Kendall Dunkelberg directs the Eudora Welty Writers’ Symposium and the low-residency MFA at Mississippi University for Women. He has published Barrier Island Suite, Landscapes and Architectures, Time Capsules, Hercules, Richelieu, and Nostradamus, and the introductory multigenre textbook A Writer’s Craft.

Cary Holladay has published seven volumes of fiction, most recently Horse People: Stories and The Deer in the Mirror. More than eighty of her stories, novellas, and essays have appeared in literary journals and anthologies. Her awards include an O. Henry Prize and an NEA fellowship.

Lorraine M. López, Gertrude Conaway Chair, teaches in the MFA program at Vanderbilt University. She is the author of six books of fiction, editor or coeditor of three essay collections, and associate editor of the Afro-Hispanic Review. Her most recent publication is The Darling, a novel.

Angela Ball is the author of six poetry collections, including The Museum of the Revolution: 58 Exhibits, Possession, Quartet, Night Clerk at the Hotel of Both Worlds (winner of the Donald Hall Prize from the Association of Writers & Writing Programs), and Talking Pillow.

Kelly Norman Ellis is an associate professor of English at Chicago State University and chairperson of the English department. She is a poet who is Cave Canem fellow and a founding members of the Affrilachian Poets. She has written two poetry collections, Offerings of Desire and Tougaloo Blues.