Karen E. Bender is the author of the novel Like Normal People. Her fiction has appeared magazines including The New Yorker, Granta, Zoetrope, Ploughshares, Story, The Harvard Review, and has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, Best American Mystery Stories and twice in the Pushcart Prize series. Her stories have been read on the Selected Shorts program on NPR and she has received grants from the Rona Jaffe Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She has taught creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and at the Antioch LA MFA program. She is finishing a new novel and collection of stories.

Nina de Gramont is the author of a collection of short stories, Of Cats and Men. Her first novel, Gossip of the Starlings, is forthcoming. Her fiction has appeared in a variety of publications including Isotope, Nerve, Exquisite Corpse, Post Road, and Seventeen.