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Juana Peñate Montejo
Juana Peñate Montejo is a Ch’ol poet and writer from Tumbalá, Chiapas, Mexico. She has authored several books of poetry in Ch’ol with self-translations in Spanish, including Ipusik’al Matye’lum / Corazón de la Selva (Pluralia) and, most recently, Isoñil Ja’al / Danza de la Lluvia, which won the 2020 Premio de Literaturas Indígenas de América.
Photo by Katie Kingdiv>Luis García Montero
Luis García Montero (b. 1958, luisgarciamontero.com) is an acclaimed Spanish poet, novelist, and essayist. He helped found the poetic movement called “Poetry of Experience,” in which everyday activities illuminate the hopes and fears that mark the post-Franco era. “Room 219” appears in Habitaciones separadas (Separate rooms), which won Spain’s National Poetry Prize in 1995.
Kamilah Aisha Moon
The author of Starshine & Clay (2017), a CLMP Firecracker Award finalist featured on NPR’s All Things Considered as a collection that captures America in poetry, and She Has a Name (2013), a finalist for both the Audre Lorde and Lambda Literary Awards, Kamilah Aisha Moon’s work was published widely, including in the New York Times, Best American Poetry, Harvard Review, Poem-a-Day, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. A Pushcart Prize winner who received fellowships to MacDowell, Vermont Studio Center, Hedgebrook, and Cave Canem, she held an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and was an assistant professor of creative writing at Agnes Scott College.
Sarah Moore
Sarah Moore is a publisher and journalist who writes about international literature. Her reviews and interviews have appeared in Literary Hub, the Brixton Review of Books, and Words Without Borders, among others. She is based in Paris.
Fabio Morábito
Fabio Morábito lives in Mexico City and teaches at the Autonomous University of Mexico. He is a celebrated translator from the Italian and the author of more than fifteen books: poetry, short stories, novels, and essay collections, including El idioma materno (The mother tongue), from which this sample is drawn.
Photo © Leandro Müllerdiv>Fernando Morais
Fernando Morais is one of Brazil’s most important contemporary writers and journalists. He has received the Esso Award three times and the April Award for journalism on four occasions. Morais’s works have sold more than two million copies in more than nineteen countries.
Miguel M. Morales
Miguel M. Morales grew up working as a migrant/seasonal farmworker. He is a Lambda Literary Fellow and an alum of the VONA Voices and Macondo Writers Workshops. He is co-editor of Pulse/Pulso: In Remembrance of Orlando and the forthcoming Fat & Queer anthology.
Nancy Morejón
Nancy Morejón (b. 1944, Havana) is a beloved elder poet, essayist, journalist, and translator. The first Afro-Cuban allowed to seek a degree in Cuba, she quickly rose to national prominence as Poet Laureate, president of the Writers’ Union, member of the Academia Cubana de la Lengua, and senior adviser for Casa de las Américas and Teatro Nacional de Cuba.
Photo by Kenzie Allendiv>Rachel Morgenstern-Clarren
Rachel Morgenstern-Clarren is a Montreal-based American poet. Her honors include a Hopwood Award, an Academy of American Poets Prize, and a Fulbright Fellowship to Brazil. Her work has appeared in Narrative, BOMB, Guernica, and Best New Poets. She holds an MFA in poetry and literary translation from Columbia University.
Photo by Jen Blairdiv>Lydie Moudileno
Lydie Moudileno is professor of French, francophone studies, and comparative literature at the University of Pennsylvania. Her publications and research focus on issues of authorship in postcolonial literary contexts.
Malika Moustadraf
Malika Moustadraf (1969–2006) was a preeminent arabophone writer from Casablanca, Morocco. She died at just thirty-seven, leaving behind a semi-autobiographical novel and a collection of short stories. An exacting social critic, Moustadraf was admired for her distinctive and experimental style.
Joel Mowdy
Joel Mowdy is a writer and educator from New York living in Lithuania. He is the author of the story collection Floyd Harbor, published by Catapult.
Damjana Mraović-O’Hare
Damjana Mraović-O’Hare is an associate professor at Carson-Newman University, where she teaches contemporary American fiction and literary theory. She has published mostly about literature, but being just a mere observer—not a fan—in her high-intensity-sports-loving household, she has become fascinated by the complexity of sports.
Dipika Mukherjee
Dipika Mukherjee is the author of the novels Shambala Junction and Ode to Broken Things and the story collection Rules of Desire. Her work is included in The Best Small Fictions 2019 and appears in World Literature Today, Asia Literary Review, Del Sol Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Newsweek, Los Angeles Review of Books, Hemispheres, Orion, Scroll, The Edge, and more. Her third poetry book, Dialect of Distant Harbors, was published by CavanKerry Press in October 2022, and a collection of travel essays, Writers Postcards, has been accepted for publication by Penguin Random House (SEA) for 2023. She teaches at StoryStudio Chicago and the Graham School at University of Chicago. She holds a PhD in English (sociolinguistics) from Texas A&M University.
Nick Mulgrew
Nick Mulgrew was born in Durban, South Africa, in 1990 to British parents. He is the founder of the poetry publisher uHlanga, is the deputy chairman of Short Story Day Africa, and a Mandela Rhodes Scholar. He is the author of two books, the latest a suite of short fiction, Stations (David Philip, 2016). He currently lives in Cape Town.
Sabina Murray
Sabina Murray is the author of six works of fiction, including the recent novel Valiant Gentlemen and the short-story collection The Caprices, which won the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award. She has been awarded fellowships from the NEA, Guggenheim Foundation, and Radcliffe Institute. She teaches writing at UMass Amherst.
Ruby Hansen Murray
Ruby Hansen Murray (enrolled Osage) is a writer and photographer living in the lower Columbia River estuary. Her work appears in Yellow Medicine Review, Apogee, About Place Journal, and Indian Country Today. She is a Hedgebrook and VONA fellow who studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts and Warren Wilson College.
Kristine Ong Muslim
Kristine Ong Muslim is the author of eight books of fiction and poetry, most recently the short-story collections Age of Blight (2016) and Butterfly Dream (2016) as well as the poetry collections Meditations of a Beast (2016) and Black Arcadia (2017). Her stories have appeared in Confrontation, Weird Fiction Review, Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk & Eco-Speculation (2017), The State, and elsewhere.
Shakir Mustafa
Shakir Mustafa is teaching professor of Arabic at Northeastern University. Mustafa grew up in Iraq and taught at Mosul University in Northern Iraq for eleven years. His book Contemporary Iraqi Fiction: An Anthology (2008) was recognized by the Bloomsbury Review as one of the most important books of 2008. He has given dozens of lectures as well as radio and television interviews on Arab and Muslim cultures and politics.
Sahar Mustafah
Sahar Mustafah is the daughter of Palestinian immigrants, an inheritance she explores in her fiction. Her first novel, The Beauty of Your Face, was named a 2020 Notable Book and Editor’s Choice by the New York Times Book Review. She writes and teaches outside of Chicago. (saharmustafah.com)
Álvaro Mutis
Álvaro Mutis (b. 1923) is a Colombian poet, novelist, and essayist. Though he was born in Colombia, he lived in Brussels until he was eleven years old. His first collection of poetry was published in 1948 and his first short stories appeared in 1978. Mutis is best known for his award-winning novellas published in the United States in two collections, Maqroll andThe Adventures of Maqroll.
Gathondu Mwangi
Gathondu Mwangi is a geography PhD student and writer who spends his time between Massachusetts and Kenya, his home country. He enjoys listening to Congolese rumba, the inspiration for this poem. His work has previously appeared in The Fourth River, Kalahari Review, and Kwani?.