Susan Griffin's latest book, Wrestling with the Angel of Democracy: On Being an American Citizen, is about the inner life of democracy. Among her eighteen published books The Book of the Courtesans: A Catalogue of Their Virtues, explores a hidden side of women's history; Woman and Nature inspired eco-feminism, and A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War, was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Award. Named by Utne Reader as one of a hundred important visionaries for the new millennium, she has been the recipient of an NEA grant, a Macarthur Grant for Peace and International Cooperation, an Emmy award and this year, a Guggenheim Foundation award. She has completed a play to be set to music called "Canto" and is at work now on The Book of Housewifery.

Gail Collins joined The New York Times in 1995 as a member of the editorial board and later as an Op-Ed columnist. In 2001 she became the first woman ever appointed editor of the Times's editorial page. At the beginning of 2007, she stepped down and began a leave in order to finish her latest book, When Everything Changed. She returned to the Times as a columnist in July 2007. Before joining the New York Times, Collins was a columnist at Newsday and the New York Daily News, and a reporter for United Press International.

Colin Beavan is the author of Operation Jedburgh: D-Day and America's First Shadow War and Fingerprints: The Origins of Crime Detection and the Murder Case that Launched Forensic Science. His work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Mens' Journal, and many other national magazines. Beavan has appeared on NPR's All Things Considered, Talk of the Nation, and many other nationally syndicated NPR and commercial radio shows. He lives in New York City.

Jane Mayer is the co-author of two best-selling narrative non-fiction books, Landslide: The Unmaking of the President, and Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, both of which received glowing reviews and were book-of-the-month-club selections, and the latter of which was a finalist for the National Book Award. She is a Washington-based staff writer for The New Yorker, specializing in political and investigative reporting. Before that, she was a senior writer and front page editor for The Wall Street Journal, as well as the Journal's first female White House correspondent.

Tamim Ansary is the author of the memoir West of Kabul, East of New York, and has been a major contributing writer to several secondary school history textbooks. Born in Afghanistan, he now lives in San Francisco, where he is director of the San Francisco Writers Workshop and writes a column for Encarta.com.

After a long and varied business career spanning 30 years of work in every medium from film to television to newspapers to the internet, Harry Brant Chandler now devotes most of his attentions to his photography and his civic work. His photographs have been shown at the California Museum in Sacramento and will be the focus of an upcoming show in September 2009 at the Autry National Center of the American West, in Los Angeles. A fifth generation Southern Californian, he has served on the boards of several public and private Internet companies, the New Media Council, the Internet Local Advertising Council, MOCA photography board, LACMA?s Tech Advisors and the Music Center's Center Theater Group.

Dr. Kevin Starr is the state librarian emeritus of California and University Professor and professor of history at USC. Starr has written ten books, six of which are part of his "Americans and the California Dream" series. He has also written Coast of Dreams: California on the Edge, 1990-2003 and California, A History, a Modern Library Chronicles book. His writing has won him a Guggenheim Fellowship, membership in the Society of American Historians, the Gold Medal of the Commonwealth Club of California, and the Lifetime Achievement Award, PEN USA, Western Center. In June 2006 he was given the Centennial Medal of the Graduate School of Arts and Science, Harvard University.

Chip Jacobs is a Los Angeles-area author and award-winning journalist. He is the author of Smogtown: the Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles with William J. Kelly, and Wheeling the Deal, the Outrageous Legend of Gordon Zahler, Hollywood's Flashiest Quadriplegic. On the journalism side, Jacobs' reporting has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, the Daily News of Los Angeles, L.A. Weekly, CNN, The Chicago Tribune, The Orlando Sentinel, The Pasadena Star News and Southland Publishing, among other outlets. For his efforts, he's been honored by the Los Angeles Press Club, the California Newspaper Publishers Association, the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies and The Los Angeles Times.

chipjacobs.com

William J. Kelly has written for L.A. Weekly, Los Angeles Times, Alternet, and California Journal. He was chief spokesman for more than thirteen years of South Coast Air Quality Management District, the smog control agency for greater Los Angeles. He is the author of Home Safe Home, and senior correspondent for California Energy Circuit.

After forty years of activism, politics and writing, Tom Hayden is still a leading voice for ending the war in Iraq, erasing sweatshops, saving the environment, and reforming politics through greater citizen participation. He has written eyewitness accounts for The Nation, where he serves on the editorial board, about the global justice movements in Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, Chiapas, and India. He is currently writing and advocating for US Congressional hearings on exiting Iraq. This year he drafted and lobbied successfully for Los Angeles and San Francisco ordinances to end all taxpayer subsidies for sweatshops. He is the author or editor of thirteen books, including most recently, Reunion (re-issued as Rebel), The Lost Gospel of the Earth, Irish on the Inside, Street Wars, and The Port Huron Statement. He recently has taught at Pitzer College, Occidental College, and Harvard's Institute of Politics.

Victor Clark Alfaro is director of the Binational Center for Human Rights in Tijuana and a lecturer in the Latin American Studies Department at San Diego State University. He has been studying human smuggling patterns across the U.S.-Mexico border for more than 20 years.

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez began his journalism career writing about the arts for, among others, Tijuana's La Tarde newspaper, the San Diego Union-Tribune, and the Chicago Tribune. He later served as senior producer of "These Days," KPBS-FM's daily talk show in San Diego. Adolfo is also an accomplished poet. He has toured nationally with The Taco Shop Poets, the performance poetry troupe he co-founded. His poetry has been published in various journals, and in Geography of Rage: Remembering the Los Angeles Riots of 1992.

Amy Isackson has been the border reporter at KPBS in San Diego since 2004. She covers breaking news and feature stories on California-Mexico border issues and immigration, for local and national broadcast. Since joining KPBS, Amy's work has been recognized with awards from the Associated Press Television-Radio Association of California and Nevada, the California Chicano News Media Association, and the San Diego Press Club. Most recently, she won the Sol Price Prize for Responsible Journalism for her story about high school students smuggling people and drugs across the U.S. Mexico border.

Tom Brokaw, one of the most trusted and respected figures in broadcast journalism, is a special correspondent for NBC News. In this role, he reports and produces long-form documentaries and provides expertise during election coverage and breaking news events for NBC News. For 21 years, he was the anchor and managing editor of "NBC Nightly News." He has received numerous honors, including the Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award, an Emmy Award for Lifetime Achievement, and he was inducted as a fellow into the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His insight, ability and integrity have earned him a dozen Emmys and two Peabody and duPont awards for his journalistic achievements.

Wangari Muta Maathai was born in Kenya in 1940. The first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree, Professor Maathai obtained a degree in Biological Sciences from Mount St. Scholastica College in Atchison, Kansas, and a Master of Science degree from the University of Pittsburgh. She pursued doctoral studies in Germany and Kenya, obtaining a Ph.D. from the University of Nairobi where she became the first woman chair of the Department of Veterinary Anatomy.