Pablo Alvarez holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies. His writing is grounded in activism and collaborations that unearth the legacies of Latinx and Chicanx AIDS queer ancestry through literature, photography, documentary, and film. He is an assistant professor in Women and Gender Studies and Queer Studies at California State University, Fullerton. A participant of Writers at Work, he co-edited and wrote the afterword for My Body Is Paper: Stories and Poems by Gil Cuadros (2024). 

Omar González, a poz puto pocho pelon pisces from El Paso (Chuco), studied under the renowned scholar/creative writer, Dr. Alicia Gaspar de Alba, and the world-famous artist, Alma Lopez, to produce Queer Xicanx theory based on themes from the works of the first Queer Xicanx writer, John Rechy, earning a Ph.D. in Chicana/o Studies as part of the first cohort of graduates from UCLA. An Anzaldúan scholar, he continues to chart the historical and contemporary effects of the AIDS epidemic on BIPoC communities, remembering those we have lost and honoring those who live with the stigmatic disease.

Myriam Gurba is a writer and activist. Her first book, the short story collection Dahlia Season, won the Edmund White Award for debut fiction. O, the Oprah Magazine, ranked her true crime memoir Mean as one of the best LGBTQ books of all time. Creep, her most recent book, is a finalist for a National Book Critics’ Circle award in criticism. The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Vox, and Paris Review have published her work. She is a co-founder of Dignidad Literaria, a grassroots organization committed to combatting racism in the book world. She is active in the anti-rape movement. 

Rafael Pérez-Torres, a professor of literatures in English at UCLA, works on Chicana/o/x literature and culture in conversation with gender and sexuality studies, postmodernism, and globalization. He has written numerous articles and authored three books: Movements in Chicano Poetry (2005), Mestizaje (2015), and To Alcatraz, Death Row, and Back (2016). He is co-editor of The Chicano Studies Reader: An Anthology of Aztlán (2022) and My Body Is Paper: Stories and Poems by Gil Cuadros (2024). His other recent work includes essays on the poetry of Juan Felipe Herrera and the poetics of writer/activist Luis J. Rodríguez.

Terry Wolverton is the author of twelve books of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction, including Insurgent Muse: life and art at the Woman’s Building, a memoir that received the Judy Grahn Award for Nonfiction from Publishing Triangle; and Embers, a novel in poems. Her most recent poetry collection is RUIN PORN. She has edited sixteen literary compilations, including three volumes each of the Lambda Award–winning His: brilliant new fiction by gay writers and Hers: brilliant new fiction by lesbians. She was Gil Cuadros’ writing instructor at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center from 1989 through 1996.