Robert Morgan is the author of several books of poems, most recently Terroir (2011) and Dark Energy (2015). He has published a dozen works of fiction, including the New York Times bestseller Gap Creek (1999). Among his nonfiction books are the national bestseller Boone: A Biography (2007) and Fallen Angel: The Life of Edgar Allan Poe (2023). He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. A native of western North Carolina, he is currently Kappa Alpha Professor of English (Emeritus) at Cornell University.

Randall Wilhelm is a writer, editor, and researcher who lives in Clemson, South Carolina. He is editor of Uplands: Selected Stories of Robert Morgan,Conversations with Robert Morgan, Summoning the Dead: Essays on Ron Rash, and The Ron Rash Reader.