Margaret Atwood, whose work has been published in over thirty-five countries, is the author of more than forty books of fiction, poetry, and critical essays. In addition to The Handmaid's Tale, her novels include: Cat's Eye, shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Alias Grace, which won the Giller Prize in Canada and the Premio Mondello in Italy; The Blind Assassin, winner of the 2000 Booker Prize; Oryx and Crake, shortlisted for the 2003 Booker Prize; and her most recent, The Year of the Flood. She lives in Toronto.

Sarah Shun-lien Bynum is the author of two novels: Ms. Hempel Chronicles, a finalist for the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award, and Madeleine Is Sleeping, a finalist for the 2004 National Book Award. Her fiction has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including the New Yorker, Tin House, the Georgia Review, and the Best American Short Stories 2004 and 2009. The recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award and an NEA Fellowship, she was named one of the "20 Under 40" fiction writers by The New Yorker. She teaches in the Graduate Writing Program at Otis College of Art and Design.

Photo credit: Jean Malek

Bernard Cooper is an author of The Bill From My Father, and the recipient of many awards, including the PEN/USA Ernest Hemingway Award, O. Henry Prize, a Guggenheim grant, and a National Endowment of the Arts fellowship in literature.  His work has appeared in several anthologies, magazines, and literary reviews, including five volumes of The Best American Essays, Harper's Magazine, The Paris Review, Story, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, and The New York Times Magazine. He has contributed to National Public Radio's "This American Life", and Los Angeles Magazine. Mr. Cooper currently teaches in writing programs at Bennington College and USC.

George Saunders, a MacArthur Genius Grant fellow, is the acclaimed author of several collections of short stories, including Pastoralia and CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, as well as a collection of essays and a book for children. He teaches in the creative writing program at Syracuse University. His most recent work is a collection of short stories, Tenth of December.

Sarah Shun-lien Bynum is the author of two novels, Ms. Hempel Chronicles, a finalist for the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award, and Madeleine Is Sleeping, a finalist for the 2004 National Book Award. Her fiction has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including the New Yorker, Tin House, the Georgia Review, and the Best American Short Stories 2004 and 2009. The recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award and an NEA Fellowship, she was named one of the "20 Under 40" fiction writers by the New Yorker. She teaches in the Graduate Writing Program at Otis College of Art and Design.

Sarah Shun-lien Bynum is the author of two novels, Ms. Hempel Chronicles, a finalist for the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award, and Madeleine Is Sleeping, a finalist for the 2004 National Book Award and winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. Her fiction has appeared in several magazines and anthologies, including the New Yorker, Tin House, the Georgia Review, and the Best American Short Stories 2004 and 2009. The recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award and an NEA Fellowship, she directs the MFA program in writing at the University of California, San Diego. She lives in Los Angeles and was recently named one of "20 Under 40" fiction writers by the New Yorker.

Yiyun Li is the author of A Thousand Years of Good Prayers and The Vagrants. A native of Beijing and a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, she is the recipient of the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award, the Whiting Writers' Award, the Guardian First Book Award, and is a 2010 recipient of the MacArthur "Genius" Grant. In 2007, Granta named her one of the best American novelists under thirty-five. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, A Public Space, The Best American Short Stories, and The O. Henry Prize Stories, among others. She teaches writing at the University of California, Davis.

Brighde Mullins' plays have been produced in New York, London, and San Francisco. Titles include:Monkey in the Middle, Fire Eater, Topographical Eden; Pathological Venus. She has received a Whiting Foundation Award; an NEA Fellowship and others. She has taught at Harvard University and at Brown University, and for fifteen years she curated the Reading Series at Dia Art Foundation in New York. She is currently the Director of the Master of Professional Writing Program at USC.