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.

Wally Lamb is the author of five New York Times bestselling novels: She’s Come Undone, I Know This Much Is True, The Hour I First Believed, Wishin’ and Hopin’ and We Are Water.

He has twice been selected for Oprah’s Book Club. Lamb also edited I’ll Fly Away and Couldn’t Keep It to Myself, two volumes of essays from students in his writing workshop at York Correctional Institution, a women’s prison in Connecticut, where he has been a volunteer facilitator for the past sixteen years. He lives in New York and Connecticut.

Michael Cunningham is the author of six novels, including ‘A Home at the End of the World’, ‘Flesh and Blood’, ‘The Hours’ (winner of the PEN / Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize), ‘Specimen Days’ and ‘By Nightfall’, as well as ‘Land’s End: A Walk in Provincetown’.

His most recent novel is ‘The Snow Queen’. He lives in New York

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.