Roy Choi is a classically trained chef from Los Angeles who cut his teeth in the kitchens of Le Bernardin, the Embassy Suites, and the Beverly Hilton before rediscovering his roots as an Angeleno and channeling his soul into a taco that tastes a lot like L.A. After launching Kogi BBQ in 2008, Choi fused the flavors of the city with Hawaiian-style picnics and opened A-Frame; Venice's Sunny Spot followed in 2011. L.A. Son: My Life, My City, My Food is Choi’s first book.

Evan Kleimanhas been the host of Good Food on KCRW for 15 years. The show reflects her wide-ranging interest in food and how humans interact with it. Evan’s food policy interest is expressed through her participation in the Los Angeles Food Policy Council and as a member of the Stewardship Council of the statewide organization Roots of Change. Evan Kleiman was chef-owner of Angeli Caffe on Melrose for 27 years. A cookbook author of six titles, she teaches and gives food tours of her native Los Angeles. Her latest project is Easy As Pie, an app for the iPhone/iPad.

Joe Sacco's acclaimed books include Palestine, which was serialized as a comic book from 1993 to 1995, the first collection of which won an American Book Award in 1996 Safe Area Gorazde, and Footnotes in Gaza, as well as a best-selling collaboration with Chris Hedges, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt.

Gene Luen Yang began drawing comic books in the fifth grade. He was an established figure in the indie comics scene when he published his first book with graphic novel publisher First Second, American Born Chinese, which is now in print in over ten languages. Yang won the Printz Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. His latest book is the graphic novel diptych Boxers & Saints.

Charles Hatfield, Professor of English at California State University, Northridge, teaches comics, children's literature, media, and cultural studies. He is the author of Hand of Fire: The Comics Art of Jack Kirby and Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature and co-editor of the newly released The Superhero Reader.

Henry Jenkins is Provost's Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. He has written and edited more than fifteen books on media and popular culture, including Spreadable Media: Creating Meaning and Value in a Networked Culture with Sam Ford and Joshua Green. His other published works reflect the wide range of his research interests, touching on democracy and new media, the “wow factor” of popular culture, science-fiction fan communities, and the early history of film comedy. His most recent book, Reading in a Participatory Culture: Remixing Moby-Dick for the Literature Classroom, was written with Wyn Kelley, Katie Clinton, Jenna McWilliams, Erin Reilly, and Ricardo Pitts-Wiley.

Wyn Kelley teaches in the Literature Section at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is the author of Melville's City: Literary and Urban Form in Nineteenth-Century New York and of Herman Melville: An Introduction. She also co-author Reading in a Participatory Culture: Re-Mixing Moby-Dick in the English Classroom with Henry Jenkins and Ricardo Pitts-Wiley. She is the former Associate Editor of the Melville Society journal Leviathan, and editor of the Blackwell Companion to Herman Melville. A founding member of the Melville Society Cultural Project, she has collaborated with the New Bedford Whaling Museum on lecture series, conferences, exhibits, and a scholarly archive. She serves as Associate Director of MEL (Melville Electronic Library), an NEH-supported interactive digital archive for reading, editing, and visualizing Melville’s texts.

Ricardo Pitts-Wiley is the co-founder of the Mixed Magic Theatre, a non-profit arts organization dedicated to presenting a diversity of cultural and ethnic images and ideas on the stage. While serving as Mixed Magic Theatre’s director, Pitts-Wiley gained national and international acclaim for his page-to-stage adaptation of Moby Dick, titled Moby Dick: Then and Now. This production, which was presented at the Kennedy Center for the Arts in Washington, DC, is the centerpiece of a national teacher's study guide and is featured in the book, Reading in A Participatory Culture. In addition to his work as an adapter of classic literature, Pitts-Wiley is also the composer of over 150 songs and the author of 12 plays with music, including: Waiting for Bessie Smith, Celebrations: An African Odyssey, and The Spirit Warrior’s Dream.

