Novelist Robert Stone described A. M. Homes' 1999 novel, Music for Torching, as "a wondrous, terrifying book that zeroes in and draws out for examination the confusion and violence under the surface of contemporary middle class life. Her insights into social and sexual relationships are breathtaking, and she balances marvelous dialogue with interior reflections in a way that leaves nothing out, yet employs a rare economy of effects. She is certainly among the most important young writers working now and her new book is dazzling."
Homes is the author of three earlier novels, a short story collection, and an artists' book, and her fiction has been translated into ten languages and is much anthologized. She is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, Mirabella, Bomb, and Blind Spot, and her fiction and non-fiction has also appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, Elle, The New York Times Magazine, and numerous other magazines and newspapers.
She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and she teaches in the writing programs at Columbia University and the New School.
David Gates is the author of Jernigan (Knopf, 1991), a novel short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize and called by novelist Joseph Heller, "a sizzler of a novel, a whirlwind," and of Preston Falls (Knopf, 1998), which was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist and about which The New York Times said, "Beautifully written... Gates (has a) pitch-perfect ear for contemporary speech." His short stories have appeared in such national magazines as Esquire, GQ, Grand Street, Triquarterly, and anthologized in Best American Short Stories and the O. Henry Prize Stories. Several of his short stories are collected in his most recent book, The Wonders of the Invisible World (Knopf, 1999).
Gates' "day job" is at Newsweek magazine. He joined the staff as a correspondent in the Letters department in October 1979, became a researcher in 1983, was promoted to associate editor in 1987, and was named general editor in 1986. He has been a senior writer since January 1993, covering book reviews and music for the magazine. He has also written a number of major stories, including the March 29, 1993 cover, "White Male Paranoia: Are They the Newest Victims--or Just Bad Sports?," which examined the increasing anger and defensiveness of white males.
A native of Clinton, Connecticut, David Gates studied English at the University of Connecticut and was a lecturer in the English department at the University of Virginia from 1975-1977, and was an instructor at Harvard University in 1977. He currently splits his time between New York City and Washington County in upstate New York.
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This series made possible in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Westchester Arts Council with funds from Westchester County Government, corporations and individuals and with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency.