Barry Hannah (1942- 2010) was the author of twelve books and the recipient of the Robert Penn Warren Lifetime Achievement Award, the PEN/ Malamud Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. Hannah won the William Faulkner Prize for his 1972 novel, Geronimo Rex; was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for his 1996 short story collection, High Lonesome; and twice received the Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters Fiction Award. A longtime writing instructor who taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, the University of the South, and Bennington College, he was the director of the MFA program at the University of Mississippi, where his students included Larry Brown and Donna Tartt. Sam Lipsyte is author of the short story collections Venus Drive and The Fun Parts and five novels, including the New York Times bestseller The Ask, Hark, Home Land (a New York Times Notable Book and winner of the Believer Book Award), and No One Left to Come Looking for You. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Best American Short Stories, among other places. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University's School of the Arts.