Ian Buruma is the Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College. His previous books include God's Dust, Behind the Mask, The Missionary and the Libertine, Playing the Game, The Wages of Guilt, Anglomania, Bad Elements and Murder in Amsterdam, which won a Los Angeles Times Book Prize for the Best Current Interest Book. He was awarded the 2008 Shorenstein Journalism Award, which honored him for his distinguished body of work and the 2008 Erasmus Prize.

Toni Morrison is the Robert F. Goheen Professor of Humanities Emeritus at Princeton University. She has received the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize. In 1993 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Lisa See is the author of the critically-acclaimed international bestseller, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. Ms. See was born in Paris but grew up in Los Angeles, spending much of her time in Chinatown. Her first book, On Gold Mountain: The One Hundred Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family, was a national bestseller. That success was followed by her first novel, Flower Net, also named a New York Times Notable Book. Other novels include The Interior and Dragon Bones, and her most recent, Peony in Love. Honoring her Chinese heritage, See has written a libretto for the Los Angeles Opera based on On Gold Mountain, which premiered in June 2000 at the Japan America Theatre. She also served as guest curator for an exhibit on the Chinese-American experience for the Autry Museum of Western Heritage, which then traveled to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., in 2001.

www.lisasee.com

Marilynne Robinson is the author of the novels Gilead--winner of the Pulitzer Prize-and Housekeeping, and two books of nonfiction, Mother Country and The Death of Adam. She teaches at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Paul Theroux began his travels after graduating from the University of Massachusetts in 1963. He taught briefly in Urbino, Italy, before joining the Peace Corps in Malawi, Africa, and eventually ended up teaching English at the Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. In 1971, he gave up teaching to write full time and England became his 17-year, on-again, off-again home.

Mary Gordon is the author of the novels Spending, The Company of Women, The Rest of Life, Final Payments, The Other Side, and Pearl, as well as the memoir The Shadow Man. She has received a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writers' Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the 1997 O. Henry Award for Best Short Story. She teaches at Barnard College and lives in New York City.

Edna O'Brien is the author of eighteen works of fiction, including most recently the New York Times Notable Books and Book Sense picks Wild Decembers and In the Forest, and Lantern Slides, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for fiction. In 2002, she won the National Medal for Fiction from the National Arts Club. An honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she was born and grew up in Ireland and has lived in London for many years.

Walter Mosley is the author of more than twenty-five critically acclaimed books, including the bestselling mystery series featuring Easy Rawlins. His work has been translated into twenty-one languages and includes literary fiction, science fiction, political monographs, and a young adult novel. His short fiction has been widely published, and his nonfiction has appeared in the New York Times Magazine and The Nation, among other publications. He is the winner of numerous awards, including an O. Henry Award, a Grammy, and the PEN American Center's Lifetime Achievement Award. He lives in New York City.

John Rechy is the recipient of two coveted Lifetime Achievement Awards: PEN-USA-West's 1997 Lifetime Achievement Award and The Publishing Triangle's William Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement. In September 2000, a CD-Rom of his life and works--Memories and Desire: The Worlds of John Rechy" (produced through the Annenberg Center at the University of Southern California)--debuted at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles to an overflow crowd. Last August, Rechy's eagerly awaited novel The Coming of the Night appeared as # 2 on the Los Angeles Times' Bestseller List. His 12th novel marks the author's return to some of the scenes and themes of his now-classic first novel, City of Night.

Born in 1917, Millard Kaufman plunged into World War II on Guadalcanal as a member of the U.S. Marine Corps, then made D-Day landings on Guam and Okinawa. He co-created the beloved Mr. Magoo and was twice nominated for screenwriting Oscars-in 1954 for Take the High Ground! and in 1956 for the legendary Bad Day at Black Rock. He won the Brussels World's Fair screenwriting award for Raintree County in 1958. He is the author of Plots and Characters, a text on screenwriting that was published in 1999, and has taught at Johns Hopkins and at the Sundance Institute. He lives in Los Angeles and is currently working on his second novel.

Nell Freudenberger was awarded the 2005 Whiting Writer's Award. In addition to the PEN/Faulkner Award for excellence in short fiction, she has received the O. Henry Award for short fiction, and the Sue Kaufman Prize for first fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Lucky Girls was named a best/notable book of 2003 by the New York Times Book Review, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR's "Fresh Air," Chicago Tribune, Seattle Times, and New York Newsday, and was a BookSense 76 pick. She lives in New York City.

Jennifer Gilmore's work has appeared in magazines, jour­nals, and anthologies, including the New York Times Magazine, Allure, Nerve, and Salon. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. Her debut novel, A Golden Country, vividly brings to life the intertwining stories of three immigrants seeking their fortunes. It was both a 2006 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist as well as a National Jewish Book Award Finalist.