Lorrie Moore is author of Birds of America, Like Life, and Self-Help and the novels Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?, Anagrams, and A Gate at the Stairs. Her short stories have frequently been reprinted in anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike. After serving as the Delmore Schwartz Professor in the Humanities at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for almost three decades, Moore has been named the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor of English at Vanderbilt University. She has received numerous grants and awards, including the Lannan Foundation, the National Books Critics Circle, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Brighde Mullins is a poet and playwright, whose works include The Bourgeois Pig, Monkey in the Middle, Fire Eater, and many others. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012 and has also won awards from United States Artists, the NEA, and the Whiting Foundation for her plays. She teaches in and directs the Master of Professional Writing (MPW), a multi-genre graduate creative writing program at the University of Southern California.