American Literature

Editors in Chief

Jackson R. Bryer is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Maryland, where he taught undergraduate and graduate courses, principally in twentieth-century American fiction and American dramatic literature, for more than four decades. He is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of more than 50 books. Among them are Black American Writers: Bibliographical Essays (1978); American Women Writers: Bibliographical Essays (1983); Conversations with Lillian Hellman (1987); Selected Letters of Eugene O’Neill (1988); Sixteen Modern American Authors––Volume 2: A Survey of Research and Criticism Since 1972 (1990); The Heath Anthology of American Literature (1990; 1994; 1998; 2001; 2005; 2009); Lanford Wilson: A Casebook (1994); French Connections: Hemingway and Fitzgerald Abroad (1998); The Actor’s Art: Conversations with Contemporary American Stage Performers (2001); Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (2002); The Facts on File Companion to American Drama (2004; 2009); The Art of the American Musical: Conversations with the Creators (2005); Conversations with August Wilson (2006); The Selected Letters of Thornton Wilder (2008); Approaches to Teaching Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (2009); Thornton Wilder: New Perspectives (2013); William Inge: Essays and Reminiscences on the Plays and the Man (2014); Eugene O’Neill: The Contemporary Reviews (2014); Thornton Wilder in Collaboration: Collected Essays on His Drama and Fiction (2018); Why I Like This Story (2019); Conversations with Neil Simon (2019); Conversations with Sam Shepard (2021); and Conversations with Beth Henley (2023). He is the co-editor and co-founder of Resources for American Literary Study and co-editor of The F. Scott Fitzgerald Review and of the Thornton Wilder Journal. He is co-founder and President of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society, President of the Thornton Wilder Society, former President and current member of the Board of Directors of the Eugene O’Neill Society, and former member of the Board of Directors of the Ernest Hemingway Society and Foundation. He has served on the editorial boards of the South Atlantic Quarterly, the Eugene O’Neill Review, and American Drama.

Richard Kopley is Professor Emeritus of English at Penn State DuBois, where he taught both literature and writing. A specialist in American Romanticism, he has published extensively on Edgar Allan Poe (including Edgar Allan Poe and the Dupin Mysteries [Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, 2011]) and Nathaniel Hawthorne (including The Threads of The Scarlet Letter: A Study of Hawthorne’s Transformative Art [University of Delaware Press, 2003]). He has spoken on Poe and Hawthorne at scholarly conferences in the United States and around the world. He has also served as president of the Poe Studies Association and the Nathaniel Hawthorne Society. And he has published, as well, on Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Herman Melville. Dr. Kopley has edited several books—Poe’s Pym: Critical Explorations (Duke University Press, 1992), Prospects for the Study of American Literature (NYU Press, 1997), Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (Penguin, 1999)—and co-edited others—Prospects for the Study of American Literature (II) (AMS Press, 2010) and Poe Writing / Writing Poe (AMS Press, 2013). He is the co-editor of the journal Resources for American Literary Study (Penn State Press, 1992-2001; AMS Press, 2002-present) and has served as the Chat Coordinator for the Council of Editors of Learned Journals. Dr. Kopley has also published short stories (“A Dream” [Poe Review, 2003] and “The Hideous and Intolerable Bookshop” [Lighthouse Anthology 2, Alma Press, 2012]) and a children’s picture-book (The Remarkable David Wordsworth [Eifrig Publishing, 2013]).

Paul Lauter is Allan K. and Gwendolyn Miles Smith Professor of Literature Emeritus at Trinity College (Hartford). He taught American literature, specializing in the early 19th century and in contemporary multicultural writing. He is the author of many articles and a number of books, most recently Our Sixties: An Activist's History (Rochester, 2020) and, with Nicholas Coles, an edited volume, A History of American Working-Class Literature (Cambridge, 2017). Earlier books include Canons and Contexts (Oxford) and From Walden Pond to Jurassic Park (Duke). Lauter was the primary organizer of the Heath Anthology of American Literature now in its 7th edition and he remains general editor; the book represents a successful effort to put canon change into practice. Other projects have included a co-edited collection called Literature, Class, and Culture (Longman’s), a volume of Thoreau’s writings for the New Riverside Series (Houghton Mifflin), and a Blackwell Companion to American Literature and Culture (Wiley-Blackwell). Lauter served as president of the American Studies Association (USA). Earlier he served as statewide vice-president of the SUNY faculty-staff union, and in a number of positions in the peace movement. He was the 2001 recipient of the annual Jay Hubbell medal for lifetime achievement in American Literary Study awarded by the Modern Language Association; and in 2006 of the Bode-Pearson Prize of the American Studies Association for lifetime achievement in American Studies. He has also been honored with the Francis Andrew March Award of the MLA's Association of Departments of English, and with lifetime achievement awards in ethnic studies and in working-class studies.