Melissa Ginsburg

Melissa Ginsburg is the author of a noir novel, Sunset City, and a poetry collection, Dear Weather Ghost, as well as two poetry chapbooks, Arbor and Double Blind. Her poems have appeared in Guernica, Boulevard, Bennington Review, Fence, Denver Quarterly, and other magazines. She has received support from the Mississippi Arts Council and the Ucross Foundation. Originally from Houston, Texas, Ginsburg studied poetry at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow. She is an assistant professor of creative writing and literature at the University of Mississippi in Oxford.

Chris Offutt

Chris Offutt is the author of Country Dark, Kentucky Straight, Out of the Woods, The Same River Twice, No Heroes, The Good Brother, and My Father the Pornographer. He also wrote screenplays for “True Blood," “Treme," and “Weeds." 

His writing has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the NEA, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The international magazine Granta included him in its list of the “Top 20 Young American Writers.” His work is in many anthologies, including Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays, Best American Food Writing, and the Pushcart Prize. 

He grew up in the hills of eastern Kentucky, and currently lives in rural Lafayette County near Oxford, Mississippi.