Taslima Nasrin

Living in exile, Taslima Nasrin is one of the world’s most well-regarded writers, a secular humanist who has been subjected to forced banishment and multiple fatwas. Her writings have been deemed controversial time and again because of their unflinching preoccupation with gender, community and identity. Her widely celebrated books include Lajja, Split: A Life, My Girlhood, Exile and French Lover and others.

Jesse Waters is director, Bowers Writers House, Elizabethtown College, Pennsylvania. His poetry as well as fiction and non-fiction work have been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes and have appeared nationally and internationally in such journals as 88, The Adirondack Review, Coal Hill Review, The Cortland Review, Cimarron Review, Iowa Review, River Styx, Slide, Story Quarterly, Southeast Review, Sycamore Review. His books include of Human Resources as well as So Let Me Get This Straight.