CHARLES BAXTER IS author of seven books, including
the story collections First
Light and Believers and the bestselling novel, The Feast of Love, a National Book Award
finalist. Andrea Barrett
calls The Feast of Love a “banquet for the soul”;
a reviewert in The Washington
Post Book World describes it as “a near perfect book, as
deep as it is broad in its humaneness, comedy, and wisdom.”
Baxter’s “trademark” is writing about middle America,
its people and relationships, and he is unique in his ability
to reveal the extraordinary in the world of ordinary people.
He has also written a book about the craft of fiction,
Burning Down the House. He’ll
read from his new novel, Saul
and Patsy (in bookstores 9/03).
THE WASHINGTON POST describes Jane Smiley as
“one of the premier novelists of her generation,” and Pico Iyer
in Time writes that “[s]he turns literary and stylistic cartwheels .
. . . Is there anything Jane Smiley cannot do?”
Her 12 books range in type from historical saga to mystery,
invariably plumbing the intricacies and complications of family
life. They include the Pultizer Prize-winning novel,
A Thousand Acres; The
Greenlanders, which reflects her training as a medieval
scholar; the popular academic satire, Moo;
and Horse Heaven. She will read
from her new novel, Good
Faith, which Publisher’s
Weekly describes as “a clever and entertaining cautionary
tale about America’s greedy decade of the 1980s.”
