Louise Erdrich is Turtle Mountain Chippewa, Pembina Band. Her novels include The Nightwatchman, which won the Pulitzer Prize and is based on the her grandfather Patrick Gourneau’s fight against Termination. She owns Birchbark Books, a Native-centric bookstore in Minneapolis.

New York Times Bestselling author and Guggenheim Fellow David Treuer is Ojibwe from the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. Treuer is the author of seven books and the winner of three Minnesota Book Awards, the California Book Award for Nonfiction, and was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Carnegie Medal. His writing has appeared in Harper’s, Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post. He is a professor of English at The University of Southern California.

Tommy Orange is the New York Times bestselling author of There There , winner of the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. The novel was longlisted for the National Book Award, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. It was named a Top Five Fiction Book of the Year by The New York Times and won the John Leonard Award for Best First Book and the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel. There There was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His next novel Wandering Stars will be published by Alfred A Knopf.

Brandon Hobson is a writer, professor and enrolled citizen of the Cherokee Nation Tribe of Oklahoma. He has written four books, including Where the Dead Sit Talking, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the Reading the West Award. His short stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories 2021, McSweeney’s, American Short Fiction, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize. Hobson earned his PhD from Oklahoma State University. His most recent novel is The Removed.

Kelli Jo Ford is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. She is the recipient of numerous awards including The Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize and a Dobie Paisano Fellowship. Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Missouri Review, and the anthology Forty Stories: New Writing from Harper Perennial. Her first novel Crooked Hallelujah was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice.

Rebecca Roanhorse is a New York Times bestselling and Hugo, Nebula, Ignyte, and Locus Award-winning speculative fiction writer. She has published multiple award-winning short stories and novels, including contributions to Simon & Schuster’s The Sixth World series, Star Wars: Resistance Reborn, Race to the Sun, and most recently the epic fantasy Black Sun. She has written for Marvel and FX TV, and has projects optioned by Amazon Studios, Netflix, and AMC. Her next novel Fevered Star is out April 2022.

David Heska Wanbli Weiden, an enrolled citizen of the Sicangu Lakota Nation, is the author of Winter Counts, which was nominated for an Edgar Award, and won the Anthony, Thriller, Lefty, and others. The novel was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, an Indie Next pick, main selection of the Book of the Month Club, and was named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR, Amazon, Publishers Weekly, and others. His stories have appeared or will in crime fiction anthologies including Denver Noir and Midnight Hour. He lives in Denver, Colorado, with his family.

Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe is from the Upper Skagit and Nooksack Indian Tribes. She holds a double MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in creative nonfiction and poetry. Her memoir Red Paint received a starred review from Kirkus, was named a “Best new book of the month” in March 2022 by Time Magazine and has received praise from several outlets including Ms. Magazine and The LA Times. Her poetry collection Rose Quartz is forthcoming from Milkweed in 2023.

Victor is the great-great grandson of Chief Victor Charlo of the Bitterroot Salish. He is the author of the chapbook Swift Current Times and the poetry collection Put Sey (Good Enough). His second collection is forthcoming from Many Voices Press. Most recently one of his poems was selected for the Norton anthology When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through. Charlo is part of The Missoula Writing Collaborative, a non-profit that teaches children to love writing.

Debra Magpie Earling is a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. Until recently, she taught creative writing at the University of Montana. Earling is the author of the novel Perma Red, which Milkweed Editions will reissue this year.

Chris La Tray is a Métis storyteller and an enrolled member of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians. He is the author of One-Sentence Journal: Short Poems and Essays From the World At Large (2018, Riverfeet Press) and Descended From a Travel-worn Satchel (2021, Foothills Publishing). A third book, Becoming Little Shell, will be published by Milkweed Editions in Spring, 2023. He lives near Missoula, Montana.

Heather Cahoon is an award-winning poet, author of Horsefly Dress and Elk Thirst, and a scholar of federal Indian policy. She is the founding co-director of the American Indian Governance and Policy Institute at the University of Montana, where she is an assistant professor of Native American Studies. Heather grew up on the Flathead Reservation and is a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.

Taté Walker is a Lakota citizen of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe of South Dakota. They are an award-winning Two Spirit storyteller for outlets like The Nation, Everyday Feminism, Native Peoples magazine, Indian Country Today, and ANMLY. They are featured in several anthologies: FIERCE: Essays by and about Dauntless Women, South Dakota in Poems, and W.W. Norton's Everyone's an Author. Their first book of poetry, The Trickster Riots, was published in 2022 by Abalone Mountain Press.

M.L. Smoker is a member of the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes. She was Montana’s co-poet laureate from 2019-2021. Smoker is the author of the poetry collection Another Attempt at Rescue, and Thunderous, a graphic novel coming this year. For nearly a decade until 2018, she was Director of Indian Education in Montana. President Obama appointed her to the National Advisory Council in 2015, and she currently works at Education Northwest providing support for Native education efforts around the country. She is a fellow at the Academy of American Poets.

Born on the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes Reservation, Susan Devan Harness was adopted out to a white family. She is the award-winning author of Bitterroot: A Salish Memoir of Transracial Adoption. She has spoken on the topic at TEDXMileHigh and on numerous podcasts. She holds graduate degrees in cultural anthropology and creative nonfiction from Colorado State University, where she is an affiliate of the Department of Anthropology and Geography.

Adrian L. Jawort is a Northern Cheyenne fiction writer and veteran journalist based in Billings, Montana. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric Literature, and Indian Country Today, among others. She is the author of Moonrise Falling, a horror novel, and the editor of and contributor to Off the Path volumes I and II, a fiction anthology featuring indigenous writers from around the globe. A Two Spirit/transgender woman, she is political director of Indigenous Transilience.

Tailyr Irvine is a Salish and Kootenai journalist born and raised on the Flathead Reservation. Her work offers in-depth representations of the people and communities that make up Native America. Tailyr is co-founder of Indigenous Photograph, a global database dedicated to encouraging media outlets to hire Indigenous photographers.

Raven Heavy Runner grew up on the Blackfeet Reservation and in the Seattle Urban Indian Community. He was raised by a single mother and his maternal grandparents. He's been a social worker since 1999, and currently holds the position of Director of Social Services at the Blackfeet Care Center. He is a BIA boarding school survivor, Seattle street kid, U.S. Army Veteran, stage actor, Two-Spirit leader, Native activist and college graduate. Raven is an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Nation.

Sterling HolyWhiteMountain grew up on the Blackfeet Reservation. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, ESPN.com., and Montana Quarterly. In 2020, HolyWhiteMountain was named a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University, where he was previously a Wallace Stegner fellow. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he has held fellowships at the University of Wisconsin and at the Fine Arts Work Center. He is an unrecognized citizen of the Blackfeet Nation.