Maggie Shipstead is the author of two novels: Astonish Me and Seating Arrangements, which was a New York Times bestseller, a finalist for the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, and the winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize and the L.A. Times Book Prize for First Fiction. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. She has been a National Magazine Award finalist for fiction, and her writing has appeared in many publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, Condé Nast Traveler, Tin House, Guernica, VQR, and The Best American Short Stories.

Jennifer DuBois’s debut novel, A Partial History of Lost Causes, was the winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction, the Northern California Book Award for Fiction, and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction. Her second novel, Cartwheel, was the winner of the Housatonic Book Award fiction and was a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a former Stanford University Stegner Fellow, duBois is the recipient of a Whiting Writer’s Award and a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award. She teaches in the MFA program at Texas State University.