Morgan Talty is a citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation where he grew up. He received his BA in Native American Studies from Dartmouth College and his MFA in fiction from Stonecoast’s low-residency program.

His story collection Night of the Living Rez  (2022) won the New England Book Award for fiction, and is set in a Native community in Maine and explores what it means to live, survive, and the persevere after tragedy. The New York Times called it “Remarkable… An electric, captivating voice… Talty has assured himself a spot in the canon of great Native American literature.”

Talty’s work has appeared in Granta, The Georgia Review,  Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, Narrative Magazine, LitHub, and elsewhere. A winner of the 2021 Narrative Prize, Talty’s work has been supported by the Elizabeth George Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts (2022). Talty teaches courses in both English and Native American Studies, and he is on the faculty at the Stonecoast MFA in creative writing. Talty is also a Prose Editor at The Massachusetts Review.

Brendan Shay Basham (Diné) is Tó Ts’ohnii (Big Water) and Bit’ah’nii (Folded-Arms People), born for bilagáana (Irish, Scottish, English, German). A writer, artist, educator, and recovering chef, Brendan was born in Alaska and raised in northern Arizona. He received his MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts, and BA in Liberal Arts from the Evergreen State College. His debut novel, Swim Home to the Vanished, was released August 22, 2023, from Harper Books, flagship imprint of HarperCollins.

Brendan’s work has appeared in Puerto del Sol, Santa Fe Literary Review, Yellow Medicine Review, and Juked, among other publications. He is a recipient of Poetry Northwest’s inaugural James Welch Prize for Indigenous Writers, the Ucross Foundation’s first Native American Literary Award, and fellowships from the Truman Capote Trust, Writing By Writers, and Tin House. He is a fiction faculty member at UNR – Lake Tahoe’s Creative Writing MFA Program.