Adrienne Chung

Adrienne Chung is the author of Organs of Little Importance (Penguin 2023), winner of the National Poetry Series. Her work has appeared in The Yale Review, Joyland, Recliner, the Washington Square Review, and others, and has been supported by the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. She holds an MFA from UW-Madison and a BA from Stanford.

Daniel Castro

Daniel Castro is a writer and journalist. His work has appeared in Harper's, Salon, the Miami Herald, and Tampa Review. He holds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and has won awards and fellowships from the Fulbright Association, Cintas Foundation, Louisiana Press Association, the MacDowell Colony, and the Faulkner Society. He has taught at the University of Iowa and the Sackett Street Writers' Workshop.

Tracy Fuad

Tracy Fuad, a 2023 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Creative Writing, is the author of two collections of poetry. Her second collection, PORTAL, won the 2023 Phoenix Emerging Poets Prize and was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2024. Her debut collection, about:blank, was a finalist for the National Poetry Series. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The Yale Review, The New Republic and elsewhere. In 2024, Tracy became the director of the Berlin Writers' Workshop.

Evan James

Evan James is the author of Cheer Up, Mr. Widdicombe: A Novel and I've Been Wrong Before: Essays. He received an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and has taught writing at Columbia University, The New School, Drexel University, The University of Iowa, Victoria University of Wellington, and The Center for Fiction. His work has appeared in The Yale Review, Oxford American, The New York Times, McSweeney's, Travel + Leisure, and elsewhere, and he has received fellowships from Lambda Literary, Yaddo, The Elizabeth Kostova Foundation, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. He lives in Brooklyn.

Kannan Mahadevan

Kannan Mahadevan earned his M.F.A in fiction from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He has been a recipient of the Richard E. Guthrie Memorial Fellowship, as well as a fiction fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. His work has been published in the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and Racquet. He currently teaches in Brooklyn and is at work on a novel.

Ben Mauk (co-founder and former director)

Ben Mauk is an Emmy and Peabody award-winning writer and multimedia journalist. He writes for The New York Times Magazine, Harper's Magazine, and The New Yorker, among other publications. He co-founded and directs the Berlin Writers' Workshop. He has taught English literature and writing at the University of Iowa. (Photo credit Carleen Coulter)

Ben Miller

Ben Miller is a writer and historian living in Berlin. With Huw Lemmey, he is the author of Bad Gays: A Homosexual History (2022), which has been translated into three languages and won the Goodreads Choice Award for History and Biography. A regular contributor to the arts pages of The New York Times and of book criticism and essays to outlets like Baffler and The Los Angeles Review of Books, Ben’s writing has been aditionally anthologized in A Queer Anthology of Healing (Pilot Press, 2020) and Les Tasses – Toilettes publiques, Affaires privées. He is the author of Time Is A Queer Thing (Media Guru Editions, 2019), and The New Queer Photography (Verlag Kettler, 2020). Photo credit: Florian Hetz

Lauren Oyler

Lauren Oyler is a critic and novelist from the United States. Her essays and book reviews appear regularly in The New Yorker, the New York Times, Harper's, the London Review of Books, and other publications. Her debut novel, Fake Accounts, was a New York Times Editor's Choice, a Washington Post book of the year, and shortlisted for the 2021 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction.

An Paenhuysen

An Paenhuysen works as an art critic, cultural historian, and curator of contemporary art in Berlin. She is the author of a book on the Belgian avant-garde in the 1920s, based on her PhD work, which was published by Meulenhoff-Manteau in Belgium. She has worked as a post-doc fellow at UC Berkeley, Columbia University, New York, and Humboldt University, Berlin and published in many academic journals such as New German Critique. As a curator, An is the author of several catalogues. She has also contributed to such magazines as Contemporary And, Spex, and Sleek Magazine. Her regular column C’est du Belge appeared in Junge Welt. She recently published Little Thoughts in Art with TFGC Publishing. An teaches art criticism and creative writing in art at the Node Curatorial School.

