Role: Chair

Ben Fountain (Chair) is the author of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, a Finalist for the National Book Award. His work has received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Fiction, the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, the PEN/Cerulli Award for Excellence in Sports Writing, and a Whiting Award, among other honors. He lives in Dallas, Texas. 

(Photo credit: Thorne Anderson)

Sharon M. Draper is a professional educator, as well as an accomplished writer of over thirty award-winning books for adolescents and teachers, including Copper Sun, Winner the 2007 Coretta Scott King Award and the highly acclaimed Jericho and Hazelwood trilogies. She served as the National Teacher of the Year, has been honored at the White House six times, and is a New York Times bestselling author. She was selected by the US State Department to be a literary ambassador to the children of Africa as well as China.

Robert Polito‘s books include the poetry collections Hollywood & God and Doubles, as well as A Reader’s Guide to James Merrill’s The Changing Light at Sandover and the Library of America editions of Kenneth Fearing, Manny Farber, and David Goodis. He received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Savage Art: A Biography of Jim Thompson. He founded the graduate program in creative writing at the New School, and is President of the Poetry Foundation.

Alan Taylor has published seven books, including William Cooper’s Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early Republic, which won the Pulitzer Prize for American history and the Bancroft and Beveridge prizes; The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution; The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies; and The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, which was a finalist for the National Book Award in 2013.

Geraldine Brooks won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel, March. A former foreign correspondent, she has reported from more than fifteen countries and wrote two works of nonfiction before turning to novels, which include Year of Wonders, People of the Book, and Caleb’s Crossing. Born and raised in Sydney, she now lives on Martha’s Vineyard