Bill Buford was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and grew up in California. Since April 1995 he has been fiction and literary editor of the New Yorker. For 15 years he was editor of Granta magazine. He has also been publisher of Granta Books, a joint venture with Penguin Books. He edited three anthologies: The Best of Granta Travel, The Best of Granta Reportage, and the Granta Book of the Family. He is the author of Among the Thugs, a nonfiction account of crowd violence and British soccer hooliganism.
Douglas Kennedy was born in New York. Educated at Trinity College, Dublin, he lived in Dublin for 11 years. His novel The Big Picture was a bestseller in the United States. His previous novel, The Dead Heart was filmed as Welcome to Woop Woop and The Job, has just been published in paperback. He is also the author of three travel books, Beyond the Pyramids, In God's Country and Chasing Mammon. He now lives in London.
Mary Morrissy was born in Dublin in 1957. Her first collection of short stories, A Lazy Eye, was published in 1993 and her first novel, Mother of Pearl, received critical acclaim when it was published in 1996. Her stories have been anthologised in Ireland, Britain and the United States. She is the recipient of a Lannan Literary Award and a Hennessy Award for short stories. Mother of Pearl was short-listed for the Whitbread Prize and is to be filmed. Her second novel will be published shortly.