Barbara Ehrenreich is a renowned social critic and most recently the author of Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War, as well as eight other books. Her much discussed essays and articles have appeared in major newspapers and magazines around the country. The recipient of several prestigious writing awards, she is currently a regular essayist for Time Magazine and a columnist for The Guardian in Great Britain. She holds a Ph.D. in biology from Rockefeller University.

Dr. Amy Parish is a Biological Anthropologist, Primatologist, and Darwinian Feminist who has taught at University of Southern California in the Gender Studies, Arts and Letters, and Anthropology programs and departments since 1999. She received her undergraduate training at University of Michigan and her graduate school education at University of California-Davis and then taught at University College London. She conducted post-doctoral research at the University of Giessen in Germany on the topic of reciprocity.

Isabel Wilkerson, formerly James M. Cox Professor of Journalism at Emory University, is Professor of Journalism and Director of Narrative Nonfiction at Boston University. In 1994, while Chicago bureau chief of The New York Times, she became the first African-American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in journalism. Wilkerson has also won a George S. Polk Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Journalist of the Year award from the National Association of Black Journalists.

Laura Trombley is an internationally renowned Mark Twain scholar, authoring several books and dozens of scholarly articles on Twain. She appeared in Ken Burns's Mark Twain documentary and, as a graduate student, discovered the largest known cache of Mark Twain letters.

In addition to her most recent book, Mark Twain's Other Woman, Laura's other works on Twain include Mark Twain in the Company of Women and Constructing Mark Twain: New Directions in Scholarship. In addition to being an author, Laura is also the president of Pitzer College. http://lauratrombley.org/

A native of California, Stephen G Breyer taught at the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government and served as assistant special prosecutor in the Watergate investigation before being appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in 1980 and becoming its Chief Judge in 1990. President Clinton nominated him as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and he took his seat August 3, 1994. He currently serves as an Honorary Chair for the World Justice Project.

Henry Weinstein teaches law and journalism at the University of California, Irvine. He was a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times from 1978 to 2008, specializing in the coverage of law and labor, and did a considerable amount of investigative reporting. Weinstein has won numerous journalistic awards, including, in 2006, the John Chancellor Award for Excellence, presented annually by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Attica Locke is a writer whose first novel, Black Water Rising, was nominated for a 2010 Edgar Award, a 2010 NAACP Image Award, as well as a Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Attica is also a screenwriter who has written movie and television scripts for Paramount, Warner Bros, Disney, Twentieth Century Fox, Jerry Bruckheimer Films, HBO, Dreamworks and Silver Pictures. She was a fellow at the Sundance Institute's Feature Filmmakers Lab and is a graduate of Northwestern University.

http://www.atticalocke.com/

Danzy Senna's debut novel, Caucasia, was the LA Times Book of The Year and became an instant national bestseller. Her second novel Symptomatic was published in 2003, and her latest work is the memoir: Where Did You Sleep Last Night? A Personal History, in which she reconstructs a long-buried family mystery that illuminates her own childhood, her enigmatic father, and the power and failure of her parents' interracial union.

Ayelet Waldman is the author of Daughter's Keeper and Love and Other Impossible Pursuits. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Salon.com, New York, Elle, Vogue, and other publications. She and her husband, the novelist Michael Chabon, live in Berkeley, California, with their four children.

http://www.ayeletwaldman.com/

Susan Straight's novels include the forthcoming Take One Candle Light a Room and Highwire Moon, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the California Book Award. Her essays and stories have appeared in Harper's, Salon.com, The Los Angeles Times, and on NPR's "All Things Considered", among other outlets. She is also the recipient of a Lannan Foundation Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Edgar Award. Straight was born in Riverside, where she lives with her three daughters and teaches at the University of California.

Bill Boyarsky (writer) is a political columnist for Truthdig.com and blogs for LA Observed. He was a lecturer at the USC Annenberg School for Communication for several years and teaches there periodically. In his 30 years with the Los Angeles Times, Boyarsky was a political writer, featured columnist, and city editor. He was a member of reporting teams that won three Pulitzer Prizes. He is the author of two biographies of Ronald Reagan, and authored Big Daddy: Jesse Unruh and the Art of Power Politics as well as Los Angeles: City of Dreams. Together with his wife, Nancy, he coauthored Backroom Politics. He lives in Los Angeles.

Peter Jones (Filmmaker) began his career as a broadcast journalist. In 1987, he formed Peter Jones Productions, originally specializing in documentary films related to the history of the motion-picture industry. His special on Judy Garland won a 1997 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Informational Series. "Stardust: The Bette Davis Story", had its U.S. premiere on Turner Classics Movies in 2006, garnering Jones and his team an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Nonfiction Special and an Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing for Nonfiction Programming. He lives in the hills overlooking the city the Chandlers invented.

Patt Morrison is a writer and columnist for the Los Angeles Times and host of the daily Patt Morrison public affairs program on KPCC. She has won six Emmys and six Golden Mike awards as founding host and commentator on Life & Times Tonight, the nightly news and current affairs program on KCET. Her one-on-one television interview subjects include Salman Rushdie, Henry Kissinger, Frank Gehry, Ray Bradbury, Joan Didion, and many more.

www.pattmorrison.com

Sebastian Junger is the New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Storm and A Death in Belmont. He is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, and has been awarded a National Magazine Award and an SAIS Novartis Prize for journalism. He lives in New York City.

John Sacret Young began his television work on the Emmy winning Best Drama series, Police Story, and has since created, written, or Executive Produced six additional series and multiple pilots, mini-series and movies of the week. He co-created with William Broyles, Jr., wrote, and executive produced the ground-breaking series, China Beach. For his work on the show, John received five Emmy and four Writer's Guild Award nominations. The WGA honored him with the Award for an episode he also directed. The West Wing brought him two more Emmy and two more WGA nominations. John won his second WGA Award for the mini-series, A Rumor of War. He's also written and produced feature films and has been honored with two Christopher Awards for the Academy Award nominated Testament starring Jane, and the film Romero with Raul Julia. John's original mini-series about the Gulf War, Thanks of a Grateful Nation, was honored with his second Humanitas Prize as a writer. Young's book, REMAINS: Non-Viewable was a Los Angeles Times best seller.