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by John Edgar Wideman

  REGINALD MCKNIGHT is professor of English at the University of Michigan. He is the author of the nonfiction books African American Wisdom and African American Wisdom, Revised and Expanded. He has published three novels, I Get on the Bus, White Boys, and He Sleeps. His stories have appeared in numerous literary reviews and anthologies. He has received many awards, including the Addison M. Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Whiting Writer's Award, a Special Citation from the Ernest Hemingway Foundation, the Bernice M. Slote Award for Fiction, and the Pushcart Prize.

  STEWART O'NAN has published stories in journals including Colorado Review, Glimmer Train, and Ploughshares. Named by Granta magazine as one of the twenty best young American novelists, his fiction titles include Everyday People, A Prayer for the Dying, The Names of the Dead, Snow Angels, and The Speed Queen. He has also published a work of nonfiction, The Circus Fire: A True Story, and edited The Vietnam Reader: The Definitive Collection of American Fiction and Nonfiction on the War.

  EDITH PEARLMAN has published more than one hundred short stories in literary reviews, magazines, and anthologies, and an equal number of nonfiction pieces in newspapers and magazines. She has been the recipient of the Pushcart Prize and two O. Henry Awards, and her stories have been included in New Stories from the South (2001) and two editions of Best American Short Stories (2000 and 1998).

  JONATHAN PENNER is a professor of creative writing at the University of Arizona, and the author of the novel Natural Order. His previous novel, Going Blind, received several awards as an outstanding first novel; The Intelligent Traveler's Guide to Chiribosco won the Galileo Press Short Novel Prize. His short stories have appeared in Harper's, TriQuarterly Review, Antaeus, and other magazines, and in The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction.

  RANDALL SILVIS writes poetry, fiction, and drama. He is the author of eight novels, including Excelsior, Dead Man Falling, On Night's Shore, and (forthcoming in 2002) Disquiet Heart. His screen and stage plays have won first place in the National Playwrights Showcase Award (three times) and the Ruby Lloyd Apsey Playwriting Award; in 1983 he won both the drama and the short story awards at the Deep South Writers Drama Conference.

  MAYA SONENBERG is associate professor of English at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. Her short fiction has been published in numerous literary journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, Gulf Stream, Santa Monica Review, Columbia: A Magazine of Poetry and Prose, and Grand Street.

  KATHERINE VAZ is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Saudade. Her second novel, Mariana, has been published in six languages and is a bestseller, in its fourth printing, in Portugal. Her short fiction has been published in Glimmer Train, Tin House, The Gettysburg Review, The Antioch Review, The Iowa Review, and TriQuarterly Review.

  W. D. WETHERELL is the author of thirteen books, including the novels Chekhov's Sister and Morning, the short story collection Wherever That Great Heart May Be, and the memoir North of Now. His work has received three O. Henry Awards, a National Magazine Award, and The Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His stories have appeared in major journals, magazines, and anthologies; one story, “The Bass, the River, and Sheila Mant,” has been reprinted more than thirty times, and appears in textbooks for high school and college students throughout the country.

  ROBLEY WILSON is emeritus professor of English at University of Northern Iowa, and former editor of The North American Review. He has authored several fiction titles including The Book of Lost Fathers, The Victim's Daughter, and Terrible Kisses, as well as poetry titles including Everything Paid For, A Walk Through the Human Heart, A Pleasure Tree, and Kingdoms of the Ordinary.