Kim Addonizio has authored eight poetry collections, two novels, two story collections, and two books on writing poetry: The Poet’s Companion (with Dorianne Laux) and Ordinary Genius. Her most recent collection is Exit Opera (W.W. Norton, September 2024). She has received fellowships from the NEA and Guggenheim Foundation, and Pushcart Prizes in both poetry and the essay. Tell Me was a National Book Award Finalist in poetry.... Read more

Rabih Alameddine is the author of the novels Koolaids, and I, the Divine, The Hakawati, An Unnecessary Woman, The Angel of History, as well as the story collection, The Perv. His most recent novel, The Wrong End of the Telescope, won the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He divides his time between his bedroom and living room.... Read more

Isabel Allende —novelist, feminist, and philanthropist—is one of the most widely-read authors in the world, having sold more than 77 million books. Chilean born in Peru, Isabel won worldwide acclaim in 1982 with the publication of her first novel, The House of the Spirits, which began as a letter to her dying grandfather. Since then, she has authored more than twenty seven bestselling and critically acclaimed books, including Daughter of Fortune,... Read more

Steve Almond is the author of twelve books of fiction and nonfiction, including the New York Times bestsellers All the Secrets of the World, Candyfreak and Against Football. His recent books include William Stoner and the Battle for the Inner Life, which is about reading and writing and the struggle to pay attention to our lives, and Bad Stories,... Read more

Ashton Applewhite’s journey began as apprehensive baby boomer and led to becoming a pro-aging radical. Her first book, Cutting Loose: Why Women Who End Their Marriages Do So Well, challenged conventional notions and landed her on Phyllis Schlafly’s enemies list. Working at the American Museum of Natural History for 17 years, she later embraced activism full-time, questioning society’s bleak perception of late life despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Ashton co-founded the Old School Anti-Ageism Clearinghouse and became known for her blog ThisChairRocks and her advocacy platform Yo,... Read more

Louise Aronson, MD MFA, is a leading geriatrician, writer, educator, professor of medicine at UCSF and the author of the New York Times bestseller and Pulitzer Prize finalist Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, and Reimagining Life.

A graduate of Harvard Medical School, Louise has received the Gold Professorship in Humanism in Medicine, the California Homecare Physician of the Year award, and the American Geriatrics Society Clinician-Teacher of the Year award.... Read more

Steven Austad is Distinguished Professor of Biology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Scientific Director of the American Federation for Aging Research and the inaugural holder of the UAB Protective Life Endowed Chair in Healthy Aging. He is the author of Why We Age: What Science is Discovering about the Body’s Journey through Life, Real People Don’t Own Monkeys, and, most recently, Methuselah’s Zoo: What Nature Can Teach Us about Living Longer,... Read more

Julianna Baggott has published over twenty books, some pseudonymously, including Pure and Harriet Wolf’s Seventh Book of Wonders, both New York Times Notable Books of the Year. There are over one hundred foreign editions of her novels published overseas.

Julianna heads the production company Mildred’s Moving Picture Show with projects in development at Disney+, Netflix, MGM, Paramount, Universal, and elsewhere.  Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry,... Read more

Nir Barzilai, M.D. is one of the leading pioneers of longevity research. He is the founding director of the Institute for Aging Research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where he is also a professor in the Departments of Medicine and Genetics.  He is also the director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging Research and the National Institutes of Health Nathan Shock Centers of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging. ... Read more

Jeanine Basinger is the founder of the department of film studies at Wesleyan University and the curator of the cinema archives there. She has written eleven books on film, including I Do and I Don’t; The Star Machine, winner of the Theatre Library Association Award; A Woman’s View; Silent Stars, winner of the William K. Everson Film History Award; Anthony Mann; The World War II Combat Film; and American Cinema: One Hundred Years of Filmmaking.... Read more

Perla Batalla is a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter celebrated for her distinctive voice, emotional honesty and culture-merging compositions. After singing with and recording with numerous musicians, including Leonard Cohen, Perla launched her solo career with Cohen’s encouragement. Since then, she has recorded seven albums, been featured in film and TV, staged two one-woman shows and performed in prestigious venues around the world.  ... Read more

