Wilton Barnhardt is a former reporter for Sports Illustrated and is the author of Emma Who Saved My Life (1989), Gospel (1993), and Show World (1999).

Barnhardt took his B.A. at Michigan State University, and was a graduate student at Brasenose College, University of Oxford, where he read for an M.Phil. in English. He teaches fiction-writing to undergraduate and graduate students at the North Carolina State University in Raleigh, where he is the director of the Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Writing.