Mark Behr grew up in South Africa and studied at the University of Stellenbosch. After Stellenbosch, he also studied in Norway and in the United States. His debut Die reuk van appels (The smell of apples) appeared in 1993 and won several prizes, including the CNA, Eugene Marais, and M-Net prizes. His second novel Embrace (2000) was short-listed for The Sunday Times award in South Africa as well as for the Encore Prize in the United Kingdom. Behr is currently an assistant professor of world literature and creative writing at the College of Santa Fé in New Mexico.
Michelle Bliss is an MFA student at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, where she is the nonfiction editor for the literary journal Ecotone. She has spent a lot of her time in radio, managing a community station in Blacksburg, Virginia, and reporting for Wilmington’s NPR affiliate station WHQR.
Michael Bogan is a writer living in Danville, Indiana. His fiction has previously appeared in PRISM International. E-mail him at michael.bogan@gmail.com.
Jill Christman teaches creative nonfiction in Ashland University’s low-residency MFA program and at Ball State University in Muncie, where she lives with her husband, writer Mark Neely, and their two kids in a decently childproofed house. Her memoir, Darkroom: A Family Exposure, won the AWP Award Series in Creative Nonfiction and was published by the University of Georgia Press in 2002. Recent essays appearing in River Teeth and Harpur Palate have been honored by Pushcart nominations, and her writing has been published in Barrelhouse, Brevity, Descant, Literary Mama, Mississippi Review, Wondertime, and many other journals, magazines, and anthologies.
Gretchen Clark co-teaches various creative nonfiction classes online at Writers.com, including Piece of Cake: Writing Flash Nonfiction. Her essays have appeared in Flashquake, Tiny Lights, Hip Mama, and New York Family Magazine, among other publications.
Kathy Fagan is the author of four books of poems, most recently Lip. She teaches in the MFA Program at The Ohio State University, where she also edits The Journal. This is her first published essay.
Mohja Kahf, born in Damascus, Syria, is associate professor of comparative literature at the University of Arkansas. Her novel, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf, was a Booklist Reading Group favorite in 2007 and Bloomington, Indiana’s Art Council Book of the Year in 2008. Her other books are E-mails from Scheherazad (poetry) and Western Representations of the Muslim Woman: From Termagant to Odalisque (scholarship). Kahf ’s poetry, which received an Arkansas Arts Award, has been projected on the façade of the New York Public Library as installment art; it has been published more conventionally in Mizna, The Paris Review, and The Atlanta Review and anthologized in Enduring Ties: Poems of Family Relationships, Shattering the Stereotypes: Muslim Women Speak Out, and Face to Face: Women Writers on Faith.
Mark H. Massé is a tenured professor of literary journalism at Ball State University. A widely published writer for more than thirty years, Massé is author of Inspired to Serve: Today’s Faith Activists (2004), listed in the Selected Historical Bibliography in Norman H. Sims’s 2007 book, True Stories: A Century of Literary Journalism. Massé has also written two novels, Delamore’s Dreams (2005) and Whatever Comes (2008). His Web site is http://markmasse.com.
Rebecca McClanahan has published nine books, most recently Deep Light: New and Selected Poems 1987–2007 and The Riddle Song and Other Rememberings, which won the 2005 Glasgow Award for nonfiction. Her work has appeared in The Best American Essays, the Pushcart anthology, and The Best American Poetry series, among other publications. She lives in New York and teaches in the low-residency MFA programs of Queens University (Charlotte) and Pacific Lutheran University.
Heather Killelea McEntarfer is a graduate student in SUNY Buffalo’s English Education program. A graduate of Hiram College, she earned her MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Pittsburgh in 2006 and has taught writing at Niagara University. Her work has appeared in Permafrost, The New Yinzer, and Terrain.org. She lives in Buffalo, New York, with her dog, Bailey.
Kelly McMasters is the author of Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir from an Atomic Town, and her essays and articles have appeared in such places as The New York Times, The Washington Post Magazine, and MrBellersNeighborhood.com. Kelly teaches writing at mediabistro.com and in the School of the Arts and Journalism Graduate School at Columbia University and is the co-director of the KGB Nonfiction Reading Series. She lives in Manhattan and northeast Pennsylvania with her husband, the painter Mark Milroy. Visit her Web site for more information: www.kellymcmasters.com.
Chris Rose is a columnist for the Times-Picayune in New Orleans, an essayist for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, and a frequent commentator for National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. In 2006, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Commentary in recognition of his Hurricane Katrina columns and was awarded a share in the Times-Picayune staff ’s Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Rose lives in New Orleans with his three children.
Brent Spencer is the author of The Lost Son, a novel, and Are We Not Men?, a collection of short fiction. His work has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Midland Review, Epoch, and elsewhere. He teaches fiction writing and screenwriting at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska.
