Richard Bausch is the author of eleven novels, most recently Peace, and eight collections of stories. 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 holds the Moss Chair of Excellence at the University of Memphis.
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 Associate Professor of English at Vanderbilt University.
Diane Johnson has published ten novels, most recently Lulu in Marrakech. Her novel, Le Divorce, was a finalist for the 1997 Nation Book Award. Her distinctions include a Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
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 four story collections, most recently Going Away Shoes, and five novels. 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.
Padgett Powell has published five novels—Edisto, A Woman Named Drown, Edisto Revisited, Mrs. Hollingsworth’s Men, and The Interrogative Mood: A Novel?—and two story collections, Typical and Aliens of Affection. He is currently a professor of English at the University of Florida.
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. Her second novel, All Souls was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She lives and teaches in New York.
Steve Yarbrough is the author of three story collections—Family Men, Mississippi History, and Veneer—and five novels, most recently Safe from the Neighbors. A professor at Emerson College, he lives with his wife in Stoneham, Massachusetts.
Dan O'Brien's widely produced plays include The House in Hydesville, The Voyage of the Carcass, and Lamarck, as well as the new plays The Cherry Sisters Revisited and The Three Christs of Ypsilanti. His awards include the American Theatre Critics Association’s Osborn Award for an emerging playwright.
Beth Henley received the Pulitzer Prize and a New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award in 1981 for her play Crimes of the Heart. Other works include The Miss Firecracker Contest, The Lucky Spot, and Ridiculous Fraud. She lives in California.
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; and Figure Studies. She is Professor of English and Arrington Distinguished Chair in Poetry at The University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Robert Hass received the 2007 National Book Award and the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for his book, Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005. From 1995 to 1997, he was Poet Laureate of the United States. He is currently a professor of English at the University of California at Berkeley.
Charles Martin is the author of five books of poems, most recently Starting from Sleep: New and Selected Poems, which was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall Award. His next book of poems, Signs & Wonders, will be published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2011. He is on the faculty of the Stonecoast MFA Program.
Mary Jo Salter has published six books of poetry, most recently A Phone Call to the Future: New and Selected Poems. Her poems, articles, and reviews appear in the New Yorker, Yale Review, and elsewhere. Currently she is the W. Mellon Professor in the Writing Seminars at The Johns Hopkins University.
Alan Shapiro has published ten books of poems; the most recent, Old War, was published by Houghton Mifflin in 2008. His books of prose include The Last Happy Occasion, a finalist for the 1996 National Books Critics Circle Award, and Vigil. He teaches at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
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 he served as Poet Laureate of the United States in 1990. He teaches at Columbia University.