Charles Baxter is the author of the novel The Feast of Love, which was a finalist for the National Book Award. He has published two other novels, First Light and Shadow Play; and four books of stories, including Believers. His essays on fiction are collected in Burning Down the House; and he has edited or co-edited two books of essays and an anthology, The Business of Memory and Bringing the Devil to His Knees, and Best New American Voices 2001. Baxter received the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work has been widely anthologized, and has been translated into ten languages.

He was born in Minneapolis in 1947, graduated from Macalester College with a B.A. in 1969, and the State University of New York at Buffalo with a Ph.D. in 1974. He taught for several years at Wayne State University in Detroit. Then, in 1989, he moved to the Department of English at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and its MFA program. He now teaches at the University of Minnesota.

"Watch out for the 'quiet Midwestern' tag on [Baxter's] writing: That's the iceberg you will strike. There is nothing simple in his universe, and nothing solely on the surface. Baxter's intelligence and humor are submerged, and dangerous. You know--something like yours." –Detroit Free Press