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Dr. Joshua Bennett is Distinguished Chair of the Humanities and Professor of Literature at MIT. He is the author of seven books, including Spoken Word: A Cultural History (Knopf, 2023), which was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2023; The Study of Human Life (Penguin, 2022), which won the Paterson Poetry Prize and was adapted for television in collaboration with Warner Brothers Studios; and The Sobbing School (Penguin, 2016), winner of the National Poetry Series and a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. For his creative writing and scholarship, Joshua has received fellowships and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. Alongside his work as an author and educator, Bennett is also the founding editor of the Duke Poetry Series, and the founder and principal of Solon: a design studio specializing in the art of adaptation. He lives in Massachusetts with his family.
Monica Ferrell is the author of four books of fiction and poetry, including the forthcoming The Future (March 2026) and the collection You Darling Thing (2018), a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award and Believer Book Award in Poetry. Her novel The Answer Is Always Yes (Dial Press/Random House) was named one of Booklist's Top Ten Debut Novels of the Year. Her first collection of poems, Beasts for the Chase, was a finalist for the Asian American Writers Workshop Prize in Poetry and won the Sarabande Books Kathryn A. Morton Prize. She has been recognized with residencies at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation and the MacDowell Colony, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, and a Discovery/The Nation Prize. She has taught fiction and poetry for the MFA Programs at Columbia University and Bennington College, and is Professor of Creative Writing at Purchase College (SUNY). She was born in Delhi, India, and divides her time between Vermont and New York. Author photo by Beowulf Sheehan.
