Rachel Pastan and Josh Weil

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | Rachel Pastan’s most recent novel, Alena (Riverhead, 2014), was named an Editors’ Choice in The New York Times Book Review and is a finalist for the New England Society Book Award in fiction. She is also the author of two other novels, Lady of the Snakes (Harcourt, 2008) and This Side of Married (Viking, 2004). Her short fiction has been published in The Georgia Review, The Threepenny Review, Mademoiselle, Prairie Schooner, and many other places. She has a BA in English from Harvard College and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and has received grants from the Wisconsin Arts Board and the Delaware Arts Council. In 2014 she edited Seven Writers (The Common Press), a chapbook of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry inspired by exhibitions organized at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, where until recently she served as Editor-at-Large. 

Josh Weil is the author of the novel The Great Glass Sea and the novella collection The New Valley, both New York Times Editor’s Choices. A Fulbright Fellow and National Book Foundation 5-under-35 honoree, his awards include the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Sue Kaufman Prize from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, the GrubStreet National Book Prize, the Library of Virginia’s Award in Fiction, the New Writers Award from the Great Lakes Colleges Association, and a Pushcart Prize. His short writing has appeared in Granta, Tin House, One Story, Esquire, and The New York Times. Granted fellowships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences, VCCA, and the MacDowell Colony, he has taught in the MFA programs at Columbia University, Brooklyn College, The New School and Bennington College, and been Distinguished Visiting Writer at Bowling Green State University and Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi. He currently lives with his family in California’s Sierra Nevada.