Ann Hood is the author of thirteen novels including the bestsellers The Knitting Circle and The Obituary Writer, as well as a memoir, Comfort: A Journey Through Grief. She is also the editor of Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting, Knitting Pearls: More Writers on Knitting, and Providence Noir. She is the winner of two Pushcart prizes as well as two Best American Food Writing, Best American Travel Writing, and Best American Spiritual Writing awards. Her most recent novel is The Book That Matters Most. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

Alden Jones’s first book, The Blind Masseuse, was longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award, winner of an Independent Publishers Book Award for Travel Essays, and called “the best travel book of 2013” by the Huffington Post. Her story collection, Unaccompanied Minors, won the New American Fiction Prize, the Lascaux Book Prize, and an Independent Publishers Book Award for Short Fiction. She has lived, worked, and traveled in over forty countries, including as a creative writing teacher and program director in Cuba, a WorldTeach volunteer in Costa Rica, and a professor on Semester at Sea. She lives in Boston, where she teaches at Emerson College.