Laura Browder (playwriting) is the author, most recently, of Her Best Shot:  Women and Gun in America.   Her first book, Rousing the Nation:  Radical Culture in Depression America, was named a Choice Outstanding Book of the Year.  She was awarded grants from the Massachusetts Council for the Arts and Humanities and the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy for her play Spitting Into the Wind.  Her living newspaper play Sheep Hill Memories, Carver Dreams (2000), was supported by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy. Her work has been supported by grants, fellowships and awards from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, the Illinois Humanities Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts and the Alabama Humanities Foundation.  She is currently at work on a series of documentaries based on her book, Slippery Characters:  Ethnic Impersonators and American Identities (2000).

Susann Cokal (fiction) is the author of the novels Mirabilis (2001) and Breath and Bones (2005), and short stories in such journals as Hayden's Ferry Review and Gulf Stream. Her essays about contemporary writers including Jeanette Winterson and Marianne Wiggins appear in Critique and The Centennial Review, among others. She is particularly interested in literary historical fiction and the modern novel, and holds an MA from the University of California, Berkeley, and PhDs from SUNY Binghamton and the University of California, Berkeley. She previously taught at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo.

Tom De Haven (fiction, scriptwriting) is the author of five novels, Freaks' Amour, Jersey Luck, Funny Papers, Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies, and his most recent, Dugan Under Ground, released October 2001; a collection of three related novellas, Sunburn Lake; and a three-novel series, Chronicle of the King's Tramp, which includes Walker of Worlds, The End-of-Everything Man, and The Last Human. His latest novel for young adults, The Orphan's Tent, was published in 1996, and his latest graphic novel, Green Candles, in 1997. He has previously published two young adult novels, two graphic novels, and various other innovative fiction projects. De Haven has a richly varied experience as a writer, having worked as a freelance journalist, an editor, and a film and television scriptwriter. His book reviews appear regularly in Entertainment Weekly and The New York Times Book Review. His awards include a fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and he has twice won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. Before joining VCU's faculty, De Haven taught at Rutgers and Hofstra University.

Gregory Donovan (poetry) is the author of poetry and short fiction published in such magazines as Kenyon Review, New England Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, CutBank, The Southern Review, and the Alaska Quarterly Review, among others. He has won the Robert Penn Warren prize, judged by Rosanna Warren and sponsored by New England Writers, as well as grants and fellowships from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the Ucross Foundation, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Donovan's poetry collection, Calling His Children Home, won the Devins Award from University of Missouri Press. His work has been anthologized in The Devins Award Poetry Anthology (1998), Fives: Fifty Poems by Serbian and American Poets (2002), and in Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets of Virginia (2003). He is currently an editor of Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts.

Clint McCown (fiction) has taught journalism, fiction writing, playwriting, screenwriting, and American and Scottish literature. He has published two books of poetry and three novels (The Weatherman, The Member-Guest, War Memorials), won an Associated Press award for his broadcast journalism, and toured as an actor with the National Shakespeare Company. He is the only writer to have twice won the American Fiction Prize; he has also won the Society of Midland Authors Award and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. He has been a screenwriter for Warner Bros. His stories and essays have appeared widely, and he is a contributing editor to ten literary journals nationwide as well as founding editor of the Beloit Fiction Journal.

Gary Sange (poetry) is the author of Sudden Around the Bend, published by University of Missouri, Kansas City. He has two volumes of poetry in manuscript, Joy Boss and Out in the Oy. His poetry has appeared in Ohio Review, Shenandoah, Literary Review, Crazy Horse, Field, Quarterly, The New York Times, Prism International, Quarterly Review of Literature, Three Rivers Poetry Journal, New York Quarterly, and many others. His poetry has been anthologized in New Voices in American Poetry and Southern Poetry Review 20 Year Anniversary. Sange has won the Richard Hugo Memorial Fellowship, has been Poet-in-Residence at the Caribbean Writers' Conference in Nassau, and has taught a course, Journaling in Ireland, for bicyclists and journal keepers. His long poem, "Maud," was performed as an oratorio at Carnegie Hall and is available on compact disc.

David Wojahn (poetry), program director,is the author of six collections of poetry, Spirit Cabinet (2002), The Falling Hour, Late Empire, Mystery Train, Glassworks, and Icehouse Lights. He is also the author of Strange Good Fortune (2001), a collection of essays on contemporary verse. He is the editor (with Jack Myers) of A Profile of Twentieth Century American Poetry; he also edited The Only World, a posthumous collection of Lynda Hull’s poetry. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Illinois Arts Council, the Indiana Arts Commission, and the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference, as well as writing residencies from the Yaddo and McDowell colonies. Among his other awards and honors are the Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Scholarship, the Yale Younger Poets' Award for Icehouse Lights, the William Carlos Williams Book Award and the Celia B. Wagner Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Society of Midland Authors’ Book Award, Vermont College’s Crowley/Weingarten Award for Excellence in Teaching, the George Kent Memorial Prize from Poetry magazine, and three Pushcart Prizes. His poetry, essays and reviews have appeared in many journals and anthologies, among them The Paris Review, The New Yorker, Best American Poetry, The American Poetry Review, The New York Times Book Review, The Chicago Tribune, The Kenyon Review, New England Review, The Georgia Review, and TriQuarterly.