Jon Hickey is a writer in San Francisco. He was born in Mankato, Minnesota and is a member of the Lac du Flambeau band of Anishinaabe. He earned his MFA at Cornell University and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.

His stories have appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Gulf Coast, and the Massachusetts Review. His debut novel Big Chief came out in 2025 from Simon & Schuster. 

Tomas Moniz is a latinx writer living in East Oakland, CA. His debut novel, Big Familia, was a finalist for the 2020 PEN/Hemingway and the LAMBDA. His second novel, All Friends Are Necessary, won the 2024 California Golden Poppy Award. His next novel will be published in Fall 2026 from Algonquin Books.

He teaches at Berkeley City College, the Antioch MFA program and USF. He has stuff on the internet but loves penpals: PO Box 3555, Berkeley CA 94703. He promises to write back.

Photo credit: Ella Moniz

Lexi Pandell is a journalist and author of fiction from Oakland, CA. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and was the winner of the Editors’ Prize in Fiction from New Ohio Review. Her debut memoir Holy Mother! will be published in 2027.

Photo credit: Emily Merrill

Sommer Schafer is Senior Editor of The Forge Literary Magazine and widely published, including a Distinguished Story in Best American Short Stories 2019. Her first book, The Women, a collection of short stories, was released by Unsolicited Press in November 2023. Her second book, Hope, a novel-in-stories, was released in November 2025. She lives on Coast Miwok land with her family, a rescue dove, and a bearded dragon.

Photo credit: Felix AuYeung