Hisham Aidi is a lecturer at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. He was a George Soros OSI Fellow, a Carnegie Scholar, and co-editor of Black Routes to Islam with Manning Marable. He has been a columnist for Al Jazeera and also wrote for Africana.com based at Harvard University's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute. He lives in New York.

Safa Samiezade'-Yazd currently edits the Arts and Culture and Music sections for Aslan Media, an online media source on the Middle East and its global diaspora communities. She has blogged for Care2's Causes and News Network, where she was recognized for her cultural reporting on the Egyptian protests in Tahrir Square. Her writings on resistance art within Middle East conflict and periphery cultures can be found online at Art21 and Reorient Magazine, as well as Deutsche Welle's upcoming anthology Sitting on the Fence: The Role of Media and Conflict. She lives in Denver, Colorado.

Masha Gessen is the author of seven books, including the national bestseller The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. Born in Moscow, she emigrated to the United States in her teens, then returned to Russia a decade later. Writing in both Russian and English, she has covered every major development in Russian politics and culture of the past two decades, receiving numerous awards and fellowships in the process. She blogs weekly for The New York Times and has written for The New York Review of Books, International Herald Tribune, The Guardian, andU.S. News & World Report (where she served as Moscow Bureau Chief), and has also edited several Russian magazines. She has recently relocated to New York City.

Suzi Weissmanis a Professor of Politics at Saint Mary’s College of California. She broadcasts the weekly Beneath the Surface with Suzi Weissman program on KPFK Los Angeles. She serves on the editorial boards of Critique and Against the Current, and is the author of Victor Serge: The Course is Set on Hope, and the editor of Victor Serge: Russia Twenty Years After and The Ideas of Victor Serge.

Walter Mosley is the author of more than 34 critically acclaimed books, including the bestselling mystery series featuring Easy Rawlins. His work has been translated into 21 languages and includes literary fiction, science fiction, political monographs, and a young adult novel. He is the winner of numerous awards, including an O. Henry Award, a Grammy, and PEN America's Lifetime Achievement Award.

Attica Locke's first novel, Black Water Rising, was shortlisted for the prestigious Orange Prize in the UK in 2010 and nominated for an Edgar Award as well as a Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Attica has spent many years working as a screenwriter, penning movie and television scripts for Paramount, Warner Bros, Disney, and Twentieth Century Fox, among others. She was a fellow at the Sundance Institute's Feature Filmmakers Lab and is a member of the board of directors for the Library Foundation of Los Angeles. Most recently, she wrote the introduction for the UK publication of Ernest Gaines's A Lesson Before Dying. Her second book is The Cutting Season, for which Locke recently received The Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence.

Edward Frenkel is a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, and was previously on the faculty at Harvard University. He is a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society and winner of the Hermann Weyl Prize in mathematical physics. His recent work has focused on the Langlands Program and dualities in Quantum Field Theory. Frenkel has authored two books and over eighty research articles in mathematical journals, and he has lectured on his work around the world. He co-produced, co-directed, and played the lead in the film "Rites of Love and Math," which French newspaper Le Monde called "a stunning short film... offering an unusual romantic vision of mathematicians."

Described by Time Magazine as a "televisionary," Chris Carter created one of the most successful television franchises of all time with his award-winning show The X-Files. The show ran a remarkable nine seasons, is still seen today in over 60 countries, and spawned two films as well as a comic book and video game adaptations. Carter also created the shows Millennium, Harsh Realm, and The Lone Gunmen. The impact of Carter’s series is such that in 1997, Time Magazine named him one of "The 25 Most Influential People in America. After a hiatus from television, Carter is about to return to the medium, helming Amazon Studios' very first TV drama pilot The After, which he wrote and directed.

Barry Miles is the author of many seminal books on popular culture, including the authorized biography of Paul McCartney, Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now; Ginsberg: A Biography; William Burroughs: El Hombre Invisible; Jack Kerouac: King of the Beats; and The Beat Hotel: Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Corso in Paris, 1957-1963. He also co-edited the revised text edition of William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch.

David L. Ulin is a book critic for the Los Angeles Times and, from 2005-2010, was the paper's book editor. He is the author of The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time and The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith, and the editor of Another City: Writing from Los Angeles and Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a 2002 California Book Award. His essays and criticism have appeared in many publications.

Singer-songwriter Angélique Kidjo has been recognized as one of Africa’s "50 most iconic figures" (the BBC) and one of the world’s "100 most inspiring women" (The Guardian). Among the many honors, she received her June 2103 appointment as vice-president of CISAC, the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers. She now makes her home in Brooklyn, New York, with her family. In 2014, she will follow up the release of her memoir with the release of a new album of original songs distributed by Savoy Records and a world tour.

Lorraine Ali is a writer and journalist who is currently serving as Music Editor for the Los Angeles Times. She was previously a Senior Writer with Newsweek, where she covered culture, music, and the Middle East. Lorraine has written for publications such as the New York Times, Rolling Stone, and GQ and is currently working on a book about the plight of her Iraqi family following the 2003 invasion.

