Eleanor Henderson, the Director of the Ithaca Writers Institute, is the author of the novel Ten Thousand Saints, which was named one of the Top 10 Books of 2011 by The New York Times and a finalist for the Art Seidenbaum Award from the Los Angeles Times. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Salon, NPR, Poets & Writers, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Agni, and The Best American Short Stories. She holds an M.F.A. from the University of Virginia and teaches fiction writing at Ithaca College, where Ten Thousand Saints was the First Year Reading Initiative selection for 2012.