Wednesday, May 27, 2026
Sylvie Baumgartel
Sylvie Baumgartel is the author of Song of Songs (FSG, 2019) and Pink (FSG, 2021). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Paris Review, Financial Times, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, Subtropics, Raritan, Harvard Review, Ploughshares, The Virginia Quarterly Review, the PEN Poetry Series, The Unprofessionals: New American Writing from the Paris Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
- Contributors' Notes, The Best American Essays 2023.
Jillian Barnet
Jillian Barnet’s poems and essays have appeared in North American Review, New Letters, Nimrod, and Image, among others. She holds an MFA in poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts, is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and the author of the poetry chapbook Falling Bodies. Links to some of her work can be found at jillianbarnetwrites.com. She taught writing and literature at Pennsylvania State University and Chatham University, and now lives on a tiny farm in the Finger Lakes where she is at work on a memoir.
- Contributors' Notes, The Best American Essays 2023.
Ciara Alfaro
Ciara Alfaro is a Chicanx writer, romantic, and descendant of magicians from Texas. Her work has appeared in Cutthroat’s Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century, Water~Stone Review, swamp pink, and elsewhere. Most recently, she won Iron Horse Literary Review’s 2022 PhotoFinish Contest. Her work has been supported by awards and fellowships from Colgate University, the Anderson Center, Hedgebrook, and others. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Minnesota. Currently, she is at work on a memoir about queer mestiza girlhood, monsterhood, and magic.
- Contributors' Notes, The Best American Essays 2023.