RACHEL COHEN is the author of three books of nonfiction: Austen Years: A Memoir in Five Novels, Bernard Berenson: A Life in the Picture Trade, and A Chance Meeting, which won the PEN/Jerard Fund Award and was a finalist for the Guardian First Book Prize. Cohen’s essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, The London Review of Books, The Believer and The New York Times, among other publications, and her work has been included in Best American Essays and Pushcart Prize anthologies. She is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and is Professor of Practice in the Arts in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Chicago.

VIJAY SESHADRI is the author of five books of poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize winner 3 Sections and, most recently, That Was Now, This Is Then. He lives in Brooklyn.