Verlyn Klinkenborg was born in Colorado in 1952 and raised in Iowa and California. He graduated from Pomona College and received a Ph.D. in English literature from Princeton University. Mr. Klinkenborg joined the editorial board of the New York Times in 1997. He is the author of Making Hay, The Last Fine Time, The Rural Life, and Timothy; Or, Notes of an Abject Reptile. His work has appeared in many magazines, including The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Esquire, National Geographic, Smithsonian, Audubon, Martha Stewart Living, and Sports Afield, among others. He has taught literature and creative writing at Fordham University, St. Olaf College, Bennington College, and Harvard University and is a recipient of the 1991 Lila WallaceReader's Digest Writer's Award and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. He lives in rural New York.

Ariel Levy is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where she has profiled the South African runner Caster s.e.m.e.nya, the director Nora Ephron, the lesbian separatist Lamar Van d.y.k.e, and the conservative politician Mike Huckabee, among others. Prior to joining The New Yorker in 2008, Levy wrote for New York Magazine for twelve years. Her work has been anthologized in The Best American Essays and Sugar in My Bowl: Real Women Write About Real s.e.x. She is the author of Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture.

Jessica McCaughey is a writer and adjunct professor at George Mason University and Northern Virginia Community College, where she teaches writing, literature, and English as a second language. She earned her B.A. in English at Mary Washington College (now the University of Mary Washington) and both an M.A. in English and an M.F.A. in creative writing at George Mason University. Her work has appeared in The Colorado Review, Silk Road, Phoebe, and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a book examining fear from both a scientific and personal perspective. Jessica lives in Arlington, Virginia, and can be found on-line at [email protected]

Justin n.o.bel covers science and culture for magazines and pens a blog about death for the funeral industry and another where he sits for hours in one New York City spot. He lives in Blissville, a sliver of forgotten New York.

Tea Obreht was born in 1985 in the former Yugoslavia, and spent her childhood in Cyprus and Egypt before eventually immigrating to the United States in 1997. Her writing has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper's Magazine, Zoetrope: All-Story, the New York Times, and the Guardian, and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. Her first novel, The Tiger's Wife, was published in 2011. She has been named by The New Yorker as one of the twenty best American fiction writers under forty and included in the National Book Foundation's list of 5 Under 35. She lives in Ithaca, New York.

Annie Proulx is the author of eight books, including the novel The Shipping News and the story collection Close Range. Her many honors include a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and a PEN/Faulkner Award. Her story "Brokeback Mountain," which originally appeared in The New Yorker, was made into an Academy Awardwinning film. Her memoir Bird Cloud was published in 2011. She lives in Wyoming.

Gary Shteyngart was born in Leningrad in 1972 and came to the United States seven years later. His debut novel, The Russian Debutante's Handbook, won the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. His second novel, Absurdistan, was named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by the New York Times Book Review, as well as a best book of the year by Time, the Washington Post Book World, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, and many other publications. His novel Super Sad True Love Story was published in 2010. He has been selected as one of Granta's Best Young American Novelists. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, GQ and Travel + Leisure, and his books have been translated into more than twenty languages. He lives in New York City.

William T. Vollmann is the author of seven novels, three collections of stories, and a seven-volume critique of violence, Rising Up and Rising Down. He is also the author of Poor People, an examination of poverty worldwide through the eyes of the impoverished themselves; Riding Toward Everywhere, an investigation of the train-hopping hobo lifestyle; and Imperial, a panoramic look at Mexican California. He has won the National Book Award, the PEN Center USA West Award for Fiction, a Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize, and a Whiting Writers' Award. His journalism and fiction have been published in The New Yorker, Esquire, Spin, and Granta.

Emily Witt is a journalist currently based in New York. She has been a staff reporter at the New York Observer and the Miami New Times and has published essays, articles, and reviews in N + 1, Foreign Policy on-line, the New York Times, and The Nation. She was the recipient of a Fulbright fellowship to Mozambique and has also lived in Brazil, Chile, and England.

Notable Travel Writing of 2010.

Selected by Jason Wilson PHYLLIS BARBER.

The Knife Handler. Agni, vol. 71.

ELIF BATUMAN.

The Memory Kitchen. The New Yorker, April 19.

Summer in Samarkand, Part II. N + 1, Spring.

FRANK BURES.

The Roads Between Us: A Journey Across Africa. World Hum, April 19.

ERIC CALDERWOOD.

The Road to Damascus. New England Review, vol. 31, no. 3.

SEBASTIAN COPELAND.

Alone Across Greenland. Men's Journal, December/January.

JOHN D'AGATA.

What Happens There. The Believer, January.

AVI DAVIS.

Creatures of Other Mould. The Believer, November/December.

MARCIA DESANCTIS.

Strangers on a Train. New York Times Magazine, July 16.

BILL DONAHUE.

A Pilgrimage to SkyMall. World Hum, January 26.

BRIAN T. EDWARDS.

Watching Shrek in Tehran. The Believer, March/April.

ETHAN EPSTEIN.

Staring at North Korea. Slate, October 7.

IAN FRAZIER.

On the Prison Highway. The New Yorker, August 30.

A. A. GILL.

Loch, Stalk, and Burials. Vanity Fair, January.

AARON GULLEY.

Shaken. Outside, October.