Ruth Dickey, Executive Director of the National Book Foundation, has spent over 30 years working at the intersection of community building, writing, and art. Since 2013, she served as Executive Director of Seattle Arts & Lectures, which brings the best writers and thinkers to Seattle stages and classrooms. A builder and believer in big dreams, Ruth has had the pleasure of leading organizations in Washington, DC; New Orleans, LA; Cincinnati, OH; and Seattle, WA to dramatically expand their community impact. Ruth holds an MFA in poetry from UNC-Greensboro, and a BS in Foreign Service and an MA in Latin American Studies from Georgetown University. She was a 2017 fellow with the National Arts Strategies Chief Executive Program, and served as a judge in Fiction for the 2019 National Book Awards. (Photo credit: Libby Lewis)

Javier Ramirez is a longtime Chicago indie bookseller and co-owner of Madison Street Books. He is currently a member of the American Booksellers Association’s ABC advisory council, recently served on the ABA’s middle grade/YA debut Indies Introduce panel, was a 2017 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction judge, and has co-hosted Publishing Cocktails—a semi-annual Chicago-area social bringing together independent booksellers and authors—since 2011.

Danzy Senna is the author of five critically acclaimed books of fiction and nonfiction, including her award-winning first novel Caucasia, and her most recent novel, New People, selected as a New York Times Notable Book and one of Time Magazine’s Best Novels of the Year. Senna is a recipient of the Whiting Writers Award and the Dos Passos Prize for Literature. She lives in Los Angeles and is a Professor at the University of Southern California.

Jeff VanderMeer is the bestselling author of the Southern Reach Trilogy. His fiction has won the Shirley Jackson and Nebula awards, and been translated into 38 languages. His novel Borne was recently added to the National Endowment for the Arts’s Big Reads program. His nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The Atlantic. VanderMeer has previously been a judge for the Eisner Awards, the Philip K. Dick Award, and the PEN / E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award, among others.