The ''rare writer who can combine keen, grounded, psychological observation with visionary headiness'' (Salon), Ken Kalfus is the author of the novels The Commissariat of Enlightenment, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; A Disorder Peculiar to the Country, a National Book Award finalist; and Equilateral. His short story collections include Coup de Foudre, Thirst, and PU-239 and Other Russian Fantasies. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Pew Fellowship for the Arts, Kalfus's works have been translated into more than 10 languages. In 2 A.M. in Little America, Kalfus imagines a plausibly dystopian future in which young people from the United States are forced to emigrate to other countries because of large-scale civil unrest.

Nathaniel Popkin's many books of fiction and nonfiction include Everything is Borrowed, The Year of the Return, and To Reach the Spring: From Complicity to Consciousness in the Age of Eco-Crisis. He is co-editor of the literary anthology Who Will Speak for America?, was the fiction editor of Cleaver Magazine, and the writer/editor of the Emmy-winning documentary film series Philadelphia: The Great Experiment.  (recorded 5/11/2022)