Paul Auster is an American novelist, essayist, translator, and poet whose complex mystery novels are often concerned with the search for identity and personal meaning. Auster earned his B.A. and M.A. in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where he discovered French poets and started his writing career as a poet, translator, and essayist. But he told Marcelle Thiebaux in Publishers Weekly, "My dream was always to write novels. Absolutely. From the beginning. Writing novels gives you the opportunity to explore all sides of yourself--more than anything else I can think of."

After graduating from Columbia University (M.A., 1970), Auster moved to France, where he began translating the works of French writers and publishing his own work in American journals. For years he labored in relative obscurity until the mid-1980s when he began to attract critical attention with his New York Trilogy, a trio of post-modern and experimental detective novels. Completed in 1987, the trilogy marked him as a talent to watch. It comprises City of Glass (1985), about a crime novelist who becomes entangled in a mystery that causes him to assume various identities; Ghosts (1986), about a private eye known as Blue who is investigating a man named Black for a client named White; and The Locked Room (1986), the story of an author who, while researching the life of a missing writer for a biography, gradually assumes the identity of that writer.

Although the influence of American writers like Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville is evident in his fiction, other influences range from Montaigne, and Pascal to Wittgenstein and Merleau-Ponty, and Beckett.

Other books that feature protagonists who are obsessed with chronicling someone else's life are the novels Moon Palace (1989) and Leviathan (1992). The Invention of Solitude (1982) is both a memoir about the death of his father and a meditation on the act of writing. Auster's other writings include the verse volumes Unearth (1974) and Wall Writing (1976), the essay collections White Spaces (1980) and The Art of Hunger : Essays, Prefaces, Interviews (1982), and the novels The Music of Chance (1990) and Mr. Vertigo (1994). He also wrote the screenplay for the critically acclaimed films Smoke and Blue in the Face (1995) and Lulú on the Bridge (1998).

One of his most recent works is Timbuktu (1999).

He was also editor of the Random House Book of Twentieth-Century French Poets, and has translated works by Joan Miro, Jacques Dupin, Jean-Paul Sartre, Stephan Mallarme, and Jean Chesneux, among others. His awards include the chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1993, Prix Medicis for foreign literature in the same year, American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1990, and Ingram Merrill Foundation, PEN Translation Center, and National Endowment of the Arts fellowships.

He autorbusght in the creative writing program at Princeton University from 1986 to 1990.

Born in Pine Mountain, Kentucky, Roxana Robinson grew up in New Hope, Pennsylvania. She graduated from Buckingham Friends School, in Lahaska, and from The Shipley School, in Bryn Mawr. She attended Bennington College and studied with Bernard Malamud and Howard Nemerov. She received a B.A. degree in English Literature from the University of Michigan.

Ms. Robinson has received Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the MacDowell Colony. She is a critically acclaimed fiction writer, author of four novels and three collections of short stories. Her work has been compared to John Cheever’s, by The New York Times, and to Edith Wharton’s, by Time Magazine. It has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, The Atlantic, and other magazines. Her work has appeared often in Best American Short Stories, has been widely anthologized and broadcast on National Public Radio. Four of her works have been chosen Notable Books of the Year by The New York Times, and she was named a Literary Lion by The New York Public Library.

Roxana Robinson has taught creative writing workshops at Bennington College, the University of Southern Indiana, and George Mason University. She has taught frequently at the Wesleyan Writers’ Conference at Wesleyan University. She taught in the Creative Writing Department at the University of Houston, Fall 2001, and in the year 2002-2003 at Wesleyan University.

Ms. Robinson is also a biographer and scholar of nineteenth and early twentieth century American art. Her articles have appeared in Arts, ARTnews, and Art & Antiques, as well as in exhibition catalogues for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Katonah Museum of Art, and other institutions. Her biography of Georgia O'Keeffe was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was named one of The New York Times Most Notable Books of the Year. Ms. Robinson lectures frequently on Georgia O'Keeffe, and appeared in the BBC documentary on the artist. Her biography is considered the definitive work, called by Calvin Tomkins, of the New Yorker, "without question the best book written about O'Keeffe."

She is a frequent contributor to The New York Times Book Review and Travel Section. She reviews books for The Washington Post and her essays have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, Vogue, House and Garden, and other publications.

Ms. Robinson is also a gardener and garden writer, and her work in this field has appeared in Horticulture and House and Garden. Her garden is listed in the Garden Conservancy Open Days, and has been written about in The New York Times, House and Garden, Traditional Homes, The Atlantic, Gardens Illustrated, and other publications.

Cynthia Cruz is a poet whose work has appeared in The Paris Review, The American Poetry Review, and other publications. Her first book, Ruin, was published by Alice James Books in 2006. She currently lives in Brooklyn and teaches at Sarah Lawrence College.

Saïd Sayrafiezadeh is a writer of plays, essays, and fiction. He was born in Brooklyn in 1968 and grew up in Pittsburgh. His writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, Open City, and elsewhere. His first book, the memoir When Skateboards Will Be Free, was published in March 2009.

Lynne Tillman has published novels, story collections, and works of nonfiction. Her novel No Lease on Life was a New York Times Notable Book and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and she received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2006. Her most recent novel is American Genius: A Comedy.

An association of writers working to advance literature, defend free expression, and foster international literary fellowship.