TAO LIN is the author of the novels Taipei, Richard Yates, and Eeeee Eee Eeee; the novella Shoplifting from American Apparel; the story collection Bed; and the poetry collections Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy and you are a little bit happier than i am. His most recent book is Selected Tweets, a collaboration with Mira Gonzalez. He lives in New York City, and is at taolin.info.
KELLY LINK is the author of the collections Get in Trouble, Stranger Things Happen, Magic for Beginners, and Pretty Monsters. She and Gavin J. Grant have co-edited a number of anthologies, including multiple volumes of The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and, for young adults, Monstrous Affections. She is the cofounder of Small Beer Press. Her short stories have been published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, The Best American Short Stories, and The O. Henry Prize Stories. She has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Link was born in Miami, Florida. She currently lives with her husband and daughter in Northampton, Massachusetts.
SAM LIPSYTE is the author of three novels and two short-story collections. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Paris Review, Tin House, NOON, The Quarterly, and The Best American Short Stories. He won the first annual Believer Book Award and was a Guggenheim fellow. He lives in New York City, where he teaches at Columbia University’s School of the Arts.
MAUREEN F. MCHUGH has lived in New York; Shijiazhuang, China; Ohio; Austin, Texas; and now lives in Los Angeles, California. She is the author of two collections of stories—Mothers & Other Monsters and After the Apocalypse—and four novels, including China Mountain Zhang and Nekropolis. McHugh has also worked on alternate-reality games for Halo 2, the Watchmen, and Nine Inch Nails, among others.
DONALD RAY POLLOCK, recipient of the 2009 PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship, made his literary debut in 2008 with the critically acclaimed story collection Knockemstiff. He worked as a laborer at the Mead Paper Mill in Chillicothe, Ohio, from 1973 to 2005. He holds an MFA from Ohio State University. His work has appeared in, among other publications, EPOCH, Granta, and The New York Times.
GEORGE SAUNDERS’s most recent book of fiction, Tenth of December, which spent fourteen weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, won the inaugural Folio Prize in 2013 (for the best work of fiction in English) and the Story Prize (best short-story collection) and was a finalist for the National Book Award. He has received MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships and the PEN/Malamud Prize for Excellence in the Short Story, and was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University.
SAÏD SAYRAFIEZADEH was born in Brooklyn and raised in Pittsburgh. He is the author of the story collection Brief Encounters with the Enemy, which was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Fiction Prize, and the memoir When Skateboards Will Be Free. His short stories and personal essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Granta, McSweeney’s, The New York Times, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. He is the recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award for nonfiction and a fiction fellowship from the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. He lives in New York City.
CHRISTINE SCHUTT is the author of two short-story collections and three novels. Her first novel, Florida, was a National Book Award finalist; her second novel, All Souls, a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize. A third novel, Prosperous Friends, was noted in The New Yorker as one of the best books of 2012. Among other honors, Schutt has twice won the O. Henry Award. She is the recipient of a New York Foundation of the Arts Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Schutt lives and teaches in New York.
ZADIE SMITH was born in north-west London in 1975. Her first novel, White Teeth, was the winner of the Whitbread Award for First Novel, the Guardian First Book Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, and the Commonwealth Writers’ First Book Award. Her second novel, The Autograph Man, won the Jewish Quarterly — Wingate Literary Prize. Zadie Smith’s third novel, On Beauty, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Commonwealth Writers’ Best Book Award (Eurasian Section) and the Orange Prize for fiction. Her most recent novel, NW, was published in 2012 and has been shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize and the Women’s Prize for Fiction.
MATHIAS SVALINA is the author of five books, including Destruction Myth, Wastoid, and a collaborative book with the photographer Jon Pack, The Depression. He lives in Denver, Colorado, where he has taught at universities and in DIY spaces and prisons. He is an editor for the independent poetry press Octopus Books and runs a Dream Delivery Service.
WELLS TOWER is the author of Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, a collection of short fiction. Tower was the recipient of the Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize for Fiction, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, a National Magazine Award for fiction, and was included in the New Yorker’s list of twenty promising writers under forty. Tower’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, GQ, McSweeney’s, The Paris Review, The Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere.
DEB OLIN UNFERTH is the author of the memoir Revolution, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; the story collection Minor Robberies; and the novel Vacation, winner of the Cabell First Novelist Award. Her work appears in Harper’s, The New York Times, McSweeney’s, and NOON. She has received three Pushcart Prizes and grants from the Creative Capital Foundation. She is an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Her next collection is forthcoming from Graywolf Press.
CLAIRE VAYE WATKINS is the author of Battleborn, winner of 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. Her stories and essays have appeared in Granta, One Story, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, Best of the West 2011, Best of the Southwest 2013, and elsewhere. A graduate of the University of Nevada, Reno and the Ohio State University, Claire teaches at Bucknell University. Her first novel, Gold, Fame, Citrus, is forthcoming from Riverhead Books.