Eric Olsen is a journalist and graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He directed the U.S. branch of the International Institute of Modern Letters and created the first American City of Asylum, which provided a safe haven for persecuted writers. He was also an executive editor at Time Inc. Health, a Time Warner company. This is his sixth book.

Glenn Schaeffer was, for twenty years, president of Mandalay Resort Group in Las Vegas. In 2009, Liberty Media rated him as the gaming industry's most influential executive, after Steve Wynn. Schaeffer is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and he's finally finishing a novel he started there thirty years ago, Holy Shaker.

Bill Manhire is a professor at the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University in Wellington, New
Zealand, where he resides.