Ashley Wilda has an MFA in Creative Writing for Children and Young Adults from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. In addition to writing, she loves painting, making ceramics, playing music, rock climbing, and hiking with her husband, Ethan, and rescue pup, Phoenix.
Melissa M. Wilcox is Professor and Holstein Family and Community Chair of Religious Studies at the University of California, Riverside. She is the author of Queer Women and Religious Individualism, winner of the 2010 Book Award of the ASA’s Sociology of Religion Section.
Priya Parmar is the author of the novels Exit the Actress and Vanessa and Her Sister, a New York Times Notable Book, as well as co-author of the musical Sylvia (London Old Vic) nominated for the Olivier Award for Best Original Musical. Her forthcoming novel, The Original, will be published by Ballantine in April 2026. She lives between London and Connecticut with her family and four rescue dogs.
Linda Stift studied German literature at the University of Vienna. She has published three novels to date: Kingpeng (2005), Stierhunger (2007) and Kein einziger Tag (2011).
She won the Alfred Gesswein Literaturpreis in 2007. She was also nominated for the prestigious Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in 2009. Stierhunger was published in English as The Empress and the Cake by Peirene Press in 2016 in a translation by Jamie Bulloch.
al-Masʿūdī (c. 896 – 956) was a historian, geographer and traveler. He is sometimes referred to as the "Herodotus of the Arabs". A polymath and prolific author of over twenty works on theology, history (Islamic and universal), geography, natural science and philosophy, his celebrated magnum opus The Meadows of Gold (Murūj al-Dhahab) combines universal history with scientific geography, social commentary and biography.
