Photo credit: Daniele Molajoli
Jamel Brinkley
Jamel Brinkley is the author of Witness: Stories (2023), a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. A Lucky Man: Stories (2018) was a finalist for the National Book Award, the Story Prize, the John Leonard Prize, the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; and winner of a PEN Oakland Award and the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. His writing has appeared in A Public Space, Ploughshares, Zoetrope: All-Story, The Paris Review, American Short Fiction, The Yale Review, Guernica, The Threepenny Review, Gulf Coast, Glimmer Train, The Believer, and Tin House, and has been anthologized twice in The Best American Short Stories. His work has also received support from the Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop, the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, the Tin House Summer Workshop, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Lannan Foundation. He was a Carol Houck Smith Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and has received an O. Henry Award and the Rome Prize. Raised in Brooklyn and the Bronx, he teaches at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Photo credit: Elliot & Erick Jimenez
Patricia Engel
Patricia Engel is the author of Infinite Country, a New York Times Bestseller, Reese’s Book Club pick, and winner of the New American Voices Award; The Veins of the Ocean, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize; It’s Not Love, It’s Just Paris, winner of the International Latino Book Award; Vida, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway and Young Lions Fiction Awards and winner of Colombia’s Premio Biblioteca de Narrativa Colombiana and most recently, a story collection titled The Faraway World. She has been awarded the John Dos Passos Prize for Literature, fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and an O. Henry Award. Her short fiction has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and elsewhere. Born to Colombian parents and raised in New Jersey, Patricia is an Associate Professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Miami.
Patricia Engel featured in Between the Covers interview.
Patricia Engel featured in PBS Books interview.
Patricia Engel featured in Friends of the Key West Library interview.
Photo credit: Thorne Anderson
Ben Fountain
Ben Fountain's work has received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize, the PEN/Cerulli Award for Excellence in Sports Writing, and a Whiting Award, and has been a finalist for the National Book Award and runner-up for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. His novel BILLY LYNN'S LONG HALFTIME WALK was adapted for film by three-time Oscar winner Ang Lee, and his short stories and nonfiction have appeared in the New York Review of Books, the New York Times, Harper's, The Paris Review, Esquire, the Guardian, Le Monde (France), Reporto Sexto Piso (Mexico), and Intranqui'illites (Haiti), among other places. He lives in Dallas, and is a former attorney in private practice.
Ben Fountain featured interview.
Ben Fountain featured at the French American School Gala (remarks begin at 19:50)
Ben Fountain featured in Malcolm Gladwell’s New Yorker story.
Photo credit: Jesse Dittmar
Idra Novey
Idra Novey is the author of Take What You Need, longlisted for the Dublin Literary Prize, and a 2023 New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her first novel, Ways to Disappear, was a finalist for the L.A. Times First Novel Prize and received the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize. Her co-translation with Ahmad Nadalizadeh of Iranian poet Garous Abdolmalekian, Lean Against This Late Hour, was a finalist for the 2021 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. Soon and Wholly, her first poetry collection in a decade, will be published in fall 2024. She teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Princeton University.
Idra Novey featured in Barnes & Noble Poured Over Podcast with Miwa Messer
Idra Novey featured in Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures, interview with Angie Cruz
Idra Novey featured in Conversation with Jhumpa Lahiri at Barnard College
Photo credit: Carmen Maria Machado
Bennett Sims
Bennett Sims is the author of A Questionable Shape, White Dialogues, and Other Minds and Other Stories. His work has received the Bard Fiction Prize, the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize at the American Academy in Rome, and the Pushcart Prize. He teaches fiction at the University of Iowa and lives in Iowa City.
