about the authors
is the author of Instant Love and The Kept Man. She has written about sex, technology, comic books, and urban life for Jane, Print, Nerve, New York, Nylon, Salon, and other publications. Her novel The Melting Season is forthcoming from Riverhead Books.
has worked as a painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, playwright, editor, commentator, and teacher and found they are very much alike. She is the inimitable creator behind the syndicated strip Ernie Pook’s Comeek featuring the incomparable Marlys and Freddie, as well as the books What It Is, One! Hundred! Demons!, Cruddy: An Illustrated Novel, The! Greatest! of! Marlys!, and Naked Ladies! Naked Ladies! Naked Ladies! Drawn & Quarterly plans to publish a multivolume hardcover collection of Ernie Pook’s Comeek starting in 2009 as well as her new book, Near-sighted Monkey. Her work has been widely praised, and her book The Good Times Are Killing Me—also adapted as an off-Broadway musical—won the Washington State Governor’s Award. Barry currently offers her workshop, “Writing the Unthinkable,” all over the place.
is the author of two books, Phone Calls from the Dead and Large Animals in Everyday Life. Her stories and essays have appeared in Seventeen, Allure, Story, Ploughshares, and other magazines and have been anthologized in The Best American Magazine Writing and New Stories from the South. She is a contributing writer for Oxford American magazine and teaches in the MFA program in creative writing at University of North Carolina–Wilmington.
novel The Great Man won the 2008 PEN / Faulkner Award. Her fifth novel, Trouble, was published in May 2009 by Doubleday. She is currently working on a new novel, The Astral. Her essays and reviews have appeared in various publications, including Elle, Tin House, Salon, the NYTBR, and many anthologies. She lives in Brooklyn.is the author of two novels, An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England and The Ordinary White Boy and two short story collections, Carrying the Torch and What We Won’t Do. He has twice been a finalist for the National Magazine Award in fiction. His fiction and essays have appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Believer, One Story, Southern Review, Georgia Review, the New York Times, and New England Review; in the Pushcart Prize and New Stories from the South annual anthologies; and on NPR’s Selected Shorts. He is a 2008 NEA fellow in fiction, and teaches at the University of Cincinnati.
is the author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, winner of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize; and Drown, winner of the PEN / Malamud Award. His fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, the Paris Review, and The Best American Short Stories. Born in the Dominican Republic and raised in New Jersey, Díaz lives in New York City and is a professor of writing at MIT.
is the author of ten books, including I’m Looking Through You: Growing Up Haunted. Her 2003 memoir, She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders, was the first bestselling work by a transgendered American. She has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Larry King Live, The Today Show, and been the subject of documentaries on CBS News’ 48 Hours and on the History Channel. In 2007 she played herself on several episodes of ABC’s All My Children. Jenny is professor of English at Colby College. She lives in Maine with her partner Deirdre and her sons Zach and Sean.
is an illustrator, cartoonist, and writer. Her work has appeared in such publications as Forbes, the Nation, the New Yorker, and the New York Times. Her cartoon strip, Lulu Eightball, runs in alt-weeklies across the country. She is the author and illustrator of These Things Ain’t Gonna Smoke Themselves: A Love/Hate/Love/Hate/Love Letter to a Very Bad Habit. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Writer and editor has worked at People, where she covered broken hearts at Buckingham Palace; at In Style magazine, where she wrote about celebrity weddings; and at the Wall Street Journal, where she exposed the foibles of the oft-divorced filthy rich. She also is the author of The Dream at the End of the World, a biography of Paul and Jane Bowles and the other expatriates who came to Tangier after World War II seeking sex. In her own life, she has had unsatisfactory relationships with at least one person in the following job categories: rock guitarist, rodeo rider, foreign correspondant, glassblower, helicopter pilot. In April, she eloped with Terry Acree, a sensory scientist and professor at Cornell whose favorite author is Jane Austen.
is the author of the national best seller Rock On: An Office Power Ballad and Loser Goes First: My Thirty-Something Years of Dumb Luck and Minor Humiliation, a regular contributor at GQ, and a long-standing writer at McSweeneys.net. He resides in New York City where he frequently performs onstage as part of the Moth storytelling collective. He is currently writing and developing the pilot of Rock On for HBO.
