Ron Hansen is the Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. Professor in the Arts & Humanities at Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, California. Hansen is a graduate of the University of Iowa’s Writers Workshop and Stanford University. At Stanford University he held a Wallace Stegner Creative Writing Fellowship. He has also received fellowships from the Michigan Society of Fellows, the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Lyndhurst Foundation, and was presented with an award in literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts & Letters. Mr. Hansen has written ten works of fiction, edited two short story collections and written a book of essays on faith and fiction.

Bo Caldwell’s first novel,The Distant Land of My Father, was a national bestseller, one of the Los Angeles Times' Best Books of 2001, and a Booksense 76 pick. Her second novel, City of Tranquil Light, was a Los Angeles Times bestseller, an October 2010 Indie Next Notable, and one of O Magazine's Ten Must Reads for October 2010. Her essays have appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine, the Washington Post Magazine, and America Magazine, and her short stories have been included in Story, Ploughshares, Epoch, and other literary journals. She lives in Northern California with her husband, novelist Ron Hansen.