Cara Black is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of 20 books in the Private Investigator Aimée Leduc series, and two World War II-set novels featuring American markswoman Kate Rees. Cara has received multiple nominations for the Anthony and Macavity Awards, a Washington Post Book World Book of the Year citation, the Médaille de la Ville de Paris—the Paris City Medal, which is awarded in recognition of contribution to international culture—and invitations to be the Guest of Honor at conferences such as the Paris Polar Crime Festival and Left Coast Crime.... Read more

David W. Blight is a teacher, scholar and public historian. At Yale University he is Sterling Professor of History, joining that faculty in January, 2003. As of June, 2004, he is Director, succeeding David Brion Davis, of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. In his capacity as director of the Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale, Blight organizes conferences, working groups, lectures, the administering of the annual Frederick Douglass Book Prize,... Read more

Sari Botton is a bestselling author, editor, and teacher with decades of experience.

She is the author of the memoir in essays, And You May Find Yourself…Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen-X Weirdo. She is a contributing editor at Catapult, and the former Essays Editor for Longreads. She edited the bestselling anthologies Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving NewYork and Never Can Say Goodbye: Writers on Their Unshakable Love for New York.... Read more

Nicholas Buccola is a writer, lecturer, and teacher who specializes in the area of American political thought. He is the author of The Fire Is upon Us: James Baldwin, William F. Buckley Jr., and the Debate over Race in America, for which he received an Oregon Book Award, and The Political Thought of Frederick Douglass: In Pursuit of American Liberty. He is the editor of The Essential Douglass: Writings and Speeches and Abraham Lincoln and Liberal Democracy.... Read more

Hayes Carll is a multi-award winning singer-songwriter based in Nashville, whose latest release, You Get It All, turns droll confessions, messy relationships, motel room respites, and an exasperated, hitchhiking God into modern nuggets.

The New York Times has likened Hayes’ ability to undergird humor with a weightier narrative to Bob Dylan. When he talks about the sounds that are in his own head, Hayes mentions Randy Travis. That juxtaposition defines the singularity of his career: He exists in a space of his own,... Read more

Myisha Cherry is an associate professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. Her research interest lies at the intersection of moral psychology and social and political philosophy. More specifically she is interested in the role of emotions and attitudes in public life.

Cherry’s books include  ‘The Moral Psychology of Anger‘ co-edited with Owen Flanagan, “Unmuted: Conversations on Prejudice, Oppression, and Social Justice and The Case for Rage: Why Anger is Essential to Anti-Racist Struggle,... Read more

Nina Collins has consciously chosen to embrace the mantra of raging gracefully. The Brooklyn-based entrepreneur, former literary agent, and mother to four young adults has created a vibrant community of women centered on disrupting social norms around aging.

Nina has channeled her multifaceted career as a founder, writer, life coach, and speaker and to bring together a vibrant community of women dedicated to disrupting the taboo and social norms around aging through her social media platform,... Read more

Judy Collins has inspired audiences with sublime vocals, boldly vulnerable songwriting, personal life triumphs, and a firm commitment to social activism. In the 1960s, she evoked both the idealism and steely determination of a generation united against social and environmental injustices. Five decades later, her luminescent presence shines brightly as new generations bask in the glow of her iconic 55-album body of work, and heed inspiration from her spiritual discipline to thrive in the music industry for half a century.... Read more

Judith Curr joined HarperCollins Publishers in April 2018 as President and Publisher of the HarperOne Group, charged with the group’s growth and expansion. She brought the imprints HarperOne, Amistad, and HarperCollins Español under one roof, and created the international imprint HarperVia. Since the HarperOne Group was formed, Judith has published the heartwarming bestseller The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy to great success, along with ten other bestselling titles.... Read more

Liza Donnelly is a writer and award-winning cartoonist with The New Yorker Magazine, where she has been drawing cartoons and writing about culture and politics for forty years. She has contributed to CBS News and CNN, creating political cartoons as well as live-drawing special cultural and political events. Donnelly also writes and draws for The New York Times, CNN Opinion pages and the Washington Post.... Read more

