Kate Walbert was born in New York City and raised in Georgia, Texas, Japan and Pennsylvania. She attended Northwestern University and received a Masters in English from New York University. She is the author of A Short History of Women, chosen by The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2009 and a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize, Our Kind, a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction in 2004, The Gardens of Kyoto, winner of the 2002 Connecticut Book Award in Fiction, and Where She Went, a collection of linked stories and New York Times notable book. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fiction fellowship and a Connecticut Commission on the Arts fiction fellowship, as well as fellowship from the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. Her short fiction has been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Best American Short Stories 2007 and 2012, and The O. Henry Prize stories, among other magazines and journals. From 1990 to 2005, Walbert lectured in fiction writing at Yale University.

Colm Fox has a B.A. in Communications, a Masters in Pacific and International Affairs, and worked for over 10 years in New Media design. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at George Washington University and writing his dissertation. His research investigates how political candidates use visual and verbal appeals to mobilize ethnic and religious groups during electoral campaigns in Southeast Asia.

 

Ibrahim Bechrouri is a Master degree student from the French Institute of Geopolitics of the University Paris VIII. After a research last year about the “Issues and Representations around the United States Foreign Policy in Morocco”, he recently came to New York thanks to the Center for the Study of Democracy Toleration and Religion to lead a field research about the Surveillance of Muslim Communities by the New York Police Department.