Parul Sehgal is a book critic atThe New York Times. She was previously a columnist and senior editor atThe New York Times Book Review.Her work has appeared inthe Atlantic, Slate, Bookforum, The New Yorker, Tin House,andThe Literary Review,among other publications, and she was awarded the Nona Balakian Awardfrom the National Book Critics Circle for her criticism.She has been a featured speaker at TED and teaches at Columbia University and the Center for the Humanities at CUNY. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Ocean Vuong is the author of the critically acclaimed poetry collectionNight Sky with Exit Woundsand theNew York Timesbestselling novelOn Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous. A recipient of the 2019 MacArthur "Genius" Grant, he is also the winner of the Whiting Award and the T.S. Eliot Prize. His writings have been featured inThe Atlantic,Harper's Magazine,The Nation,TheNew Republic,The New Yorker, andThe New York Times. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he currently lives in Northampton, Massachusetts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Garth Greenwell is the author of What Belongs to You, which won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for six other awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Los Angeles TimesBook Prize. A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, it was named a Best Book of 2016 by over fifty publications in nine countries, and is being translated into a dozen languages. A new book of fiction, Cleanness, is forthcoming from FSG in early 2020. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review,A Public Space,and VICE, and he has written criticism for The New Yorker, the London Review of Books, and the New York Times Book Review, among others. He lives in Iowa City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Lewis Hydeis the author ofTrickster Makes This World: Mischief, Myth, and ArtandThe Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World, as well as a book of poems,This Error Is the Sign of Love. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Imani Perry is the Hughes-Rogers Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, where she also teaches in the Programs in Law and Public Affairs, and in Gender and Sexuality Studies. She is a native of Birmingham, Alabama, and spent much of her youth in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Chicago. She is the author of several books, including Looking for Lorraine: The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry. She lives outside Philadelphia with her two sons, Freeman Diallo Perry Rabb and Issa Garner Rabb. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]