by Zadie Smith
HARI KUNZRU is the author of The Impressionist, Transmission and the short story collection Noise, and was named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2003. He is a contributing editor of Mute magazine and sits on the executive council of English PEN. He lives in East London.
JONATHAN LETHEM is the author of six novels including The Fortress of Solitude, as well as two collections of short stories. He lives in Brooklyn and Maine.
TOBY LITT was born in 1968. He is the author of Adventures in Capitalism, Beatniks, Corpsing, deadkidsongs, Exhibitionism, Finding Myself, Ghost Story and Hospital. In 2003, he was named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. His website can be found at www.tobylitt.com.
DAVID MITCHELL was born in England in 1969. He is the author of four novels. He lives in Ireland with his wife and their two children.
ANDREW O’HAGAN lives in London and his latest novel is Be Near Me.
ZZ PACKER is the author of Drinking Coffee Elsewhere, which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and a New York Times Notable Book. A graduate of Yale, she has been a Wallace Stegner-Truman Capote fellow at Stanford University, where she is currently a Jones lecturer. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area.
GEORGE SAUNDERS, a 2006 MacArthur Fellow, is the author of five books of fiction including the short story collections CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, Pastoralia, and In Persuasion Nation. He teaches at Syracuse University.
POSY SIMMONDS was born in 1945 in Berkshire. She studied at the Sorbonne University, Paris before returning to England to attend the Central School of Art and Design in London. She has contributed to the Guardian since 1972 and has also drawn for the Sun, The Times and Cosmopolitan. Her bestselling children’s books include Fred, Lulu and the Flying Babies and The Chocolate Wedding, and her books for adults include Gemma Bovery and Literary Life. She lives in London.
ZADIE SMITH was born in north-west London in 1975. She is the author of White Teeth, The Autograph Man and On Beauty.
ADAM THIRLWELL was born in 1978. His first novel, Politics, was published in 2003. A book about novels, Miss Herbert, is out this year. ‘Nigora’ is from a novel in progress.
COLM TÓIBÍN is the author of the five novels, including The Black-water Lightship and The Master, and a volume of stories Mothers and Sons. He lives in Dublin.
VENDELA VIDA is the author of two novels, Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name and And Now You Can Go. Her first book, Girls on the Verge, was a journalistic study of female initiation rituals in America. She is the co-editor of The Believer magazine, the editor of The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers, and a founding board member and teacher at 826 Valencia. She lives in Northern California.
CHRIS WARE lives outside of Chicago, Illinois, and is the author of Jimmy Corrigan - the Smartest Kid on Earth. He is currently serializing two new graphic novels in his ongoing periodical The ACME Novelty Library, the 18th and 18½ issues of which will be released in late 2007.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Ted Thompson and Sarah Vowell for suggesting the project, to Linda Shaughnessy and Georgia Garrett for ensuring publication in many territories, and to Nick Laird for the title.
1 You can find out more about their work at www.826ny.org.