Philip K. Dick (1928-1982) published 36 science fiction novels and 121 short stories over a three decade writing career, in which he explored the essence of what makes man human and the dangers of centralized power. Toward the end of his life, his work turned to deeply personal, metaphysical questions concerning the nature of God. Eleven novels and short stories have been adapted to film, notably, Blade Runner (based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?), Total Recall, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkly.

Jonathan Lethem is the critically acclaimed author of eight novels, including Motherless Brooklyn and his latest, Chronic City. He has published and spoken widely on Dick and is the editor of the Library of America editions of Dick's novels. His new book of essays, The Ecstasy of Influence: Nonfictions, Etc. is due out this fall.

David L. Ulin is a book critic for the Los Angeles Times. From 2005-2010 he served as the Times' 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 are widely published.

Pamela Jackson is an independent scholar, editor, and archivist who holds degrees in Rhetoric and Library and Information Studies from the University of California Berkeley and Los Angeles, respectively. Her 1999 dissertation, The World Philip K. Dick Made, initiated a decade's study of Dick's Exegesis. She is also a graduate of Berkeley High School, Philip K. Dick's only alma mater.

Laura Leslie is the oldest of Philip K. Dick's three children and grew up in the small town of Pt. Reyes Station, California in the house that informed much of Dick's writing from 1960 - 1964 such as The Man in the High Castle, Martian Time Slip, and the Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. She has been responsible for his estate since his death in 1982. She works closely with her sister, Isa Dick Hackett, to steward the legacy of their late father. She recently organized the manuscript material left by their late father and has created an extensive catalog. Ms. Leslie has worked in the information technology services industry for over two decades.

Isa Dick Hackett, daughter of Philip K. Dick, is co-founder along with her sister Laura Leslie and CEO of Electric Shepherd Productions, LLC, the company dedicated to the stewardship and adaptation of the Philip K. Dick library. Ms. Hackett served as an Executive Producer on Adjustment Bureau, based on Philip K. Dick's short story The Adjustment Team. She is also credited for her work on Richard Linklater's adaptation of A Scanner Darkly and for her guidance on and participation in the DVD special features for Blade Runner: The Final Cut, Minority Report and A Scanner Darkly.

Luis J. Rodríguez, the son of Mexican immigrants, began writing in his early teens and has won national recognition as a poet, journalist, fiction writer, children's book writer, and critic. His memoir, Always Running La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. earned a Carl Sandburg Literary Award, was designated a New York Times Notable Book and has been named by the American Library Association as one of the nation's 100 most censored books. Rodriguez co-founded Tia Chucha Press and Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural & Bookstore, a cultural center in Northeast San Fernando Valley. He is currently working as a peacemaker among gangs on a national and international level.

Father Gregory Boyle was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1982. Since 1986, Father Gregory has been the pastor of Dolores Mission in Boyle Heights, sited between two large public housing projects. In 1988, Father Gregory began what would become Homeboy Industries, now located in downtown Los Angeles. Since Father Greg started Homeboy Industries nearly twenty years ago, it has served members of more than half of the gangs in Los Angeles. Fr. Greg is the recipient of numerous awards, including the California Peace Prize, the Irvine Leadership Award and an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Occidental College. His bestselling memoir, Tattoos on the Heart, has been honored by PEN USA as the 2011 Best Creative Nonfiction Book of the Year.

Héctor Tobar has worked as a journalist for the Los Angeles Times for nearly twenty years. He shared a Pulitzer Prize for the paper's coverage of the 1992 riots, and then served as the national Latino Affairs correspondent, the Buenos Aires bureau chief, and the Mexico City bureau chief. He currently writes a weekly column for the paper and is the author of three books, Translation Nation, The Tattooed Soldier, and, most recently, The Barbarian Nurseries. The son of Guatemalan immigrants, he is a native of the city of Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife and three children.

Jesse Katz is the author of The Opposite Field, a memoir set in the immigrant suburb of Monterey Park. As a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times, Jesse shared in two Pulitzer Prizes­-for coverage of the 1994 Northridge earthquake and the 1992 L.A. riots-and was named a Pulitzer finalist for his stories about street gangs. As a senior editor at Los Angeles magazine, he received the PEN Center USA's award for literary journalism. Jesse teaches literary journalism at the University of California, Irvine, and has mentored incarcerated teenagers as a volunteer with InsideOut Writers.