Andre Dubus III is the New York Times bestseller author of House of Sand and Fog, The Garden of Last Days, and his memoir, Townie. His novel Gone So Long, has been named on many “Best Books” lists, including The Boston Globe’s “Twenty Best Books of 2018.” Most recently he is the author of the novel Such Kindness, and the collection of personal essays, ... Read more

Camille T. Dungy is a versatile writer, poet and professor who draws inspiration from her experiences in various regions of the United States and her extensive travels around the world. Camille’s exploration of history, landscape, culture, family, and desire resonates throughout her work.

Camille is the author of four collections of poetry, and two novels, Guidebook to Relative Strangers and most recently, Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden,... Read more

Named a 2005 MacArthur Fellow, President Obama’s first appointment to the National Council on the Arts and Governor Snyder’s appointment to the Michigan Council for Arts & Cultural Affairs, Aaron P. Dworkin served as dean of the University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theatre & Dance (SMTD), which is ranked among the top performing arts schools in the nation. He is currently a tenured full professor of arts leadership and entrepreneurship at SMTD as well as serving as a Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies at the Stephen M.... Read more

Thomas Dyja worked in publishing for more than a decade before becoming a writer. Along with editing four anthologies, he’s written three novels, a biography of civil rights pioneer Walter White and The Third Coast: When Chicago Built the American Dream, a New York Times Notable book, One Book One Chicago selection, and winner of the 2013 Heartland Prize for Non-fiction. A Chicago native, he lives on the Upper West Side with his wife,... Read more

Elissa Epel, Ph.D. is a professor and vice chair at UCSF, and health psychologist who studies stress, aging and metabolism. She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, and the past President of the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research and co-chair of the Mind & Life Institute Steering Council.  She has served as a consultant to NIH, CDC, Facebook, Apple, United Health, and UC campus-wide initiatives on stress and health.  

Elissa’s research has been ranked as top 1% globally for citation impact.... Read more

Joseph Fasano is a poet, novelist, and songwriter. His books include Fugue for Other Hands (2013), Inheritance (2014), Vincent (2015), The Crossing (2018), The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing (2020), The Swallows of Lunetto (2022), The Magic Words (forthcoming, 2024), and The Last Song of the World (forthcoming, 2024). His writing has been widely translated and anthologized, most recently in The Forward Book of Poetry (Faber and Faber).... Read more

Grant Faulkner is the co-founder of 100 Word Story, co-host of the Write-minded podcast, and an Executive Producer of the upcoming TV show, America’s Next Great Author. 

He recently published The Art of Brevity: Crafting the Very Short Story. He’s also published Fissures, a collection of 100-word stories; All the Comfort Sin Can Provide; Nothing Short Of: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story; ... Read more

Sarah Fay is the award-winning writer of the memoir Pathological: The True Story of Six Misdiagnoses (HarperCollins). Pathological was an Apple Best Books pick, hailed in The New York Times as a “fiery manifesto of a memoir,” and named by Parade Magazine as one of the sixteen best mental health memoirs to read. She writes for many publications, including The New York Times, ... Read more

For 27 years, James Fox traveled across the world in pursuit of the truth regarding UFOs.  He directed and produced four films on the subject and in 2007 orchestrated an event, with help from journalist Leslie Kean (Coalition for Freedom of Information), which to this day is hailed as the most credible civilian effort of disclosure on UFOs in history.  Fox assembled 14 speakers, including two retired generals and several other military officers, a former governor,... Read more

Marc Freedman, Founder and CoCo of Encore.org, is one of the nation’s leading experts on the longevity revolution.