Adrienne Raphel

Adrienne Raphel is the author of Thinking Inside the Box: Adventures with Crosswords and the Puzzling People Who Can't Live Without Them (Penguin Press), named an Editor's Choice in the New York Times Book Review; What Was It For (Rescue Press, 2017), selected by Cathy Park Hong as the winner of the Black Box Poetry Prize; and Our Dark Academia (Rescue Press, 2022). Her essays, poetry, and criticism appear in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, The New Republic, and The Atlantic, among other publications. Born in New Jersey and raised in Vermont, Raphel holds a PhD in English from Harvard University, an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and an AB (summa cum laude) from Princeton University. She is currently a Lecturer in the Princeton Writing Program.

Liska Jacobs

Liska Jacobs is the author of the critically acclaimed novels "Catalina", "The Worst Kind of Want" and most recently, "The Pink Hotel" which was an Indie best-seller and listed as one of the best books of 2022 by Esquire. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Literary Hub, Alta, The Millions, and Zyzzyva, among other publications. She has taught creative writing at the University of California Los Angeles Writers' Program and the University of California Riverside Low-Residency MFA program. She's lectured at the Rutgers University Writing Program, Cal State University Los Angeles, Moorpark College, and The Reader Berlin.

Nathan Ma

Nathan Ma is a critic, editor and strategist. His work has been featured in the Financial Times, Dwell, The Baffler, The Believer, and Texte Zur Kunst, among other publications. His extensive commercial portfolio includes work for Art Basel, easyJet, Jägermeister, Siemens, and SONOS. Originally from Seattle, Nathan is a lecturer in media studies at the British and Irish Modern Music Institute. He is currently working on his professional certification in teaching and learning.

Rebekah Smith

Rebekah Smith is a writer, translator, and editor. She edits books at Ugly Duckling Presse, and makes small edition artist books and chapbooks with her side project, Johan Johan Editions. Her writing has appeared in Poems by Sunday; No, Dear; and is forthcoming in a belladonna* chaplet. Her translations from Spanish include The Sea by Victoria Cóccaro (DoubleCross, 2024) and Ova Completa (UDP, 2021). She is a 2024 NEA Literature in Translation Fellow.

Madeleine Watts

Madeleine Watts is the author of the novel The Inland Sea, shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the UTS Glenda Adams Award for New Writing. Her essays have appeared in Harper's, The Believer, and Literary Hub, and short stories have been published in The White Review, HEAT, and Guernica, among others. She teaches creative writing at Columbia and Johns Hopkins Universities, and has previously taught classes for Catapult and the Center for Fiction. Born in Sydney, Australia, she spends most of her time in New York.

Gurmeet Singh

Gurmeet Singh is a writer and editor based in Berlin. His work has appeared in New England Review, Sand, Social Text Journal, and elsewhere, and was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize. He was a 2022 CRIT participant and is the founder of Writers of Colour Berlin, which organises regular events and readings around the city. His first novel is currently under consideration in the USA.

Mitch Speed

Mitch Speed is a Canadian writer based in Berlin. Since 2010, his art criticism and essays have appeared in Artforum, Frieze, Art Review, Camera Austria, Turps, Momus, Canadian Art, and other publications. He is the author of Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore (2019), a study of Mark Leckey’s video artwork of the same name, written for Afterall Books’ One Work series. In late 2024, Floating Opera Press will publish his book 'Undead Tongues: Art in the Nostalgia Gyre,' a book-length essay exploring the question of art's relevance, in an age when time and experience are warped by capitalism and technology. His collected essays are also forthcoming from Brick Press.

Mia Bailey

Mia Bailey is an artist and writer. She received a B.A. in Comparative Religions from SOAS at the University of London, a six-year graduate Fine Arts degree in painting from the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe, Germany, and an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was a Maytag Fellow. Her writing has been anthologized in Strangers in Paris. Her visual art has been exhibited in Germany, Switzerland, Australia, and Korea, and she has received grants and fellowships from the Stanley Thomas Johnson Foundation, the Cité des Arts, and the Audiovision and Multimedia Commission Basel. She was born in Bangkok, Thailand, grew up in Australia, Canada, France, and Japan, and holds both Australian and German citizenship.

