Loung Ung is a Cambodian-American human-rights activist, lecturer and national spokesperson for the Campaign for a Landmine-Free World from 1997 to 2003. She has served in the same capacity for the In…
Edwidge Danticat is a Haitian American novelist and short story writer. Her first novel, Breath, Eyes, Memory, was published in 1994 and went on to become an Oprah's Book Club selection. Danticat has …
Jamaica Kincaid is an Antiguan-American novelist, essayist, gardener, and gardening writer. She was born in St. John's, Antigua (part of the twin-island nation of Antigua and Barbuda). She lives in No…
Malidoma Patrice Somé was from the Dagara tribe of Burkina Faso, formerly Upper Volta, West Africa. "Malidoma," in his native language, means "be friend with the stranger." He was an initiated, gifted…
Rattawut Lapcharoensap was born in Chicago in 1979 and raised in Bangkok. He currently lives in Brooklyn and teaches high-school English. ‘Farangs’, his first published story, appeared in Granta 84. S…
Georgi Gospodinov is a writer, poet and playwright based in Sofia, Bulgaria. He studied Bulgarian Philology at Sofia University. Later he defended a PhD on New Bulgarian literature with the Bulgaria A…
Tahmima Anam is an award-winning novelist, short story writer, and anthropologist. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Granta Best Young British Novelist, and winner of a Commonwealt…
Eka Kurniawan was born in Tasikmalaya in 1975 and completed his studies in the Faculty of Philosophy at Gadjah Mada University. He has been described as the “brightest meteorite” in Indonesia’s new li…
Mariama Bâ (1929 – 1981) was a Senegalese author and feminist, who wrote in French. Born in Dakar, she was raised a Muslim, but at an early age came to criticise what she perceived as inequalities bet…
Souvankham Thammavongsa is the author of four poetry books, and the short story collection HOW TO PRONOUNCE KNIFE, won the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize and and was New York Times Editors' Choice, out …
Born and raised in Việt Nam, Dr. Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai is the author of the international bestseller The Mountains Sing, runner-up for the 2021 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, winner of the 2020 BookBrowse…
Gothataone Moeng was born in Serowe, Botswana. She was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Fiction, a Summer Workshop scholar at Tin House, and an Emerging Writer Fellow at A Public Space. Her writing has app…
Fiston Nasser Mwanza Mujila is a Congolese writer.. He now lives in Graz, Austria and is pursuing a PhD in Romance Languages. His writing has been awarded numerous prizes, including the Gold Medal at …
Tiffany Tsao is a novelist and a translator of Indonesian literature. She holds a PhD in English from UC-Berkeley and now lives in Sydney, Australia, on Gamaragal land.
Sandra Uwiringiyimana, a member of the Banyamulenge tribe (also referred to as Tutsi Congolese), and was born in South Kivu, located in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but spent the majority of her …
French-Rwandan Gaël Faye is an author, composer and hip hop artist. He was born in 1982 in Burundi, and has a Rwandan mother and French father. In 1995, after the outbreak of the civil war and the Rwa…
John Manuel Arias is the National Bestselling author of Where There Was Fire, named a Best Debut by Apple Books and a Finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize. A Canto Mundo fellow & an alumnus …
Ho Sok Fong (賀淑芳) is the author of two short-story collections in Chinese, Maze Carpet (迷宮毯子, Aquarius, 2012) and Lake Like a Mirror (湖面如鏡, Aquarius, 2014). Her literary awards include the Chiu Ko Fic…
Svetlana Alexievich was born in Ivano Frankivsk, Soviet Union. Her father was Belarusian and her mother Ukrainian. Alexievich grew up in Belarus, where both her parents were teachers. She studied to b…
Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner is a Marshall Islander poet, performance artist, educator. She received international acclaim through her poetry performance at the opening of the United Nations Climate Summit in…
Karina Robles Bahrin got her first break as a writer when she guest edited a weekly teen column in The New Straits Times a very long time ago. Her short fiction has been published in venues such as Ur…
