Don DeLillo published his first short story when he was twenty-three years old. He has since written more than a dozen novels, including
White Noise (1985), which won the National Book Award. It was followed by
Libra (1988), his novel about the assassination of President Kennedy, and by
Mao II, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. In 1997 he published the bestselling
Underworld, and in 1999 he was awarded the Jerusalem Prize, given to a writer whose work expresses the theme of the freedom of the individual in society; he was the first American author to receive it. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Richard Powers (introduction) is the author of more than a dozen novels, including the Pulitzer Prize winner
The Overstory and the National Book Award winner
The Echo Maker. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, he lives in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.