Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels, including A Thousand Acres, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and most recently, the New York Times bestselling Hundred Years Trilogy.

She is also the author of several works of non-fiction and books for young adults. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she has also received the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature. She lives in Northern California.

Dave Eggers was born in Boston in 1970. He is the author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, You Shall Know Our Velocity, The Unforbidden is Compulsory, How We Are Hungry, Short Short Stories, Teachers Have It Easy, Surviving Justice, What is the What, How the Water Feels to the Fishes, The Wild Things, Zeitoun, A Hologram for the King, The Circle and Your Fathers, Where Are They? And The Prophets, Do They Live Forever?

A Hologram for the King and The Circle are both currently in production for major film adaptations. Dave Eggers is the founder of McSweeney's independent publishing house, the 826 National network, and the nonprofit organisation ScholarMatch. He lives in Northern California with his family and Heroes of the Frontier is his seventh novel.

Pico Iyer is the author of six works of nonfiction and two novels.

He has covered the Tibetan question for Time, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and many other publications for more than twenty years. He has been traveling in and around Tibetan communities and the Himalayas for more than thirty years.

Richard Ford was born in Jackson, Mississippi. He has published eight novels and four collections of stories, including The Sportswriter, Independence Day, The Lay of the Land and the New York Times bestseller, Canada.

Independence Day was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the first time the same book had won both prizes.

Let Me Be Frank with You was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize in 2015. His work has been translated into twenty-eight languages, and most recently was awarded the Prix Femina Étranger in France and the Princess of Asturias Prize for Literature in Spain.

Richard Ford lives in Maine with his wife.