ZAN BOCKES (pronounced “Bacchus”) earned an M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Montana. Her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in numerous magazines, including Poetry Motel, Visions International, the Pedestal, the Comstock Review, Cutbank, and Phantasmagoria. She has had three nominations for a Pushcart Prize. A current resident of Missoula, Montana, she works as a residential sanitation specialist for her own housekeeping business, Maid in Montana, and shares a funky old house with her husband and two exceptional cats.
JAMES BROWN is the author of The Los Angeles Diaries: A Memoir. His work has appeared in Gentleman’s Quarterly, the New York Times Magazine, the Los Angeles Times Magazine, Esquire, and Best American Sports Writing 2006. He has received the Nelson Algren Award in short fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship.
WENDY CALL is coeditor of Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers’ Guide. She is a recent writer in residence at Seattle University and Richard Hugo House, Seattle’s literary center. Her Web site is http://www.wendycall.com.
KAREN DE BALBIAN VERSTER’S work has been published in numerous literary reviews and anthologies. Her first novel, Boob: A Story of Sex, Cancer & Stupidity, was published in 2006. She is currently writing her second novel, A Basket of Kisses. Her Web site is http://mysite.verizon.net/kdebv.
JOHN DUFRESNE is the author of six books, most recently the novel Requiem, Mass. and a book on writing novels, called Is Life Like This? His full-length play, Trailerville, was produced in New York at the Blue Heron Theater. He is the coauthor of the screenplay, To Live and Die in Dixie, a film released in June 2008. His story “The Timing of Unfelt Smiles” was featured in Best American Mystery Stories 2007. He teaches creative writing at Florida International University in Miami.
KATHLEEN GERARD’S writing has been widely published, anthologized, and featured on National Public Radio (NPR). Her plays have been staged and performed both regionally and off-Broadway in New York City. Her work was awarded the Perillo Prize, was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award, and was nominated for Best New American Voices. She is currently at work on a novel.
REGINALD GIBBONS recently edited Goyen: Autobiographical Essays, Notebooks, Evocations, Interviews, a posthumous collection of writings of William Goyen (1915–1983), American author of The House of Breath and other fiction. Gibbons’s 2008 books include a new collection of poems, Creatures of a Day, and translations of Selected Poems of Sophokles. He is a professor of English and classics at Northwestern University, and he also teaches in the M.F.A. Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
SUE GRAFTON entered the mystery field in 1982 with the publication of “A” Is for Alibi, which introduced female hard-boiled private investigator Kinsey Millhone, who operates out of the fictional town of Santa Teresa (a.k.a. Santa Barbara) California. “B” Is for Burglar followed in 1985, and since then she has added eighteen novels to the series, now referred to as “the alphabet mysteries.” “U” Is for Undertow has been completed and is slated for publication in December 2009.
ROBIN HEMLEY is the author of eight works of fiction and nonfiction, most recently Do-Over! He has published in numerous magazines and anthologies, including the New York Times, New York Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, the Wall Street Journal, the Far Eastern Economic Review, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. His work has been widely anthologized in publications such as The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses series and the Touchstone Anthology of Creative Nonfiction. He is the recipient of awards such as a Guggenheim fellowship, the Nelson Algren Award for fiction, and the Independent Press Book Award for nonfiction. He teaches in the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa, and he is the founder and coordinator of the biennial NonfictioNow Conference.
DORIANNE LAUX was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her fourth book of poems, Facts about the Moon, is the recipient of the Oregon Book Award and was short-listed for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Laux is also author of Awake, What We Carry, Smoke, and Superman: The Chapbook. She is coauthor of The Poet’s Companion and the recipient of two Best American Poetry Prizes, a Best American Erotic Poems Prize, a Pushcart Prize, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Guggenheim fellowship. Her work has appeared in the Best of APR, The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, and many others. She taught for fifteen years at the University of Oregon in Eugene and since 2004 at Pacific University’s Low-Residency M.F.A. Program. She and her husband, poet Joseph Millar, recently moved to Raleigh, where she joined the faculty at North Carolina State University.
PHILLIP LOPATE is the author of more than a dozen books, the most recent, Two Marriages (novellas) and Notes on Sontag. He is the editor of five anthologies, including The Art of the Personal Essay. In addition his work has been collected in a Phillip Lopate reader, Getting Personal: Selected Writings. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including two National Endowment for the Arts grants, and is a professor at Columbia University.
REBECCA MCCLANAHAN has published nine books, most recently Deep Light: New and Selected Poems 1987–2007 and The Riddle Song and Other Rememberings, which won the 2005 Glasgow Award for nonfiction. Her work has appeared in The Best American Essays, the Pushcart Prize anthology, and The Best American Poetry series. She lives in New York and teaches in the low-residency M.F.A. programs of Queens University (Charlotte) and Pacific Lutheran University (Tacoma).
KYOKO MORI is the author of three nonfiction books, Yarn: Remembering a Way Home, The Dream of Water: A Memoir, and Polite Lies: On Being a Woman Caught between Cultures, and three novels, Shizuko’s Daughter; One Bird, Stone Field; and True Arrow. Her essay “Yarn” appeared in The Best American Essays 2003. Mori grew up in Kobe, Japan, and spent much of her adult life in the American Midwest before moving to the East Coast. She currently teaches in the M.F.A. Program at George Mason University and lives in Washington, D.C.
