Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper '41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and a staff writer at The New Yorker. Her books include Book of Ages, a finalist for the National Book Award; New York Burning, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; The Name of War, winner of the Bancroft Prize; and The Mansion of Happiness, which was short-listed for the 2013 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Alex Cohen is co-host of KPCC's "Take Two" show. Prior to that, she was the host of KPCC's "All Things Considered." She has also hosted and reported for NPR programs, including "Morning Edition," "All Things Considered," and "Day to Day," as well as American Public Media's "Marketplace" and "Weekend America." Prior to that, she was the L.A. Bureau Chief for KQED FM in San Francisco. She has won various journalistic awards, including the LA Press Club’s Best Radio Anchor prize. Alex is also the author of Down and Derby: The Insider’s Guide to Roller Derby.

David Finkel is the award-winning author of The Good Soldiers. A staff writer for The Washington Post, he is also the leader of the Post’s national reporting team. Finkel received the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting in 2006 and the MacArthur “Genius” Grant in 2012. He lives in Maryland with his wife and two daughters.

Albert "Skip" Rizzo is a clinical psychologist and Director of Medical Virtual Reality at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies. He is also a research professor with the USC Department of Psychiatry and at the USC Davis School of Gerontology. Rizzo conducts research on the design, development, and evaluation of Virtual Reality systems targeting the areas of clinical assessment, treatment, and rehabilitation across the domains of psychological, cognitive, and motor functioning in both healthy and clinical populations. This work has focused on PTSD, TBI, Autism, ADHD, Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, and other clinical conditions. In his spare time, he listens to music, rides his motorcycle, and thinks about new ways that VR can have a positive impact on clinical care by dragging the field of psychology, kickin’, and screamin’, into the 21st Century.

Thomas Curwen is an award-winning staff writer at the Los Angeles Times, where he has worked as the editor of the Outdoors section, as a writer-at-large and editor for the features sections, and as the deputy editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review. He has received an Academy of American Poets Prize, a Rosalynn Carter Fellowship for mental health journalism, and in 2008 he was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize.

John Lahr, the author of twenty books, was senior drama critic of The New Yorker for over two decades. Among his books are Notes On a Cowardly Lion: The Biography of Bert Lahr; Dame Edna Everage: Backstage with Barry Humphries; and Prick Up Your Ears: The Biography of Joe Orton, which was made into a film. He has twice won the George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism and has twice been included in volumes of Best American Essays. His stage adaptations have been performed around the world. Lahr is the first critic ever to win a Tony Award for co-authoring the 2002 Elaine Stritch at Liberty. He divides his time between London and New York.

Armistead Maupin is the author of the Tales of the City series, of which The Days of Anna Madrigal is the ninth book and which includes: Tales of the City, More Tales of the City, Further Tales of the City, Babycakes, Significant Others, Sure of You, Michael Tolliver Lives, and Mary Ann in Autumn. Maupin is also the author of Maybe the Moon and The Night Listener (made into a feature film starring Robin Williams). Maupin lives in San Francisco and Santa Fe.

Zachary Mason, author of the novel The Lost Books of the Odyssey, is a computer scientist specializing in artificial intelligence. He is at work on two books for FSG: Metamorphica and Void Star. He was a finalist for the 2008 New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award. He lives in California.

Madeline Miller grew up in Philadelphia, has a BA and MA from Brown University in Latin and Ancient Greek, and has been teaching both for the past several years. She has also studied at the Yale School of Drama, specializing in adapting classical tales to a modern audience. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Song of Achilles is her first novel.

Molly Pulda is a Provost's Postdoctoral Scholar in the Humanities at USC. She is working on a manuscript about secrecy in contemporary literature and culture.

Lourdes Grobet, a contemporary photographer, is best known for her photographs of Mexican Lucha libre wrestlers. Her work has been exhibited widely in more than a hundred individual and joint exhibitions, including MoMA in New York and San Francisco and festivals such as PhotoEspaña in Madrid. Among her many published books are Lourdes Grobet: LuchaLibre, Espectacular de LuchaLibre, and Luchalibremexicana. Among her other projects are: Paisajespintados, Teatrocampesino, Strip Tease. Bering: Balance and Resistance (2013) is her first documentary film, inspired by a photographic exhibition of the same name she authored in 2009. Groubet lives in Mexico.

Julianna Brannum is a documentary filmmaker based in Austin, TX. Her first film, The Creek Runs Red, aired in 2007 on PBS’s national prime-time series, Independent Lens. In early 2008, she co-produced a feature-length documentary with Emmy Award-winning producer Stanley Nelson for PBS’s We Shall Remain – a 5-part series on Native American history. Brannum was a 2007 Sundance Institute/Ford Foundation Fellow and has been awarded many grants and fellowships for her latest documentary LaDonna Harris: Indian 101. She is a member of the Quahada band of the Comanche Nation of Oklahoma.