Evelyn McDonnell is the author and co-editor of five books, including Mamarama: A Memoir of Sex, Kids and Rock ‘n’ Roll. She has worked as a pop music critic for the Miami Herald and as senior editor for the Village Voice. She’s won several awards, including an Annenberg Fellowship at USC and first place for enterprise by the South Florida Black Journalists Association. She is currently a journalism professor at Loyola Marymount University.

Exene Cervenka is an American singer, songwriter, artist, and activist. Shortly after moving to Los Angeles in 1977, Exene met John Doe at a poetry workshop at Beyond Baroque. Together with guitarist Billy Zoom, they formed the seminal Los Angeles punk band, X. To this day, X continues to play nationally and internationally with all four original members: Cervenka, Doe, Zoom, and drummer D.J. Bonebrake. Over the years, Exene has published poetry, prose, and art books; exhibited her collages in museums and galleries; recorded and toured with her other bands; played solo shows with an acoustic guitar and her songs; and said "yes" to just about every insane, imaginative, worthwhile project other thinking humans have offered her.

Allison Wolfe formed the all-girl punk band Bratmobile with the intention of helping to create and expand a feminist music scene spearheaded by Kathleen Hanna and Bikini Kill. This feminist, DIY (do-it-yourself) music scene, soon to be coined "riot grrrl," had a goal of making the punk rock scene more feminist while simultaneously making academic feminism more "punk." Later recognized as a strain of third-wave feminism, riot grrrl spread throughout the 1990s, mostly in the US and UK, as a loose network of young, feminist, alternative music scene women who believed in fighting the power with cultural activism. After the demise of Bratmobile and riot grrrl, Allison continued to be active in bands such as Cold Cold Hearts, Deep Lust, Partyline, and Cool Moms. In 1999-2000, she also initiated Ladyfest, a non-profit, DIY feminist music festival. Allison currently resides in Los Angeles, where she is working on an oral history of riot grrrl book/film project.

Academy Award-winning actress and director Anjelica Huston continues her renowned family’s legacy in film, which began with her grandfather, Walter Huston, and her father, John Huston. Huston has received a multitude of awards for her work, including many honors from the National Society of Film Critics, two Independent Spirit Awards, and the Los Angeles and New York Film Critics Awards. Huston received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar® as well as a Golden Globe Award®. She recently starred as Broadway producer Eileen Rand in the musical drama television series Smash on NBC. A Story Lately Told: Coming of Age in Ireland, London, and New York is the first installment of her two-part memoir. The second part of her story—Watch Me—picks up in Los Angeles in 1973 and will be published in fall 2014.

Colm Tóibín's many novels include The Blackwater Lightship; The Master, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Dublin IMPAC Prize; and Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Book Award. His work has been translated into thirty languages, and he has been twice shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. His most recent novel is The Testament of Mary, first performed as a solo show in Dublin and lauded in the New York Times as a beautiful and daring work. Toibin, who lives in Dublin and New York, has also published extensively as a journalist and travel writer.

The Americans perform original rock & roll rooted in traditional American music. Formed in Los Angeles in 2010, The Americans have toured all over the United States, twice accompanying GRAMMY and Oscar award winner Ryan Bingham. The band's newest album Home Recordings was released in January 2013.

Shirin Neshat is an Iranian-born artist who left her native country at the age of 17 to study art in the United States. She graduated from UC Berkeley in 1982. Upon returning to her country as an adult, Neshat encountered a reality far from the one of her memory. This discord inspired meditations on memory, loss, and contemporary life in Iran that are central to her work. Her video and installation works explore the political and social conditions of Iranian and Muslim life, particularly focusing on women and feminist issues. Neshat's many awards include: the First International Prize, Venice Biennale (1999); Edinburgh International Film Festival (2000); International Center of Photography (2002); and the Hiroshima Freedom Prize (2005).

Christy MacLear is the Founding Executive Director of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, which fosters the legacy of Rauschenberg's life, work, and philosophy that art can change the world. MacLear's career is defined by projects that intersect business strategy and culture. She was the inaugural Executive Director of the Philip Johnson Glass House; directed the Museum Campus in Chicago that created a lakefront park; and managed strategic planning for the Walt Disney Company's new town, Celebration.

Michael Connelly is the bestselling author of twenty-five novels and one work of nonfiction. A former newspaper reporter who worked the crime beat at the Los Angeles Times and the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, Connelly has won numerous awards for his journalism and his fiction. His novels include The Black Echo, awarded the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award for Best First Novel in 1992. In 2002, Clint Eastwood directed and starred in the movie adaptation of Connelly’s 1998 novel Blood Work. In March 2011, the movie adaptation of his The Lincoln Lawyer hit theaters worldwide. His most recent #1 New York Times bestsellers include The Black Box, The Drop, The Fifth Witness, The Reversal, The Scarecrow, and The Brass Verdict. His next book is a Lincoln Lawyer novel titled The Gods of Guilt.

Miles Corwin, a former crime reporter for The Los Angeles Times, is the author of three nonfiction books: The Killing Season, a national bestseller, And Still We Rise, the winner of the PEN West award for nonfiction and a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year; and Homicide Special, a Los Angeles Times bestseller. His novel Kind of Blue was named one of the Top Ten First Crime Novels by Booklist. Midnight Alley is the second book in the Ash Levine series.