Randall Albers chairs the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia College Chicago, home to the Story Workshop® approach to teaching writing and one of the largest graduate and undergraduate creative writing programs in the country. He is also the founding producer of Story Week Festival of Writers. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Chicago Review, Northfield Magazine, Mendocino Review, f Magazine, Writing From Start to Finish, and elsewhere. A chapter from his novel-in-progress, All the World Before Them, appearing in the Summer 2001 issue of f Magazine, was nominated for a Pushcart prize. Selections from his roundtable discussion with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Bharati Mukherjee, April Sinclair, Don DeGrazia, and Geling Yan, "Censorship and the Writer's Voice," recently appeared in f5. He is the co-writer and co-producer of the Story Workshop® creative writing videotapes, The Living Voice Moves and Story From First Impulse to Final Draft, and had presented at AWP and many other national conferences on writing and the teaching of writing. A Certified Story Workshop Master Teacher, he is a former recipient of the Columbia College Chicago Teaching Excellence Award.

Andrew Allegretti is the winner of numerous Illinois Arts Council Artists Fellowships and Literary Awards, and is a professor in the M.F.A. program in Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago. His fiction has been published in many magazines, including TriQuarterly, Private Arts, Stand, Bandit-Lit, and f magazine. "Heat Lightning," the prologue to his novel, Winter House, was also a semifinalist for the James Fellowship for Novels in Progress, sponsored by the Heekin Foundation. Recently, an excerpt from A Fool's Game appeared in f4. Allegretti has chaired the John Schultz & Betty Shiflett Story Workshop® Scholarship Fund gala, is a board member of the Story Workshop Institute, and an active member of the Cultural Committee of the Union League Civic & Arts Foundation. He grew up in Fox River Valley and in Watseka, IL, where his father published a daily newspaper. Allegretti currently resides in Chicago.

Don DeGrazia is a full-time Fiction Writing professor at Columbia College, where he also earned his BA and MFA. After completing his master's thesis, American Skin, DeGrazia decided to send it off to London's prestigious publisher, Jonathan Cape, who had worked with Irvine Welsh and the Scottish Beats he so admired. Cape offered him a contract, and in January 1998, American Skin was published in the U.K. Hailed as an American classic, the book was so highly acclaimed by critics that it caught the attention of publishers around the world, and in April 2000, American Skin was released in the U.S. by Scribner. A flood of positive reviews appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, and the San Francisco Examiner. It is now in its fourth printing and is being translated into other languages. Plans are underway for a feature film. DeGrazia is also the editor of f Magazine, a journal devoted to new fiction. He resides in Chicago, where he is at work on his second novel.

Ann Hemenway earned her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and has published fiction and creative nonfiction in Writing From Start to Finish, Emergence, Private Arts, Sport Literate, and other magazines. Hemenway is an AWP Intro award winner, and has edited numerous publications. She is a Certified Story Workshop Master Teacher and full-time professor in the Fiction Writing department at Columbia College Chicago, and is currently at work on a novel.

Gary Johnson is a writer/producer of creative nonfiction for Public Radio on Morning Edition, Soundprint, Living On Earth, and Pacifica. Among his awards are the Associated Press Award for Best Radio Documentary, National Federation of Community Broadcasters' Silver Reel. He was a Herman Kogan Media Award finalist and a winner of the Edwin L. Schuman Award for Fiction, Northwestern University. His fiction appears in F2, F3, Private Arts, Hyphen, and his articles have appeared in the Chicago Reader. He is a Certified Story Workshop Master Teacher.

Antonia Logue was born in County Derry, Ireland, in 1972. She was raised in Brussels and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. For the past decade, Logue has been a freelance journalist and literary critic for such publications as the Chicago Tribune, the Guardian, the New York Times, Boston Globe, the Irish Times, the Scotsman, the Sunday Tribune, Fortnight, and others. Her debut novel, Shadow-Box (1999), was the winner of the Irish Times Irish Literature Prize and was short-listed for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and Hawthorden Prize. Logue has been recognized as one of the (London) Observer's 21 Writers for the 21st Century. She is a recipient of a Royal Society of Authors (London) Award, has held four Yaddo residencies, and is an Honorary Fellow of the University of Iowa's Writing Program. Logue was recently commissioned to write a new play for the Irish Repertory Theatre of Chicago, as well as an opera in collaboration with New York composer Harold Metzler. Her second novel, Say of What You See in the Dark, will soon be published.

Eric May graduated with a BA in Writing/English from Columbia in 1975 and the following year joined what was then Columbia's Writing/English Department as a part-time instructor. He moved to Washington D.C. in 1985 to attend graduate school at American University and began working at the Washington Post as a newsroom clerk. In 1987, he joined the Post staff where he was a reporter on the Metro section. He returned to Columbia College in 1993. His fiction and nonfiction have been published in such literary anthologies as Fish Stories: Collective I, Sport Literate, Angels in My Oven, and f5 Magazine. May is a Certified Story Workshop Director, and Associate Faculty member at the Stonecoast Writers' Conference in Maine, and a past Board of Judges member for the Columbia University Scholastic Press Association (CSPA). He is currently at work on a novel and a memoir.