BONNIE MORRIS is a women’s studies professor at George Washington University and Georgetown University, and she is on the board of Mothertongue, D.C.’s spoken-word stage for women. The author of eight books—including two Lambda Literary Award finalists, Girl Reel and Eden Built by Eves—she has kept a journal since age twelve and is presently on notebook number 150. “Dr. Bon” has contributed essays, articles, and short stories to more than sixty anthologies of women’s writing; her most recent book, Revenge of the Women’s Studies Professor, is based on her one-woman play about homophobia in higher education.
MARK PAWLAK is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Official Versions. His poetry and prose have appeared widely in journals and anthologies, including The Best American Poetry 2006. He is the editor of four anthologies, and the most recent is Present/Tense: Poets in the World, a collection of contemporary American political poetry. He is coeditor/publisher of the Brooklyn-based Hanging Loose Press. He supports his poetry habit by teaching mathematics at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, where he is director of Academic Support Programs. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife and teenage son.
DIANA M. RAAB is author of six books of nonfiction and poetry, including the award-winning books Regina’s Closet: Finding My Grandmother’s Secret Journal and Dear Anaïs: My Life in Poems for You. Her work has been widely published in literary journals and anthologies such as the Writer, Writers’ Journal, the Louisville Review, the Litchfield Review, Rosebud, Alehouse, Palo Alto Review, and the Rambler. She teaches in the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program and facilitates journaling workshops around the country for professional and emerging writers, high-risk students, and cancer survivors. Her Web site is http://www.dianaraab.com.
PETER SELGIN’S first book of stories, Drowning Lessons, won the 2008 Flannery O’Connor Award for fiction. His novel, Life Goes to the Movies, was a finalist for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Writing Award. His work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including Salon, the Sun, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, Missouri Review, Writing Fiction, and Best American Essays. He is the author of two books on the craft of writing, By Cunning & Craft: Sound Advice and Practical Wisdom for Fiction Writers and Fiction Matters (forthcoming). He leads an annual writing workshop in Italy and edits Alimentum: The Literature of Food.
KIM STAFFORD is the founding director of the Northwest Writing Institute in Oregon and author of a dozen books of poetry and prose, including The Muses among Us: Eloquent Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer’s Craft and Early Morning: Remembering My Father, William Stafford.
MAUREEN STANTON’S essays and memoirs have appeared in Fourth Genre, Creative Nonfiction, River Teeth, Crab Orchard Review, the Sun, and other journals and anthologies. Her nonfiction has received the Iowa Review Award, the American Literary Review Award, and the Thomas J. Hruska Award in nonfiction from the journal Passages North. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Maine Arts Commission. She teaches in the Ph.D. program in creative writing at the University of Missouri in Columbia.
ILAN STAVANS is the Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. His books include On Borrowed Words, Dictionary Days, The Disappearance, and Resurrecting Hebrew. He edited the three-volume Isaac Bashevis Singer: Collected Stories and The Poetry of Pablo Neruda, among others.
MICHAEL STEINBERG is the founding editor of the journal Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction. His most recent books include Peninsula: Essays and Memoirs from Michigan; Still Pitching, winner of the 2003 Foreword Magazine Independent Press Memoir of the Year; and The Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writers of/on Creative Nonfiction (fifth edition), coedited with Robert Root. His shorter works have appeared in many literary journals and anthologies. He is currently writer in residence in the Pine Manor College / Solstice Low-Residency M.F.A. Program.
KATHERINE TOWLER is author of the novels Snow Island and Evening Ferry. The third volume of her New England Trilogy will be published in 2010. She has been awarded fellowships from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts and Phillips Exeter Academy, where she served as the Bennett Fellow. She teaches in the M.F.A. Program in Writing at Southern New Hampshire University and lives with her husband in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Her Web site is http://www.katherinetowler.com.
TONY TRIGILIO’S recent publications include the poetry collection The Lama’s English Lessons and the chapbook With the Memory, Which Is Enormous. He also coedited the anthology Visions and Divisions: American Immigration Literature, 1870–1930. He teaches in the Creative Writing-Poetry Program at Columbia College, Chicago, and coedits the poetry magazine Court Green.
LORI VAN PELT wrote Amelia Earhart: The Sky’s No Limit, which made the New York Public Library’s “Best Books for the Teen Age 2006” list. The title story in her short fiction collection, Pecker’s Revenge and Other Stories from the Frontier’s Edge, won the 2006 Western Writers of America Spur Award for best short fiction. She is also the author of the nonfiction Wyoming-based Dreamers and Schemers series published by High Plains Press. She lives with her husband on their cattle ranch near Saratoga, Wyoming. Her Web site is http://www.lorivanpelt.com.
MICHELLE WILDGEN is the author of the novels But Not for Long and You’re Not You and the editor of the anthology Food & Booze: A Tin House Literary Feast. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, O, the Oprah Magazine, Best Food Writing, Best New American Voices, and several journals and anthologies. She is a senior editor at Tin House Magazine.
KATHRYN WILKENS’S writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Writers’ Journal, America West Magazine, ByLine, Verbatim, the Christian Science Monitor, Writer’s Forum, Romantic Homes, Futures and three anthologies—Gardening at a Deeper Level, The Walker Within, and Chicken Soup for the Soul: My Resolution. She is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors.