WMFA Creators & Guests

Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic. He is the author of 2016 poetry collection The Crown Ain't Worth Much (published as Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib), 2017 essay collection They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us and the 2019 non-fiction book, Go Ahead in the Rain, on the hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest.

Kristen Arnett is a fiction author and essayist.

R. Okyong Kwon is an author, best known for her first novel, "The Incendiaries," which was published in 2018.Kwon’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Vanity Fair, The Paris Review, Bookforum, and NPR.

Karan Mahajan is a novelist, essayist, and critic. He is also an associate professor in Literary Arts at Brown University.Mahajan's work has appeared in The Believer, The Daily Beast, the San Francisco Chronicle, Granta, and The New Yorker. His first novel, "Family Planning," was published in 2008.

Nicole Chung is an author, advice columnist for Slate, and an editor of Catapult magazine.

Mike Sakasegawa is a writer, photographer, book artist, and activist. His writing has appeared in Last Exit, Catapult, PetaPixel, and Don’t Take Pictures Magazine. His photographs have been featured on Lenscratch, A Photo Editor, and SD Voyager, and included in exhibitions around the US.He is originally from the Central Coast region of California. Nowadays he lives in San Diego with his family.

Anne Helen Petersen is a writer and journalist.