Andre Dubus III is the author of a collection of short fiction, The Cage Keeper and Other Stories, and the novels Bluesman, House of Sand and Fog and The Garden of Last Days forthcoming in the Spring of 2008 with W.W. Norton. His work has been included in The Best American Essays of 1994, The Best Spiritual Writing of 1999 and The Best of Hope Magazine. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, The National Magazine Award for fiction, The Pushcart Prize and was a Finalist for the Prix de Rome Fellowship from the Academy of Arts and Letters. An Academy Award-nominated motion picture and published in seventeen languages, his novel House of Sand and Fog was a fiction finalist for the National Book Award, The Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award, Booksense Book of the Year, and was an Oprah Book Club Selection and #1 New York Times bestseller. A member of PEN American Center and the Executive Board of PEN New England, Andre Dubus III has served as a panelist for The National Book Foundation and The National Endowment for the Arts. He has taught writing at Harvard University, Tufts University and Emerson College. He is currently a full-time faculty member at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He is married to performer Fontaine Dollas Dubus. They live in Massachusetts with their three children.
Rick Moody is the author of the novels Garden State, The Ice Storm, Purple America and The Diviners. His short story collections include The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven, Demonology and Right Livelihoods. His fiction and essays have been published in The New Yorker, Esquire, The Paris Review, Harper’s, Grand Street, The Atlantic Monthly and The New York Times. His first novel Garden Statewon the Pushcart Editor’s Choice Award. His memoir The Black Veil won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of Memoir. He is also the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Addison Metcalf Award and The Paris Review Aga Khan Prize. His short fiction and journalism have been anthologized in Best American Stories 2001 and Best American Essays 2004. Moody graduated from Brown University and received a master’s degree in fine art from Columbia University. Before releasing his first novel he worked as an editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux. He has taught at the State University of New York at Purchase and Bennington College. Moody was, from 2005 to 2007, secretary of the PEN American Center and he co-founded the Young Lions Book Award at the New York Public Library. His band, the Wingdale Community Singers, for which he writes the lyrics and some music, are at work on their second album, Spirit Duplicator. He currently resides in Brooklyn.
Roxana Robinson is the author of the three novels Sweetwater, This Is My Daughter and Summer Ligh; the three short story collections A Perfect Stranger, Asking for Love, A Glimpse of Scarlet; and the biography Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life. Four of these were named Notable Books of the Year by The New York Times. She has received fellowships from the NEA, the MacDowell Colony and the Guggenheim Foundation. Her short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Daedalus, Best American Stories and other publications. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, House and Garden, Fine Gardening, Travel and Leisure, The Wilson Quarterly, Vogue, The Wall Street Journal and elsewhere. Most recently, Ms.Robinson has introduced and edited New York Stories by Edith Wharton, published by the New York Review of Books, September 2007. Her new novel Cost, published by Farrar, Straus & Girous, will be released in June 2008. She divides her time between New York and Maine, and writes frequently on the natural world and the environment. She is a Trustee emeritus of American PEN, and the National Humanities Center. She is on the Council of The Authors’ Guild, and the board of the Maine Coast Heritage Trust and The Nature Conservancy of Eastern New York. She has taught at the University of Houston and at Wesleyan University. She teaches at The New School for Social Research in New York City.