Wallace Stegner (1909–1993) published more than two dozen books throughout his life, including the novels Angle of Repose, which won the Pulitzer Prize; Crossing to Safety; and The Big Rock Candy Mountain. An early environmentalist, Stegner was instrumental—with his now famous “Wilderness Letter”—in the passage of the 1964 Wilderness Act.
Jane Smiley is the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of more than ten novels and four works of nonfiction. She lives in California.