Yolanda Cruz is a filmmaker from Oaxaca, Mexico. She is a 2011 Sundance Screenwriting and Directing Lab Fellow, whose first feature script, La Raya, will be produced by Canana Films in 2015. Her work has been screened at venues such as the Sundance Film Festival, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Park la Villette in Paris, the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, and the National Institute of Cinema in Mexico City. She holds an MFA from the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television. Cruz is also an alumna of the Sundance Institute Native Lab.

Francisco Goldman is the author of Say Her Name- winner of the Prix Femina Etranger and four other books. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Cullman Center Fellow at the NY Public Library, and a Berlin Fellow at the American Academy, among other awards and honors. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, The Believer, and numerous other publications. Every year he teaches one semester at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and then hightails it back to Mexico City.

Rubén Martínez, an Emmy-winning journalist and poet, is the author of several books, including Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail and The New Americans. His most recent book is Desert America: Boom and Bust in the New Old West. He holds the Fletcher Jones Chair in Literature and Writing at Loyola Marymount University.

Laurel Braitman is a contributing writer for Pop Up Magazine, The New Inquiry, Orion, and other publications. She holds a Ph.D. in the history of science from MIT and is a Senior TED Fellow. Her newly published book is Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves.

Kathryn Bowers was a staff editor at The Atlantic and a writer and producer at CNN International. She has edited and written popular and academic books and teaches a course at UCLA on medical narrative. Bowers co-authored Zoobiquity with Barbara Natterson-Horowtiz.

Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, M.D., earned her degrees at Harvard and the University of California, San Francisco. She is a cardiology professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and serves on the medical advisory board of the Los Angeles Zoo as a cardiovascular consultant. Her writing has appeared in many scientific and medical publications. Natterson-Horowitz co-authored Zoobiquity with Kathryn Bowers.

As KPCC's Science Reporter, Sanden Totten covers everything from space exploration and medical technology to endangered species and the latest earthquake research. Totten is the co-producer of Brains On!, a podcast for kids and curious adults about the scientific mysteries of the universe, and has won several honors, including the Radio and TV News Association’s Golden Mike for “Best Radio Medical and Science Reporting,” the National Entertainment Journalism's award for “Best Radio News Story,” and a 2011 Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT.

Denis Johnson is the author of plays, poetry, non-fiction, and fiction, including the National Book Award-winning Tree of Smoke, Train Dreams, and Jesus’ Son. He serves as Playwright in Residence for the Campo Santo Theater Company in San Francisco.

Cedering Fox is the Founder and Artistic Director of WordTheatre. Since partnering with Darrell Larson on Literary Evenings at The Met, she has been creating, producing, and directing unique theatrical, literary events in America and England: intimate Author/Actor series themed benefits for other important organizations, performances/readings by actors and authors in Title l Schools. In England, partnered with Kirsty Peart, WordTheate is tapped annually to present the shortlist for The Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award, the richest prize in the world for a single short story. WordTheatre's annual July Writers Workshop and Retreat set in the heart of England's Peak District will be led by Andre Dubus lll. Cedering’s voice has been heard on hundreds of television promos and commercials as well as on live events such as the 2012 and 2013 Oscars.

Darrell Larson made his New York debut directing and starring in Tom Strelich's Dog Logic with Lois Smith at American Place Theatre. He has directed many Sam Shepard plays, Steve Earle'sKarla and Adam Rapp's 'blistering hip hop apocalyptic horror show Faster. He has collaborated several times with Denis Johnson in Shoppers Carried By Escalators into the Flames, Psychos Never Dream, and The Starlight on Idaho. Larson directed Charles Mee's Big Love and David Ives' All in the Timing, and adapted and directed The Wizard of Oz In Concert. He has acted in over thirty films and scores of television programs. Larson created and hosted Literary Evenings at the MET live and directed and hosted The Act of Poetry for four years at the Chateau Marmont.

Michelle Huneven is the author of three previous novels:Blame, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Jamesland, and Round Rock.

Mona Simpson’s novels include My Hollywood, A Regular Guy, Off Keck Road, The Lost Father and Anywhere But Here. Her work has been recognized with numerous prizes, including the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize, the Whiting Writer’s Award, and a Guggenheim fellowship. Most recently, she was the recipient of a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and letters. Her short fiction has been published in Granta, Harpers, The Atlantic, McSweeney’s and The Paris Review.

Christopher Bollas, Ph.D., is a member of the British Psychoanalytical Society, the Los Angeles Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies, and an Honorary Member of the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR) in New York. Among his books are Catch Them Before They Fall (The Psychoanalysis of Breakdown) and The Christopher Bollas Reader, with forward by Adam Phillips.

Edward St. Aubyn was born in London in 1960. He is the author of a series of highly acclaimed novels about the Melrose family, including At Last and Mother’s Milk, which was short-listed for the 2006 Man Booker Prize as well as the novels A Clue to the Exit and On the Edge.

Michael Silverblatt is the host of KCRW's half-hour radio show Bookworm, where he introduces listeners to new and emerging authors along with writers of renown. He created Bookworm for KCRW-FM in 1989.