Jennine Capó Crucet is a novelist, essayist, and screenwriter. She’s the author of four previous books, most recently the novel Say Hello to My Little Friend, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, the 2025 Joyce Carol Oates Prize, and was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize for Fiction. Her first novel, Make Your Home Among Strangers, won the International Latino Book Award, was named a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice book, and was cited as a best book of the year by NBC Latino, the Guardian, the Miami Herald, and other venues; it has been adopted as an all-campus read at over forty U.S. universities. Her other books include the story collection How to Leave Hialeah, which won the Iowa Short Fiction Prize, the John Gardner Book Award, and the Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award; and the essay collection My Time Among the Whites: Notes from an Unfinished Education, which was long-listed for the 2019 PEN America/Open Book Award. A former Contributing Opinion Writer for the New York Times, she’s also a recipient of a PEN/O. Henry Prize, the Picador Fellowship, and the Hillsdale Award for the Short Story, awarded by the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Her writing has appeared on PBS NewsHour, National Public Radio, and in publications such as the Atlantic, Condé Nast Traveler, and others. She’s worked as a professor of Ethnic Studies and of Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska and at Florida State University, and she’s taught writing workshops at conferences across the country and internationally. She’s also worked for the One Voice Scholars Program as a college access counselor to first-generation college students and as a sketch comedienne (though not at the same time). Born and raised in Miami to Cuban parents, she currently lives in North Carolina with her family.

Crystal Pearl Molinary is a visual artist based in Miami, Florida. Working primarily with photography and video, her practice draws from personal narrative to examine the layered intersections of identity, nostalgia, heritage, femininity, and beauty within the Cuban-American experience. Her work explores how cultural values are reflected and reinforced through aesthetic choices, domestic rituals, humor, and gestures rooted in memory, revealing the beauty and absurdity of inherited traditions and the ways identity reverberates across generations.

Molinary holds a BFA in Photography from Florida International University. Her work has been exhibited at MoMA PS1 and is included in notable collections, such as the NSU Art Museum and The Frost Art Museum. Her work has been written about in The Aesthetics of Excess and featured in numerous publications, including Hyperallergic and Teen Vogue. Alongside her studio practice, she has developed a career in arts education, working with institutions such as the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami; and Miami-Dade County Public Schools, where she initiated and directed impactful outreach programs. She is currently the Director of Visual Arts at Miami Arts Charter School.