George Garrett, novelist, short story writer, poet, playwright and literary critic is Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Virginia. His novels include the Elizabethan trilogy Death of the Fox, The Succession: A Novel of Elizabeth and James and Entered from the Sun. His collections of short stories include King of the Mountain, In the Briar Patch, Cold Ground Was My Bed Last Night, A Wreath for Garibaldi and Other Stories, An Evening Performance: New and Selected Short Stories and The Old Army Game: A Novel and Stories. He has been the recipient of Guggenheim, Ford and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, the Rome Prize of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the PEN/Malamud Award. His novel, The King of Babylon Shall Not Come Against You, was published by Harcourt Brace in April 1996.
Barry Hannah is author of the novels Geronimo Rex, nominated for a National Book Award, Nightwatchmen, Ray, The Tennis Handsome, Hey Jack!, Boomerang and Never Die. His short story collections are Airships, Captain Maximus and Bats out of Hell. He has received the Arnold Gingrich Award for short fiction from Esquire, a special award in fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Mississippi Governors Award. Barry Hannah lives in Oxford, Mississippi, where he is writer-in-residence at the University of Mississippi.
Jayne Anne Phillips’ most recent book is the novel Shelter, published by Houghton Mifflin in 1994. Her first novel, Machine Dreams, became a New York Times bestseller and was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her two collections of short stories are Black Tickets and Fast Lanes. She was awarded the Sue Kauffman Prize for First Fiction by the National Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters for Black Tickets. Other awards include two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships in Fiction, the St. Lawrence Award for Fiction, the O. Henry Award, the Ingram Merrill Fellowship, and the Pushcart Prize, Vols. II, IV and VIII. Her stories have been widely anthologized, including selection for The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, Best American Short Stories and The American Story: Short Stories from the Rea Award. Jayne Anne Phillips is Visiting Senior Lecturer in Fiction at Harvard University.