Patricia Ann McNair, Director of the Graduate Program in Creative Writing — Fiction, has had her fiction and creative nonfiction appear in various anthologies, journals, and magazines, including American Fiction: Best Unpublished Short Stories by Emerging Writers; Other Voices; Dogwood; River Teeth; Fourth Genre; Brevity; and Creative Nonfiction.  Her travel writing is published regularly in The Elks Magazine and enRoute — Air Canada's in-flight magazine, and her work is featured in the textbook The Truth of the Matte: Art and Craft in Creative Nonfiction.  Her honors include four Illinois Arts Council awards as well as Pushcart Prize nominations in fiction and nonfiction, a Writer's Grant and residency at the Vermont Studio Center, a residency at the Glen Arbor Arts Association, and a Writer-in-Residence position at Interlochen Arts Academy.  McNair is a full-time Professor in the Fiction Writing Department at Columbia College Chicago.

Joe Meno is a fiction writer and playwright that lives in Chicago. A winner of the Nelson Algren Literary Award and the Society of Midland Author's Fiction Prize, he is the author of four novels, The Boy Detective Fails (Akashic 2006), Hairstyles of the Damned (Akashic 2004), Tender as Hellfire (St. Martin's 1999), and How the Hula Girl Sings (HarperCollins 2001). His short story collection is Bluebirds Used to Croon in the Choir (TriQuarterly 2005). His online serial, "The Secret Hand", ran through Playboy magazine at playboy.com. His short fiction has been published in the likes of McSweeney's, Witness, TriQuarterly, Mid-American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Washington Square, Other Voices, Gulf Coast, and broadcast on NPR.

Alexis Pride, coordinator of Story Week and Fiction Writing Department outreach events, earned her MFA in Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago, where today she is a full-time Fiction Writing Department professor. She earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Pride served as former Director of Curriculum Planning at the Saturday Academy and was a consultant for the Chicago Public Schools through the Chicago Teachers Center at Northeastern Illinois University. Pride received the Columbia University Scholastic Press Association (CSPA) Award for her short story "Fried Buffalo." She has recently completed a book on Mama Hawk, a Chicago educator and social activist, entitled Stirred With Fire.

Betty Shiflett is a professor emeritus and consultant, writer, playwright, and co-producer of Story Workshop videotapes. Illinois Arts Council Fellowship recipient and two Pushcart Prize nominations in fiction. Author of We Dream of Tours (play), Phantom Rider (music drama). Stories, articles, and novels and play excerpts in Life, Evergreen Review, American Fiction: Best Unpublished Short Stories by American Writers, Fiction and Poetry by Texas Women, Emergence: Writings by Women, Private Arts, F Magazine, Writing From Start to Finish, College English, and The Sichuan Literature Monthly, translation by award-winning novelist Geling Yan. Featured teacher and co-producer of classroom video Story From First Impulse to Final Draft, also co-producer of video The Living Voice Moves. Class segment and interview in video From Grad School to Grade School: Voice and Content Permission in the Writing Classroom shown at NCTE, AWP, and MMLA. Numerous presentations at Modern Language Association, College Composition and Communication Conference, Associated Writing Programs, National Conference of Teachers of English, Midwest Modern Language Association, College English Education. Featured presenter at the 1975 invitational NCTE Research on Composing Conference at SUNY Buffalo, and presenter at American Society of Training Directors. Guest reader, Southwest Writers’ Conference. Inaugural Fellow for Excellence in Teaching. Certified Principal Story Workshop Master Teacher.

Shawn Shiflett's novel Hidden Place was included in Library Journal's "Summer Highs, Fall firsts," a 2004 list of "most successful debuts." He received an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship for his work and was a three-time Finalist for the James novel-in-progress contest, sponsored by the Heekin Group Foundation. His short stories and novel excerpts appeared in a variety of literary journals. He was elected to Newcity's Chicago Lit 50 list, an annual ranking of top figures in the Chicago literary scene.

Sam Weller is the author of The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury (William Morrow, 2005) winner of the Society of Midland Author's Award for Best Biography of 2005.  The book was also a finalist for the prestigious Bram Stoker Award. Sam is the former Midwest Correspondent for Publishers Weekly. He is a contributing writer for the Chicago Public Radio program, 848 and his work has appeared on the National Public Radio program, All Things Considered. Sam is a regular contributor to the Chicago Tribune Magazine, a frequent literary critic for the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, as well as Punk Planet magazine. During his tenure as managing editor of Columbia College's Gravity, the publication was given Newsweek magazine's Robert Sibley award for best college magazine. As a staff writer for the Chicago alternative weekly, Newcity, Sam was the recipient of the Peter Lisagor Award for arts criticism. Sam is also a frequent lecturer. In 2006, he spoke across the country as part of the National Endowment for the Arts "Big Read" initiative. He is the author of Secret Chicago: The Unique Guidebook to Chicago's Hidden Sites, Sounds & Tastes (ECW Press) and his short fiction has appeared in Spec-Lit. He received his MFA in Fiction from Columbia College Chicago. Sam lives in Chicago with his family.