Amy Benfer

Amy Benfer is a writer and editor formerly based in San Francisco and New York City. A graduate of Wesleyan University, she began her career at Salon, where she wrote and edited essays and reported features. She has also been a senior editor at Legal Affairs, managing editor at PAPER magazine, and a senior writer and deputy arts editor at Metro newspapers. Her arts criticism, features, and essays have appeared in The Believer, Mother Jones, The Guardian, The LA Times, The New York Times, Paris Review Daily, NBC News, Bloomberg Businessweek, Glamour, and Elle. She writes frequently on European bands for Bandcamp Daily.

Tom Drury

Tom Drury is the author of numerous short stories, essays, and the novels The End of Vandalism, The Black Brook, Hunts in Dreams, The Driftless Area, and Pacific. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, A Public Space, Granta, Ploughshares, Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, and Tricycle: The Buddhist Review. A graduate of the MA creative writing program at Brown University, Drury is originally from the American Midwest. He has taught creative writing at Wesleyan University, Hollins University, Bard College Berlin, and the University of Leipzig, where he was named Picador Professor for Literature in spring 2017. His novel Pacific, published in 2013, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and he has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the American Academy in Berlin. His novels have been translated into Spanish, French, Italian, and German; Grouse County, a trilogy of his Midwestern novels, was published in German by Klett-Cotta in the fall of 2017.

Madeleine LaRue

Madeleine LaRue is a writer, editor, and translator from German. She is the associate editor and director of publicity for Music & Literature, and has worked as an academic editor and writing tutor since 2008. She has degrees in Art History (B.A.) and Cultural Translation (M.A.), both from the American University of Paris, and is a TEFL-certified teacher of English as a Foreign Language. She has taught students of all ages in private academies in the Czech Republic, Taiwan, and Germany. Originally from Colorado, she has lived in Europe (and Asia) since 2006.

Matthew Nelson-Teutsch

Matthew Nelson-Teutsch is a fiction writer and educator. Previously based in Washington, DC, northern California, and New York City, he now lives in Berlin. A graduate of the George Washington University, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he has taught writing and literature courses at the University of Iowa, Evergreen Valley College, the Fashion Institute of Technology, Adelphi University, and Baruch College (CUNY). His writing has been awarded the Hassan Hussein Award and the Deena Davidson Prize for fiction. He is currently at work on a novel.

Anne Posten

Anne Posten translates prose, poetry, and drama from German. The recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, she has translated such authors as Carl Seelig, Thomas Brasch, Tankred Dorst, Anna Katharina Hahn, Monika Held, and Paul Scheerbart for New Directions, Christine Burgin/The University of Chicago, n+1, VICE, The Buenos Aires Review, FIELD, Stonecutter, and Hanging Loose, among others. She has taught writing and literature at Queens College, SUNY’s Fashion Institute of Technology, and the Humboldt University in Berlin. She holds a BA in German Language and Literature from Oberlin College and an MFA in Creative Writing and Literary Translation from Queens College, CUNY. She is based in Berlin.

Ryan Ruby

Ryan Ruby is the author of The Zero and the One (Twelve Books, 2017). His fiction and criticism have appeared in The Baffler, Conjunctions, Dissent, Lapham’s Quarterly, n+1, and The Paris Review Daily, among other venues. He has translated novellas by Roger Caillois and Grégoire Bouillier from the French for Readux Books. He is the recipient of the 2019 Albert Einstein Fellowship and is currently an Affiliated Fellow of the Institute for Cultural Inquiry in Berlin.

Rebecca Rukeyser

Rebecca Rukeyser is a fiction writer and the recipient of a 2018 Grant for Non-German Literature, awarded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and has taught creative writing at the University of Iowa and Heinrich Heine Universität, Düsseldorf. She's a member of the guest faculty at Bard College Berlin, where she teaches fiction writing. Her stories have appeared in such publications as ZYZZYVA, The Massachusetts Review, and Best American NonRequired Reading. Her debut novel is forthcoming from Granta Books.

Bennett Sims

Bennett Sims is the author of the novel A Questionable Shape (Two Dollar Radio, 2013), which received the Bard Fiction Prize and was a finalist for The Believer Book Award, and the collection White Dialogues (Two Dollar Radio, 2017). He is a recipient of a Michener-Copernicus Society Fellowship. His fiction has appeared in A Public Space, Conjunctions, Electric Literature, Tin House, and Zoetrope: All-Story, as well as in the Pushcart Prize Anthology. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and has taught at Bard College, Grinnell College, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop.