Bill Roorbach

Bill Roorbach is the author of ten books, including the Montana Award-winning Lucky Turtle, The Girl of the Lake, the Kirkus Prize finalist The Remedy for Love, the bestselling Life Among Giants, and the Flannery O’Connor Award–winning collection Big Bend. Roorbach has received fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. His craft book, Writing Life Stories, has been in print for over twenty-five years. His writing has appeared in Harper’s, the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic,The New York Times Book Review, Ploughshares, Granta, Ecotone, New York Magazine, The American Scholar, and other publications. He lives in Maine with his family.

Julia Phillips

Julia Phillips is the bestselling author of the novel Disappearing Earth, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and one of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year. Her second novel, Bear, was published in June. Julia’s work has been translated into twenty-six languages. A 2024 Guggenheim Fellow, she has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Paris Review. She is on the board of the Crime Victims Treatment Center, a nonprofit that helps people heal from violence. She teaches at the Randolph College MFA program and lives with her family in Brooklyn.

Married

M.T. Anderson

M. T. Anderson is the author of a number of celebrated books including the Thrilling Tales series, as well as The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume 1, The Pox Party, which won the National Book Award and a Printz Honor, and The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Volume II: The Kingdom on the Waves, which also won a Printz Honor. Feed was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the L.A. Times Book Award for YA fiction in 2003. His latest book Elf Dog and Owl Head, was a Newbery Honor book in 2024. His new book, Nicked, is his debut adult novel. Anderson has a BA from Cambridge University in England and an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. He is a lifelong New Englander and lives in a small, haunted 18th century house in the hills of Vermont. 

Marie-Helene Bertino

Marie-Helene Bertino is the author of Beautyland, Parakeet, 2 A.M. at The Cat’s Pajamas, and the story collection Safe as Houses. She was the 2017 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Fellow in Cork, Ireland. She has received the O. Henry Prize, the Pushcart Prize, the Iowa Short Fiction Award, the Mississippi Review Prize, and fellowships from MacDowell, Sewanee, and New York City’s Center for Fiction, and she has twice been featured on NPR’s Selected Shorts. Her work has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, and Mississippi Review 30. She is the Ritvo-Slifka Writer-in-Residence at Yale University.

Amy Jo Burns

Amy Jo Burns is the author of the memoir Cinderland and the novel Shiner, which was a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick, NPR Best Book of the year, and “told in language as incandescent as smoldering coal,” according to The New York Times. Her latest novel, Mercury, is a Barnes & Noble Book Club Pick, a Book of the Month Pick, a People Magazine Book of the Week, and an Editor’s Choice selection in The New York Times. Amy Jo’s writing has appeared in The Paris Review Daily, Elle, Good Housekeeping, and the anthology Not That Bad. You can find her on Instagram at @burnsamyjo.