Alejandra Márquez: Alejandra Márquez is an Associate Professor of Spanish in the Department of Romance and Classical Studies at Michigan State University. Her research interests include contemporary Latin American literature, queer/cuir studies in Latin America, contemporary Mexican chronicle, gendered narratives of northern Mexico, gender identity and transgressions, depictions of state-sponsored violence, and Latinx literature and culture. She has published articles in academic journals such as Revista de Literatura Mexicana Contemporánea, Chasqui, iMex, and the Latin American Literary Review. Her book, Lenchitudes: Sapphic Representation in Contemporary Mexican Narrative (SUNY 2026) examines literary representations of sapphic desire and how narratives can challenge or perpetuate normative perceptions of gender and sexuality.
Vasthi Jean-Michel: Vasthi Jean-Michel is a Haitian-born General Practitioner who speaks fluently English, Spanish, Haitian Creole, and French. She uses her free time to fuel her passion for literature by reading profusely, writing short stories, and editing texts for online blogs and magazines. Her interests mainly include Haitian/LatinX magical realism and historical narratives, fiction or non-fiction, of the repercussions of colonialism on Caribbean and Latin cultures. During her medical training in Havana, Cuba where she learned Spanish, she was deeply inspired by the storytelling flair of popular authors such as Alejo Carpentier and Nicolás Guillén. That is when she began editing stories for the aspiring authors in her community as well as writing her own stories in Spanish, English and Haitian Creole as she hopes, one day, to be a published author herself.
