Glenn Kaino: This Book Is a Promise

Amir Ahmadi Arian started out as a journalist in Iran in 2000 and has since published a collection of stories, a nonfiction book, and two novels in Persian. He also translated from English to Persian novels by E.L Doctorow, Paul Auster, P.D. James, and Cormac McCarthy. Since leaving Iran in 2011 to complete a PhD in comparative literature at the University of Queensland, Australia, he has published short stories and essays in Michigan Quarterly Review, Guernica, The New York Times, and The Guardian. He currently lives in New York where he earned an MFA in the NYU Creative Writing Program as The Axinn Foundation/E.L. Doctorow Fellowship recipient, and teaches literature and creative writing at CUNY City College.

Brian Dooley is a longtime human rights activist specializing in supporting Human Rights Defenders working amid revolutions, armed conflict, and severe repression. He is an Honorary Professor of Practice at Queen's University Belfast, a Visiting Scholar at University College London, and a Senior Advisor at Human Rights First. From 2020 to 2023, Dooley served as Senior Advisor to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders. In 2025, he received the University of Oslo Human Rights Award. He is the author of several books on civil rights and the Northern Ireland conflict.

Denise Markonish is the Chief Curator at MASS MoCA. Her exhibitions include Jeffrey Gibson: POWER FULL BECAUSE WE'RE DIFFERENT; Joseph Grigely: In What Way Wham?; Amy Yoes: Hot Corners; Marc Swanson: A Memorial to Ice at the Dead Dear Disco (MASS MoCA and Thomas Cole National Historic Site, Catskill, NY); Lily Cox-Richard: Weep Holes; Amy Hauft: Terra, Luna, + Sol; Glenn Kaino: In the Light of a Shadow; Suffering from Realness; Trenton Doyle Hancock, Mind of the Mound: Critical Mass; Nick Cave: Until (co-organizers Carriageworks, Sydney, Australia, and The Momentary, Bentonville, AK; traveled to Tramway, Glasgow, Scotland); Explode Every Day: An Inquiry into the Phenomena of Wonder; Teresita Fernández: As Above So Below; Oh, Canada (traveled to Alberta, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island); Nari Ward: Sub Mirage Lignum; These Days: Elegies for Modern Times; and Badlands: New Horizons in Landscape. She has worked on long-term projects with Laurie Anderson and has commissioned works by Sarah Oppenheimer, Stephen Vitiello, Julianne Swartz, Mark Dion, and many others. Markonish has produced numerous exhibition catalogs and has guest edited the books Teresita Fernández: Wayfinding (DelMonico) and Wonder: 50 Years of RISD Glass, and co-edited Sol LeWitt: 100 Views (Yale University Press). She has taught at Williams College and the Rhode Island School of Design, was a visiting curator at Artpace, San Antonio, and Haystack School of Craft, Deer Isle, Maine.