Rachel Sherman is the author of the The First Hurt (Open City Books, 2006), a book of short stories, and Living Room (Open City Books, 2009), a novel. The First Hurt was a finalist for The 2006 International Frank O’Connor Short Story Award, short-listed for the 2007 Story Award, and was chosen as one of the 25 Books to Remember from 2006 by the New York Public Library. Her fiction has appeared in McSweeney's, Nerve, Post Road, Conjunctions, n+1, Story Quarterly, and Fence among other publications. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and teaches creative writing at Rutgers University and Columbia University.
James Magruder’s short fiction has appeared or will appear in The Gettysburg Review, The Harrington Gay Men’s Fiction Quarterly, Bloom, Subtropics, The Normal School, and the anthology Boy Crazy. His adaptations of Marivaux, Molière, Lesage, Labiche, Gozzi, and Dickens have been produced on and Off-Broadway, across the country, and in Japan and Germany. His Three French Comedies (Yale University Press) was named an “Outstanding Literary Translation of the Year” by the American Literary Translators Association. His writing has been supported by the Maryland State Arts Council, the New Harmony Project, The MacDowell Colony, where he was named a Thornton Wilder Fellow, the Ucross Foundation, and the Jerome Foundation. He teaches translation and adaptation at the Yale School of Drama and production dramaturgy at Swarthmore College. The University of Wisconsin Press published his debut novel, Sugarless, in October of 2009.
Jane Delury’s fiction has appeared in Narrative, The Southern Review and Prairie Schooner, among other publications. She has an essay forthcoming in the anthology, Writers on the Words They Love and Loathe. She is a recipient of an Individual Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council and a fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. A graduate of the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars, she is on the faculty of the University of Baltimore’s MFA in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts program.
After three decades of writing press releases, speeches and newsletters to pay the bills, Caryn Coyle tried fiction. Her ninth story was recently accepted for publication in Gargoyle, and her stories have been published in jmww, Loch Raven Review, The Santa Fe Writer's Project Literary Journal, and a few others. She won the 2009 Maryland Writers Association Short Fiction Contest. A graduate of the College of Notre Dame of Maryland and the Johns Hopkins University, she reviews restaurants for the website, Welcome to Baltimore, Hon.
Josh Weil is the author of the novella collection The New Valley (Grove, 2009), a New York Times Editors Choice selection for which he was honored with a “5 Under 35” National Book Award. His fiction has been published or is forthcoming in Granta, American Short Fiction, Narrative, and Glimmer Train, among other journals; he has written non-fiction for The New York Times, Granta Online, and Poets & Writers. Since earning his MFA from Columbia University, he has received a Fulbright grant, a Writer’s Center Emerging Writer Fellowship, the Dana Award in Portfolio, and fellowships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences. As the 2009 Tickner Fellow, he is the writer-in-residence at Gilman School in Baltimore, where he is at work on a novel.
Laura van den Berg was raised in Florida and earned her MFA at Emerson College. She is the recipient of scholarships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences, the 2009 Julia Peterkin Award, and the 2009-2010 Emerging Writer Lectureship at Gettysburg College. Her fiction has appeared in One Story, Boston Review, American Short Fiction, Best American Nonrequired Reading 2008, Best New American Voices 2010, and The Pushcart Prize XXIV: Best of the Small Presses, among others. Laura’s first collection of stories, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us (Dzanc Books, October 2009), is the winner of the Dzanc Prize and was recently selected by Barnes & Noble for their "Discover Great New Writers" Program. To learn more about Laura, please visit www.lauravandenberg.com.
Geoffrey Becker’s new book of stories, Black Elvis (University of Georgia Press, October, 2009), won the 2008 Flannery O’Connor Prize for Short Fiction. His novel, Hot Springs, is forthcoming from Tin House books. He is the author of two previous books, Dangerous Men, a collection that won the Drue Heinz Prize, and Bluestown, a novel. His other awards and honors include an NEA fellowship, selection for the Best American Short Stories anthology, the Nelson Algren Award from The Chicago Tribune, and the Parthenon Prize. He teaches writing at Towson University in Maryland, where he also directs the graduate program in Professional Writing.
Dylan Landis is the author of Normal People Don't Live Like This (Persea), a debut novel-in-stories that has won praise from Vanity Fair, More, and Booklist. Her fiction has appeared in Bomb, Tin House and Best American Nonrequired Reading, and she has won the Poets & Writers California Exchange Award and an NEA-funded Fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Normal People was a finalist for the Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction.
Sherrie Flick’s debut novel Reconsidering Happiness is just out with University of Nebraska Press. I Call This Flirting, her awarding-winning chapbook of flash fiction, was published in 2004 (Flume Press). Her work appears in the anthologies Flash Fiction Forward (Norton) and New Sudden Fiction (Norton) as well as You Have Time For This (Ooligan Press). A recipient of a PA Council on the Arts grant, she lives in Pittsburgh where she works as a freelance writer and directs the Gist Street Reading Series. www.sherrieflick.com
Originally from Toronto, Elise Levine was named by Margaret Atwood as one of Canada’s most important emerging women writers. Reviewers have called Levine “a cutting-edge literary sensation” and “one of Canada’s finest fiction writers … a sensitive, cagey dominatrix of literary form and human psychology.” She is the author of the story collection Driving Men Mad and the novel Requests and Dedications. Her poems, fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous periodicals including Hotel Amerika, Gargoyle, Prairie Schooner, Best Canadian Stories, the Journey Prize Anthology, and Canada’s The National Post. She is the recipient of a Canadian National Magazine Award for Fiction, and many awards including ones from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council, as well as residency fellowships from, among others, the McDowell Colony and Yaddo, where she was an Eli Cantor Fellow. She currently resides in Baltimore, where she teaches creative writing at Towson University and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
