Jimmy was born in Jackson, Mississippi. He earned his MFA from the University of Mississippi. He is the author of five novels and lives in New York.

Tracy is a researcher, editor, and writer in Jackson, Mississippi. She manages the book reviews for the Mississippi Books Page in the Clarion-Ledger and Hattiesburg American newspapers and is the editor of the forthcoming Conversations with Ellen Gilchrist (University Press of Mississippi).

John hosts the television show TrueSouth (SEC Network, ESPN, & Hulu), now in its sixth season, and serves Garden & Gun as a columnist. He is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, including The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South, named a best book of 2017 by NPR and a dozen others. Twice winner of the MFK Fisher Distinguished Writing Award, presented the 2018 nonfiction prize from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters, Edge was elected to the Georgia Writer's Hall of Fame in 2019. A native of Clinton, Georgia, he teaches in the low-residency MFA program in narrative nonfiction at the University of Georgia and serves the University of Mississippi as writer-in-residence for the Department of Writing and Rhetoric, director of the Mississippi Lab, founder of the Greenfield Farm Writers Residency, and founding director of the Southern Foodways Alliance. Edge lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his wife Blair Hobbs, an artist and university teacher.

Helen is the author of five books including the New York Times bestselling American Housewife and Southern Lady Code. She writes humor for Garden & Gun and The New Yorker. Raised in Alabama, she lives with her husband in New York City.

W. Ralph is the author of A Place Like Mississippi: A Journey Through A Real and Imagined Literary Landscape (Timber Press, March 2021). A native of Mount Olive, Mississippi, he is the author of two other books: Ever Is a Long Time: A Journey Into Mississippi’s Dark Past and The House at the End of the Road: The Story of Three Generations of an Interracial Family in the American South. His essays have been published in the Hedgehog Review, Vanity Fair, The American Scholar, The Georgia Review, and The New Yorker. A 2007 Guggenheim Fellow, he is currently a visiting professor of English and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi. He divides his time between Oxford, Mississippi, and Washington, DC.

Beth Ann has published three poetry books: Open House, Tender Hooks, and Unmentionables, all with W. W. Norton. She is also the author of 3 books of prose: Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs; Great With Child: Letters to a Young Mother, a collection of essays; and The Tilted World, a novel co-authored with her husband Tom Franklin. Beth Ann's poetry has been in over fifty anthologies, including Best American Poetry, The Book of Irish American Poetry from the Eighteenth Century to the Present, Poets of the New Century, and The Penguin Book of the Sonnet. She teaches in the MFA Program at the University of Mississippi, where she was named Outstanding Teacher of the Year.

Tom is the award-winning and New York Times bestselling author of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, which was

nominated for nine awards and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the prestigious Crime Writers' Association's Gold Dagger Award. His previous works include the Edgar-winning story, Poachers, from the collection under the same title, as well as The Tilted World, which he co-authored with Beth Ann Fennelly, Hell at the Breech, and Smonk. Winner of a 2001 Guggenheim Fellowship, he teaches in the University of Mississippi's MFA program.

Richard is an author of nonfiction books, a journalist, and a documentary film writer. His last two books, Dispatches from Pluto and The Deepest South of All, were New York Times bestsellers. His previous books include the adventure travel classic God's Middle Finger: Into the Heart of the Sierra Madre and American Nomads, which was made into an acclaimed BBC documentary with Grant as the writer and star. Currently a contributor to Smithsonian magazine, Grant has published journalism in Esquire, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. Originally from London, England, now a US citizen, he has traveled extensively and written books about Mexico and East Africa. After several years of living in a remote farmhouse in the Mississippi Delta, an experience chronicled in the multi-award-winning Dispatches from Pluto, Grant is living in Tucson, Arizona, with his wife and daughter.

JC grew up in Hattiesburg, Mississippi and holds degrees from The University of Southern Mississippi and the University of Mississippi Medical Center. He is an avid reader and reviewer of literary fiction. He promotes authors and their stories while cultivating bookish community through his Instagram page @jcgrenn_reads, where he often features original artwork. He is a recurring reviewer of new literary fiction for the Mississippi Books Page featured in the 'Clarion Ledger' and 'Hattiesburg American'. He lives in Jackson, MS where he works an Assistant Professor of Internal Medicine and and Pediatrics.

A resident of Oxford, Mississippi, Sarah is a retired lawyer and (not retired) fine artist who has redirected her creative juices towards writing and illustrating children's books. Her published work includes Puzzled by Pink, Paint Me!, and Dress Me!. She will be debuting her illustrations for One Mississippi, a children's book based on the newly adopted state song of Mississippi by Steve Azar, at this year's Mississippi Book Festival.

