Shelley Fairweather-Vega is a professional translator of Russian and Uzbek in Seattle, Washington, where she runs the Northwest Literary Translators, manages a library consulting business, and serves on the advisory board of the Translation Studies Hub at the University of Washington. Her translation practice focuses on the contemporary literature of Central Asia. Shelley’s translation of Hamid Ismailov’s We Computers: A Ghazal Novel was a Finalist for the 2025 National Book Award for Translated Literature.

Javier García del Moral was trained as a civil engineer, working on roads and bridges in Spain, Ireland, the Middle East, and the United States. He is the founder of The Wild Detectives, the Dallas bookstore-bar opened in 2014, which has hosted more than 1,000 literary and cultural events and is widely recognized as a cornerstone of the city’s independent arts scene. He also coordinates Hay Festival Forum Dallas, helping position the city as an international meeting point for contemporary literature and ideas. (Photo credit: Andrew Ryan Shepherd)

John Keene is the author of a handful of books, including Punks: New & Selected Poems, Winner of the 2022 National Book Award for Poetry; and the award-winning Counternarratives: Stories and Novellas. With Robert F. Reid-Pharr he co-edited Essex Hemphill's Love Is a Dangerous Word: Selected Poems. His translations include Hilda Hilst’s novel, Letters from a Seducer. A 2018 MacArthur Fellow, he is Board of Governors Professor of English at Rutgers University-Newark. (Photo credit: Nina Subin)

Christopher Merrill (Chair) is the author of many books of poetry, nonfiction, and translation, among them On the Road to Lviv; Flares; The Tree of the Doves: Ceremony, Expedition, War; and Self-Portrait with Dogwood. He directed the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa from 2000–2025, and served on both the National Council on the Humanities and the U.S. National Commission for UNESCO. (Photo credit: Tim Schoon)

Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi is the author of Fra Keeler, Savage Tongues, and Call Me Zebra, winner of the 2019 PEN/Faulkner Award. She has received a Whiting Award, is a past National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree, and has held fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Fulbright Program, the Aspen Institute, and MacDowell. Her work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The Paris Review, and The Yale Review, among other publications. She is the Dorothy G. Griffin College Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame. (Photo credit: Beowulf Sheehan)