Charles Baxter is the author, most recently, of Gryphon: New and Selected Stories, published in January, 2011. He is also the author of The Soul Thief, Saul and Patsy, First Light, Shadow Play and four books of stories.His third novel, The Feast of Love, was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2000 and has been made into a film by Robert Benton. He has published essays on fiction,and published a book of poems, Imaginary Paintings. He has received the Award of Merit in the Short Story and the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Harper's, among other journals and magazines. His fiction has been widely anthologized and translated into many languages.

William Lychack is author of a forthcoming collection of stories, The Architect of Flowers, and a novel, The Wasp Eater. His work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, The American Scholar, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, and other places, including public radio's This American Life. The Architect of Flowers has been selected for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Summer 2011 season. He currently lives in Stamford, Vermont, and teaches in the Low-Residency MFA Program at Lesley University.

Jess Row is the author of two collections of short stories, The Train to Lo Wu, which was shortlisted for the 2006 PEN/Hemingway Award and the just-released Nobody Ever Gets Lost. His fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, Granta, Ploughshares, American Short Fiction, Witness, Harvard Review, Conjunctions, Boston Review, and twice in The Best American Short Stories. He has received a Whiting Writers Award, an NEA fellowship in fiction, a PEN/O. Henry Award, and a Pushcart Prize; in 2007 he was named one of Granta’s “Best Young American Novelists.” He is an associate professor of English and Buddhist chaplain at The College of New Jersey.