The Writer's Reader

Robert Cohen is the author of three previous novels, The Organ Builder, The Here and Now, and Inspired Sleep, and a collection of short stories. Winner of a Lila Atcheston Wallace -Reader's Digest Writers Award, the Ribalow Prize, The Pushcart Prize, and a Whiting Award, he has published short fiction in a variety of publications -- including Harpers, GQ, The Paris Review and Ploughshares. He has taught at the Iowa Writers Workshop, Harvard University, and Middlebury College. He lives in Vermont.

Jay Parini is the author of acclaimed biographies of John Steinbeck, Robert Frost, William Faulkner, Jesus, and Gore Vidal. His eight novels include Benjamin’s Crossing, The Damascus Road, The Passages of H.M., and The Last Station, the latter of which was made into an Academy Award-nominated film. His nonfiction works include The Art of Teaching, Why Poetry Matters, Promised Land: Thirteen Books that Changed America, and The Way of Jesus. His most recent book, Borges and Me: An Encounter,  has been filmed. He graduated from both Lafayette College and the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, where he received a Ph.D., and he is a faculty member of Middlebury College. Parini lives in Weybridge, Vermont.