2009 Living Writers (Video-Small)

Kim Edwards, a graduate of Colgate University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, has won numerous awards for her fiction, including a Whiting Writers' Award, the Nelson Algren Award, and the National Magazine Award for Excellence in Fiction. She is the author of a collection of short stories, The Secrets of a Fire King, which was short-listed for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her first novel, The Memory Keeper's Daughter, spent two years on The New York Times Bestseller List, with 20 weeks at No. 1; it won the British Book Award, and has been now been published in 40 countries. Kim Edwards is an associate professor at The University of Kentucky. She is finishing a new novel set in the Finger Lakes area of upstate New York, where she grew up.

Emmanuel Dongala is a Congolese short-story writer, novelist, playwright. After schooling in Brazzaville, he earned degrees in chemistry in the United States and France. Back in the Congo he worked as a teacher and dean until he was forced to leave after a bitter civil war. He now teaches at Bard College, where he holds the Richard B. Fisher Chair in Natural Sciences and leads a seminar in African Francophone literature. Dongala has published four novels, a collection of short stories and a play. His essays and articles have appeared in Liberation, Le Monde, The New York Times, and Transition. His latest novel, Johnny Mad Dog, was selected by the Los Angeles Times as one of the best books of the year, and a film has been made of the book.

Patrick is joined by Professor's Jane Pinchin and Jennifer Brice, along with graduate students Jan Taubman and Harry Raymond. Patrick OKeeffes collection of stories, The Hill Road (Viking Penguin), was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. The Hill Road also received The Story Prize for 2005. He is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Michigan, and his work has been published in Doubletake, the Irish Times, and Michigan Quarterly Review. In 2007, he received a Whiting Award for fiction writing. He is an assistant professor of creative writing at Colgate University.

Patrick OKeeffes collection of stories, The Hill Road (Viking Penguin), was a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. The Hill Road also received The Story Prize for 2005. He is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Michigan, and his work has been published in Doubletake, the Irish Times, and Michigan Quarterly Review. In 2007, he received a Whiting Award for fiction writing. He is an assistant professor of creative writing at Colgate University.

Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing, China and moved to the United States in 1996. Her stories and essays have been published in The New Yorker, Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. She has received a Whiting Writers' Award and was awarded a Lannan Foundation residency. Her debut collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, won the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, PEN/Hemingway Award, and Guardian First Book Award. She was selected as one of Granta's 21 Best of Young American Novelists. Her novel, The Vagrants, was published in February 2009.

Elizabeth Strouts most recent work, Olive Kitteridge, a novel in stories, won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize, was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was a New York Times Bestseller. She is the author of two previous novels, Abide With Me, a national bestseller, and Amy and Isabelle, also a New York Times Bestseller, which won the L.A. Times Award for First Fiction, The Chicago Tribunes Heartland Prize, and was short-listed for The PEN/Faulkner Award, as well as The Orange Prize in England. Her stories have appeared in a number of magazines, including The New Yorker ,O, and also in Best American Mystery Stories. She is on the faculty of the low-residency MFA Program at Queens College in Charlotte, N.C., and makes her home in New York City.

Elizabeth Strouts most recent work, Olive Kitteridge, a novel in stories, won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize, was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was a New York Times Bestseller. She is the author of two previous novels, Abide With Me, a national bestseller, and Amy and Isabelle, also a New York Times Bestseller, which won the L.A. Times Award for First Fiction, The Chicago Tribunes Heartland Prize, and was short-listed for The PEN/Faulkner Award, as well as The Orange Prize in England. Her stories have appeared in a number of magazines, including The New Yorker ,O, and also in Best American Mystery Stories. She is on the faculty of the low-residency MFA Program at Queens College in Charlotte, N.C., and makes her home in New York City.

Ladette Randolph is editor-in-chief of Ploughshares magazine and a professor at Emerson College. She is the author of the novel A Sandhills Ballad and the award-winning short story collection This Is Not the Tropics, as well as the editor of two anthologies: The Big Empty and A Different Plain. She has been the recipient of a grant from the Rona Jaffe Foundation, as well as a Pushcart Prize, a Virginian Faulkner Award, and three Nebraska Book Awards. Her work has been reprinted in Best New American Voices.

Carrie Brown is the author of five novels and a collection of short stories. She has won many awards for her work, including a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, the Barnes and Noble Discover Award, and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. She lives in Virginia with her husband, the novelist John Gregory Brown, and their three children. She teaches at Sweet Briar College. John Gregory Brown was born and raised in New Orleans. He is the author of the novels Decorations in a Ruined Cemetery (1994), The Wrecked, Blessed Body of Shelton Lafleur (1996), and Audubons Watch (2001). His honors include a Lyndhurst Prize, the 1994 Lillian Smith Award, the 1996 Steinbeck Award, and the 2002 Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities Book of the Year Award. He is the Julia Jackson Nichols Professor of English at Sweet Briar College and lives in Virginia with his wife, the novelist Carrie Brown, and their three children.

Junot Diaz was born in Santo Domingo, Domincan Republic, and is the author of Drown and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which won the John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. He is the fiction editor at the Boston Review, and the Rugde (1948) and Nancy Allen professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.