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Dominic Smith

Dominic Smith is the author of six novels, including The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, which was a New York Times bestseller, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and published in more than a dozen countries. His latest novel, Return to Valetto—set in the world of abandoned and dwindling Italian towns and villages—was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in June 2023 and received the Texas Institute of Letters Jesse H. Jones Award for Fiction. Dominic’s short stories, essays and criticism have appeared in The Atlantic, Texas Monthly, the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, and The Australian. A graduate of the University of Iowa and the Michener Center for Writers at UT Austin, Dominic is the recipient of the Australian Indie Book of the Year Award, a Dobie Paisano Fellowship, as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Australian Council for the Arts. He grew up in Australia and currently lives in Seattle.

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Vanessa Hua

Vanessa Hua is the author of the national bestsellers A River of Stars and Forbidden City, as well as Deceit and Other Possibilities, a New York Times Editors Pick. A National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, she has also received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, a Steinbeck Fellowship in Creative Writing, and a de Groot Foundation Writer of Note grant, as well as awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Asian American Journalists Association, among others. A former longtime columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, her work has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Washington Post, and The Atlantic. A Visiting Writer at Saint Mary’s College of California, she teaches at the Sewanee Writers Conference and elsewhere. The daughter of Chinese immigrants, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.

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Liam Callanan

Liam Callanan’s most recent book, When in Rome, came out in March 2023 from Dutton. His novel Paris by the Book was a national bestseller and was translated into German, Italian and Chinese. His story collection, Listen & Other Stories won George W. Hunt, SJ Prize in Arts & Letters, and his novel The Cloud Atlas was a finalist for the Edgar Award. He’s written for Slate, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and about chasing children’s books (in France and Greece) for the Wall Street Journal. Liam was also the founder and executive producer of the nationwide Poetry Everywhere animated film project. He teaches in the English department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he was previously department chair and director of its doctoral program in creative writing.