Xhenet Aliu, author of the short story collection Domesticated Wild Things, has worked as a secretary, waitress, entertainment journalist, private investigator, and librarian/archivist. Her fiction has appeared in various literary journals and was awarded the 2012 Prairie Schooner Book Prize.

Marie-Helene Bertino's debut collection of stories Safe as Houses was the winner of the Iowa Short Fiction award and long-listed for the 2013 Story Prize and Frank O'Connor International Short Story Prize. Her debut novel 2 A.M. At the Cat's Pajamas will be published in August 2014.

EJ Levy’s debut story collection, Love, In Theory, won the 2012 Flannery O’Connor Award. Her essays & fiction have appeared in Best American Essays, The New York Times, Orion, and Paris Review, and received a Pushcart Prize. Her anthology, Tasting Life Twice, won a Lambda Award.

Hugh Sheehy is the author of The Invisibles, which won the 2012 Flannery O'Connor Award. He teaches at Ramapo College, in Mahwah, New Jersey.

Chad Simpson is the author of the story collection Tell Everyone I Said Hi. His work has appeared in McSweeney's, Esquire, the Sun, American Short Fiction, and New Stories from the Midwest 2012. He teaches at Knox College.