Alison Saar has exhibited her work throughout the US for over thirty years. Saar's sculptures explore the role of women, African-American history, and African religious traditions. Saar uses the history and associations of her materials, everyday experience, Greek mythology, and African art and practice, to create work rich with cultural and historical references. Saar is the recipient of two National Endowment Awards as well as a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her work is included in many public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Mary (Polly) Nooter Roberts is a Professor in UCLA's Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance and Consulting Curator for African Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She served as Senior Curator at the Museum for African Art until 1994 and as Deputy Director and Chief Curator of UCLA’s Fowler Museum until 2008. Roberts is the author and curator of thematic books and exhibitions that explore the philosophical underpinnings of African visual arts and expressive culture. Together with Allen F. Roberts, she produced the award-winning works Memory: Luba Art and the Making of History and A Saint in the City: Sufi Arts of Urban Senegal.

A. Scott Berg is the author of four previous bestselling biographies, including Max Perkins: Editor of Genius, for which he received the National Book Award; Goldwyn: A Biography; Lindbergh, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and the best-selling biographical memoir of Katharine Hepburn, Kate Remembered.

Jim Newton is a veteran journalist who began his career as a clerk to James Reston at the New York Times. Since then, he has worked as a reporter at the Atlanta Constitution and as a reporter, bureau chief, and editor at the Los Angeles Times, where he presently is the editor at large and the author of a weekly column. He is also an educator and author of two biographical books, Justice for All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made, and most recently, Eisenhower: The White House Years.

Eli and Edythe Broad have built two of the most prominent collections of postwar and contemporary art worldwide: The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Collection and The Broad Art Foundation. The two collections together include nearly 2,000 works by more than 200 artists. Since 1984, The Broad Art Foundation has operated an active “lending library” of its extensive collection and will open a contemporary art museum in downtown Los Angeles in the fall 2014.

Joanne Heyler is the director/chief curator of The Broad Art Foundation. She has curated the Broad collections and directed the Foundation’s “lending library” program since 1995. Under Ms. Heyler’s direction, the Foundation’s collection has added over 60 artists, including in-depth representations of work by crucial postwar figures such as Andy Warhol and Joseph Beuys, as well as work by more recent figures like Damien Hirst, Sharon Lockhart, Kara Walker, and Mark Bradford. As an adviser to the Broads, Ms. Heyler is closely involved with the Broads’ philanthropic investments in the visual arts.

Inge Reist is the director of The Frick Collection's Center for the History of Collecting and the chief of Research Collections and Programs at the Frick Art Reference Library. She is the co-editor of Provenance: An Alternative Art History, and her essays on the history of collecting have been included in numerous publications. From 2005 to 2011, Reist served as the chairman of the Association of Research Institutes in Art History from 2005 to 2011. She currently serves on the editorial board of Art Documentation and the Art Advisory Board for EBSCO Publishing.

MK Asante is an award-winning writer, filmmaker, hip-hop artist, and professor of creative writing and film at Morgan State University. He received the Langston Hughes Award in 2009 and won the Jean Corrie Prize from the Academy of American Poets for his poetry collection Like Water Running Off My Back. Asante directed The Black Candle, a film he co-wrote with Maya Angelou, and directed and produced the award-winning film 500 Years Later.

Jeff Chang is the executive director of the Institute for Diversity in the Arts at Stanford University. Named by the Utne Reader as “one of the 50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World,” Jeff Chang has been a USA Ford Fellow in Literature. He is the author of the award-winning Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation. He was a co-founder of ColorLines, the SoleSides hip-hop crew, and CultureStr/ke. His latest book is Who We Be: The Colorization of America.

Photo credit: Lee Steffen

Greg Goldin has written widely about architecture and urban affairs for Los Angeles Magazine, L.A. Weekly, Los Angeles Times, and Architect's Newspaper. He is the curator of Windshield Perspective, a Getty Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A. now showing at A+D Architecture and Design Museum > Los Angeles. He is co-curator of Never Built: Los Angeles and co-author of the book of the same title.

Christopher Hawthorne is architecture critic for the Los Angeles Times. Before coming to the Times he was architecture critic for Slate and a frequent contributor to the New York Times. His work has also appeared in The New Yorker, the Washington Post, Metropolis, Architect, Domus, I.D., Print, Landscape Architecture Magazine, and Architectural Record, among many other publications. He is the author, with Alanna Stang, of The Green House: New Directions in Sustainable Architecture.

