EDWARD McPHERSON is the author of four books: Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat, The Backwash Squeeze and Other Improbable Feats, The History of the Future: American Essays, and Look Out: The Delight and Danger of Taking the Long View. He has written for the New York Times Magazine, the Paris Review, Tin House, the American Scholar, the Gettysburg Review, Gulf Coast, Salon, Guernica, True Story, the Southern Review, Esopus, Epoch, Catapult, Essay Daily, Literary Hub, I.D., the New York Observer, and Talk, among others. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize, the PEN Southwest Book Award, the Gulf Coast Prize in Fiction, an Artist Fellowship from the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis, a Minnesota State Arts Board grant, and the Gesell Award from the University of Minnesota, where he received his MFA. He is a contributing editor of the Common Reader. He teaches creative writing at Washington University in St. Louis.

FREDERICK McKINDRA attended Howard University and the New School in NYC where he obtained an MFA in fiction writing. Currently, he works as the Associate Editor for the Oxford American Magazine, a literary magazine focused on Southern culture. He has written essays for the Oxford American, Buzzfeed Reader, and the Arkansas Times, and his 2017 essay "Becoming Integrated" from the Oxford American was listed as a notable essay in the 2018 Best American Essays collection, edited by Hilton Als. Frederick also serves on the Talent Committee for the Six Bridges Book Festival, a literary festival that invites authors to the Central Arkansas area for a week of celebrating the written word.