John Biguenet is the widely acclaimed author of The Torturer’s Apprentice: Stories and Oyster, a novel. His stories have appeared in such magazines as Granta, Esquire, Playboy, Story, and Zoetrope and been presented in « Selected Shorts » at Symphony Space on Broadway. He is the author of three plays, Wundmale, The Vulgar Soul, and Rising Water, which won the National New Play Network Commission Award. His new play, Shotgun, premiered at Southern Rep Theatre in 2009. Another new play, Night Train, was developed at the National Theatre in London this past year. An O. Henry Award winner for his short fiction and a New York Times guest columnist, he is the Robert Hunter Distinguished University Professor at Loyola University in New Orleans.
Dubbed « Jack Kerouac for the Internet Age » by USA Today, Potts’ essays and reportage have appeared in such venues as the New York Times Magazine, Salon.com, Slate.com, National Geographic Traveler, the Travel Channel, and National Public Radio — as well as over a 20 nonfiction anthologies, including the Best American Travel Writing series and the Best Creative Nonfiction series. He has won four Lowell Thomas Awards for his travel writing, and his first book, Vagabonding, has been translated into four languages. His newest book, published in 2008, is Marco Polo Didn’t Go There. This will be his eighth summer of teaching at the Paris American Academy.
Lauren Grodstein is the author of the short story collection The Best of Animals (Persea, ’02) and Reproduction is the Flaw of Love, a novel (Dial, ’04). Her new novel, A Friend of the Family, was published by Algonquin in 2009. Her essays, stories, and reviews have been published in The New York Times, The Ontario Review, and several anthologies. She is an assistant professor of English at Rutgers University, Camden, where she helps direct the new MFA in creative writing.