Celebrated nature writer, fiction writer, and environmental activist. More about Rick Bass

Award-winning author exploring the borderland of wild nature and human culture in books including Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, More about Janisse Ray

Poet, photographer, and scholar, is past Wisconsin Poet Laureate and founding director of Indigenous Nations Poets. More about Kimberly Blaeser

Painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, playwright, editor, and teacher known for inspiring imagination and creativity. More about Lynda Barry

Novelist, short fiction writer, and a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow. More about Bonnie Jo Campbell

Chinese American poet Marilyn Chin is the winner of the Poetry Foundation’s Ruth Lilly Prize for lifetime achievement. More about Marilyn Chin

Editor-in-chief of the Chicago Reader, author and winner of many best book awards. More about Anne Elizabeth Moore

Chicago-based author and winner of the Chicago Writers Association award, and The Borrower, a Booklist Top Ten Debut which has been translated into eight languages. More about Rebecca Makkai

Recipient of the Kingsley Tufts Award, The Poets’ Prize, the San Francisco Poetry Center Book Award, and a Pacific Northwest Book Award, as well as fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Idaho Commission on the Arts. More about Robert Wrigley

Created the global storytelling organization The Moth in 1997 and is the author of three highly acclaimed novels: The Caveman’s Valentine, The Juror and Ravens. More about George Dawes Green

A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation More about Susan Choi

Author of 20 books of fiction and nonfiction, and distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at Indiana University, where he taught from 1971 to 2009. More about Scott Russel Sanders

author Author of seven books of poetry and finalist for the National Book Award and won the Paterson Poetry Prize. More about Kevin Young

Best known for his award-winning novel, The Last King of Scotland and won a Whitbread First Novel Award and the Somerset Maugham Prize. More about Giles Foden

A novelist, poet, and a winner of the Peter Lisagor Award for sports journalism. More about James McManus

A 2007 National Book Award finalist, and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, three Pushcart Prizes, and a Kingsley Tufts Award. More about Linda Gregerson

Author of more than 20 books, a range of novels, collections of stories, and works of personal nonfiction and Pulitzer Prize-nominated. More about Scott Russell Sanders

Fiction writer who is the author of over 17 novels and short story collections and in 2004, he won the PEN/Malamud Award for excellence. More about Richard Bausch

Called one of the best of the post-Vietnam fiction writers, won the National Book Award for Dog Soldiers (1974) and the PEN Faulkner prize for A Flag for Sunrise (1981). More about Robert Stone

One of America’s preeminent travelogists whose Blue Highways (1982) spent 42 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list. More about William Least Heat-Moon

Appointed as the 2001-2003 Library of Congress Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry and was a Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize finalist. More about Billy Collins

Award-wining author whose stories have been selected for the Best American Short Stories Collections, the O. Henry Awards, the Pushcart Prize, and the Best American Short Stories of the Century. More about Pam Houston

Regents Professor and McKnight Distinguished Professor at the University of Minnesota where she teaches in the master of fine arts program of the English department. More about Patricia Hampl

Prominent Chinese dissident poet who has been repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Prize. More about Bei Dao

Novelist and writer of short stories who currently teaches at the University of California-Irvine. More about Ron Carlson

Highly acclaimed Asian-American poet and winner of many awards for his riveting autobiographical verse. He won won the 2002 William Carlos Williams Award and he Delmore Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award. More about Li-Young Lee

One of the most prominent of the new American “minimalist” writers. She won the Rea Award for the Short Story in 2008, and she received the PEN/Malamud Award for Short Fiction in 2009. More about Amy Hempel

Wrote and published 20 books of poetry and was perhaps the most influential woman poet in the United States since the 1940s. More about Denise Levertov

Author best known for his nature and travel writing. His nonfiction has been widely praised and he is the recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships. More about Edward Hoagland

One of the most prolific American writers since World War II. He is co-founder of The Paris Review, and received a National Book Award. More about Peter Matthiessen

Author of eight books of poetry and Pulitzer Prize winner. More about Carolyn Kizer

Author of 26 books whose nature-writing fiction has been called one of “tomorrow’s classics” by critic George Plimpton. More about Rick Bass

One of the most celebrated writers of speculative fiction in the United States who won the Hugo and Nebula awards in 1970. More about Ursula K LeGuin

One of the best-loved poets in the United States who received a 1962 National Book Award was appointed the twentieth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1970. More about William Stafford

A noted writer of both poetry and short fiction, and one of the few writers equally acclaimed in both genres. More about Tess Gallagher

One of the most influential American writers of short fiction since 1975. More about Raymond Carver