Mia Lehrer is the founder of Mia Lehrer + Associates, known for its wide spectrum of design and development of ambitious public and private projects, including urban revitalization developments, large urban parks, and complex commercial projects. She is internationally recognized for her progressive landscape designs, working with such natural landmarks as parks, lakes, and rivers, coupled with her advocacy for ecology and people-friendly public space. Lehrer believes that great landscape design coupled with sustainability has the power to enhance the livability and quality of life in our cities and, in doing so, improve by great measure the quality of our environment.

Sam Lubell is the West Coast Editor of the Architect’s Newspaper. He has written five books about architecture: Never Built: Los Angeles, Paris 2000+, London 2000+, Living West, and Julius Shulman Los Angeles: The Birth of a Modern Metropolis. He has written for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Magazine, New York Magazine, Architectural Record, Architect Magazine, Architectural Review, and several other publications. His exhibition Never Built: Los Angeles opens on July 27.

Alan Hess is an architect, historian, and author whose nineteen books on modern architecture and urbanism include monographs on Oscar Niemeyer, Frank Lloyd Wright, John Lautner, and the architectural histories of Las Vegas, Palm Springs, the Ranch House, and Googie architecture. Hess holds a Master of Architecture degree, was a National Arts Journalism Fellow at Columbia University's School of Journalism, and was the recipient of a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. As a preservationist, Hess qualified the oldest remaining McDonald’s drive-in restaurant, located in Downey, for the National Register of Historic Places.

Josh Kun is a professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, where he is director of The Popular Music Project at The Norman Lear Center. He is the author of Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America, co-author of And You Shall Know Us By The Trail Of Our Vinyl,, and co-editor of Tijuana Dreaming: Life and Art at the Global Border, among other volumes. With The Grammy Museum, he recently curated "Trouble in Paradise: Music and Los Angeles 1945-1975", part of the Getty's Pacific Standard Time series. He is currently collaborating with The Library Foundation of Los Angeles, The Los Angeles Public Library, and Angel City Press on Songs in the Key of L.A., a multimedia exploration of Los Angeles through its vintage sheet music.

The music of GRAMMY® Award-winning band Quetzal, is at once visceral, and intellectual. It makes you move, it makes you sing, and it makes you think. Sometimes thought of as a rock band, its members draw from a much larger web of musical, cultural, and social engagement. On the band’s latest full-length release Imaginaries, Quetzal creatively combines shades of East L.A.’s soundscape, traditional son jarocho of Veracruz, salsa, R&B, and more to express the political and social struggle for self-determination and self-representation, which ultimately is a struggle for dignity.

Alan Mandell, a Beckett scholar, has had a distinguished 75-year acting career and is an accomplished voice-over actor. He is a founding member of the famed San Francisco Actor’s Workshop and co-founder of the San Quentin Drama Workshop, which started in 1957 with a performance of Waiting for Godot inside the prison. Mandell toured Europe with original productions of Godot and Endgame directed by Beckett and has appeared on Broadway. Most recently, he appeared in Godot at the Mark Taper Forum in 2012. His films include The Marrying Man, Midnight Witness, John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Shortbus, and the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man.

Jeannette Seaver was born in Paris and began her career as a concert violinist. She met her future husband, Richard Seaver, in Paris when he was running the influential literary magazine Merlin. Together they formed Seaver Books at Viking Press and later, Arcade Publishing, where for over twenty years, they discovered new literary voices from other cultures, including Natalia Ginzburg, Ismail Kadare, Andrei Makine, and two Nobel Laureates-Octavio Paz and Mo Yan. In 2012, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, decorated Jeannette with the medal of Chevalier dans l'Ordre de la Legion d'Honneur. Following Richard Seaver's death, Arcade Publishing closed. In 2005, Arcade's backlist was acquired by Skyhorse Publishing, where Jeannette currently serves as Editor of Arcade Publishing, at Skyhorse. Jeannette is also the author of four cookbooks illustrated by her daughter, Nathalie Seaver.

Howard A. Rodman is a professor of screenwriting at USC's School of Cinematic Arts, Vice President of the Writers Guild of America, West, and has served as Artistic Director of the Sundance Screenwriting Labs. He wrote Savage Grace, August, and Joe Gould’s Secret. Rodman is on the executive committee of the Writers Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and is a Fellow of the Los Angeles Institute of the Humanities.