Playwright Sheila Callaghan's work includes Lascivious Something , developed at the Soho Rep and scheduled for a fall 2008 production at the Cherry Lane Theatre; Dead City , a riff on Joyce's Ulysses and most recently staged at Dog & Pony Theatre in Chicago; Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake), first performed by Clubbed Thumb; and Kate Crackernuts , performed at the Flea Theatre in New York City. A graduate of the MFA program at UCLA School of Theatre, Film and Television, Ms. Callaghan is the recipient of a Princess Grace Award for emerging artists, a Jerome Fellowship, NYFA and NYSCA grants, and a Susan Smith Blackburn Award. She is a member of 13P, an Obie-winning collective of playwrights who will stage her new work, Crawl, Fade to White , in 2008. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, composer Sophocles Papavasilopoulos.

Ben Fountain's first book of stories, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, was published by Ecco/Harper Collins in 2006. Most of the stories are set in the third world and deal with the complex effects of globalization. His fiction has been published in Harper's , The Paris Review and Zoetrope: All-Story , among other magazines, and included in the O. Henry Prize and the Pushcart Prize collections. Ecco/HarperCollins will publish his novel, The Texas Itch , in 2009. Born in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, he has a B.A. from UNC/Chapel Hill and a law degree from Duke University. He is former fiction editor of Southwest Review and lives with his wife, Sharon Monahan Fountain, and their two children in Dallas, Texas.

Poet Paul Guest is the author of two collections, The Resurrection of the Body and the Ruin of the World (New Issues Press), and the recently published Notes for My Body Double (University of Nebraska Press), winner of the 2006 Prairie Schooner Prize. His work has appeared in many journals including The Southern Review, Crazyhorse, Poetry, and Verse, and his chapbook, Exit Interview, is available from New Michigan Press. Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Mr. Guest has an MFA from Southern Illinois University and has taught at the University of Alabama and the University of Tennessee. He is currently Visiting Professor of English at University of West Georgia and lives in Carrollton, Georgia.

Brad Kessler's novel, Birds In Fall (Scribner, 2006), examines the aftermath of a plane crash off the coast of Nova Scotia. Winner of this year's Dayton Literary Peace Prize, it was named by The Los Angeles Times as one of the top ten books of fiction and poetry in 2006. Mr. Kessler is also the author of Lick Creek (Scribner, 2001) and several children's books, including The Woodcutter's Christmas (Council Oak Books, 2001). His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, The Kenyon Review and The New York Times Magazine among other places. A recipient of an NEA grant and the Lange-Taylor Prize from Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies, he has taught at the New School University and Antioch University. He lives in Vermont with his wife, photographer Dona Ann McAdams. The Goat Diaries, his first nonfiction book, is forthcoming in 2009 from Scribner and explores the history of pastoralism and his own experience raising dairy goats.

Cate Marvin's new book of poems, Fragment of the Head of a Queen, was published by Sarabande in August 2007. Her first book, World's Tallest Disaster (Sarabande, 2001), won the Kathryn A. Morton Prize, and the Kate Tufts Discovery Prize. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, Fence, The Paris Review, Slate, and TriQuarterly . She is co-editor with poet Michael Dumanis of the anthology Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century (Sarabande Books, 2006). Ms. Marvin teaches poetry writing in Lesley University's Low-Residency M.F.A. Program and is an Associate Professor in Creative Writing at the College of Staten Island, City University of New York. She lives on Staten Island.

Playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney received a BFA in acting at the Theater School at DePaul University and recently completed his MFA at the Yale School of Drama. He is a recipient of Yale's Cole Porter Playwriting Award and the Vineyard Theater's inaugural Paula Vogel Award. His play, The Brothers Size, was presented at the McCarter Theater and will be shown at the Young Vic in London and at New York City's Public Theater. This play is part of a trilogy that includes Marcus; or, the Secret of Sweet and In the Red and Brown Water, premiering at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta. Mr. McCraney also co-authored The Breach, a play about Hurricane Katrina commissioned by the Southern Rep Theater in New Orleans where it premiered in August 2007. He is a member of Teo Castellanos/ D Projects Theater Company in Miami where he lives.

Carlo Rotella has published three books of nonfiction: October Cities: The Redevelopment of Urban Literature (1998); Good with their Hands: Boxers, Bluesmen and other Characters from the Rust Belt (2002), both published by University of California Press; and Cut Time: An Education at the Fights (Houghton Mifflin, 2003) which won the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. He has published many essays and magazine pieces, including the title chapter from Cut Time which was selected for inclusion in Best American Essays 2001 and chosen by The American Scholar as "Best Essay" and "Best Work by a Younger Writer" in 2000. He has a Ph.D in American Studies from Yale and has held Guggenheim, Du Bois, and Howard Fellowships. Now a Professor of English and Director of American Studies at Boston College, he lives in Brookline, MA.

Dalia Sofer was born in Iran and fled with her family at the age of ten to the United States. She is the author of the novel, The Septembers of Shiraz (Ecco, 2007), and has been a contributor to NPR's All Things Considered, Poets & Writers magazine, the National Poetry Almanac of the Academy of American Poets, and The New York Sun. Her essays, "Of These, Solitude" and "A Prenuptial Visit to Chartres" were included, respectively, in the anthologies Yentl's Revenge: The Next Wave of Jewish Feminism (Seal Press, 2001) and France, a Love Story (Seal Press, 2004). She received her MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College, has been a resident at Yaddo, and was the first recipient of the Sirenland Fellowship, allowing her to attend the Sirenland Writers Conference in Positano, Italy. She lives in New York City.

Peter Trachtenberg is the author of Seven Tattoos: A Memoir in the Flesh (Crown, 1997), and fiction and essays that have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Bomb, and other magazines. He is at work on The Book of Calamities, an exploration of suffering and its narratives, which will be published by Little, Brown in Spring 2008. For this book, he observed genocide tribunals in Rwanda; took part in post-tsunami relief efforts in Sri Lanka; and interviewed an elderly survivor of the Siege of Leningrad. Mr. Trachtenberg has performed his monologues at Dixon Place, PS 122, The Kitchen and has broadcast his commentaries on NPR's All Things Considered . A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, with an M.A. from City College of New York, he has taught at The New School and The Summer Literary Seminars in St. Petersburg, among other places. He lives in Red Hook, New York, with his wife, Mary Gaitskill.

Jack Turner is president of Exum Mountain Guides and School of American Mountaineering in Grand Teton National Park and has led treks in India, Pakistan, Nepal, China, Tibet, Bhutan and Peru. His first book was a collection of environmental essays, The Abstract Wild (University of Arizona Press, 1996) and was followed by a memoir, Teewinot: A Year in the Teton Range (St. Martin's Press, 2000). A new book for St. Martin's, Travels in the Greater Yellowstone , will be published in April 2008. He is at work on a philosophical tract entitled Wildness 101 ; a new collection of essays for St Martin's called The Eagle's Eye ; and a trio of novellas set in Jackson Hole. Mr. Turner studied Philosophy and Chinese at the University of Colorado, Stanford, and Cornell, and taught Philosophy at the University of Illinois. This winter he will be a Visiting Scholar in the College of Humanities at the University of Utah. He lives in Wyoming, with his wife, Dana, and their dog, Rio.