In addition to serving on the book festival board of directors since the very beginning, Scott is a member of the Mississippi Arts Commission and the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters. He is also co-owner of Pass Christian Books/Cat Island Coffeehouse in Pass Christian and Gulfport. Before all of that, he received undergraduate and graduate degrees from Penn State University, Millsaps College, and Tulane University.

Aimee is the author of the New York Times bestselling illustrated collection of nature essays World of Wonders, chosen as Barnes & Noble's Book of the Year and as a finalist for the Kirkus Prize. She has published four award-winning poetry collections and is the poetry editor for Sierra magazine, the storytelling branch of the Sierra Club. She lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with her family and is a professor of English and creative writing in the University of Mississippi's MFA program.

Catherine is the author of four books of poems: Danger Days (2020), The Tornado Is the World (2016), The Girls of Peculiar (2012), and Famous Last Words (2008), winner of the Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. Each of her last three books received the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Poetry Prize. She is a two-time Pushcart Prize winner and the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Mississippi Arts Commission. Pierce’s work has appeared in The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, American Poetry Review, The Nation, The Southern Review, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, and elsewhere. She is professor of English and co-director of the creative writing program at Mississippi State University.

Ellen, associate professor at the University of Southern Mississippi, has been curator of the de Grummond Children's Literature Collection since 2006. She has served on the Newbery Medal Committee, the Children's Literature Legacy Award, and the Schneider Family Book Award. She also serves as an administrator of the Ezra Jack Keats Award.

Maurice is the author of the forthcoming historical novel, The American Daughters, which will be published in 2024 by One World Random House. He is the recipient of the 2023 Louisiana Writer Award and the Black Rock Senegal Residency. He also wrote The Ones Who Don't Say They Love You, which was published by One World Random House in August 2021. It is the 2023 One Book One New Orleans selection. The book was a New York Times Editor's Choice, a finalist for the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence and longlisted for the Story Prize. The book was also selected to represent Louisiana at the 2023 National Book Festival. His first book, We Cast a Shadow, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the PEN America Open Book Prize. It was longlisted for the 2021 DUBLIN Literary Award, the Center for Fiction Prize, and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. The novel was also a New York Times Editor's Choice. His work appeared in the New York Times, the LA Times, Oxford American, Garden & Gun, Kenyon Review, and Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America. A New Orleans native, Ruffin is a professor of Creative Writing at Louisiana State University, and the 2020-2021 John and Renee Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi. Ruffin was the 2022 Grand Marshal of the Mardi Gras Krewe of House Floats and recipient of the 2022 Louisiana Board of Regents ATLAS grant.

Katy was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. She is the author of the novels The Story of Land and Sea, a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice and one of Vogue's Best Books of 2014; Free Men; and The Everlasting, a New York Times Best Historical Fiction Book of 2020. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Oxford American, Granta, Literary Hub, and elsewhere. She received a PhD in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars, and is also the author of We Have Raised All of You: Motherhood in the South, 1750-1835. She lives in New Orleans.

Angie is the author of the award-winning, #1 New York Times bestselling novels The Hate U Give, On the Come Up, and Concrete Rose as well as Find Your Voice: A Guided Journal for Writing Your Truth. She is also a coauthor of the bestselling collaborative novels Blackout and Whiteout. Angie divides her time between her native Jackson, Mississippi, and Atlanta, Georgia. You can find her online at angiethomas.com.

M.O. is the author of the novels The Big Door Prize and My Sunshine Away, which was a New York Times bestseller and winner of the Pat Conroy Award for Southern Fiction. His first book, a story collection titled The Prospect of Magic, won the Tartt's First Fiction Prize. His fiction and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, Southern Review, Garden and Gun, New York Times and others. His latest novel, The Big Door Prize, has been adapted for television by Emmy winning Writer/Producer David West Read (Schitt's Creek) and is now streaming on Apple TV. He lives in New Orleans with his wife and family, where he directs the Creative Writing Workshop MFA program at the University of New Orleans.

Jerid, also known as Akili Nzuri, is a writer, educator, Ph.D. candidate, and literary influencer. He was born and raised in Natchez, MS, and survives on an unwavering commitment to igniting a passion for reading in the youth; he also exists as a living testimony to the power of shared stories and knowing oneself. He owns and creates Ablackmanreading.com and the Instagram blog: @ablackmanreading. 

Nicola is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of Instructions for Dancing; Everything, Everything; and The Sun Is Also a Star, and is a coauthor of Blackout. She is a National Book Award finalist, a Michael L. Printz Award recipient, a Coretta Scott King-John Steptoe New Talent Award winner and the first Black woman to hit #1 on the New York Times Young Adult best-seller list. Two of her novels have been made into major motion pictures. She's also the copublisher of Joy Revolution, a Random House young adult imprint dedicated to love stories starring people of color. She grew up in Jamaica and Brooklyn, New York, and lives in Los Angeles with her husband, the novelist David Yoon, and their daughter.