Katharine Beutner is an assistant professor of English at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. Her novel Alcestis won the 2011 Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction and her writing has appeared in Public Books, TriQuarterly, and the Toast.

Benoit Denizet-Lewis is a New York Times bestselling author, a writer with the New York Times magazine, and an assistant professor of writing and publishing at Emerson College. He is the author of three books, most recently, Travels with Casey, which explores America’s dog culture.

Susan Orlean is the author of eight books, including The Orchid Thief and Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend, both New York Times best sellers. She has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 1992. She is a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow in Creative Arts.

Ken Foster is the author of the bestselling memoir The Dogs Who Found Me and the short story collection The Kind I'm Likely to Get. His work has appeared in Fence, Bomb, McSweeney's, and Salon. His most recent book is I'm a Good Dog.

Miriam Bird Greenberg is the author of two chapbooks: All night in the new country and Pact-Blood, Fever Grass. She has held fellowships from the NEA, the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, the Poetry Foundation, and was a Wallace Stegner fellow in poetry.