Richard Bausch is the author of eleven novels and eight collections of stories, most recently Something is Out There. In addition to other honors, he has received the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. Past Chancellor of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, he teaches in The Writing Program at Chapman University in Orange, California.
Tony Earley is the author of a story collection, Here We Are in Paradise, which won him recognition from Granta and The New Yorker as one of America’s best young fiction writers. His novels are Jim the Boy and its sequel, The Blue Star. He is the Samuel Milton Fleming Professor of English at Vanderbilt University.
Diane Johnson has written ten novels. Le Divorce, a nominee for the National Book Award, Le Mariage, L’Affaire, and Lulu in Marrakech are her most recent. Her distinctions include a Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. She divides her time between San Francisco and Paris.
Randall Kenan is author of a novel, A Visitation of Spirits, and a collection of stories, Let the Dead Bury Their Dead, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, a nominee for a Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction, and a New York Times Notable Book. He teaches creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Jill McCorkle has six novels, most recently Life After Life (March 2013), and four story collections. Recipient of the New England Book Award, the John Dos Passos Prize, and the North Carolina Award for Literature, she serves on the faculty at North Carolina State University.
Alice McDermott is the author of six novels, including Charming Billy, which received the National Book Award in 1998. A three-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in fiction, she is currently the Richard A. Macksey Professor of Creative Writing in the Writing Seminars at The Johns Hopkins University.
Erin McGraw is the author of the novels The Baby Tree (Story Line Press, 2001), The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard (Houghton Mifflin, 2008), and Better Food for a Better World (Slant Books, March 2013), and three story collections, most recently The Good Life (Houghton Mifflin, 2004). She teaches at The Ohio State University and lives in Columbus, Ohio.
Tim O’Brien received the National Book Award in Fiction in 1979 for his novel Going After Cacciato. In 2005, The Things They Carried was named by The New York Times as one of the twenty best books of the last quarter century. Recipient of the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, the Katherine Anne Porter, and the Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement awards, O’Brien teaches creative writing at Texas State University.
Christine Schutt is the author of two short-story collections, Nightwork and A Day, a Night, Another Day, Summer. Her novel Florida was a National Book Award Finalist and her second novel, All Souls, a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize. A third novel, Prosperous Friends, was published in fall 2012. She lives and teaches in New York.
Steve Yarbrough is the author of three story collections – Family Men, Mississippi History, and Veneer – and six novels, including the forthcoming The Realm of Last Chances (August 2013). A professor at Emerson College, he lives with his wife in Stoneham, Massachusetts.
Daisy Foote’s produced plays include Bhutan, When They Speak of Rita, God’s Pictures, and Farley and Betsy. Her play Him premiered in October at Primary Stages to critical acclaim from The New Yorker and The New York Times. Her screenplay for The Church of Dead Girls will be filmed in the fall of 2013. She was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award for Bhutan and awarded the Roger L. Stevens Incentive Award for her play Living with Mary.
Dan O’Brien’s widely produced plays include The Body of an American, The House in Hydesville, The Voyage of the Carcass, The Dear Boy, and The Cherry Sisters Revisited. His awards include the 2011 L. Arnold Weissberger Award.
Daniel Anderson has published two books of poetry, Drunk in Sunlight and January Rain, and edited The Selected Poems of Howard Nemerov. He currently teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Oregon.
Claudia Emerson was awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her book, Late Wife: Poems. Her other poetry collections are Pharaoh, Pharaoh; Pinion: An Elegy; Figure Studies; Secure the Shadow; and the forthcoming collection, The Opposite House. She is Professor of English and Arrington Distinguished Chair in Poetry at The University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Robert Hass (poetry) received the 2007 National Book Award and the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for his book, Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005. His most recent book is a collection of essays entitled, What Light Can Do: Essays on Art, Imagination and the Natural World. A two-time winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, Hass has also received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. From 1995 to 1997, he was Poet Laureate of the United States, and he served as the Chancellor of The American Academy of Poets from 2001 to 2007. He is currently a professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley.
Andrew Hudgins is the author of nine books of poetry, including the forthcoming A Clown at Midnight (Houghton Mifflin, June 2013), two books of essays, and a memoir, The Joker (Simon and Schuster, June 2013). He is Humanities Distinguished Professor of English at The Ohio State University and lives in Columbus, Ohio.
Maurice Manning’s new book of poetry The Gone and the Going Away will be published in April 2013. His fourth book, The Common Man, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2011. Manning teaches at Transylvania University and in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. He lives in Kentucky.
Mary Jo Salter is the author of Nothing by Design: Poems, forthcoming in 2013 from Knopf, and six previous books of poetry. She is a co-editor of The Norton Anthology of Poetry (Norton, 1996 and 2004), and is Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Writing Seminars at The Johns Hopkins University.
A.E. Stallings is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Olives, and a verse translation of Lucretius’ philosophical epic, The Nature of Things. She lives in Athens, Greece, where she serves as director of the poetry program at the Athens Centre.
Mark Strand has written numerous volumes of poetry, among them Blizzard of One, winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize. His many honors include a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and serving as Poet Laureate of the United States in 1990. He will retire from teaching at Columbia University in 2012.