Literature is a conversation -- between writers and other writers, and writers and readers. In their introduction to literature anthology, Ann Charters, editor of the bestselling The Story and Its Writer, and Samuel Charters, a much-published poet and novelist, bring students into this conversation through a distinctive set of features, including an abundance of writer commentaries that model how to read and write about literature (and a minimum of intrusive editorial apparatus that may constrain how to think about it). In this edition of Literature and Its Writers, Ann and Samuel Charters open the conversation even further, by expanding the range of writers they include and presenting innovative new kinds of conversations about literature for students to enter.