Edwidge Danticat was born in Haiti and moved to the United States when she was twelve. She is the author of several books, including Breath, Eyes, Memory, an Oprah Book Club selection, Krik? Krak!, a National Book Award finalist, and The Farming of Bones, an American Book Award winner. She is also the editor of The Butterfly’s Way: Voices from the Haitian Dyaspora in the United States and The Beacon Best of 2000: Great Writing by Men and Women of All Colors and Cultures and has written a young adult novel, Behind the Mountains, as well as a travel narrative, After the Dance, A Walk Through Carnival in Jacmel. Her most recent work of fiction, The Dew Breaker, was published in March 2004.
Adam Haslett is the author of the short story collection, You Are Not A Stranger Here. The book won the PEN/Winship Award, was a finalist for a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize, and has been translated into fifteen languages. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, The Nation, Zoetrope, and The Yale Review. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the Yale Law School, and has received fellowships from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and the Michener/Copernicus Society of America. He lives in New York City.
Amy Hempel is the author of four short story collections: Reasons To Live, At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom, Tumble Home and The Dog of The Marriage (Spring ’05). She has won several prestigious literary awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Hobson Medal. She has served as a judge for the National Book Awards, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the Mary McCarthy Prize, among others. She currently teaches in the graduate writing program of Bennington College.