A. J. Rich

Amy Hempel is the author of four collections of stories: REASONS TO LIVE, AT THE GATES OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM, TUMBLE HOME, and THE DOG OF THE MARRIAGE. THE COLLECTED STORIES was published in 2006. She has won many awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and an inaugural USA Foundation Fellowship, and the PEN/Malamud Award for the Short Story. She teaches writing at the University of Florida and at Bennington College. She is a founding board member of two dog rescue nonprofit organizations: The Deja Foundation (www.dejafoundation.org) and Morgan’s Place, a rescue in New Milford, CT. Jill Ciment was born in Montreal, Canada. She is the author of Small Claims, a collection of short stories and novellas; The Law of Falling Bodies, Teeth of the Dog, The Tattoo Artist, Heroic Measures, and Act of God, novels; and Half a Life, a memoir. She has been awarded a National Endowment for the Arts, a NEA Japan Fellowship Prize, two New York State Fellowships for the Arts, the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. A film adaptation of Heroic Measures, starring Morgan Freeman and Diane Keaton, will be in theaters 2015. Ciment is a professor at the University of Florida. She lives in Gainesville, Florida, and Brooklyn, New York.