Wayne Koestenbaum—poet, critic, fiction writer, painter, filmmaker, performer—has published more than twenty books, including Stubble Archipelago, The Cheerful Scapegoat, Figure It Out, Camp Marmalade, The Anatomy of Harpo Marx, Humiliation, Hotel Theory, Andy Warhol, Jackie Under My Skin, and The Queen’s Throat (nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award). His poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, the London Review of Books, and many other publications. He has had solo exhibitions of his visual art at White Columns, 356 Mission, the University of Kentucky Art Museum, Millennium Film Workshop, and Gattopardo. He has given musical performances of his improvisatory Sprechstimme soliloquies at the Hammer Museum, The Kitchen, REDCAT, Centre Pompidou, Walker Art Center, the Renaissance Society, and other venues; he released an album of piano and vocal music, Lounge Act. He has received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, a Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry, and a Whiting Award. Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library acquired his literary archive. A Distinguished Professor of English, French, and comparative literature at the CUNY Graduate Center, he lives in New York City.

Morgan Bassichis is a writer, performer, and member of Jewish Voice for Peace-NYC. Their one-person show Can I Be Frank?, about the groundbreaking late queer comedian Frank Maya, was directed by Sam Pinkleton and won a 2026 Obie Award. Morgan is the author of The Odd Years and co-editor of Questions to Ask Before Your Bat Mitzvah (both from Wendy’s Subway) with Jay Saper and Rachel Valinsky, an anti-zionist anthology for young people of all ages. Morgan also edited and wrote the introduction to the 2019 Nightboat Books reprint of the 1977 cult classic, The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions, written by Larry Mitchell and illustrated by Ned Asta.