Shen Congwen (simplified Chinese: 沈从文; traditional Chinese: 沈從文; pinyin: Shěn Cóngwén; Wade–Giles: Shen Ts'ung-wen, December 28, 1902—May 10, 1988) was the pen name of a Miao Chinese writer from the May Fourth Movement. He was known for combining the vernacular style of writing with classical Chinese writing techniques, and his writing also reflects a strong influence from western literature.

He was born as Shen Yuehuan (沈岳煥) on December 28, 1902 in Fenghuang County (凤凰县) in Hunan Province. He died on May 10, 1988 in Beijing. He is described as "a novelist, short-story writer, lyricist and passionate champion of literary and intellectual independence". Although almost entirely unknown to Western readers, Mr. Shen's oeuvre, much of it embued with the folklore and customs of his native western Hunan, has been compared to that of William Faulkner."

Shen was initially trained for a career in the military. As a soldier in the Chinese army, he observed border fighting and the lives of the Miao tribesmen, which later became the subject matter of his early short fiction stories. He began writing fiction in 1922 and wrote almost continually until 1949. He taught Chinese literature at various universities during the Second Sino-Japanese War out of monetary necessity.

Yiyun Li (李翊雲) (born 1972) is a Chinese American writer. Her debut short story collection A Thousand Years of Good Prayers won the 2005 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, and her second collection Gold Boy, Emerald Girl was shortlisted for the same award. Her debut novel The Vagrants was shortlisted for the 2011 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

She was named a 2010 MacArthur Fellow. She is an editor of Brooklyn-based literary magazine, A Public Space.

Yiyun Li grew up in Beijing, China, and moved to the United States after earning a B.S. at Peking University in 1996. She earned an MS in immunology at the University of Iowa, an MFA in creative nonfiction from the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa, and an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her stories and essays have been published in The New Yorker,The Paris Review, and Zoetrope: All-Story. Two of the stories from A Thousand Years of Good Prayers were adapted into 2007 films directed by Wayne Wang: The Princess of Nebraska and the title story, which Li adapted herself.

Lydia Davis (born 1947) is a contemporary American writer noted for her short stories. Davis is also a French translator, and has produced several new translations of French literary classics, including Proust's Swann’s Way and Flaubert's Madame Bovary.

The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis was published as a single volume in 2010.

She is the daughter of Robert Gorham Davis and Hope Hale Davis. From 1974 to 1978 Davis was married to Paul Auster, with whom she has a son, Daniel Auster. Davis is currently married to artist Alan Cote, with whom she has a son, Theo Cote. She is a professor of creative writing at University at Albany, SUNY and Lillian Vernon Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at New York University.

She has published six collections of short stories, including The Thirteenth Woman and Other Stories (1976) and Break It Down (1986). Her most recent collection was Varieties of Disturbance, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2007. "The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis", published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2009, contains all her stories to date.

Sergio Chejfec is an Argentine Jewish writer. He was born in Buenos Aires in 1956. From 1990-2005 he lived in Venezuela, where he published Nueva sociedad, a journal of politics, culture and the social sciences. He currently lives in New York City and teaches in the Creative Writing in Spanish program at New York University.

Chejfec has written novels, essays and a poetry collection. His works include Lenta biografía (1990), Los planetas (1999), Boca de Lobo (2000), Los incompletos (2004) and Mis dos mundos (2008). He has been compared to Juan José Saer, which he finds flattering but not accurate. His novels usually feature a slow-paced narration that interweaves the plot with reflection. Memory, political violence, and Jewish-Argentine culture and history are some of the themes recurring throughout his work.

Robert L. Hass (born March 1, 1941, San Francisco) is an American poet. He served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997. He won the 2007 National Book Award and shared the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for the collection Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005

Hass is a California poet whose works are well-known for their West Coast subject and attitude. He was born in San Francisco and grew up in San Rafael. He grew up with an alcoholic mother, a major topic in the 1996 poem collection, Sun Under Wood. It was his older brother who encouraged him to dedicate himself to his writing. Awe-struck by Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg, among others in the 1950s Bay Area poetry scene, Hass entertained the idea of becoming a beatnik. He graduated from Marin Catholic High School in 1958. When the area became influenced by East Asian literary techniques, such as haiku, Hass took many of these influences up in his poetry. Hass is married to the poet and antiwar activist Brenda Hillman, who is also a professor at Saint Mary's College of California.