Luanne Smith lives in New Jersey and works in Pennsylvania, but she is a born Kentuckian. She is an Associate Professor at West Chester University outside of Philadelphia where she has taught creative writing and film for nearly 30 years. Her work, usually short fiction, has appeared in Puerto del Sol, The Oxford Review, The Texas Review and other literary journals.

Michael Gills is the author of eight books of fiction and nonfiction, including the novel West (Raw Dog Screaming Press, March 2019) and the forthcoming visionary memoir, Finisterre. His short story collection The House Across From The Deaf School (Texas Review Press, 2016) was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Prize for Fiction. Gills is Professor of writing for the Honors College at the University of Utah, where he lives in the foothills with his wife, Jill.

Lee Zacharias is the author of a collection of short stories, Helping Muriel Make It Through the Night; three novels, Across the Great Lake, Lessons, and At Random; and a collection of personal essays, The Only Sounds We Make. She has received fellowships from the NEA and the North Carolina Arts Council, North Carolina’s Sir Walter Raleigh Award, Southern Humanities Review’s Theodore Christian Hoepfner Award, Prairie Schooner’s Glenna Luschei Award, and a Silver Medal in Creative Nonfiction from the IPPYs. At Random was a finalist in literary fiction for the 2013 International Book Awards, the National Indie Lit Awards, and the USA Best Book Awards, and Across the Great Lake has been named a 2019 Notable Michigan Book. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous journals. Ten times her essays have been named Notable Essays of the Year by The Best American Essays. For a decade she served as editor of The Greensboro Review.