Robert Atwan is the Series Editor of The Best American Essays, which he founded in 1985. His essays, criticism, humor, reviews, and poetry have appeared in many professional and literary periodicals, including The Atlantic Monthly, The Denver Quarterly, Image, The Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, River Teeth, Creative Nonfiction, American Book Review, The Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times. The editor of many college and literary anthologies, he has written on a wide variety of subjects, which include the interpretation of dreams in ancient literature, Shakespearean tragedy, and the cultural origins of American advertising. He recently returned to the West Side of Manhattan.

Kathleen Blackburn grew up in West Texas. She is currently completing her MFA in creative writing at The Ohio State University.

Andre Dubus III is the author of five books: The Cage Keeper and Other Stories, Bluesman, the New York Times bestsellers House of Sand and Fog and The Garden of Last Days, and his memoir, Townie, a number-four New York Times bestseller and a New York Times “Editors’ Choice.” Townie was listed as one of the “Top Nonfiction Books of 2011” in many publications, including The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, and Esquire. His work has been included in The Best American Essays of 1994 and The Best Spiritual Writing of 1999. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Magazine Award for fiction, and the Pushcart Prize, and he was a finalist for the National Book Award and the Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is a 2012 recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature.

Richard Gilbert is writing a memoir of farming in Appalachian Ohio, from which “Wild Ducks” is adapted. He teaches essay writing and journalism at Otterbein University. His blog, NARRATIVE (http://richardgilbert.me/), explores issues in creative nonfiction.

Lee Martin‘s latest book is the memoir Such a Life. He is also the author of The Bright Forever, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 2006, as well as three other novels, a story collection, and two other memoirs. He teaches in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at The Ohio State University.

Karen McElmurray‘s Surrendered Child: A Birth Mother’s Journey was an AWP Award Winner for Creative Nonfiction. Her novels are The Motel of the Stars, Editor’s Pick by Oxford American, and Strange Birds in the Tree of Heaven, winner of the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing. Other stories and essays have appeared in Iron Horse, Kenyon Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and in the anthologies An Angle of Vision, Listen Here, Dirt, Family Trouble, and To Tell the Truth. Her writing has been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, and the Kentucky Foundation for Women. She taught in the MFA Program at Georgia College, where she was Nonfiction Editor for Arts and Letters. She is at work on a new novel, Wanting Inez, and on a collection of essays called The Land Between. Read more about her at www.karenmcelmurray.com.

C.D. Mitchell has an MFA with concentrations in fiction and creative nonfiction. He has worked as a tracklayer and bridgeman for the Union Pacific Railroad, a building contractor, a fry cook, and was 45-5 with 38 knockouts as a professional fighter. His website is www.cdmitchell.net. He teaches at Arkansas Northeastern College.

Eli Sanders is the winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing and is an associate editor at The Stranger in Seattle. He has written for The New York Times, Esquire.com, Tablet, The American Prospect, The Seattle Times, The Boston Globe, Time Magazine, The Boston Phoenix, and Salon.com. His website is www.elisanders.net.

Joshua Wolf Shenk‘s work includes Lincoln’s Melancholy and essays for Harper’s, The Atlantic, Slate, and The New York Times. He is a member of the general counsel for Stories at the Moth and curates the Arts in Mind series on the arts, mental health, and creativity. His next book is a study of creativity in partnership, called 1 + 1 = ∞. His website is www.shenk.net.

Leslie Stainton is the author of Lorca: A Dream of Life and the forthcoming Ghost House: Reflections on an American Theater. Her articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Opera News, American Poetry Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Memoir, and Common-place, among other publications. She is at work on a book about her slaveholding ancestors, the Scarletts of Georgia. For more information, visit lesliestainton.com.

Laurie Rachkus Uttich teaches creative writing at the University of Central Florida. Her fiction and essays have been published in Creative Nonfiction; Poets and Writers (“Why We Write” column); Iron Horse (recipient of the 2009 Discovered Voices award in fiction); So To Speak (recipient of the 2007 Creative Nonfiction award); The Writer’s Chronicle; The Good Men Project; and others.

Robert Vivian is the author of two essay collections, Cold Snap As Yearning and The Least Cricket Of Evening, a trilogy of novels entitled The Tall Grass Trilogy, and a new novel, Water And Abandon. He teaches at Alma College and in the low-residency MFA program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Jerald Walker is the author of Street Shadows: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion, and Redemption, recipient of the 2011 PEN New England/L. L. Winship Award for Nonfiction. His essays have appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies, including three times in the Best American Essays. Walker is an Associate Professor of creative writing at Emerson College, where he is Chair of the Department of Writing, Literature, and Publishing.