Gail Tsukiyama was born in San Francisco, California to a Chinese mother from Hong Kong and a Japanese father from Hawaii. She attended San Francisco State University where she received both her Bachelor of Arts Degree and a Master of Arts Degree in English with the emphasis in Creative Writing.

During 1997 to 1999, she sat as a judge for the Kiriyama Book Prize and is currently Book Review Editor for the online magazine The WaterBridge Review. In September of 2001, she was one of fifty authors chosen by the Library of Congress to participate in the first National Book Festival in Washington D.C. and has been guest speaker at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival and the Sydney Writers’ Festival.

Her first novel, WOMEN OF THE SILK, St. Martin’s Press, was published in 1991. Her second novel,THE SAMURAI’S GARDEN, St. Martin’s Press, was published in 1995, followed by NIGHT OF MANY DREAMS, St. Martin’s Press in 1998 and THE LANGUAGE OF THREADS, St. Martin’s Press in 1999. Her latest novel, DREAMING WATER, St. Martin’s Press, will be published in May of 2002.

Haven Kimmel studied English and creative writing at Ball State University and North Carolina State University and attended seminary at the Earlham School of Religion. She lives in Durham, North Carolina.

Books:

• A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland Indiana
• The Solace of Leaving Early
  

Kathryn Harrison is a graduate of Stanford University and the Iowa Writer's Workshop. Her first novel, Thicker Than Water, was a New York Times Notable Book of 1991. Her second novel, Exposure, was also a New York Times Notable Book, and a national bestseller. She lives in New York City with her husband, the writer Colin Harrison.

Books:

• The Seal Wife
• Seeking Rapture: Essays and Occasional Pieces
• The Binding Chair: Or, a Visit from the Foot Emancipation Society
  

McCrumb is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with an MA in English from Virginia Tech. She has taught journalism and Appalachian Studies at Virginia Tech, but she is now a full-time novelist and lecturer. She has been invited to talk about her work at the University of Bonn, the American Library in Berlin, Oxford University, the Smithsonian Institution, and at literary festivals and universities throughout the United States.

Sharyn McCrumb’s great-grandfathers were circuit preachers in North Carolina’s Smoky Mountains a hundred years ago, riding horseback over the ridges to preach in a different community each week. It is from them, she says, that she gets her regard for books, her gift of story-telling and public-speaking, and her love of the Appalachian Mountains.

Books:

• The Songcatcher: A Ballad Novel

Born and raised in Lowell, Massachusetts, Lipman graduated from Simmons College, where she studied journalism and began writing fiction in an adult education workshop at Brandeis University (10 weeks/$40).

Her first short story was published in 1981 in Yankee Magazine, and her first book (stories: Into Love and Out Again) was published in 1987. She writes essays and book reviews when prevailed upon (The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Self, More, Salon), but prefers to devote her time to novel-writing. Then She Found Me, The Way Men Act, and The Ladies' Man are all in development as movies.

She describes herself as overly fond of coffee, the telephone, e-mail, cookbooks, yarn stores, cable news, and reading. Her husband and teenaged son agree.

Books:

• The Dearly Departed: A Novel
• The Pursuit of Alice Thrift
• The Inn at Lake Devine
  
  

Judy Blunt spent more than thirty years on wheat and cattle ranches in northeastern Montana, before leaving in 1986 to attend the University of Montana. Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies.

She is the recipient of a Jacob K. Javits Graduate Fellowship and a Montana Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship. Breaking Clean was awarded a 1997 PEN/Jerard Fund Award for a work in progress, as well as a 2001 Whiting Writers' Award. She lives in Missoula, Montana.

Books:

• Breaking Clean

Joyce Weatherford's family landed in Oregon via the Oregon Trail in 1851, and Joyce grew up as a fifth-generation farmer working on her family's wheat and cattle ranch. She now lives in California with her husband and son.

Books:

• Heart of the Beast