Patricia Weaver Francisco is the author of Telling: A Memoir of Rape and Recovery, for which she was awarded a Minnesota Book Award, a NEA fellowship, and a Loft-McKnight Award of Distinction. Francisco’s published work also includes the novel Cold Feet, the book of essays Village Without Mirrors, and the play Lunacy. She has been awarded two Bush Foundation fellowships, and grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board in both fiction and the essay. Francisco teaches at Hamline University.

Francine Prose is the author of stories, reviews, essays, and numerous award-winning works including the novels A Changed Man; Blue Angel, which was a finalist for the 2000 National Book Award; and Lovers at the Chameleon Club; and the nonfiction books Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife and Reading Like a Writer. The recipient of Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships, two NEA grants, and a PEN translation prize, she has taught at Harvard University, Sarah Lawrence College, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and currently teaches at Bard College. In 2009, she was elected to the Academy of Arts & Letters.

Stuart Dybek’s two new collections of fiction Ecstatic Cahoots and Paper Lantern were published in 2014. His previous fiction includes Childhood and Other Neighborhoods, The Coast of Chicago, and I Sailed with Magellan. He has also published two volumes of poetry, Brass Knuckles and Streets in Their Own Ink. He is the recipient of many literary awards including a MacArthur fellowship, the PEN/Malamud Award, a Lannan Award, a Guggenheim fellowship, a Whiting Writers' Award, two fellowships from the NEA, and four O’Henry Prizes. His work is widely anthologized and has appeared in Best American Poetry and Best American Fiction. He is the Distinguished Writer in Residence at Northwestern University.