Andrew Sean Greer was born in Washington, DC, the son of two scientists. He studied writing at Brown University, where he was the Commencement Speaker at his own graduation. After years in New York working as a chauffeur, television extra and unsuccessful writer, he moved to Missoula, MT, where he received his MFA from the University of Montana. He soon moved to San Francisco and began to publish in magazines such as Esquire, The Paris Review and The New Yorker before releasing a collection of his stories, How It Was for Me. His first novel, The Path of Minor Planets, was published to much acclaim in 2001, and his second book, The Confessions of Max Tivoli, came out in 2004. John Updike first put this novel on the literary map when, in the pages of The New Yorker, he called it “enchanting, in the perfumed, dandified style of disenchantment brought to grandeur by Proust and Nabokov.” Mitch Albom then chose Max for the Today Show Book Club and it soon became a bestseller. He is the recipient of the California Book Award, the Northern California Book Award, the New York Public Library Young Lions Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Public Library.

Mark Sarvas lives the quiet life with his wife in Pacific Palisades. His debut novel, Harry, Revised, was just published by Bloomsbury as well as is in more than a dozen countries around the world. He is best known as the host of the popular and controversial literary weblog The Elegant Variation, a Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog, a Forbes Magazine Best of the Web pick, and a Los Angeles Magazine Top L.A. Blog. It has been covered by The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Scotsman, Salon, the Christian Science Monitor, Slate, the Denver Post, The Village Voice, New York Newsday, the New York Sun, NPR's Day to Day and All Things Considered and numerous other fine publications. His book reviews and criticism have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Threepenny Review, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Truthdig, The Modern Word, Boldtype and the Los Angeles Review, and he is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. He has written episodic comedy for HBO and Showtime as well as screenplays for Warner Brothers, producer David Foster, and the World Entertainment and Business Network. His fiction has appeared in Troika Magazine, The Wisconsin Review, Apostrophe, Thought Magazine, Pindeldyboz and as part of the Spoken Interludes, Vermin on the Mount and Swink reading series in Los Angeles.