As New York City embraces a new era of possibility, Sunday Salon returns for 2026 with fearless voices and stories that stay with you. On January 25th, join four powerful writers whose work cuts deep into identity, community, and the personal stakes of history. Stories of loss and resilience, of belonging and exile, of lives shaped by history and memory. Come out for a night of bold, transformative stories to start the year. Your dynamic hosts and favorite DJ return to set the perfect vibe.
Hannah Lillith Assadi is the author of Sonora (Soho 2017), which received the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/ Robert W. Bingham Prize. Her second novel The Stars Are Not Yet Bells (Riverhead 2022) was named a New Yorker and NPR best book of 2022. Her third novel Paradiso 17, inspired by the life of her late Palestinian father, is forthcoming from Knopf in March 2026. She teaches fiction at the Columbia University School of the Arts and the Pratt Institute. In 2018, she was named a ‘5 under 35’ honoree by the National Book Foundation.
Born in Puerto Rico, Jaquira Díaz was raised between Humacao, Fajardo, and Miami Beach. She is the author of Ordinary Girls: A Memoir, winner of a Whiting Award, a Florida Book Awards Gold Medal, a Lambda Literary Awards finalist, and an American Booksellers Association Indies Introduce Selection; the book was optioned for television and is currently in development. She has received a Letras Boricuas Fellowship, the Jeanne Córdova Prize for Lesbian/Queer Nonfiction, the Alonzo Davis Fellowship from VCCA, two Pushcart Prizes, an Elizabeth George Foundation grant, and fellowships from MacDowell, the Kenyon Review, Bread Loaf, Sewanee, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and the Black Mountain Institute at UNLV. Díaz has written for The Atlantic, The Guardian, Time, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and The Fader, and her work has been anthologized in The Best American Essays, The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext, Best American Experimental Writing, and The Pushcart Prize anthology. In 2022, she held the Mina Hohenberg Darden Chair in Creative Writing at Old Dominion University and a Pabst Endowed Chair for Master Writers at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. Her debut novel, This Is the Only Kingdom, longlisted for the Center for Fiction 2025 First Novel Prize, was published in October 2025. She lives in New York and teaches at Columbia University.
Serkan Görkemli is the author of two books: Sweet Tooth and Other Stories (University Press of Kentucky; 2024 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards silver winner in LGBTQ+ fiction and finalist in short stories; 2025 Housatonic Book Awards finalist in fiction) and Grassroots Literacies: Lesbian and Gay Activism and the Internet in Turkey (SUNY Press; 2015 Lavender Rhetorics Book Award winner). His writing has appeared in Image, Ploughshares, the Iowa Review, Epiphany, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Joyland, Foglifter, and Chelsea Station. Originally from Türkiye, he has a Ph.D. in English from Purdue University and is a professor of English at the University of Connecticut.
James Stewart III is a Black writer and arts organizer from Chicago. His debut novel, Defiant Acts (Acre Books, 2025), was named one of Chicago Magazine’s “Summer’s Required Reading” picks. He was also named to Newcity’s 2025 Lit 50 list, recognizing influential voices in Chicago’s literary culture. His writing has appeared in journals including Lampblack, The Forge, and Midwest Review. Additionally, he is a co-founder of the reading series and artist collective Exhibit B. Stewart holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, an MA from North Central College, and a BA from Columbia College Chicago. He lives with his wife and daughter at the end of DuSable Lake Shore Drive. www.jamesstewart3.com.