Brooke Champagne is an award-winning author and essayist from New Orleans. Her debut essay collection, Nola Face: A Latina’s Life in the Big Easy, was published in 2024. Current projects include an essay collection entitled Your Bones Are My Bones, and a memoir-in-profiles. Champagne is also an assistant professor in the MFA program at the University of Alabama and has been recognized with the inaugural William Bradley Prize for the Essay. She lives in Northport, Alabama, with her family.

W. Ralph Eubanks is a writer and essayist whose work focuses on Race, Identity, and the Culture and Literature of the American South. He is the author of such titles as A Place Like Mississippi, and Ever Is a Long Time: A Journey Into Mississippi’s Dark Past. His next book, When It’s Darkness on the Delta: How America’s Richest Soil Became Its Poorest Land, which focuses on the Mississippi Delta, will be published January 13, 2026 by Beacon Press.

Now director of grants at the Mississippi Arts Commission and a host of MPB’s The Mississippi Arts Hour, Lauren Rhoades started Mississippi's first fermentation company and helmed the Eudora Welty House & Garden. In 2022, Lauren founded Rooted Magazine, an online publication dedicated to telling unfiltered stories about what it means to call Mississippi home. Her debut memoir, Split the Baby: A Memoir in Pieces, was published in June 2025.

Dale Gray is a South African-born author and food blogger known for her unique culinary journey. She graduated from Stellenbosch University and taught English in South Korea for six years before moving to the United States, where she now resides in Mississippi. Her debut cookbook, South of Somewhere, chronicles her life and culinary experiences, featuring a blend of flavors from Korea and the American South. Dale Gray has contributed to various publications, including Martha Stewart, Saveur, and Southern Living, and shares her recipes on platforms like Instagram and TheDaleyPlate.com.

Johnnie Bernhard is a traditionally published author. Her work has appeared in newspapers and magazines, both nationally and internationally. She has written articles and columns for: the Suburban Reporter of Houston, World Oil Magazine, The Mississippi Press, the international Word Among Us, Heart of Ann Arbor Magazine, Houston Style Magazine, and the Cowbird-NPR production on small town America.  Johnnie's entry for Cowbird, "The Last Mayberry" received 7,500 views, nationally and internationally.

Alexander Blevens is an Air Force veteran and a retired orthopaedic surgeon who lives and writes on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. He is the author of the debut novel Bycatch. His latest award-winning novel, Arkansas Black, is loosely based on his family’s early twentieth-century ancestral roots on a farm in Northwest Arkansas.

Olivia Clare Friedman is a fiction writer and poet. She is the author of four books, most recently the book of poems An Arm Fixed to a Wing (2025) from LSU Press. She is also the author of the novel Here Lies (Grove Atlantic), the short story collection Disasters in the First World (Black Cat/Grove Atlantic), and the book of poems The 26-Hour Day (New Issues). In fiction, she is a recipient of an O. Henry Prize, a Pushcart Prize, and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award.

Max Hipp is a teacher, writer, and musician from Mississippi. He teaches American Literature and Contemporary Literature at the University of Mississippi and has published works in various literary journals, including Black Warrior Review and SmokeLong Quarterly. His notable works include the short story collection, What Doesn’t Kill You Opens Your Heart, which explores themes of struggle and resilience in the American South. He received the 2025 Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters Award in Fiction for his writing.

Mississippian Linda Williams Jackson is the author of award-winning middle grade novels. Her first book, Midnight Without a Moon, centered around the Emmett Till murder, is an American Library Association Notable Children’s Book, a Jane Addams Honor Book for Peace and Social Justice, and a Washington Post Summer Book Club Selection. Her most recent book, The Lucky Ones, inspired by Robert Kennedy’s 1967 Poverty Tour of the Mississippi Delta, is recognized by Good Housekeeping magazine as one of the best 50 kids’ books of all time.

Skye Jackson was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. She writes about love, femininity and the challenges of navigating our modern world as a young Black woman. Her work has appeared in Palette Poetry, The Southern Review, RHINO, RATTLE and elsewhere. She is the author of the chapbook A Faster Grave (2019) and her debut collection of poetry, Libre, which was recently published by Regalo Press and distributed nationally by Simon & Schuster. Former Poet Laureate Billy Collins selected her poem "can we touch your hair?" for inclusion in the Library of Congress Poetry 180 Project Anthology.

Michael Farris Smith’s novels have appeared on Best of the Year lists with Esquire, NPR, Southern Living, Garden & Gun, Oprah Magazine, Book Riot, and numerous other outlets. As a screenwriter, he scripted the feature-film adaptations of his novels Desperation Road and The Fighter, titled for the screen as Rumble Through the Dark. With his band MFS & The Smokes, Smith wrote and released the record Lostville, which was produced by Grammy nominee Jimbo Mathus. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi.