Robert Byington, a writer and filmmaker, won last year’s Austin Chronicle Short Story contest. He lives in Austin and is making a romantic comedy about a man getting out of jail and trying to readjust to civilian life, titled Registered Sex Offender.
Doug Dorst, who teaches creative writing at St. Edward’s University, is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a recent Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. His short stories have appeared in McSweeney’s, Ploughshares, Epoch, and other journals, as well as in the anthology Politically Inspired (MacAdam/Cage, 2003). He collaborated with San Francisco’s foolsFURY Theater on Monster in the Dark, a devised play that was produced in 2005. His first novel, Alive in Necropolis, and story collection, The Surf Guru, are forthcoming from Riverhead Books.
Elizabeth Harris grew up in Fort Worth and Pittsburgh, has also lived in Boston, Toledo, Dublin (Ireland), and Palo Alto. She earned several degrees, including a Ph.D. from Stanford University. Her short story collection, The Ant Generator (University of Iowa Press, 1991), won the John Simmons Fiction Award and is still in print. She has completed a novel, The Looks Thief, which she will soon be trying to sell. She teaches fiction writing at the University of Texas at Austin in the graduate and undergraduate programs, is married, and reads, cooks, birds, and travels.
Clay Smith is the literary director of the Texas Book Festival and the former Books editor at the Chronicle.
Dao Strom is an author and musician (www.daostrom.com). Her first novel, Grass Roof, Tin Roof, was published in 2003 by Mariner Books, and she released her debut album, Send Me Home, in 2004. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the recipient of several awards, including an NEA Literature Fellowship. Her second book of fiction, The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys, is due out in May 2006 with Counterpoint Press.
This article appears in February 17 • 2006.