Toledo native Craig Holden published his first novel, The River Sorrow, in 1994, after having spent several years working as a film rights agent. The success of the book allowed Holden to begin writing full time and his second novel, The Last Sanctuary, appeared in 1996. His third book, Four Corners of Night, met with tremendous critical acclaim, garnering Holden the 1999 Great Lakes Book Award for fiction and making the USA Today bestseller list. Holden’s fourth novel, The Jazz Bird--a fictionalized account of a 1920s Cincinnati society murder--was published in 2001, and the author is currently at work on a new book.

“…Holden delves deep into the murk of the Jazz Age, blending mystery and history in a heady cocktail…The poignancy of the story lies in Holden's uncanny ability to make hip creations believable, flaws and all, and in his evocation of the charged and sultry 1920s.” - Jeff Zaleski, Publisher’s Weekly review of The Jazz Bird.

Diane Seuss is Writer in Residence at Kalamazoo College. Her recent work has appeared in The Georgia Review, Artful Dodge, Rattle and Primavera. Her poems have been anthologized in Are You Experienced?, edited by Pamela Gemin (University of Iowa Press, 2003), September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond, edited by William Heyen (Etruscan Press, 2002), Boomer Girls: Poems by Women from the Baby Boom Generation, edited by Pamela Gemin and Paula Sergi (University of Iowa Press, 1999), and New Poems from the Third Coast, edited by Michael Delp, Conrad Hilberry and Josie Kearns (Wayne State University Press, 2000). Her book It Blows You Hollow was published in 1998 by New Issues Press. Diane won the Allen Ginsberg Memorial Poetry Prize in October 2000, and her poems that appeared in Poetry Northwest and Primavera were nominated for The Pushcart Prize

“Here's what I've been waiting for: Diane Seuss-Brakeman's fresh, deep-digging poems, the rich texture of detail and metaphor, and under the images --exuberance, tenacity, loss. For me, the God poems offer a search, a wrestling as bold and intense as any since G. M. Hopkins.” - Conrad Hilberry on It Blows You Hollow.

O’Leary, a native of Saginaw, holds a B.A. in Journalism from Wayne State University. His poetry has appeared in literary magazines across North America and in Other Voices, Other Doors, a volume of collected works that span 20 years of his writing. His novels include, The Impossible Bird, Door Number Three, and The Gift. Currently, he is an Associate Creative Director at an advertising agency where his work has won numerous industry awards.

"As a posthumous fantasy, then, THE IMPOSSIBLE BIRD is a pure success... Philip K. Dick texture...cool de Chirico surreality...some of the estranged crystalline ring of Jonathan Carroll or Jonathan Lethem or Robert Charles Wilson... In the end THE IMPOSSIBLE BIRD does molt out of its sf trappings and (lifts) our hearts.” - John Clute, The New York Review of Science Fiction

For more information, please visit Patrick O’Leary’s website at: http://mywebpages.comcast.net/patrickoleary/newindex.html.

After graduating from MSU in 1996, Escanaba native Tom Bissell joined the Peace Corps and taught English in the former Soviet republic of Uzbekistan. When he returned stateside, he worked for several years in book publishing. Among his editorial endeavors was the restoration to print of Paula Fox's novels and editing her memoir Borrowed Finery, conceiving and editing The Collected Stories of Richard Yates, and conceiving A Galaxy Not So Far Away: Writers and Artists on Twenty-five Years of Star Wars. His criticism, fiction, and journalism have appeared in Agni, The Alaska Quarterly Review, The Boston Review, BOMB, Esquire, Harper's Magazine, Men's Health, Men's Journal, and Salon. He is currently finishing a collection of Central Asia-themed short stories entitled Death Defier. He lives in New York City and has returned to Uzbekistan four times since completing Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia, his first book.

“The humor and poignancy in this blend of memoir, reportage and history mark the author as a front-runner in the next generation of travel writers.” - Publisher’s Weekly review of Chasing the Sea.

Burton is a writer-in-residence in the Interdisciplinary Studies Program at Wayne State University and co-founder of the program’s Detroit Institute for Creative Writers. Her debut novel, The Root Worker was published in hard cover and paperback by The Overlook Press (2001) and Penguin Putnam (2002), respectively, and was reviewed and featured in 'O' (Oprah) Magazine, Publishers Weekly, Ebony, Essence, Black Issues Book Review, the Chicago Tribune, Madison Times and the Ann Arbor News. The novel was a Great Lakes Book Award finalist in 2001. Ms. Burton is a Michigan regional representative for the International Women’s Writing Guild and workshop director at the Guild’s summer writers’ conferences at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York.

“Rainelle Burton interweaves African American folklore with religious rumor in a moving and often suspenseful novel that borders on social commentary…(She) brilliantly dances on the border of the grotesque to allow the characters' anguish and innocence to seep into the reader's pores.” - Michelle Gipson in Black Issues Book Review.

Steinberg's most recent book is Still Pitching: A Memoir (MSU Press, Fall 2003). Other books include the anthology, Peninsula: Essays and Memoirs From Michigan, The Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writers of/on Creative Nonfiction and Those Who Do, Can (the latter two with Robert L. Root Jr.), and The Writer's Way with Clinton S. Burhans, Jr. Peninsula was a finalist for both the ForeWord Magazine Anthology of the Year Award and for the 2000 Great Lakes Booksellers Award. In addition, Steinberg has published numerous personal essays, memoirs, and poems in such journals as The Missouri Review, New Letters, The Bellingham Review, and The Florida Review, among many others. Dr. Steinberg is a Professor Emeritus of American Thought & Language at MSU.

“With adroit precision and quiet enthrallment, Mike Steinberg leads us into the American Epoch that was New York and baseball in the 1950s. But to say that Still Pitching is simply about baseball is to say that Moby Dick was a good little book about whales.” - Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River.