Darien Hsu Gee is a bestselling novelist with Penguin Random House and a recent Poetry Society Chapbook Fellow. Her craft book, Writing the Hawaiʻi Memoir, won the Hawaiʻi Book Publishers' Ka Palapala Poʻokela award. Darien has received a Sustainable Arts Foundation grant as well as a Vermont Studio Center fellowship. She lives on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi and is second-generation Chinese American.

Carla Crujido is a hapa writer of Filipino, Norwegian, Mexican, and German descent. She is a graduate of the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. A short story writer and essayist, Carla is originally from San Francisco, but now calls Portland home.