Dennis Lehane is the author of the Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro mystery series (A Drink Before the War; Darkness, Take My Hand; Sacred; Gone, Baby, Gone; Prayers for Rain; and Moonlight Mile), as well as Coronado (five stories and a play) and the award-winning novels Mystic River, Shutter Island, and The Given Day. Mystic River, Shutter Island, and Gone, Baby, Gone have been made into award-winning films. In 2009 he edited the best-selling anthology Boston Noir for Akashic Books.

Mary Cotton is the pseudonymous author of nine novels for young adults, six of them New York Times bestsellers. She is also a fiction editor for the literary magazine Post Road, and is coeditor of No Near Exit: Writers Select Their Favorite Work from Post Road. She is co-owner of Newtonville Books in Boston, Massachusetts.

Jaime Clarke is the author of the novel We're So Famous, editor of Don't You Forget About Me: Contemporary Writers on the Films of John Hughes, and Conversations with Jonathan Lethem, and coeditor of No Near Exit: Writers Select Their Favorite Work from Post Road. He is a founding editor of Post Road and has taught creative writing at University of Massachusetts, Boston, and Emerson College. He is co-owner of Newtonville Books in Boston, Massachusetts.