Cris Beam is an author and professor in New York City who’s most recent book, To the End of June: The Intimate Life of American Foster Care was named a 2013 New York Times Notable Book, was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Award, shortlisted for the William Saroyan Prize and the and was a best book on several year-end lists including NPR, New York Magazine and The Boston Globe. She is also the author of Transparent: Love, Family and Living the T with Transgender Teenagers (Harcourt 2007), which won a Lambda Literary Award and was a Stonewall Honor book.

Fatima Farheen Mirza is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Teaching-Writing-Fellow. She has taught creative writing and fiction courses at the University of Iowa and at the Iowa Young Writers’ Studio. In 2013 she was awarded The Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research/ Creative Achievement from The University of California, Riverside. She will be working on her first novel while at Marble House.