ROUGH CUT PRESS – Melissa Febos is the author of five books, including the national bestselling essay collection, GIRLHOOD, which has been translated into ten languages and won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. Her craft book, BODY WORK (2022), was also a national bestseller and an LA Times Bestseller. A new memoir, The Dry Season, was published by Alfred. A. Knopf in June 2025.
ROUGH CUT PRESS – Myriam Gurba is a writer and activist. Her first book, the short story collection Dahlia Season, won the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction. O, the Oprah Magazine ranked her true-crime memoir Mean as one of the “Best LGBTQ Books of All Time.” Her recent essay collection “Creep: Accusations and Confessions” was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle award for Criticism, and won the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Nonfiction. She has written for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Vox, and Paris Review. Her new book, “Poppy State: A Labyrinth of Plants and a Story of Beginnings,” was published by Timber Press in October 2025.
ELECTRIC LIT – “Did you know that hungry people feel less pain? I mean this literally: hunger activates a neural pathway that inhibits the perception of and response to pain. So I don’t eat brioche or butters or creams or custards or anything that makes me flush, full, or moan. Instead, I eat leafy things, watery things, bland things. I am always hungry. I am always hungry. And I rarely feel pain.”
ROUGH CUT PRESS – Edgar Gomez (all pronouns) is a Florida-born writer with roots in Nicaragua and Puerto Rico. A graduate of University of California, Riverside’s MFA program, his words have appeared in The LA Times, Poets & Writers, Lithub, The Rumpus, and beyond. His debut memoir, High-Risk Homosexual, was called a “breath of fresh air” by The New York Times; named a Best Book of 2022 by Publisher’s Weekly, Buzzfeed, and Electric Literature; and received a 2023 American Book Award, a Stonewall Israel-Fishman Nonfiction Book Honor Award, and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir. Gomez’s second book, a darkly-comic memoir about growing up poor in early 2000’s Florida titled Alligator Tears, will be out in 2025 from Crown. His work has been supported by The New York Foundation for the Arts and the Black Mountain Institute. He lives between New York and Puerto Rico. Find him across social media @OtroEdgarGomez.
ROUGH CUT PRESS – mj corey is a Brooklyn-based psychotherapist and writer.
She earned graduate degrees in Creative Nonfiction and Counseling Psychology from Columbia University in 2014 and 2016, respectively. She is best known for authoring Kardashian Kolloquium on TikTok and Instagram, where she applies media theory and postmodern frameworks to the Kardashian family.
ROUGH CUT PRESS – Myriam Gurba is a writer and artist. She is the author of the true crime memoir Mean, a New York Times Editors’ Choice. O, The Oprah Magazine, ranked Mean as one of the best LGBTQ books of all time. Publishers Weekly describes Gurba as having a voice like no other. Her essays and criticism have appeared in The Paris Review, Time, and 4Columns.
THE WASHINGTON POST – Today, I am alive because a pink-haired stranger stopped me for a picture
WHERE DID YOU COME FROM, WHERE ARE YOU GOING? Billy Lezra joins Alex Schecter on this podcast episode for a heart-to-heart about addiction, radical honesty, and battling inner demons.
ROUGH CUT PRESS – Born and raised in Los Angeles, Raquel Gutiérrez is a critic, essayist, poet, performer, and educator. Gutiérrez’s first book Brown Neon (Coffee House Press) was named as one of the best books of 2022 by The New Yorker and listed in The Best Art Books of 2022 by Hyperallergic. Brown Neon was a Finalist for the Lambda Literary Prize for Best Lesbian Biography/Memoir, a Finalist for the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses’ Firework Award in Creative Nonfiction and Recipient of The Publishing Triangle Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction. A 2021 recipient of the Rabkin Prize in Arts Journalism, as well as a 2017 recipient of The Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, Gutiérrez teaches in the Oregon State University-Cascades Low Residency Creative Writing MFA Program, as well as for The Institute of American Indian Arts’s (IAIA) Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing program. Gutiérrez gets to call Tucson, Arizona home.
ROUGH CUT PRESS – Silas House is the New York Times bestselling author of seven novels, one book of creative nonfiction, and three plays. His writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Time, the New York Times, the Advocate, Garden & Gun, and other publications. A former commentator for NPR’s All Things Considered, House is the winner of two Nautilus Awards, the Storylines Prize from the NAV/New York Public Library, an E. B. White Award, and the Southern Book Prize. He has been appointed as the poet laureate of Kentucky for the years 2023-2025.