Eboo Patel is the founder and president of Interfaith Youth Core and the author of Acts of Faith. He was a member of President Obama’s inaugural faith council. He has spoken about his belief that religion is a bridge of cooperation rather than a barrier of division at places like the TED conference, the Clinton Global Initiative, and the Nobel Peace Prize Forum, as well as college and university campuses across the country. He writes about it regularly in The Washington Post, USA Today, and The Huffington Post.

Ed Bacon is rector of All Saints Church in Pasadena, California; a 4,000 member multi-ethnic urban Episcopal parish, with a reputation for energetic worship, progressive peace and justice work, and a radically inclusive spirit. Ed’s energies focus on peacemaking, interfaith relations, and articulating the Christian faith in non-bigoted ways. He has been honored several times for his peace and interfaith work, including recognition from the Islamic Center of Southern California, ACLU of Southern California and Pasadena, The Islamic Shura Council, and Pasadena NAACP. His new book is 8 Habits of Love: Open Your Heart, Open Your Mind.

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 new book is Desert America: Boom and Bust in the New Old West. He lives in Los Angeles, where he holds the Fletcher Jones Chair in Literature and Writing at Loyola Marymount University.

Alison Hawthorne Deming is author for four books of poetry and four books of nonfiction with Zoologies: On Animals and the Human Spirit forthcoming. Her work has been widely anthologized including in The Norton Book of Nature Writing and Best American Science and Nature Writing. Long dedicated to conversations between art and science, between environmentalism and social justice, she is coeditor with Lauret E. Savoy of The Colors of Nature: Culture, Identity and the Natural World. Former director at the University of Arizona Poetry Center, Alison is currently a professor at UA.

Gail Collins, the best-selling author of When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present, is a national columnist for the New York Times. Her latest book is As Texas Goes...: How the Lone Star State Hijacked the American Agenda. She lives in New York City.

Anne Taylor Fleming is a nationally recognized commentator, writer, and longtime essayist for the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vogue, and Los Angeles Magazine where she writes a monthly column. Fleming is the associate director of the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference, and the author of three books: Motherhood Deferred, Marriage: A Duet and As If Love Were Enough. She has also won numerous awards for her TV essays.

Javier Sicilia is the leader of the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity, founded in April 2011 after the death of his son to drug violence in Mexico. The movement organizes the voices of families of the victims and leads caravans throughout the country, calling for reforms to strategies used in the drug war, which has claimed some 50,000 lives in the last five years. Sicilia was awarded a "people's choice" human rights prize by Global Exchange and was profiled as one of TIME Magazine's People of the Year for 2011. Sicilia is a poet, essayist, novelist, and journalist in Mexico. In 2009 he was awarded the Aguascalientes National Award in Poetry, one of the most prestigious honors in Mexican literature.

Rubén Martínez is an author, teacher, and performer. He is the author of several books, including Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail, and the upcoming Desert America: The Ethics of Boom and Bust in the New Old West. He holds the Fletcher Jones Chair in Literature and Writing at Loyola Marymount University.

Betto Arcos, a native of Veracruz, Mexico, is a freelance reporter for BBC-PRI's The World and NPR. He has been a regular contributor to NPR's Weekend All Things Considered reviewing Latin and world music, since 2009. Betto is also host of KPFK's "Global Village" on KPFK 90.7, a daily program he created as music director in 1997.

Photo credit: Ted Lewis

Wael Ghonim was born in Cairo and grew up in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, earning a degree in computer engineering from Cairo University in 2004 and an MBA from the American University in Cairo in 2007. He joined Google in 2008, rising to become Head of Marketing for Google Middle East and North Africa. He is currently on sabbatical from Google to launch an NGO supporting education and technology in Egypt.

Reza Aslan, associate professor of creative writing at the University of California Riverside is author of the best-selling No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam and editor of Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Middle East. He is founder of AslanMedia, an online journal for news and entertainment about the Greater Middle East and the world.

[ALOUD] at the Los Angeles Theatre Center 514 South Spring Street Los Angeles, CA 90013

Special thanks to Human Rights Watch, Southern California, for their help in promoting this program.

Photo: Will Roth

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.