Poupeh Missaghi has a PhD in English and Literary Arts from the University of Denver; an MA in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD; and an MA in Translation Studies and a BA in Translation Practice from Azad University, Tehran. Her novel trans(re)lating house one was published by Coffee House Press in 2020, and her translation of Iranian author Nasim Marashi’s award-winning novel, I’ll Be Strong for You came out with Astra Publishing House in 2021. For the past five years, she has been teaching at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn; City University of New York; and Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland. She is joining University of Denver as an assistant professor in literary arts and studies in the fall of 2022. (BTL Faculty) 

José Olivarez is the son of Mexican immigrants. His debut book, Citizen Illegal, was a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Award and a winner of the 2018 Chicago Review of Books Poetry Prize. It was named a top book of 2018 by The Adroit Journal, NPR, and the New York Public Library. Along with Felicia Chavez and Willie Perdomo, he co-edited the anthology, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT. He is the co-host of the podcast, The Poetry Gods. In 2018, he was awarded the first annual Author and Artist in Justice Award from the Phillips Brooks House Association and named a Debut Poet of 2018 by Poets & Writers. In 2019, he was awarded a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. (BTL Faculty) 

Rumena Bužarovska is a fiction writer and literary translator. An author of four volumes of short stories translated into more than ten languages, her book My Husband has been adapted into three stage productions in Ljubljana, Belgrade and Skopje. A 2018 resident of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, she is a professor of American literature and translation at the Ss Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje. She is the co-author and co-organizer of the women’s storytelling initiative PeachPreach. (IWP Fall Resident ’18, BTL faculty ’20 and ’21, North Macedonia) 

Mary Hickman was born in Idaho and grew up in China and Taiwan. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow. Hickman is the author of two books of poems, This Is the Homeland (Ahsahta Press, 2015) and Rayfish (Omnidawn Publishing, 2017), which won the James Laughlin Award, given by the Academy of American Poets and chosen by Ellen Bass, Jericho Brown, and Carmen Giménez Smith. An assistant professor at Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln, Nebraska, she also teaches in (and loves!) the University of Iowa International Writing Program’s Between the Lines exchange program. (BTL Faculty ’15, ’16, ’17, ’20, ’21, U.S.) 

Vladimir Poleganov is the author of one collection of short stories, The Deconstruction of Thomas S (2013, St. Kliment Ohridski University Press) and one novel, The Other Dream (2016, Colibri), which won the Helikon Award for Best Fiction Book of the Year in 2017. His short stories have appeared in various literary magazines in Bulgaria and abroad. “The Birds”, a short story, was featured in Dalkey Archive Press’ anthology Best European Fiction 2016. In 2016, he participated in the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program. This was followed by residencies in Shanghai and Sun Yat-sen University in China. He has translated novels by writers such as Thomas Pynchon, George Saunders, Octavia E. Butler, and Peter Beagle into Bulgarian. In 2020, his translation of George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo won the Association of Bulgarian Translators Prize. He is currently working on a PhD in Bulgarian literature at Sofia University where he also teaches courses on creative writing and fantastic literature. (IWP Fall Resident ’16, BTL faculty ’20 and ’21, Bulgaria)  

Rochelle Potkar is a fictionist, poet, and screenwriter. Rochelle is an alumna of Iowa’s International Writing Program (2015) and a Charles Wallace Writer’s fellow, University of Stirling (2017). Author of Four Degrees of Separation and Paper Asylum, which was shortlisted for the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize 2020. She had her poetry film Skirt featured on Shonda Rhimes’ Shondaland. Her short story collection Bombay Hangovers was released in 2021. Widely-anthologized, a few of her poems and stories have won prizes. Her first screenplay was a quarter-finalist at the Atlanta Film Festival Screenwriting competition 2020. (IWP Fall Resident ’15, Summer Institute Mentor ’19, India) 

Kateryna Babkina is a Ukrainian poet, prose writer, columnist, screenwriter, and playwright. She’s the author of four poetry collections (Lights of Saint Elm, 2002, The Mustard, 2011, Painkillers and Sleeping Pills, 2014, Charmed for Love, 2017, Does Not Hurt, 2021), a novel (Sonia, 2013), a novel in short stories (My Grandfather Danced the Best, 2019) and two collections of stories (Lilu After You, 2008 and Happy Naked People, 2016). She has also written 3 books for kids (The Pumpkin Year, The Hat and the Whale, and Girls Power [co-authored with Mark Livin]), which are extremely popular in Ukraine. Her writings have been translated into English, Swedish, Polish, German, Hebrew, French, Spanish, Romanian, Czech and Russian. 

Shawntai Brown is a Detroit writer, media commentator, literacy coordinator and teaching artist. Her work centers on empowering communities through experiences that educate, challenge and entertain. She has a Bachelor of Arts in creative writing from Western Michigan University and a Master of Arts in Literacy Learning from Marygrove College. Her plays have been performed in New York, Chicago and across Michigan, including her episodic series eLLe, centering queer women experiences, now in its 10th year. She co-hosts a web show Woman Crush Everyday, reviewing Black woman-centered queer media and interviewing content producers, and co-founded Black LGBT+ Plays, a creative development network for film and theatre creatives. Currently, Shawntai serves as the School Coordinator with InsideOut Literary Arts where she previously taught poetry as a teaching artist. She is a board member and playwright with Extra Mile Playwrights Theatre and a 2020 Krege Live Arts Fellow. 

Melody Moezzi an Iranian-American Muslim author, attorney, activist, and visiting associate professor of creative writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She is the author of War on Error: Real Stories of American Muslims, Haldol and Hyacinths: A Bipolar Life, and most recently, The Rumi Prescription: How an Ancient Mystic Poet Changed My Modern Manic Life, which earned her a 2021 Wilbur Award. Moezzi’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Christian Science Monitor, NBC News, Inside Higher Ed, Al Arabiya, The South China Morning Post, Hürriyet, The Straits Times, Parabola, and many other outlets. She’s also a United Nations Global Expert and an Opinion Leader for the British Council’s Our Shared Future initiative. 

La Shaun Phoenix Moore is a Detroit-based vocalist, spoken word artist, activist, culture creator and wife. Moore’s interdisciplinary work is infused with her love for the city of Detroit, hip-hop, God, social justice and her black momma. She is currently working on her first memoir exploring the complexities of the Mother Wound and how it is rooted in her immediate family. Moore is the coach of the Youth Performance Troupe for InsideOut Literary Arts. She is the recipient of the 2020 and 2021 Creators of Culture Award by CultureSource.

Justin Rogers is a Black poet, educator, coach, and editor from Detroit, Michigan. Rogers shares poems surrounding living and praying as a Black man in America and explores fantasy through Pop Culture. He most recently has work published in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, The Metro Times, Detroit Action, and is the author of the micro-zine “Nostalgia as Black Matilda” (Rinky Dink Press, 2017). He released his chapbook Black. Matilda. in 2019 with Glass Poetry Press. He is the coordinator of InsideOut’s award winning after school program, Citywide Poets and part of the 2021/22 MACC Rising Leaders Cohort.