Sven Birkerts is editor of the acclaimed literary magazine, AGNI, housed at Boston University, and a member of the core faculty of the Bennington Writing Seminars. He is the author of six books, including An Artificial Wilderness: Essays on 20th Century Literature (William Morrow). He has also edited several books and reviews regularly for The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Yale Review, and others. His awards include grants from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Foundation and the Guggenheim Foundation, the Citation for Excellence in Reviewing from the National Book Critics Circle, and the Spielvogel-Diamonstein Award from PEN. Rikki Ducornet is the author of two collections of short fiction, a book of essays and seven novels including The Jade Cabinet, a finalist for The National Book Critics’ Circle Award, and The Fan Maker’s Inquisition, a Los Angeles Times Book of the Year. She has received fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, The Bunting Institute and the Ingram Merrill Foundation. In 1989 she received a Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters, and, in 2004, the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction. Her work has been widely translated and anthologized. Alice Friman is Professor Emerita at the University of Indianapolis. Now living in Milledgeville, Georgia, she is Poet in Residence at Georgia College & State University. She has published eight collections of poetry, most recently The Book of the Rotten Daughter from BkMk Press. She has been awarded the Ezra Pound Poetry Award, Shenandoah’s James Boatwright III Prize for Poetry, residencies at MacDowell and Yaddo artist colonies, and three prizes from the Poetry Society of America. Albert Goldbarth is Distinguished Professor of Humanities in the Department of English at Wichita State University. He has published more than twenty collections of poetry, a novel, and four books of essays. The Kitchen Sink: New and Selected Poems, 1972-2007 is forthcoming from Graywolf (Spring 2007). Twice the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, he has also been awarded a Guggenheim and three NEA fellowships, as well as the PEN Center West Award. Mark Jarman is Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. He is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including Questions for Ecclesiastes, which won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Also well known for his critical work, he has published two books of essays. His awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Tayari Jones is currently the Jenny McKean Moore Writer in Residence at George Washington University. Starting Fall 2007, she will be Assistant Professor at Rutgers University, Newark. She is the author of two critically acclaimed novels, Leaving Atlanta, winner of the Hurston/Wright Award for Debut Fiction and listed as one of “the best of 2002” by The Washington Post, and The Untelling, winner of the Lillian C. Smith Award for New Voices. Essence magazine has called her “a writer to watch,” and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution described her as “one of the best writers of her generation.” She is a graduate of Spelman College, the University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. Laurence Lieberman is Professor of English at the University of Illinois and Poetry Editor for the University of Illinois Press, where he began the Poetry Series in 1971. He has published 14 books of poetry and three books of criticism. He also serves as Advisory Editor for Caribbean Writer magazine and the James Dickey Newsletter. His awards include The Jerome Shestack Prize and a Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts. Michael Martone is Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Alabama where he has been teaching since 1996. He is the author of nine books of fiction and creative nonfiction, including The Flatness, winner of the AWP Award for Creative Nonfiction, and has also edited collections and authored books on craft. With his wife, the poet Theresa Pappas, he publishes Story County Books. Reginald McKnight is the Hamilton-Holmes Professor at the University of Georgia. He is the author of three collections of short stories as well as a novel and nonfiction works, including African American Wisdom and Wisdom of the African World. He has received an NEA fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, an O’Henry Award, the Bernice M. Slote Award, the Drue Heinz Prize, a Special Citation from the PEN/Hemingway Foundation, and a Whiting Writer’s Award. Larissa Szporluk is Associate Professor of Creative Writing and Literature at Bowling Green State University, where she teaches in the MFA program. She is the author of three critically acclaimed books of poetry, Dark Sky Question (Beacon Press, 1998), winner of the Barnard Poetry Prize; Isolato (University of Iowa Press, 2000), winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize; and The Wind, Master Cherry, the Wind, (Alice James Books, 2003). Additional honors include poems in the Best American Poetry 1999 and 2001 and a 2003 NEA Literature Fellowship.
