Kirstin Chen is The New York Times best-selling author of three novels. Her latest, Counterfeit, is a Reese Witherspoon book club pick, a Roxane Gay book club pick, and a New York Times Editors’ Choice. Counterfeit has been translated into eight languages and is being adapted for the screen by Sony Pictures. Her previous novels are Bury What We Cannot Take and Soy Sauce for Beginners. Her next novel, Tech Wives, an exploration of the myth of genius tech founders—and the women who support them, is forthcoming. [Fiction]
The Borchard Foundation Center on Literary Arts Teaching Staff
She is a writer and editor. She has been anthologized on various occasions, taught university classes at NYU and the Claustro de Sor Juana, and has been involved in contemporary art projects. She edited the literary magazine Make in Chicago and co-organized the art and literature festival Lit&Luz, based in Chicago and Mexico City, from 2013 to 2019. Her first novel is Todo nada (Tusquets, 2009), followed by Cuaderno ideal (Alfaguara, 2014), the short story collection Cómo piensan las piedras (Alfaguara, 2017), and the novel Brujas (Alfaguara, 2020), which has been translated into several languages. She has been recognized by Conaculta (Secretariat of Culture in Mexico), Hay Festival, and the British Council as one of the most important writers under 40 in her country, and is part of Bogotá 39, highlighting the most prominent new authors from Latin America. Her most recent novel is Soñar como sueñan los árboles (Alfaguara, 2024). She writes for the newspaper El País and lives in Mexico City.
Photo Credit: Ana Hop
Lauren Markham is a writer based in California whose work regularly appears in outlets such as Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine and VQR, where she is a contributing editor. She is the author of the award-winning The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life and the critically-acclaimed A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging. Her third book, Immemorial, will be published by Transit Books in 2025. [Nonfiction]