is the author of the novel Candy Everybody Wants and the bestselling memoir I Am Not Myself These Days. He writes a monthly column for Out magazine. KilmerPurcell and his partner divide their time between Manhattan and a goat farm in upstate New York.
is the author of The Withdrawal Method (stories) and All our grandfathers are ghosts (poems).
is a columnist for BUST magazine and was a frequent contributor to the “True-Life Tales” feature in the New York Times Magazine. She is the author of the memoir I’m Not the New Me and the humor book The Amazing Mackerel Pudding Plan, and her work has appeared in several anthologies, including Sleepaway: Writings on Summer Camp. She has an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and lives in Chicago, where she works as a children’s book editor and maintains a Weblog at Poundy.com.
is a writer and blogger who grew up in Miami and now lives in a section of Brooklyn, New York, that has avoided gentrification into a hipster wonderland. Her essay, “Conversations You Have at Twenty,” won second prize in the 2008 StoryQuarterly/Narrative Love Story Contest. Her essays and stories have also appeared in Swink, Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood, storySouth, Eyeshot, Maisonneuve, Pindeldyboz, Ducts, and the anthology When I Was a Loser, and she has written for the New York Times Book Review, the American Prospect, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Newsday, Gawker, VH1’s Best Week Ever blog, and other publications and Web sites, including her own. In 2004 the City College of New York chose her as the recipient of its Irwin and Alice Stark Short Fiction Award.
is a writer and editor whose work has appeared on the blogs #1 Hit Song, Blottered, and Young Manhattanite. She has spoken on the topics of online journaling, music writing, and internet hoaxes to people who will apparently pay to listen to anything.
grew up in Monroe, Louisiana. Her most recent book is the New York Times bestselling memoir Miss American Pie: A Diary of Love, Secrets, and Growing Up in the 1970s. As an editor, she has published three books, including What Was True: The Photographs and Notebooks of William Gedney. Her photographs have appeared in books and periodicals, including DoubleTake, Esquire, and the New Yorker. She has curated shows at the International Center of Photography in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She teaches at Duke University and lives with her husband and two children in Durham, North Carolina.
is the author of When Skateboards Will Be Free, a memoir about growing up communist in the United States. His essays and short stories have appeared in the Paris Review, Granta, and Open City, among others.
is the author of Absurdistan, chosen as one of the ten best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review in 2006, and The Russian Debutante’s Handbook. His fiction and essays have appeared in the New Yorker, Granta, GQ, Esquire, the New York Times Magazine, and many other publications. He lives in New York.
has published four collections of stories and two novels: These People Are Us, The Half-Mammals of Dixie, Why Dogs Chase Cars, Drowning in Gruel, Novel, and Work Shirts for Madmen. His latest book—Pep Talks, Warnings, and Screeds—is a collection of aphorisms, analogies, and anecdotes that concern the fiction writer, illustrated by Daniel Wallace. Over one hundred of Singleton’s short stories have appeared in Glimmer Train, the Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Playboy, Zoetrope: All-story, Georgia Review, Shenandoah, and elsewhere. He’s been anthologized in New Stories from the South, Writers Harvest, They Write Among Us, Best Food Writing 2005, Behind the Short Story, and 20 over 40, among others. He lives happily in Dacusville, South Carolina, with ceramicist Glenda Guion, their collection of strays, and the two tattoos they got in Vegas, sober.
is the author of the novel The Long Haul. Her nonfiction has been featured in the New York Times, the New York Times Magazine, the East Hampton Star, the Believer, and Paste. She’s published fiction in the literary journals Swink, the Saint Ann’s Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Spinning Jenny, and Five Chapters, among other places. In 2003 she created the popular Happy Ending Music and Reading Series in New York City. She lives in Brooklyn and is at work on her second novel.
is the editor of Love Is a Four-Letter Word. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he is the Publicity Director at Algonquin Books and resides in Durham, North Carolina.
still considers herself a master of the breakup letter.
is the author of the memoir Exile in Guyville and writes about pop culture for MSNBC.com and the Advocate. His work has appeared in the Village Voice and LA Weekly. He lives in West Hollywood.