Art Blount was born and raised in The Bronx, New York. He studied Music Composition at Mannes College of Music and English Literature at Columbia University. He has worked variously as a teacher’s assistant and drama coach, and spent six years with Sony Music Entertainment as a Music Research Archivist. He is currently working on several short stories, as well as a novel entitled The Verge of Splinter, the first chapter of which was a winning entry to this competition.

David Samuel Levinson is the author of the story collection, Most of Us Are Here Against Our Will (Viking Penguin UK, 2005), the title story of which won an award in The Atlantic Monthly. His fiction and book reviews have appeared in numerous magazines and journals. Currently, he's at work on a novella and story collection, What Makes Harry Gallant, and a novel, The Art of Losing, a portion of which won the Bronx Chapter One Competition. He wrote the winning pages while at Ledig House, an international artist colony in Hudson, NY. Originally from San Antonio, Texas, David teaches at NYU. He can be reached at www.david-levinson.com.

Lynn Lurie is an attorney with a Masters in International Affairs and a Masters in Fine Arts. She served as a peace corp volunteer in Ecuador (1980-82) and currently volunteers as a translator and administrator on medical trips to South America that provide surgery and medical care free of charge to indigent children. Corner of the Dead is her first novel and is set in Peru during the 1980s. Corner of the Dead will be published by University of Massachusetts Press in Spring 2008, and is the winner of the Juniper Award.

Nora Maynard has been awarded fiction fellowships by the Millay Colony for the Arts, The Ragdale Foundation, the Ucross Foundation, and the Blue Mountain Center, and is the 2007 AEB Fellow for culinary writing at The Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow. Her work has appeared/is forthcoming in The Rambler, Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, Blood & Aphorisms, McGill Street Magazine, The Trinity Review, and The Business of Food: Encyclopedia of the Food Industry. Her column on food and drink in film, "The Celluloid Pantry," runs Tuesdays at Apartment Therapy: The Kitchen (http://kitchen.apartmenttherapy.com/). Nora is a graduate of the University of Toronto, and worked in publishing in Toronto and New York as a publicist and editor. She is a four-time finisher of the New York City Marathon. Burnt Hill Road is her first novel. Visit her website at www.noramaynard.com.