He is a member of the Wall Street Journal’s “Experts” panel, a frequent commentator in the media, and the author of five books. His most recent book — How to Live Forever: The Enduring Power of Connecting the Generations (PublicAffairs/Hachette Book Group, 2018) — was featured in ... Read more

Pauline Frommer began traveling with her guidebook writing parents when she was four months old. Over the years, she has written 12 books, edited about six times that number, and authored thousands of articles including for an internationally syndicated column. She co-hosted a nationally syndicated radio for 20 years, and her podcast “The Frommer’s Travel Show” was recently named one of the 13 best for travel by the New York Times. For three years, she created weekly travel segments for CNN’s Headline News.... Read more

Robbie Fulks is a singer, recording artist, instrumentalist, composer, and songwriter. His 2017 release, Upland Stories, earned year’s-best recognition from NPR and Rolling Stone among many others, as well as two Grammy nominations, for folk album and American roots song (“Alabama At Night”). Robbie recently released his album Bluegrass Vacation, a joyful, boundary-pushing collection of great variously-bluegrass-styled tracks, all very much in the tradition of his always joyful,... Read more

Mary Gauthier has been named by The Associated Press as one of the best songwriters of her generation. Her most recent musical release, Rifles & Rosary Beads, a collection of songs co-written with wounded veterans was nominated for a Grammy award for Best Folk Album, and Record of the Year by the Americana Music Association. The UK Americana Association named Mary their 2019 International Artist of the Year, and Folk Alliance International named Rifles &... Read more

Don George is the author of the award-winning anthology The Way of Wanderlust: The Best Travel Writing of Don George, and of How to Be a Travel Writer, the best-selling travel writing guide in the world. He is also the editor of ten acclaimed literary anthologies, including A Moveable Feast, The Kindness of Strangers, and An Innocent Abroad.... Read more

Elizabeth George is the New York Times bestselling author of twenty psychological suspense novels, four young adult novels, one book of nonfiction, and two short-story collections. Her work has been honored with the Anthony and Agatha awards, two Edgar nominations, and both France’s and Germany’s first prize for crime fiction. She has taught creative writing internationally and is the recipient of an honorary doctorate in humane letters and an honorary MFA in creative writing.... Read more

Janine di Giovanni is a multi-award winning journalist and author, and co-founder and co-director of The Reckoning Project: Ukraine Testifies, a transitional justice organization that trains researchers in Ukraine to collect testimonies that can be used in court.

Janine was a war reporter for nearly three decades, from the first Palestinian intifada in the early 1990s to the siege of Sarajevo; the Rwandan genocide; the brutal wars in Sierra Leone,... Read more

Dr. Eddie S. Glaude Jr., is a passionate educator, author, political commentator, and public intellectual who examines the complex dynamics of the American experience. His writings, including “Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul”, “In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America”, and his most recent, the New York Times bestseller, “Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for our Own”, takes an exhaustive look at Black communities,... Read more

James Gray made his directorial debut in 1994 at the age of 25 with Little Odessa, a widely acclaimed film which received the Critics Award at the Deauville Film Festival as well as the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival. That same year, he received nominations from the Independent Spirit Awards for Best First Feature and Best First Screenplay.

James is also the director of The Yards, starring Joaquin Pheonix,... Read more

Timothy Hampton is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley. An award-winning teacher and scholar, he has written widely about literature across languages and centuries, from Shakespeare and Cervantes to the present. In 2019, he published Bob Dylan: How the Songs Work, an innovative and much-praised study that broke new ground by focusing on the intersection of words and music in Dylan’s compositions. His essays have appeared in such publications as Salon,... Read more

Molly Haskell, author and critic, grew up in Richmond, Va., went to Sweet Briar College, the University of London and the Sorbonne before settling in New York. She worked at the French Film Office in the Sixties, writing a newsletter about French films for the New York press and interpreting when directors came to America (this was the height of the Nouvelle Vague) for the opening of their films. She then went to The Village Voice,... Read more

Joe Henry has left an indelible and unique imprint on American popular music. As a songwriter and artist, Henry is celebrated for his exploration of the human experience. A hyper-literate storyteller, by turns dark, devastating, and hopeful, he draws an author’s eye for the overlooked detail across a broad swath of American musical styles — rock, jazz and blues — rendering genre modifiers useless.

