Nuala O'Faolain has been a waitress, a sales clerk, a maid; a University lecturer, a television producer, and most recently, a columnist with The Irish Times. Born the second of nine children to a bohemian North Dublim family headed by an overwhelmed, alcoholic mother, and a charming famous and philandering father, Nuala not only survived, but pushed at the boundaries of the Catholic Ireland she grew up in. In memoriam, 1940-2008

Orhan Pamuk won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. His novel My Name Is Red won the 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work has been translated into more than fifty languages. He lives in Istanbul.

Orhan Pamuk won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2006. His novel My Name Is Red won the 2003 IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His work has been translated into more than fifty languages. He lives in Istanbul.

Jonathan Lethem is the author of seven novels. A recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship, Lethem has also published his stories and essays in The New Yorker, Harper's, Rolling Stone, Esquire, and the New York Times, among others.

Garrison Keillor was born in Anoka, Minnesota, and graduated from the University of Minnesota, one more English major. He pitched for the Jack's Auto Repair softball team, did an early morning radio show for ten years, lived in Copenhagen for a time, and sang bass in the Hopeful Gospel Quartet. Also sang with the New York Philharmonic and the Boston Pops. He owns Common Good Bookstore in St. Paul and is the author of 77 Love Sonnets. He has done his one-man show in theaters coast to coast. In July, 2009, he celebrated the thirty-fifth anniversary of "A Prairie Home Companion." His daily "Writers Almanac" has been on the air since 1993. He lives in St. Paul and New York City.

Lorrie Moore is the author of the story collections Birds of America, Like Life, and Self-Help, as well as the novels Who Will Run the the Frog Hospital? and Anagrams. She has been the recipient of the Irish Times Prize for International Literature, the PEN/Malamud Award, the O.Henry Award, and a Lannan Foundation Literary fellowship. She is currently a professor at the University of Wisconsin, in Madison.

Nam Le was born in Vietnam and raised in Australia. He is the recipient of many awards including the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Pushcart Prize, the Michener-Copernicus Society of America Award, and a U.S. National Book Foundation "5 Under 35" Fiction Selection. His fiction has appeared in venues including Zoetrope, NPR's Selected Shorts, Prospect Magazine, and has been widely anthologized. He is the fiction editor of the Harvard Review.

Nicholson Baker is the author of eight novels-The Mezzanine, Room Temperature, Vox, The Fermata, The Everlasting Story of Nory, A Box of Matches, Checkpoint, and The Anthologist-and four works of nonfiction-U and I, The Size of Thoughts, Double Fold, and Human Smoke. He is the co-author, with his wife Margaret Brentano, of The World on Sunday: Graphic Art in Joseph Pulitzer's Newspaper. In 1999 he established a non-profit corporation, the American Newspaper Repository, to rescue old newspapers from destruction by libraries. He is the recipient of the 2001 National Book Critics Circle award for Double Fold.

Maxine Hong Kingston was born in Stockton in 1940. Recognized as a major American writer of her generation, Kingston first received national attention with the publication of The Woman Warrior (1976), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and has been dramatized throughout the country. Her second book, China Men (1980), won the National Book Award and was a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize. Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book (1989), her first novel, won the PEN USA West Award in Fiction. Among her numerous honors are the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers Award and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. She was recently awarded the National Humanities Medal.

Jim Krusoe is the author of the novels and Iceland; two collections of stories, Blood Lake and Abductions; as well as five books of poetry. He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Fund. He teaches at Santa Monica College and lives in Los Angeles with his wife and children.