Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah was raised in Spring Valley, New York, and now lives in the Bronx. His debut collection, Friday Black, was a New York Times bestseller, won the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize. His first novel Chain-Gang All-Stars was a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction, shortlisted for the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize and the Books Are My Bag Awards, and selected as a New York Times Top Ten Books of the Year. Adjei-Brenyah is a National Book Foundation’s ‘5 Under 35’ honoree. Mai Sennaar is a writer, filmmaker and playwright. Called “extraordinary” by the New York Times and “glorious” by the Guardian, her debut novel They Dream in Gold, out from SJP Lit (Zando) in the US and Picador (Macmillan) in the UK was a finalist for the 2024 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. The book was named a Best Debut Book of 2024 by Amazon, a Best Book of July by TIME magazine and was a summer pick in the Washington Post. Her short film Wax Lovers’ Playlist premiered at AFI Silver movie theater and was an official selection of the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival. Her plays have been performed at the Smithsonian Affiliate Museum of the African Diaspora, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Archive and the Classical Theatre of Harlem among other venues. She is the book writer for the 2023 Eugene O'Neill National Musical Theater Semifinalist Carry On!, by Broadway composer Diana Wharton Sennaar. Sennaar is also a journalist, and recently covered West Africa’s largest art fair for Frieze. She lives in Baltimore and Dakar.
New York City, NY; NYC