Michael Cunningham is the author of the novels A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, The Hours (winner of the Pen/Faulkner Award & Pulitzer Prize), and Specimen Days. His latest novel is By Nightfall.

LUCY CORIN is the author of the novel Everyday Psychokillers: A History for Girls (FC2) and the short story collection The Entire Predicament (Tin House Books), a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award. Recent fiction appears in places like Conjunctions, American Short Fiction, PEN America, The Massachusetts Review and the new Penguin anthology of contemporary fairy tales My Mother She Killed Me My Father He Ate Me. She's been a fellow at Bread Loaf and Sewanee and just finished a residency at Yaddo. She teaches at the University of California at Davis.

One of America's most distinguished playwrights, Arthur Kopit is the author of such classics as Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad (1963), Indians (1969), Wings (1978), and the musical Nine (1982), and the winner of numerous drama awards and three "best play" Tony nominations. His plays have inspired major films: Robert Altman's Buffalo Bill and the Indians (1976), starring Paul Newman, and Nine (2009)--nominated for four Oscars--featuring Daniel Day-Lewis, Penelope Cruz, Nicole Kidman, Judi Dench, and Sophia Loren.

BHANU KAPIL is a British-Indian writer who lives in Colorado. She teaches at Naropa University and Goddard College, and is the author of four full-length collections of poetry/prose: "The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers" (Kelsey Street Press, 2001), "Incubation: a space for monsters" (Leon Works, 2006), "humanimal [a project for future children]" (Kelsey Street Press, 2009), and "Schizophrene" (forthcoming: Nightboat Books, 2001).

JOHN D'AGATA is the author of About a Mountain and Halls of Fame, and the editor of the anthologies The Lost Origins of the Essay and The Next American Essay. He has been the editor of lyric essays at the Seneca Review for the past 12 years and is currently on the graduate writing faculty at the University of Iowa.

Chase, Clifford; Martin, Douglas A; Reed, Kitt

MATTHEW SHARPE is the author of the novels You Were Wrong (published this fall by Bloomsbury), Jamestown, The Sleeping Father, and Nothing Is Terrible, and the short-story collection Stories from the Tube. He has served proudly in the English department at Wesleyan, and has also taught at Columbia, Bard, and New College of Florida. He has received fellowships in fiction writing from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and lives in Manhattan.

Student winners of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction awards will read from their work.

DIANE WILLIAMS is the author of six books of fiction, including It Was Like My Trying to Have a Tender-Hearted Nature and Excitability. She is the founding editor of the innovative literary journal NOON and a former editor of StoryQuarterly. Her fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and journals, including Harper's and McSweeney's. She has taught at Bard College and Syracuse University.

BRENDA COULTAS is the author of The Marvelous Bones of Time (2008) and A Handmade Museum (2003) from Coffee House Press. Coultas’s poetry is deeply invested in the local, blending lyricism with documentary reality. She is the recipient of the Norma Farber Prize from The Poetry Society of America, a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship, and a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council residency.