Julie Orringer and Ayelet Waldman: Does Literature Matter?

Julie Orringer

style='color:black'> is the author of How to Breathe Underwater, a collection

of short stories.  She is a lecturer in Creative Writing and Continuing

Studies at Stanford.  Julie was a Truman Capote Fellow in the Stegner

Program; she received her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and her BA from

Cornell University.  Her stories have appeared in The Yale Review,

Prize XXV and XXVII, The Best New American Voices 2001, and

New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, 2002.  Her short

story collection won the 2004 Northern California Book Award. She is

currently working on a novel.

Ayelet Waldman is the author of Daughter's Keeper and of the

Mommy-Track Mysteries. Her personal essays have been published in a variety

of periodicals, including the New York Times, Child Magazine, and the San

Francisco Chronicle. She has a regular column on Salon.com. Her books are

published throughout the world, in countries as disparate as England and Thailand.

Her latest novel, Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, will be published

by Doubleday in January of 2006. It has been optioned for the screen by the

Walt Disney Company.