Elizabeth McMahan is professor emerita of English at Illinois State University. She holds a Ph.D. in nineteenth-century literature from the University of Oregon. While still in graduate school, she wrote her first book, A Crash Course in Composition, published by McGraw Hill. She has taught on every level, from freshman composition to graduate seminars, and has published critical articles on works of literature and teaching composition. She served as the director of writing programs for seven years at Illinois State University. During her academic career, she received an NDEA Title IV Fellowship, the Kester Svendson Dissertation Grant, and the 1978 Illinois Arts Council Essay Award. Since taking early retirement, she has devoted her energies to writing and revising textbooks.

Robert W. Funk taught high school for 10 years before receiving his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois in 1974. He is currently a professor of English at Eastern Illinois University and lectures in grammar, advanced composition, Shakespeare, and methods for teaching English in the secondary school. He has co-authored a number of college-level textbooks with Elizabeth McMahan and Susan Day, including Literature and the Writing Process (6th ed., 2001), The Simon & Schuster Short Prose Reader (2nd ed., 2000), Strategies for College Writing (2000)

He has also lectured at Eureka College and Richland Community College and has presented numerous workshops on composition and the teaching of literature at national and regional conferences, including CCCC and NCTE, and for state and local in-service training sessions. His current research interests include contemporary rhetoric, composition theory, and reader-response criticism.

Susan X. Day is an assistant professor of psychology at Iowa State University of Science and Technology in Ames. She pursues two research programs, one concerning personality and the development of interests, and one concerning the use of distance technology in psychotherapy. Dr. Day taught English at Illinois State University for 20 years before beginning her Ph.D. in psychology at University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. Her specialties in English studies are writing and pedagogy, and she has done research on the practices of dissertation writers and the identity development of creative writers. In 1999, Dr. Day won the national American Psychological Association-sponsored Outstanding Graduate Student Award for excellence in scholarship and professional development in her field. She is the author and co-author of more than a dozen college textbooks in rhetoric, grammar, and literature, and her research has appeared in prestigious journals such as American Psychologist and Psychological Science.

Linda Coleman, is a Professor of English and Women's Studies, at Eastern Illinois University, and regularly teaches courses in composition, eighteenth-century literature, the novel, life-writing, women's literature, and feminist theory. She is author of several textbooks, including Professional and Public Writing, an advanced composition rhetoric and reader, and she regularly reviews manuscripts and books on gender-related topics for The Journal of American Culture. Currently, her research lies in the area of multicultural literature and pedagogy.