Prize-winning novelist and short story writer who has published seven novels—among them King Of The World, which won the Pushcart Press Editor's Book Award for an "important and unusual book of literary distinction," and The Kingdom of Brooklyn, winner of the Ribalow Award from Hadassah Magazine for "the best English-language book of fiction on a Jewish theme" — as well as five volumes of short stories, nine young adult novels, and three books of non-fiction. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Mademoiselle, Redbook and many other magazines, as well as in literary journals such as The Sewanee Review, Prairie Schooner, The Southwest Review, Shenandoah, The Chattahoochee Review and The Virginia Quarterly Review. She has published essays in The American Scholar, Commentary, The Sewanee Review, Salmagundi and The Writer. She earned her M.A. in English from Brandeis University and was awarded a Wallace Stegner Fiction Fellowship to Stanford University. She presently teaches fiction writing at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.

Sigrid Nunez has published seven novels, including A Feather on the Breath of God, The Last of Her Kind, Salvation City, and, most recently, The Friend. She is also the author of Sempre Susan: A Memoir of Susan Sontag. Among the journals to which she has contributed are The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, The Paris Review, Threepenny Review, Harper’s, McSweeney’s, Tin House, and The Believer. Her work has also appeared in several anthologies, including four Pushcart Prize volumes and four anthologies of Asian American literature. Sigrid’s honors and awards include a Whiting Writer’s Award, a Berlin Prize Fellowship, and two awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters: the Rosenthal Foundation Award and the Rome Prize in Literature. She has taught at Columbia, Princeton, Boston University, and the New School, and has been a visiting writer or writer in residence at Amherst, Smith, Baruch, Vassar, and the University of California, Irvine, among others. In spring, 2019, she will be visiting writer at Syracuse University. Sigrid has also been on the faculty of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and of several other writers’ conferences across the country. She lives in New York City.

Xujun Eberlein is the author of the award-winning story collection href="http://www.amazon.com/Apologies-Forth... Forthcoming. A native of Chongqing, China now living in the Boston area, she is also a widely read essayist and blogger on China. Her stories and essays have appeared in many magazines in the United States, and also in Canada, England, Kenya, and Hong Kong. Xujun's literary awards include artist fellowship in fiction/creative nonfiction from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the VCCA’s Goldfarb Non-fiction Fellowship, first prize of the Ledge Fiction Award, second prize of Literal Latte's Essay Awards, honorable mention from Dana Award in the Essay, winner of Tartt Fiction Award and runner-up for Drake Emerging Writer's Award. She is a nominee for the Pushcart Prizes and several Best American series, and received special mention in Pushcart XXXI. Xujun's recent essays on China have appeared at Los Angeles Review of Books ("The Teacher of the Future" http://lareviewofbooks.org/article.ph...), the Atlantic Web ("Another Kind of American History in Chongqing" http://www.theatlantic.com/internatio...), Foreign Policy ("China 2013" http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles...), and elsewhere. She is currently working on a memoir. More information about her writing and literary awards can be found on her website www.xujuneberlein.com and blog http://insideoutchina.blogspot.com/.

David Treuer is an Ojibwe Indian from Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. He is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from the NEH, Bush Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation. He divides his time between his home on the Leech Lake Reservation and Minneapolis. He is the author of three novels and a book of criticism. His essays and stories have appeared in Esquire, TriQuarterly, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, Lucky Peach, the LA Times, and Slate.com. Treuer published his first novel, Little, in 1995. He received his PhD in anthropology and published his second novel, The Hiawatha, in 1999. His third novel The Translation of Dr Apelles and a book of criticism, Native American Fiction; A User's Manual appeared in 2006. The Translation of Dr Apelles was named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Time Out, and City Pages. REZ LIFE is his newest book and is now out in paperback with Grove Press.