Juan Emar is the pen name of Chilean writer, painter, and art critic Álvaro Yáñez Bianchi. Born in Chile in 1893, he was a strong advocate of the artistic avant-garde of the 1920s and 30s, and his critical writings helped revolutionize the art scene in his country. Under-appreciated in his time, he is now considered to be one of the most important 20th-century Latin American writers. Megan McDowell has won the English PEN award, the Premio Valle-Inclán, and a 2020 Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; she also has been nominated four times for the International Booker Prize. She won the 2022 National Book Award in translation alongside Samanta Schweblin for Seven Empty Houses. Alejandro Zambra is the author of Bonsai, The Private Lives of Trees, Ways of Going Home, Not to Read, My Documents and Multiple Choice, among other books. Zambra is the recipient of a New York Public Library Cullman Center fellowship, and his stories and essays have appeared in publications like The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, Granta, The Believer and Harper’s. His latest novel is called Chilean Poet and has just been published by Viking. He lives in Mexico City.