Laura Furman's work has appeared inThe New Yorker,Vanity Fair,Ploughshares,The Yale Review, and other magazines. She is the founding editor of the highly regardedAmerican Short Fiction(three-time finalist for the American Magazine Award). A professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin, she teaches in the graduate James A. Michener Center for writers. She lives in Austin.
David Leavitt's first collection of stories, "Family Dancing," was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award & the PEN/Faulkner Prize. "The Lost Language of Cranes" was made into a BBC film, & "While England Sleeps" was shortlisted for the Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize. Leavitt is also the author of "Equal Affections," "A Place I've Never Been," "Arkansas," & "The Page Turner." With Mark Mitchell, he coedited "The Penguin Book of Short Stories" & "The Pages Passed from Hand to Hand" & cowrote "Italian Pleasures." He is recipient of fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation & the National Endowment for the Arts. He divides his time between Italy and Florida.
DAVID MEANSwas born and raised in Michigan. His second collection of stories,Assorted Fire Events, earned the Los Angles Times Book Prize for fiction and a National Book Critics Circle nomination. His third book,The Secret Goldfish, received widespread critical acclaim and was shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize. Both books have been translated into eight languages. His fiction has appearedThe New Yorker,Harper’s Magazine,Esquire,Zoetrope,The Best American Short Stories,The Best American Mystery Stories,The O. Henry Prize Stories, and numerous other publications. He lives in Nyack, New York, and teaches at Vassar College.