Henry has collaborated with many notable American artists on his own body of work,... Read more

Ann Hood is the author of over a dozen novels, including the bestsellers The Knitting Circle, The Obituary Writer, and The Book That Matters Most. She has also written five memoirs, including Fly Girl and Comfort: A Journey Through Grief, which was a NYT Editors’ Choice and was named one of the top ten non-fiction books of 2008 by Entertainment Weekly. Her essays and short stories have appeared in many publications,... Read more

Paul Irving is a senior fellow at the Milken Institute, previously serving as the Institute’s president and founding chair of its Center for the Future of Aging. Irving is also a distinguished scholar-in-residence at the University of Southern California Leonard Davis School of Gerontology. He earlier served as an advanced leadership fellow at Harvard University, and chair and CEO of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP, a national law and consulting firm.

Paul is chair emeritus and a member of the board of Encore.org and serves on the National Academy of Medicine Commission for Healthy Longevity,... Read more

Pico Iyer is the host of the “Speaking with Pico” series in Santa Barbara, regularly conducts interviews for the City Arts and Lectures series in San Francisco and, over 25 years, has conducted intimate onstage conversations with everyone from Philip Glass to Zadie Smith and from Martin Scorsese to Ireland’s President Mary Robinson.

Since 1982 he has been a full-time writer, publishing 15 books, translated into 23 languages, on subjects ranging from the Dalai Lama to globalism,... Read more

Steven Johnson is the bestselling author of thirteen books and an expert on the history of ideas and inventions. The Wall Street Journal called him “one of the most persuasive advocates for the role of collaboration in innovation.” His books include The Ghost Map, Where Good Ideas Come From, and most recently Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer, which was also a PBS/BBC television series.... Read more

Valerie June is a Grammy-nominated artist hailing from Tennessee, known for her diverse talents as a musician, singer, songwriter, poet, illustrator, actor, certified yoga and mindfulness meditation instructor, and author. She’s been hailed by the New York Times as one of America’s “most intriguing, fully formed new talents.”  She has served as a Turnaround artist for the President’s Committee for the Arts and Humanities and continues to contribute to The Kennedy Center.... Read more

Catherine Grace Katz is the author of the internationally acclaimed book The Daughters of Yalta: The Churchills, Roosevelts, and Harrimans: A Story of Love and War, named one of the Best Books of 2020 by Publishers Weekly and one of the Best History Books of 2020 by the Telegraph. Originally from Chicago, Catherine graduated from Harvard in 2013 with a BA in History and received her MPhil in Modern European History from Christ’s College,... Read more

Laurie R. King is the New York Times bestselling author of 30 novels and other works, including the Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes stories (The Beekeeper’s Apprentice was chosen as one of the “20th Century’s Best Crime Novels” by the IMBA.) She has won the Agatha, Anthony, Creasey, Edgar, Lambda, Macavity, Wolfe, and Romantic Times Career Achievement awards, has an honorary doctorate in theology, and is a Baker Street Irregular.... Read more

Carol Kino’s writing about art, artists, photography, museums, and contemporary culture has appeared for many years in publications like The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Town & Country, The Atlantic, Slate, and just about every major art magazine. Her first book, Double Click: Twin Photographers in the Golden Age of Magazines,... Read more

Phil Klay is a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps. His short story collection Redeployment won the 2014 National Book Award for Fiction and the National Book Critics’ Circle John Leonard Prize for best debut work in any genre, and was selected as one of the 10 Best Books of 2014 by The New York Times. His novel Missionaries was named one of the Wall Street Journal’s best 10 books of 2020, and listed by former President Barack Obama’s as one of the best books of the year.... Read more

Scott Klug is a Milwaukee native who represented Madison in the US House of Representatives. After a 14-year career as an Emmy award winning reporter he upset a 32-year Democratic Congressman. Despite winning four elections by an average margin of 62% he stayed true to his term limit pledge and retired. The moderate Republican had the third-most independent voting record of any Wisconsin Member of Congress in the last 50 years. He is the creator of the popular podcast “Lost in the Middle: America’s Political Orphans” wherever you get your podcasts,... Read more

