Rick Hilles is the author of Brother Salvage winner of the 2005 Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize (Pitt Poetry Series, 2006) and named 2006 Poetry Book of the Year by ForeWord Magazine. His work has appeared in Harper's, The Nation, The New Republic, Poetry, Ploughshares; he’s been the Amy Lowell Traveling Scholar, a Stegner fellow at Stanford, and a Halls fellow at U.W. – Madison and teaches creative writing at Vanderbilt University.

Nancy Reisman is the author of the novel The First Desire, a 2004 NY Times Notable Book, and the story collection House Fires, which won the Iowa Short Fiction Award. Her fiction has appeared in many anthologies and magazines, including 2005
O. Henry Award Stories and 2001 Best American Short Stories. She teaches creative writing at Vanderbilt University.