Saul Bellow (1915-2005) is the only novelist to receive three National Book Awards, for The Adventures of Augie March, Herzog, and Mr. Sammler's Planet. In 1976, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel Humboldt's Gift. The Nobel Prize in Literature was also awarded to him in 1976 "for the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work." In 1990, Mr. Bellow was presented the National Book Award Foundation Medal for distinguished contribution to American letters. He also received the National Medal of Arts.

Benjamin Taylor, editor, is the author of Naples Declared: A Walk Around the Bay, named a Best Book of 2012 by the New Yorker, and of two award-winning novels, Tales Out of School and The Book of Getting Even. Proust: The Future's Secret, his contribution to the Yale Jewish Lives series, will be published in autumn 2015. He previously edited Saul Bellow: Letters, named a Best Book of 2010 by Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times and Jonathan Yardley of the Washington Post. A faculty member in The New School's Graduate School of Writing, Taylor also teaches in the Graduate Writing Division of the School of the Arts at Columbia University. He is a past fellow and current trustee of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.