The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books began in 1996 with a simple goal: to bring together the people who create books with the people who love to read them. The festival was an immediate success and has become the largest and most prestigious book festival in the country, attracting more than 130,000 book lovers each year.

Jill Bialosky is the author of acclaimed novels and books of poetry including House Under Snow and her latest The Intruder. Also a respected poet and essayist, her work appears regularly in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, and O, The Oprah Magazine.

Zoe Ferraris' first novel, Finding Nouf, was nominated for the 2008 Los Angeles Times Award for First Fiction. She has an MFA from Columbia University and currently lives in San Francisco.

Joan Silber was a finalist for the National Book Award for Ideas of Heaven. Her newest novel is The Size of the World, nominated for the 2008 Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Fiction. Silber teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in New York City.

Davod Wroblewski's first novel, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, is a finalist for the 2008 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction. He earned his master's degree from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and now lives in Colorado.