Paola Ramos is a host and correspondent for VICE and VICE News, as well as a contributor to Telemundo News and MSNBC. Ramos was the deputy director of Hispanic media for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and a political appointee during the Barack Obama administration. She also served in President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign. She’s a former fellow at Emerson Collective. Ramos received her MA in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School and her BA from Barnard College, Columbia University. She lives in Brooklyn.

Fidel Martinez is an audience engagement editor at the Los Angeles Times, focusing on sports. Previously he worked as a politics editor for Mitu, as a social storytelling producer for Fusion Media Group and as content curator and managing editor for Break Media. He is a proud Tejano who will fight anyone who disparages flour tortillas.

Eric Liu is an author, educator, and civic entrepreneur. His first book, The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker, was a New York Times Notable Book featured in the PBS documentary Matters of Race. He is also the author of Guiding Lights, an Official Book of National Mentoring Month, and co-author of the bestselling Gardens of Democracy. Eric served as a White House speechwriter for President Bill Clinton and later as the President's deputy domestic policy adviser. He is a columnist for TIME.com and a regular contributor to TheAtlantic.com and lives in Seattle with his family.

Gregory Rodriguez is the Publisher & Executive Director of Zócalo Public Square, a nonprofit Los Angeles-based Ideas Exchange that blends live events and humanities journalism. He is also the founder and director of the Center for Social Cohesion at Arizona State University. Formerly a longtime op-ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times, Rodriguez has written for publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Time, and The Atlantic. He is the author of Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds: Mexican Immigration and the Future of Race in America, one of the Washington Post's Best Books of 2007, and is currently at work on a new book on the American cult of hope.

Laurel Braitman is a contributing writer for Pop Up Magazine, The New Inquiry, Orion, and other publications. She holds a Ph.D. in the history of science from MIT and is a Senior TED Fellow. Her newly published book is Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves.

Kathryn Bowers was a staff editor at The Atlantic and a writer and producer at CNN International. She has edited and written popular and academic books and teaches a course at UCLA on medical narrative. Bowers co-authored Zoobiquity with Barbara Natterson-Horowtiz.

Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, M.D., earned her degrees at Harvard and the University of California, San Francisco. She is a cardiology professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and serves on the medical advisory board of the Los Angeles Zoo as a cardiovascular consultant. Her writing has appeared in many scientific and medical publications. Natterson-Horowitz co-authored Zoobiquity with Kathryn Bowers.

As KPCC's Science Reporter, Sanden Totten covers everything from space exploration and medical technology to endangered species and the latest earthquake research. Totten is the co-producer of Brains On!, a podcast for kids and curious adults about the scientific mysteries of the universe, and has won several honors, including the Radio and TV News Association’s Golden Mike for “Best Radio Medical and Science Reporting,” the National Entertainment Journalism's award for “Best Radio News Story,” and a 2011 Knight Science Journalism Fellowship at MIT.

Denis Johnson is the author of plays, poetry, non-fiction, and fiction, including the National Book Award-winning Tree of Smoke, Train Dreams, and Jesus’ Son. He serves as Playwright in Residence for the Campo Santo Theater Company in San Francisco.

Cedering Fox is the Founder and Artistic Director of WordTheatre. Since partnering with Darrell Larson on Literary Evenings at The Met, she has been creating, producing, and directing unique theatrical, literary events in America and England: intimate Author/Actor series themed benefits for other important organizations, performances/readings by actors and authors in Title l Schools. In England, partnered with Kirsty Peart, WordTheate is tapped annually to present the shortlist for The Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award, the richest prize in the world for a single short story. WordTheatre's annual July Writers Workshop and Retreat set in the heart of England's Peak District will be led by Andre Dubus lll. Cedering’s voice has been heard on hundreds of television promos and commercials as well as on live events such as the 2012 and 2013 Oscars.

Darrell Larson made his New York debut directing and starring in Tom Strelich's Dog Logic with Lois Smith at American Place Theatre. He has directed many Sam Shepard plays, Steve Earle'sKarla and Adam Rapp's 'blistering hip hop apocalyptic horror show Faster. He has collaborated several times with Denis Johnson in Shoppers Carried By Escalators into the Flames, Psychos Never Dream, and The Starlight on Idaho. Larson directed Charles Mee's Big Love and David Ives' All in the Timing, and adapted and directed The Wizard of Oz In Concert. He has acted in over thirty films and scores of television programs. Larson created and hosted Literary Evenings at the MET live and directed and hosted The Act of Poetry for four years at the Chateau Marmont.

Founded on Cinco de Mayo, 1984, in San Francisco's historic Mission District, Culture Clash is Richard Montoya, Ric Salinas and Herbert Siguenza. Now based in Los Angeles, the trio uses "performance collage" to bring history, geography, "urban excavation," "forensic poetry" and storytelling together in a contemporary, movable theater narrative through a Chicano point of view - what Guillermo Gomez-Pena describes as "reverse anthropology."