Bret Lott is the author of seven novels, including Ancient Highway (Random House, 2008), A Song I Knew by Heart (Ballantine Books, 2005), and Jewel (Simon & Schuster, 1999), an Oprah Book Club selection. He has published three short story collections, as well as a writing guide, Before We Get Started: A Practical Memoir of the Writer’s Life (Ballantine Books, 2005), and a memoir, Fathers, Sons, & Brothers (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1997). In 2008, he edited two volumes of Eyes to See, an anthology of short stories. Lott received an MFA in fiction from University of Massachusetts, Amherst and went on to teach at the College of Charleston from 1986 to 2004. He was the editor and director of The Southern Review at Louisiana State University from 2004 to 2007, during which time he was named a Fulbright Senior American Scholar and a visiting writer-in-residence at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, Israel. He returned to teach at the College of Charleston in 2007.  

Photo by Luke Rutan