Ruth Wright

Ruth Wright earned a bachelors degree in child development and elementary education at Utah State University and a masters degree in education from the University of Michigan. She then embarked on a career that spanned over four decades and included classroom teaching stints in Germany, Oregon, Alaska, Idaho, Washington, and North Carolina. While in Chapel Hill, she taught in one of the nation's first Head Start programs and was Director of Education for the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Research Center. Retiring in 1993, Ruth Wright became an award winning photographer. Mrs. Grimes Does Barbie and Other Kindergarten Adventures was her first book. She died in 2007.

Brady Udall

Brady Udall was born and raised in the Indian country of northeastern Arizona. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop and a James Michener Fellow. A past winner of the Playboy fiction contest, his stories have been published in GQ, Story, The Paris Review, and The Midwesterner, among other places.

David Kranes

David Kranes is an emeritus professor of English at the University of Utah. His novels include Keno Runner and Margins; his short story, “Cordials,” won the 1996 Pushcart Prize, followed the next year by "Low Tide in the Desert: Nevada Stories," which won the Western Heritage Award for Best Short Story. Two of his plays, Cantrell and Going In, were published in Best American Short Plays, 1987, and Horay won the CBS Playwrights Award. He served for fourteen years as artistic director of the Sundance Playwrights’ Lab.

Robert Olmstead

Robert Olmstead is the author of seven books. His novel Coal Black Horse was the winner of the Heartland Prize for Fiction and the Ohioana Award, was a #1 Book Sense Pick, and was a Borders Original Voices pick. Olmstead is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and an NEA grant, and he is a professor at Ohio Wesleyan University.