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Then We Came to the End, Joshua Ferris’s “truly affecting novel about work, trust, love, and loneliness” (Seattle Times), won the 2008 PEN/Hemingway Award for best first novel and was a finalist for the National Book Award. His other works include The Unnamed and To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, which was shortlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize. One of The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40” writers and winner of the International Dylan Thomas Prize, Ferris has published fiction in Granta, Prairie Schooner, and Best American Voices, among other places. The Dinner Party, his first story collection, is rife with characters searching for answers in the aftermath of life’s pitfalls.

“Nailing entire worlds together with teeming, precise detail” (The New York Times), Jim Shepard is the author of seven novels, including The Book of Aron and Project X. A writer’s writer, he is perhaps more celebrated for his short fiction, which has appeared in publications ranging from The Paris Review to Playboy. His story collections include You Think That’s Bad and Like You’d Understand, Anyway, a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of The Story Prize. His new collection explores the emotional hazards of everyday life writ large on the canvases of historic tragedy and triumph.