Richard Bausch was born in Ft. Benning, Georgia in 1945. He was educated in the public schools in and around Washington, D.C., and after two failures to maintain a standing in college, served a stint in the Air Force, after which he returned to university studies, first in Virginia and then at the Iowa Writer's Workshop. He is the author of ten novels and seven collections of stories, including the novels Rebel Powers, Violence, Good Evening Mr. & Mrs. America And All The Ships At Sea, In The Night Season, Hello To The Cannibals, and Thanksgiving Night; and the story collections Spirits, The Fireman's Wife, Rare & Endangered Species, Someone To Watch Over Me, The Stories of Richard Bausch, and Wives & Lovers. His novel The Last Good Time was made into the 2005 movie of the same name directed by Bob Balaban and starring Armin Meuhler-Stahl, Maureen Stapleton and Lionel Stander. An acknowledged Master of the short story form, Richard Bausch has written for The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Harper's, The New Yorker, Playboy, The Southern Review, New Stories From the South, The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories and The Pushcart Prize Stories; and they have been widely anthologized, including The Granta Book of the American Short Story, and The Vintage Book of the Contemporary American Short Story. The Modern Library published The Selected Stories of Richard Bausch in March 1996. He has won two National Magazine Awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Lila-Wallace Reader's Digest Fund Writer's Award, the Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and The 2004 PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in the Short Story. In 1995 he was elected to the Fellowship of Southern Writers. In 1999 he signed on as co-editor, with RV Cassill, of The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. Since Cassill’s passing in 2002, Bausch is the sole editor of that prestigious anthology. He currently serves as The Moss Chair of Excellence in the Writing Program at The University of Memphis.

Marie Bradby is an award-winning writer and freelance journalist and the author of the popular children’s book More Than Anything Else, an ALA Notable Children’s Book and winner of the International Reading Association (IRA) Award. The sixth of seven children, she came from a family of storytellers who gathered at her home on holidays, regaling each other with humorous tales. Her books also include: Once Upon a Farm, a Kentucky Public Librarians Choice Award nominee; Some Friend; and the Golden Kite Honor Award winner and Nest Literary Classic Momma, Where Are You From? Her work is anthologized in several collections, including A Kentucky Christmas edited by George Ella Lyon, and she was nominated for The James Thurber House Residency in Children’s Literature. She received a Kentucky Foundation for Women grant for a novel-in-progress about Harriet Tubman and the little explored parts of her life titled Harriet’s Lost Diaries: A Novel. She's taught children's writing at the Appalachian Writer’s Workshop and the Antioch Writer's Workshop, and served as a visiting lecturer at Spalding University's MFA program in creative writing. A graduate of Hampton University, Virginia, Ms. Bradby is a former reporter for The Lexington Herald and The Courier-Journal, where she became the fashion editor. She also has been a staff writer for National Geographic Magazine, a contract writer for Time-Life Books, and a contributing writer for Louisville Magazine.

Photo by Lillian Elaine Wilson

Alice Friman’s ninth collection of poetry is Vinculum, forthcoming from LSU Press. Previous books are The Book of the Rotten Daughter and Inverted Fire (BkMk Press), and Zoo (University of Arkansas Press), which won the Ezra Pound Poetry Award and the Sheila Margaret Motton Prize. She has received fellowships from the Indiana Arts Commission, the Arts Council of Indianapolis, and the Bernheim Foundation, and won the 2002 James Boatwright Prize from Shenandoah. Her poems appear in Poetry, The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, and others. Professor of English at The University of Indianapolis from 1973 to 1993, she now lives in Milledgeville, Georgia, where she is Poet-in-Residence at Georgia College & State University.