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Stephen McCauley grew up outside of Boston. He attended the University of Vermont as an undergraduate and studied for a year in France at the University of Nice. Upon graduation, he worked at hotels, kindergartens, ice cream stands, and health food stores. He taught yoga in a church basement and cleaned houses. For many years, he worked as a travel agent. In the 1980's, he moved to Brooklyn. After taking a few writing courses at adult learning centers, he enrolled in the writing program at Columbia University. At the suggestion of writer Stephen Koch, he began working on his first novel.

A native of North Dakota, Mr. Jenkinson is a writer, lecturer, and award-winning first-person interpreter. He is the host of a nationally syndicated radio program, *The Thomas Jefferson Hour*, and of a weekly television book review program. He has appeared on *the Today Show*, *Politically Incorrect*, and CNN, and was a main commentator for Ken Burnss PBS documentary on *Thomas Jefferson* as well as the on-camera host of the documentary *Travelin' on the Lewis & Clark Trail*.

Gioia served as the chairman of the NEA from 2003 to 2009 where he helped create the largest programs in the agency's history. He also led the US cultural delegation to UNESCO. He is the author of numerous books, including Interrogations at Noon (2002), which won the American Book Award in poetry, and Can Poetry Matter? (1992), which was short listed for the National Book Critics Circle Prize. A translator and opera librettist, Gioia has also edited over two dozen literary anthologies. Before becoming a full time writer in 1992, Gioia worked for 15 years in the corporate world as vice president of Marketing for Kraft General Foods, while continuing to write during nights and weekends. He has been a visiting writer at Johns Hopkins, Sarah Lawrence, Colorado College, Wesleyan, and other universities, and has also been an American cultural commentator for BBC Radio. He served on numerous boards and has 10 honorary doctorates.

Chris is currently a Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. While working on his BA in American Studies at Amherst College during the 1970s, Chris was inspired by a wave of new historical work that was exploring the lives of poor and working-class people and a host of other subjects long ignored by conventional scholars. He subsequently wrote an honors thesis on Appalachian coal miners. Chris continued on to graduate studies at Harvard University, getting a PhD in the History of American Civilization. His dissertation on American combat soldiers in the Vietnam War received the American Studies Associations prize for the years best dissertation in the field and became the basis for his book *Working-Class War*, which was published by the University of North Carolina Press and has been used in many college and university courses on modern U.S. history.

Erica Funkhouser is a professor of poetry and writing at MIT. Her fifth book of poetry, *Earthly*, was published by Houghton Mifflin in 2008.

Judith Wilt is a founding member of the Women's Studies Committee at Boston College and has published essays and given papers recently on women writers as diverse as Ayn Rand, Toni Morrison, Georgette Heyer and Virginia Woolf.

J. Robert Barth was a scholar of the British Romantic poets and the former dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Barth first came to the University as the Thomas I. Gasson Professor in 1985. As dean, he established the music and theater departments, oversaw the opening of the McMullen Museum of Art, and was the first chair of the Boston College Arts Council, which, among other things, organizes BC's annual Arts Festival. He was also known for his old-fashioned and enthusiastic declamations of poetry, and recorded two CDs, including one featuring the poetry of Wordsworth and the other poems by Francis Thompson and Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ.

Jennifer Haigh is a novelist and short story writer. Her first book, *Mrs. Kimble*, won the 2004 PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction. Her second,* Baker Towers*, was a *New York Times* bestseller and won the 2006 PEN/L.L. Winship Award for outstanding book by a New England author. Both have been published in nine languages. Other fiction has been published in *Granta*, *Ploughshares*, *Five Points*, *Good Housekeeping* and other places.

Joan Leegant has won numerous prizes for her story collection, *AN HOUR IN PARADISE* (W.W. Norton), including the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for the best book of Jewish-American fiction, and the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award for the best book by a New England author. *AN HOUR IN PARADISE* was also a Fall 2003 Selection for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program. Joan attended Radcliffe College, Boston University Law School, and the Vermont College MFA Program. After practicing law for several years, she went to Jerusalem for what was to be a six month stay. She remained there for nearly three years, becoming absorbed by the varieties of Jewish experience that later made their way into her fiction. She is a recipient of an artist grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and several fellowships from the MacDowell Colony. She teaches writing at Harvard University.