James Plath is R. Forrest Colwell Chair of English at Illinois Wesleyan University, and the author of six books, most recently John Updike's Pennsylvania Interviews (2017).

Gail Sinclair is scholar-in-residence and executive director of the Winter Park Institute at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. She is the coauthor of Key West Hemingway: A Reassessment (2009).

Kirk Curnutt is the chair and professor of English at Troy University in Troy, Alabama. He is the author or coauthor of 17 books, among them Understanding Gay Talese (2019) and William Faulkner (2017).