Mick Cochrane
Mick Cochrane was born and raised in St. Paul, MN. He earned an undergraduate degree from the University of St. Thomas and a PhD in English from the University of Minnesota. His first novel, Flesh Wounds (Nan Talese/Doubleday), was named a finalist in Barnes and Noble’s Discover Great New Writers Competition. His second novel, Sport (St. Martin's/Dunne Books), was selected for the annual New York Public Library's Books for the Teen Age List. His first novel for young readers, The Girl Who Threw Butterflies (Random House), was named winner of the Judy Lopez Memorial Prize for Excellence in Fiction. His latest novel is Fitz (Knopf). His stories have been published in a number of literary journals, including The Cincinnati Review, Five Points, Kansas Quarterly, and Northwest Review. He has been named Peter Canisius Distinguished Teaching Professor three times. In 2015, he received Canisius University's Koessler Distinguished Faculty Award.
Eric Gansworth
Eric Gansworth is a member of the Onondaga Nation. He is the author of ten books, including the novels, Extra Indians (American Book Award, New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association Book of the Year), Mending Skins, (PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Award), and the collection of poems and paintings, A Half-Life of Cardio-Pulmonary Function, which appeared on the National Book Critics Circle's "Good Reads" List for Spring 2008. His most recent book is a novel for young adults, If I Ever Get Out of Here (Scholastic). His work, fiction, non-fiction, poetry and visual art, has been published in more than a dozen anthologies and has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Boston Review, Shenandoah, Cold Mountain Review, Poetry International, New York Quarterly, Yellow Medicine Review, American Indian Quarterly, Stone Canoe, UCLA American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Many Mountains Moving, Studies in American Indian Literature, and Slipstream, among others. He has held residencies at The Public Theater, The Seaside Institute, The Associated Colleges of the Twin Cities, The Solstice Summer Writing Conference, and The Institute for American Indian Art, among others. As a visual artist, Gansworth has exhibited in many group shows and has had solo or two-person exhibits at Niagara University, The Stuyvesant Gallery, Bright Hill Center, Canisius University, and Colgate University. He has received theater commissions from SUNY Oneonta and Ohio Northern University and was the recipient of an Individual Artist's Grant for Fiction, from the Constance Saltonstall Foundation.
Janet McNally
Janet McNally graduated summa cum laude from Canisius University in 2002 and earned a master's in fine arts degree in creative writing from the University of Notre Dame. In 2008, she was among 18 fiction writers from New York State to receive the prestigious New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) fellowship. She has published stories and poems in a number of literary magazines, including North American Review, Gettysburg Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Crab Orchard Review, Bellingham Review, and New Madrid. In 2014 her book of poems Some Girls was chosen by Ellen Bass as winner of the White Pine Press Poetry Prize, and the book was published in August 2015. Her young adult novel Girls in the Moon is forthcoming from HarperTeen (HarperCollins) in the fall of 2016.