Saira Khan is a downtown Issaquah resident, mother, lawyer, writer, and Voice Mentor at the Issaquah Middle School. Her prose appears in Pleiades, Identity Theory, WITNESS magazine, The Guardian and elsewhere. Her short fiction chapbook, Late Stage is available from DeRailleur Press in Brooklyn NY. She is a recipient of an Open Door Career Advancement Grant from Poets & Writers Magazine, funded by Reese Witherspoon. She has studied at Hedgebrook, One Story Summer Conference, Tin House Summer Conference and Writers in Paradise at Eckerd College. Her work was shortlisted for the 2023 Coppice Prize in short fiction. She was a 2023 Periplus Fellow and is a 2024 candidate at CUNY’s Writer’s Institute. Her novel in stories is a finalist for the Black Lawrence Press 2025 Immigrant Writing Series.

Chincha Holm has lived in downtown Issaquah since 2022, delighting in all her neighbors and friends. She loves bully sticks, playing piano and chicken hearts. Her kind and playful nature has inspired local poets to wax poetic. Chincha can often be seen lurking in the halls of Literary Nights, as the Train Depot technically doesn’t allow dogs. She prefers stories with canine-centered POVs, even though she considers herself partially human. Chincha is responsible for unconditional love and responding to all emails at Lit Nights.