Contributors' Notes

ANDREA AVERY is a writer, pianist, and editor who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. She has finished a book of stories, some of which have been published in the anthology Shade 2006 (Four Way Books). She received her M.F.A. in creative writing from Arizona State University.

RICHARD BAKER is an artist living in Brooklyn, New York. His work is represented by the Tibor de Nagy Gallery in Manhattan. This is his fourth cover painting for Ploughshares.

AMY BLOOM is the author of two short story collections, a novel, and a collection of essays. Her work has been widely anthologized. Her next novel, Away, will be published by Random House in February 2007. She teaches at Yale.

MICHAEL CARROLL lives in New York City, where he is the editor of Institutional Investor, a financial magazine.

ALAN CHEUSE is the author of three novels, including The Grandmothers' Club and The Light Possessed; three collections of short stories; a memoir, Fall Out of Heaven; and a collection of essays, Listening to the Page: Adventures in Reading and Writing. He serves as book commentator for NPR's evening newsmagazine All Things Considered and as a member of the writing faculty at George Mason University and the Squaw Valley Community of Writers.

JENNINE CAPÓ CRUCET graduated from Cornell University and received an M.F.A. from the University of Minnesota. Her fiction has appeared in The Northwest Review. She also writes and performs sketch comedy as part of the New York City–based comedy group Cuban Missile Crisis. She recently finished a story collection and is at work on a novel.

LAUREN GROFF is a native of Cooperstown, New York, and has degrees from Amherst College and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in The Atlantic Monthly, Hobart, and The Beloit Fiction Journal, and she is the 2006–2008 Axton Fellow in Fiction at the University of Louisville. She is finishing a novel and a collection of stories.

ANN HOOD is the author of seven novels, including Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine; a short story collection, An Ornithologist's Guide to Life; and a memoir, Do Not Go Gentle. She has won a Best American Spiritual Writing Award, the Paul Bowles Prize for Short Fiction, and two Pushcart Prizes. Her novel The Knitting Circle will be published in January 2007 by W.W. Norton.

PAM HOUSTON is the author of two collections of short stories, Cowboys Are My Weakness and Waltzing the Cat, and, most recently, the novel Sight Hound. She is Director of Creative Writing at the University of California, Davis, and divides her time between the central valley of California and Creede, Colorado.

GISH JEN's most recent novel is The Love Wife. She has received fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Lannan Foundation, as well as a Harold and Mildred Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

DAVID KRANES, a Pushcart Prize recipient, won the Western Heritage Award for Low Tide in the Desert: Nevada Stories. Two of his plays, Cantrell and Going In, were published in Best American Short Plays, 1987. He served for fourteen years as Artistic Director of the Sundance Playwrights' Lab. His most recent novel is Making the Ghost Dance. He also consults, on matters of design, in the casino industry.

ARYN KYLE's fiction has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Georgia Review, StoryQuarterly, Best New American Voices 2005, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Award and a National Magazine Award in fiction. She currently lives in Missoula, Montana. Her first novel will be published by Scribner in March 2007.

T. M. MCNALLY is the author of five works of fiction, including Almost Home, Quick, and his most recent novel, The Goat Bridge, a Booklist 2005 Editors' Choice selection.

TIM SCHELL is the co-author of Mooring Against the Tide: Writing Fiction and Poetry and the co-editor of the anthology A Writer's Country. He won the 2004 Mammoth Book Award for Prose for his novel The Drums of Africa, which will be published this fall by Mammoth Books. He teaches at Columbia Gorge Community College and serves on the Board of Directors of the Mountain Writers Series. "Road to the Sea" is the opening chapter of a novel of the same name.

MARGARET BRADHAM THORNTON is the editor of Tennessee Williams's Notebooks, which will be published in September 2006 by Yale University Press. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The Seattle Review, The Times Literary Supplement, and World Literature Today.

JOAN WICKERSHAM's writing has appeared in Agni, Glimmer Train, The Hudson Review, Ploughshares, Story, and The Best American Short Stories. She is finishing a new book.