Larry McMurtry received a Pulitzer Prize for his 1985 novel Lonesome Dove and an Academy Award and Golden Globe for his screen adaptation (co-written with Diana Ossana) of the film Brokeback Mountain.

Born in Alabama in 1945, Tobias Wolff traveled the country with his mother, finally settling in Washington State, where he grew up. He attended the Hill School in Pennsylvania until he was expelled for repeated failures in mathematics in his final year, whereupon he joined the Army. He spent four years as a paratrooper, including a tour in Vietnam. Following his discharge he attended Oxford University in England, where he received a First Class Honours degree in English in 1972. Returning to the United States, he worked variously as a reporter, a night watchman, a waiter and a high school teacher before receiving a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing at Stanford University in 1975. He is currently Ward W. and Priscilla B. Woods Professor in the Humanities at Stanford.

As co-founder of The Reduced Shakespeare Company, Jess Winfield's full-length show, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1987 and became an international sensation, leading to multiple world tours and engagements. After leaving the RSC, Winfield spent 10 years writing and producing cartoons for Disney. He left Disney two years ago to write My Name is Will, his first novel. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife.

Andrew Sean Greer is the author of How It Was for Me, a collection of short stories and three novels, including The Path of Minor Planets and The Confessions of Max Tivoli, came out in 2004. John Updike first put this novel on the literary map when, in the pages of The New Yorker, he called it "enchanting, in the perfumed, dandified style of disenchantment brought to grandeur by Proust and Nabokov." He is the recipient of the California Book Award, the Northern California Book Award, the New York Public Library Young Lions Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Public Library.

Alan Ball is the creator and Executive Producer of "Six Feet Under," the critically acclaimed drama series on HBO. The series, about a family-run funeral home in Los Angeles, has garnered unprecedented ratings for the network, two Golden Globes (including Best Drama Series) and six Emmy awards. Alan was awarded an Emmy and a DGA award for directing the pilot of "Six Feet Under", his directorial debut. Alan's first produced feature film screenplay was "American Beauty," for which he received the 1999 Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, the Writers Guild of America award for Best Original Screenplay, and the Golden Globe award for Best Screenplay, among others. His other television credits include "Oh Grow Up", "Cybill" and "Grace Under Fire." Prior to moving to Hollywood, he was a noted comedic playwright in New York.

Thomas Lynch is the author, most recently, of Booking Passage: We Irish and Americans, a book he describes as "an ethnography of everyday life." His book, The Undertaking, won an American Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Bodies in Motion and at Rest won the Great Lakes Book Award. Of his three collections of poems, Still Life in Milford is the most recent. For thirty years he has been the funeral director in Milford, Michigan.

In a career spanning five decades, W.S. Merwin, poet, translator and environmental activist, has become one of the most widely read - and imitated - poets in America. Over the years, his poetic voice has moved from the more formal and medieval to a more distinctly American voice. W.S. Merwin's recent poetry is perhaps his most personal, arising from his deeply held beliefs.

His first book, A Mask for Janus, was published in 1952 in the Yale Younger Poets series -- chosen by W.H. Auden. His book of poems, The Carrier of Ladders, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1970. His other books include The Drunk in the Furnace, The Moving Target, The Lice, Flower & Hand, The Compass Flower, Feathers from the Hill, Opening the Hand, The Rain in the Trees, Travels, The Vixen, The Lost Upland, Unframed Originals, and The Folding Cliffs. His awards include the Pulitzer Prize, the Tanning Prize, the Bollingen Prize, and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, among many others. His latest works include the collections of poems The River Sound as well as a new translation of Dante's Purgatorio. In the fall of 2004, William Merwin was awarded the prestigious 2004 Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award. His book Migration won the 2005 National Book Award for Poetry, and was also named winner of the 2006 Ambassador Book Award for Poetry. W.S. Merwin was awarded the 2006 Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry for his book Present Company.

Born in 1945, August Wilson grew up in the Hill district of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His childhood experiences in this black slum community would later inform his dramatic writings, including his first produced play, Black Bart and the Sacred Hills, which was staged in 1981.

By early 1990's, Wilson had established himself as the best known and most popular African-American playwright. His second play, Fences, earned Wilson his first Pulitzer Prize. The Piano Lesson earned Wilson his 2nd Pulitzer Prize for Drama, as well as a Drama Desk Award.

On October 2, 2005, August Wilson passed away at the age of 60.

Richard Price is the author of seven novels, including Clockers, Freedomland, and Samaritan. He won a 2007 Edgar Award for his writing on the HBO series The Wire.

Before finding his calling as a writer, Andre Dubus III worked for brief stints as a bounty hunter, private investigator, carpenter, bartender, actor, and teacher. His first book, The Cage Keeper and Other Stories, was published in 1989, followed by 1993 by his first novel, Bluesman. For the next few years, he taught and did odd jobs as a carpenter while working on House of Sand and Fog, most of which was written in his car. Dubus' work has been awarded a Pushcart Prize and the 1985 National Magazine Award for Fiction. Andre Dubus III is the son of Andre Dubus, a widely recognized master of short fiction who died in February 1999. He teaches in Emerson College's MFA Writing program, and at Tufts University.

Jim Crace is the author of eight previous novels. Being Dead was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize and won the prestigious National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in 2000. In 1997, Quarantine was named the Whitbread Novel of the Year and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Crace has also received the Whitbread First Novel Award, the E.M. Foster Award, and the Guardian Award. He lives in Birmingham, England.

Sue Miller is the best selling author of the novels Lost in the Forest, The World Below, While I Was Gone, The Distinguished Guest, For Love, Family Pictures, and The Good Mother; the story collection Inventing the Abbots; and the memoir The Story of My Father. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts.