William Sloane (1906–1974) was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts. After graduating from Princeton University in 1929 he enjoyed modest success writing supernatural and fantasy dramas. By the end of the 1930s he had published his only two novels, To Walk the Night (1937) and The Edge of Running Water (1939). During the 1950s he edited two science-fiction anthologies, Space, Space, Space: Stories About the Time When Men Will Be Adventuring to the Stars (1953) and Stories for Tomorrow (1954). Sloane taught at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference for more than twenty-five years and was responsible for inviting many notable writers, including John Williams and John Ciardi, to join the faculty. In 1983 a collection of his Bread Loaf lectures was published as The Craft of Writing. For much of his career Sloane held numerous editorial positions, including a stint at his own publishing house, and from 1955 until his death he was the managing director of Rutgers University Press.

Stephen King is the author of more than fifty novels, hundreds of stories, and several works of nonfiction, including On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Among his most recent books are The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, a collection of stories and novellas, and Finders Keepers, the second book in a trilogy of novels featuring retired homicide detective Bill Hodges. Much of his fiction has been adapted for film and television, including Carrie, based on his first published novel, Misery, Under the Dome, and The Shawshank Redemption.