Reginald McKnight is the author of The Kind of Light that Shines on Texas, White Boys, Moustapha’s Eclipse, He Sleeps, and I Get on the Bus. He was a Fiction Judge for the 2008 National Book Awards, and his many awards include the PEN/Hemingway Special Citation, Pushcart Prize, O. Henry Award, Kenyon Review Award for Literary Excellence, Whiting Award, Drue Heinz Literature Prize and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He is the Hamilton Holmes Professor of English at the University of Georgia.

 

John McNally is the author of two story collections, Ghosts Of Chicago and Troublemakers, and two novels, America’s Report Card and The Book Of Ralph. He has edited numerous anthologies, most recently Who Can Save Us Now?: Brand-New Superheroes and Their Amazing (Short) Stories. He has held many fellowships, including the Djerassi (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Jenny McKean Moore (George Washington University), and Chesterfield Writers Film Project (Paramount Pictures). His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in over 60 magazines, including Virginia Quarterly Review, Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, and The Sun. He is an Associate Professor of English at Wake Forest University.

 

Terese Svoboda was born and raised in Nebraska. Her nine published books include memoir: Black Glasses Like Clark Kent; fiction: Tin God, Trailer Girl and Other Stories, A Drink Called Paradise, Cannibal; poetry: Mere Mortals, Laughing Africa, All Aberration, Treason; and translations: Cleaned the Crocodile’s Teeth. Her work has been selected for the Writer’s Choice column in The New York Times Book Review, Great Lakes New Writers Award, VLS Best Summer Books, and one of SPIN’s books of the year. She has taught at William and Mary, Williams College, San Francisco State, Sarah Lawrence, and the University of Hawaii.

 

Hannah Tinti is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of One Story magazine. Her first novel, The Good Thief, is a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and won the John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize. Her short story collection, Animal Crackers, has sold in 16 countries and was a runner-up for the PEN/Hemingway award. Her work has appeared in The Best American Mystery Stories 2003, Alaska Quarterly Review, Story, Story Quarterly, and Epoch, among others.

 

Rigoberto González is the author of eight books, most recently of the memoir Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa, winner of the American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation; a story collection, Men without Bliss; and the young adult novel, The Mariposa Club. He is a contributing editor for Poets and Writers magazine, and serves on the Board of Directors of the National Book Critics Circle, on the Board of Directors of Fishouse Poems: A Poetry Archive, and on the Advisory Circle of Con Tinta, a collective of Chicano/ Latino activist writers. He is Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University — Newark.

 

Kimberly Johnson is the author of two collections of poetry: Leviathan with a Hook and A Metaphorical God. Her translation of Virgil’s Georgics will be released by Penguin Classics in 2009. Her poems, translations, and scholarly essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Slate, Translation, and Modern Philology. Recipient of grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Utah Arts Council, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Johnson teaches Renaissance literature and creative writing at BYU.

 

Sheila Callaghan’s plays have been produced and developed with Soho Rep, Playwright’s Horizons, South Coast Repertory, Clubbed Thumb, The LARK, Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, New Georges, and Moving Arts, among others. She is the recipient of the Princess Grace Award for emerging artists, a Jerome Fellowship from the Playwright’s Center in Minneapolis, the Susan Smith Blackburn Award, and the prestigious Whiting Award. Her full-length plays include Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake), Scab, and Crawl Fade To White. She has taught playwriting at The University of Rochester, The College of New Jersey, and Florida State University, and she is currently on the faculty at Spalding University’s MFA program in creative writing.

 

Kirsten (“Kiwi”) Smith co-wrote the screenplays for Legally Blonde, 10 Things I Hate About You, Ella Enchanted, She’s The Man, and The House Bunny, which she also executive produced. Her next screenwriting effort, The Ugly Truth, starring Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler, will be released in April 2009. Smith recently directed a short film, The Spleenectomy, starring Anna Faris and financed and produced by Glamour magazine. Her first film as a non-writing producer, Whip It!, stars Ellen Page and is directed by Drew Barrymore. She also has American Virgin, directed by Clare Kilner, in post-production. She is the author of The Geography of Girlhood, a novel-in-verse for young adults.

 

Sabrina Orah Mark’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Letters and Commentary, American Poet, Denver Quarterly, Gulf Coast, The Indiana Review, Jubilat, Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century and Best American Poetry 2007, among others. She has received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Glenn Schaeffer Foundation, and The National Endowment for the Arts. Her first book of poems, The Babies, won the 2004 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize. Her second book, Tsim Tsum, will be published in 2009. She teaches literature and creative writing at Agnes Scott College and the University of Georgia where she is a Park Fellow.

 

Porochista Khakpour was born in Tehran, raised in Los Angeles, and lives in New York. Her debut novel, Sons and Other Flammable Objects, was a New York Times “Editor’s Choice,” Chicago Tribune “Fall’s Best,” 2007 California Book Award winner, and a Saroyan Prize shortlist and Dylan Thomas Prize longlist selection. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Chicago Reader, nerve.com and FiveChapters.com. She was awarded fellowships from The Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars, Northwestern University, and The Sewanee Writers’ Conference. She teaches fiction at Bucknell University.

 

Rob Handel is a founding member and managing director of the Obie-winning company 13P. His play Millicent Scowlworthy was developed at the O’Neill Playwrights Conference and produced in New York at SPF, for which he was awarded a residency and staged reading at the Donmar Warehouse in London. His play Aphrodisiac was produced in New York by 13P in New Haven, Cleveland, and Denver. His most recent play, The Knights (after Aristophanes), was produced by Target Margin Theater. He has taught playwriting at The New School, Purchase College, the University of Montevallo, and the University of Missouri — St. Louis.

 

Jenni Ferrari-Adler is an agent at Brick House Literary Agents, where she specializes in representing fiction, food writing and cookbooks, and narrative nonfiction. She represents a number of up-and-coming fiction writers whose work she has sold to Tin House, Zoetrope, Glimmer Train, and The Chattahoochee Review. She has worked as a reader for The Paris Review, a bookseller at Housing Works, and an assistant at Sobel Weber Associates. She is also editor of the anthology Alone In The Kitchen With An Eggplant, Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone. She holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Michigan.

 

Jofie Ferrari-Adler is an editor at Grove/Atlantic, where he acquires and edits fiction and nonfiction. Recent and forthcoming titles include Joe McGinniss Jr.’s The Delivery Man, William J. Bernstein’s A Splendid Exchange, Allan Lichtman’s White Protestant Nation, Chris Ayres’s Death by Leisure, and Christopher Beha’s The Whole Five Feet. Previously he worked as an editor at Viking Penguin, the Avalon Publishing Group, Four Walls Eight Windows, and as a bookseller. He is a regular contributor to Poets and Writers magazine.