Sahar Mustafah is the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, an inheritance she explores in her fiction. Her first novel The Beauty of Your Face (W.W. Norton, 2020) was named a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, a Los Angeles Times United We Read selection representing Illinois, and one of Marie Claire Magazine’s 2020 Best Fiction by Women.

Her short story collection Code of the West was the winner of the 2016 Willow Books Fiction Award. Her stories have earned a Distinguished Story citation from Best American Short Stories 2016, First Place in Fiction from the Guild Literary Complex of Chicago, and three Pushcart Prize nominations, among other honors. Mustafah earned her MFA from Columbia College Chicago where she was the recipient of the David Friedman Award for Best Fiction. She writes and teaches outside of Chicago.

Christine Maul Rice’s novel Swarm Theory was awarded an Independent Publisher Book Award and a National Indie Excellence Award, as well as earning an Honorable Mention in the Chicago Writers Association for Book of the Year awards.  Christine's short stories have been published in MAKE Literary Magazine, BELT’s Rust Belt Anthology and The Literary Review, among others.

Christine has served as faculty at conferences including Northwestern University Summer Writers’ Conference, Interlochen's Writers Retreat, and Shake Rag Alley Writers’ Retreat. Christine taught in Columbia College Chicago's Fiction Writing Department for over 20 years, is the founder and editor of Hypertext Magazine, and director of the social justice storytelling nonprofit organization Hypertext Magazine & Studio (HMS).