Lee Martin is the author of four novels, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist, The Bright Forever. He is also the author of three memoirs, most recently Such a Life, and a story collection, The Least You Need to Know. He teaches in the creative writing program at Ohio State University.

Dorothy Allison is the author of the prize-winning novels, Bastard out of Carolina and Cavedweller, as well as the books Two or Three Things I know for Sure, Trash, Skin, and the book of poetry, The Women Who Hate me. A novel, She Who, is forthcoming.

Karen Salyer McElmurray won the AWP Award for Creative Nonfiction for her memoir, Surrendered Child: A Birth Mother’s Journey. Her novels are The Motel of the Stars and Strange Birds in the Tree of Heaven. She teaches in low-residencies at Wilkes University, West Virginia, and West Virginia Wesleyan.

Claire Vaye Watkins's Battleborn won the Story Prize, the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Silver Pen Award from the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame. One of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35, she is currently teaching at Princeton.

Sonja Livingston’s book, Ghostbreat, won the AWP Award for Nonfiction. Her work has won honors from the Deming Fund, Iowa Review, Arts & Letters, and New York Foundation for the Arts. Essays from a forthcoming collection appear in journals such as RiverTeeth, Seneca Review, and Creative Nonfiction.