Ann Beattie has published eight collections of short stories, including Park City, What Was Mine, Where You’ll Find Me, The Burning House and Follies: New Stories. She is also the author of seven novels, including The Doctor’s House, Another You and Picturing Will. Her many honors include the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction and the 2005 Rea Award for the Short Story. Beattie is a Professor at the University of Virginia and holds the Edgar Allan Poe Chair in Literature and Creative Writing. She is married to the painter, Lincoln Perry, and some of her most recent writing appears in the recently released Lincoln Perry’s Charlottesville.
Richard Ford is the author of three collections of short stories, Rock Springs, Women With Men: Three Stories and A Multitude of Sins: Stories. He is also the author of five novels, including The Sportswriter, which won the PEN/Faulkner citation for fiction in 1987. For his subsequent novel, Independence Day, he received both the PEN/Faulkner Award and The Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Among the many other awards and honors Ford has received are a Guggenheim Fellowship, two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature and the 1994 Rea Award for the Short Story. Ford’s sixth novel, The Lay of the Land, published by Alfred A. Knopf is being released in November, 2006.
Joyce Carol Oates is the author of 37 novels and novellas, 23 volumes of short stories and seven volumes of poetry. Her most recent collection is High Lonesome: New and Selected Stories 1966-2006. She received the National Book Award for her novel, Them, and is the recipient of the 2005 Prix Femina for The Falls. Her numerous other awards and honors include the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction and the 1990 Rea Award for the Short Story. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and she has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978. Her new novel, Black Girl/White Girl, will be published by HarperCollins in October 2006.