Lev Raphael is one of America’s foremost Second Generation writers. Born and raised in New York City, he earned an MFA in Creative Writing at UMass/Amherst where he won the Harvey Swados Fiction Prize, judged by Martha Foley, for a story later published in Redbook. His story collection Dancing on Tisha B'Av won a 1990 Lambda Literary Award and he is also the author of two novels about survivor families, Winter Eyes and The German Money; a collection of essays and memoirs, Journeys & Arrival; a book about Edith Wharton’s life and fiction; and several co-authored books in psychology and education. His most recent titles are Secret Anniversaries of the Heart (stories) and Writing a Jewish Life (memoirs).

Essayist, Poet, playwright, and short story writer ROBERT VIVIAN grew up in the Dundee neighborhood of Omaha. He has had over twenty plays produced off and off-off Broadway. Several have been published, with monologues appearing in the international anthologies Best Men and Women's Stage Monologues from 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998. He holds the PhD in English from University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Among his most recent plays is Something is Wrong, performed in Omaha by the Blue Barn Theatre. His current project is an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts for Studio Arena Theatre in Buffalo, New York, which will premiere in February, 2006. His work has appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Creative Nonfiction, Glimmertrain, Jabberwock, Janus Head, The New York Quarterly, River Teeth, Sycamore Review, Turnrow, and elsewhere. His collection of creative nonfiction, Cold Snap as Yearning, (University of Nebraska Press, 2002) won the Midland of Society Awards in for Nonfiction and the Nebraska Book Award for nonfiction in that same year. Many of the book's essays first appeared in Harper's, Creative Nonfiction, Salt Hill, Sycamore Review, Salt Hill, Seneca Review, and elsewhere. He was a finalist for the 2004 Iowa Short Fiction Award for his collection Eating the Bible. New work is out or forthcoming in Georgia Review, Massachusetts Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Essays have been included in the list of Notable Essays in Best American Essays (2000, 2001, 2003, 2004, 2005). His first novel, The Mover of Bones, is due out from the University of Nebraska Press in fall of 2006. He is an assistant professor of English at Alma College in Michigan.

Jeff Wray is assistant professor of English and co-director of Film Studies at MSU. His research interests include Film Studies, Filmmaking, Screenwriting, Third World and Black U.S. cinema, and Gay cinema. He has written and directed the films The Evolution of Burt; The Soul Searchers: A Trilogy; China; August; The Beautyful Ones; and Affirmative Action. He directed the film The Slave Ship Injustice.

Keith R. Widder served as Curator of History, Mackinac Island State Park Commission for over 25 years. He has written extensively on the history of the western Great Lakes and is author of Battle for the Soul: Metis Children Encounter Evangelical Protestants at Mackinaw Mission, 1823-1837.

Keith's history of MSU’s first 70 years, Michigan Agricultural College, won the Historical Society of Michigan's 2005 'State History Award.' This is the first of a three-volume set that will be published during the Michigan State University Sesquicentennial, beginning in 2005.