Bookmark Now

Tom Bissell is the author of a travel narrative, Chasing the Sea, and a short story collection, God Lives in St. Petersburg; he is also the coauthor of a humor book, Speak, Commentary. He writes often for Harper’s and The Believer, lives (most of the time) in New York City, and is really looking forward to playing Grand Theft Auto IV: San Andreas.

Nico Cary was born and raised in Berkeley, California, and is currently a sophomore at the University of California at Berkeley. He credits “most if not all” of his development as a writer to Youth Speaks and hopes to one day be a teacher.

Tracy Chevalier grew up in Washington, D.C. After graduating from Oberlin College, she moved to London, where she still lives with her husband and son. She worked for a few years as a reference book editor before leaving office life to do an M.A. in creative writing. She has written four novels, including The Lady and the Unicorn, Falling Angels, The Virgin Blue, and the international best seller Girl with a Pearl Earring.

Paul Collins edits the Collins Library imprint of McSweeney’s Books, and his work has appeared in New Scientist and the Village Voice. The author most recently of Sixpence House: Lost in a Town of Books and Not Even Wrong: Adventures in Autism, Collins currently lives in Iowa City.

Meghan Daum is the author of the best-selling essay collection My Misspent Youth and the critically acclaimed novel The Quality of Life Report, which was a New York Times Notable Book in 2003. Her articles and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, Harper’s, GQ, Vogue, New York, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times Book Review. She lives in Los Angeles. More information can be found at www.meghandaum.com.

Kelley Eskridge is the author of the New York Times Notable Book Solitaire, as well as internationally published short fiction and essays. Her work has won the Astraea Prize and has been shortlisted for the Nebula, Tiptree, Endeavour, and Spectrum Awards, as well as adapted for television. She’s a staff writer for @U2 (www.atu2.com). She lives in Seattle with Nicola Griffith and is working on a new novel. Join her for a virtual pint at www.kelleyeskridge.com.

Paul Flores is the author of the Josephine Miles Award-winning novel Along the Border Lies (Creative Arts Books, 2001). He has been performing spoken word for national audiences since 1996 and has been featured at numerous national spoken word venues including Russell Simmons Presents: Def Poetry on HBO. He is the program director of Youth Speaks, the nation’s largest presenter of spoken word for teenagers. He lives in Oakland, California.

Nell Freudenberger has taught English in Bangkok and New Delhi. Her first book, Lucky Girls, won the Pen/Faulkner Malamud Award for short fiction. She lives in New York City.

Glen David Gold is the author of a novel, Carter Beats the Devil, and has published work in McSweeneys, Playboy, the New York Times Sunday Magazine, and many, many places no one has ever heard of. He has done other cool stuff, too, but if you’ve looked him up on Google, you know that already.

Stephanie Elizondo Griest is the author of Around the Bloc: My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana (Villard/Random House, 2004) and has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Associated Press, and Latina magazine. She once drove forty-five thousand miles across the United States as a correspondent for The Odyssey, a history Web site for kids, and she currently directs an anticensorship youth activist organization. She performs and teaches creative writing nationwide. Visit her Web site at www.aroundthebloc.com.

Nicola Griffith (www.nicolagriffith.com) is the author of four novels and coeditor of the Bending the Landscape series. Her essays, stories, and books have been translated into several languages and have won a variety of awards. She lives and plays in Seattle.

Howard Hunt is the author of Young Men on Fire. He lives in Prague, where he is currently at work on a collection of short stories.

Adam Johnson teaches creative writing at Stanford University. He is the author of Emporium, a collection of short stories, and Parasites like Us, a novel. His work has appeared in Harper’s, Esquire, and the Paris Review.

Dan Kennedy is the author of Loser Goes First (Random House/ Crown, 2003). His work can also be found in Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans: The Best of McSweeney’s, Humor Category (Knopf, 2004). He lives in New York City and commutes to Los Angeles occasionally to take very vague meetings about working on something that someone else has already started or changed. See how vague? Anyway, these meetings are usually in a Japanese Restaurant near Wilshire Boulevard.

Robert Lanham is the author of the beach-towel classic The Emerald Beach Trilogy (Pre-Coitus, Coitus, and Aftermath). More recent works include Food Court Druids, Cherohonkees and Other Creatures Unique to the Republic, and The Hipster Handbook. Lanham’s writing has appeared in the New York Times, Playboy, and Time Out. He is the editor and founder of www.freewilliamsburg.com and works at Foot Locker on the weekends. Lanham lives in Brooklyn, New York, with a Wiccan ferret.

Vivien Mejia is a writer living and working in Los Angeles. She is a contributing editor to Latina magazine and has written for the Drew Carey Show and Just Shoot Me. She is currently working on both a novel and a screenplay.

Benjamin Nugent grew up in Cambridge and Amherst, Massachusetts, and graduated from Reed College with a B.A. in English literature. Nugent is the author of the biography Elliott Smith and the Big Nothing (DaCapo, 2004), and he has written for Time, New York, and the New York Times Book Review. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Neal Pollack is the semi-well-known author of The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, Never Mind the Pollacks, and Alternadad . He writes for Vanity Fair, Salon, Nerve, The Stranger, and many other publications. By the time you read this, he may have sold a TV pilot or had a screenplay optioned. He lives in Austin, Texas, and occasionally Los Angeles, with his family.

Pamela Ribon is a screenwriter and the author of Why Girls Are Weird (Downtown Press, 2003), a novel based on her own experiences with her hugely successful Web site Pamie.com. Her work can also be seen at TelevisionWithoutPity.com, where she writes snarky recaps of today’s most self-important television shows. Pamela lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Stephen Falk, who is her favorite writer. Her second novel will be published in 2006.

Michelle Richmond is the author of the novel Dream of the Blue Room and the story collection The Girl in the Fall-Away Dress, which received the Associated Writing Progress Award for Short Fiction. Her stories and essays have appeared in Glimmer Train, Other Voices, Salon, the San Francisco Chronicle, and elsewhere. She teaches writing in San Francisco and edits the online literary journal Fiction Attic.

Douglas Rushkoff is the author of 10 best-selling books on new media and popular culture, including Cyberia, Media Virus, Playing the Future, and Nothing Sacred: The Truth About Judaism, Coercion, winner of the Marshall Mcluhan Award for best media book. Rushkoff also wrote the acclaimed novels Ecstasy Club and Exit Strategy, the graphic novel, Club Zero-G, and wrote and hosted the award-winning documentaries “The Merchants of Cool” and “The Persuaders” for PBS’s Frontline. His commentaries air on CBS’s Sunday Morning and NPR’s All Things Considered, and have appeared in publications such as The New York Times and Time. The founder of the Narrative Lab at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, Douglas Rushkoff lectures at conferences and universities around the world on media, art, society, and change. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and daughter.

Tara Bray Smith lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She is the author of West of Then: A Mother, a Daughter, and a Journey Past Paradise.

K. M. Soehnlein is the author of the novels The World of Normal Boys, which won the Lambda Literary Award for best gay fiction, and You Can Say You Knew Me When, from Kensington Books (Fall 2005). He lives in San Francisco, where he teaches creative writing, works as a freelance copywriter and editor, and is part of the art and music collective The Cubby.

Elizabeth Spiers is the editor-in-chief of mediabistro.com. She was previously a contributing writer and editor at New York Magazine and the founding editor of Gawker.com. She has also written for the New York Times, the New York Post, Salon, Radar, Black Book, and The Face. A native of Alabama, she lives in New York City.