Praised for his ability to flesh out vivid characters whose lives saturate puzzling cultural backdrops, Ken Kalfus is the author of the story collections Thirst and PU-239 and Other Russian Fantasies, a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist.  His novels include The Commissariat of Enlightenment, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and A Disorder Peculiar to the Country, in which the events of 9/11 make an unlikely springboard for a biting story about the dissolution of a marriage. His new novel, Equilateral, is a sly comedy placed at the cusp of turn-of-the-century Egypt. 

Acclaimed for his masterful writing about the many manifestations of desire and his signature economy of prose, James Salter received the 2012 PEN/Malamud Award, which honors excellence in the art of the short story. He is the author of more than a dozen books, including the novels Light Years, A Sport and a Pastime, The Arm of Flesh, and The Hunters; the memoirs Gods of Tin and Burning the Days; and the short story collection Dusk and Other Stories, which won the 1989 PEN/Faulkner Award. A panoramic, seductive love story set in post-World War II America, All That Is celebrates the small tremors and the grand pleasures of being alive.