Matt Bell is the author of the novel In the House upon the Dirt between the Lake and the Woods, as well as two other books, How They Were Found and Cataclysm Baby. He is an assistant professor in the Creative Writing program at Northern Michigan University.

Peter Mountford's novel A Young Man’s Guide to Late Capitalism won the 2012 Washington State Book Award. His second novel The Dismal Science was recently published. A 2013-14 writer-in-residence at the Richard Hugo House, his essays and fiction have been in the Atlantic, Granta, and Boston Review.

Amelia Gray is the author of AM/PM and Museum of the Weird, for which she won the Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize. Her first novel, THREATS, was named a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. Her writing has appeared in Tin House, American Short Fiction, and McSweeney's.

Kevin Sampsell is the publisher of Future Tense Books, as well as a bookseller (Powell's Books), and author. His newest book is a novel, This Is Between Us and one of his essays is included in Best American Essays 2013.

Tara Ison is the author of the novels Rockaway, The List, and A Child out of Alcatraz, as well as the forthcoming collection of essays Reeling Through Life and the short story collection Ball. She is an assistant professor in the Creative Writing Program at ASU.