Stephanie Land is the author the bestselling debut memoir Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive, which recounts her harrowing saga as a single mom navigating the poverty trap. Her unflinching testimony exposes the physical, economic, and social brutality that domestic workers face, all while radiating a parent’s hope and dedication. Her second memoir Class, picks up where Maid left off as she faces the new challenges of being a poor college student and single parent. ... Read more

Elizabeth Lesser is a bestselling author and the cofounder of the Omega Institute, the renowned conference and retreat center located in Rhinebeck, New York. Elizabeth’s first book, The Seeker’s Guide, chronicles her years at Omega and distills lessons learned into a potent guide for growth and healing. Her New York Times bestselling book, Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow, has sold more than 300,000 copies and has been translated into 20 languages.... Read more

Alan Light is one of America’s leading music journalists and is the cohost of the music news podcast Sound Up!. He was a senior writer at Rolling Stone, founding music editor and editor-in-chief of Vibe, and editor-in-chief of Spin. He is a frequent contributor to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Esquire,... Read more

John Lissauer is an acclaimed songwriter, producer, and arranger whose first big gig came at the age of 19, when he produced and arranged Al Jarreau’s first recordings. Ever in good company, he went on to produce and arrange a pair of hugely successful Leonard Cohen albums and has been composing, producing and arranging ever since. John produced and arranged the first, iconic recording of Hallelujah, which has become one of the most recorded songs of all time.... Read more

Gordon Lithgow is a Professor and Vice President for Academic Affairs at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, California.  He received his PhD in Genetics from the University of Glasgow, Scotland and briefly worked in biotechnology in Switzerland before becoming intrigued with the biology of aging. In 1991 he became a post-doctoral research fellow in the laboratory of Tom Johnson at the University of Colorado, Boulder.  Johnson was the first scientist to discover a mutation in a gene age1) that increased the lifespan of the tiny nematode worm C.... Read more

Phillip Lopate is a central figure in the revival of the American essay, both through his ubiquitous edited anthology, Art of the Personal Essay, and his own essay collections, Bachelorhood, Against Joie de Vivre, Portrait of My Body and Portrait Inside My Head.  He is also the author of such book-length nonfiction works as Being with Children Waterfront, Notes on Sontag, Rudy Burckhardt: Photographer and A Mother’s Tale.... Read more

Julie Lythcott-Haims believes in humans and is deeply interested in what gets in our way. Her work encompasses writing, speaking, mentoring, and activism.

She is the New York Times bestselling author of the anti-helicopter parenting manifesto How to Raise an Adult which gave rise to a popular TED Talk. Her second book is the critically-acclaimed and award-winning prose poetry memoir Real American, which illustrates her experience as a Black and biracial person in white spaces.... Read more

Rebecca Makkai is the author of the novels I Have Some Questions for You, The Great Believers, The Hundred-Year House, and The Borrower, and the story collection Music for Wartime.

A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, The Great Believers received an American Library Association Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize,... Read more

Megan Matson has the somewhat frenetic bio of someone who starts and/or makes things happen.

Most recently, Megan got the pro-democracy media platform ResoluteSquare.com capitalized and launched, where you can find writings, podcasts and streaming shows anchored by Rick Wilson, Stuart Stevens et al, against the autocratic movement that is today’s GOP.

As board lead at The Lincoln Project from late 2021, Megan did intensive organizational work including the staffing and launch of TheUnion.us and the restructuring of the Lincoln Democracy Institute.... Read more

Dr. Jennifer Mercieca is an award-winning Professor in the Department of Communication & Journalism at Texas A&M University. She writes about American political discourse, especially as it relates to democracy. Jennifer has published three books: Founding Fictions, The Rhetoric of Heroic Expectations: Establishing the Obama Presidency, and Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump.

She is a Contributing Editor for Zócalo, the Public Square and writes the “Rhetorical Tricks: Defense Against the Dark Arts” column for Resolute Square.... Read more

Anne Midgette was the classical music critic of The Washington Post for 11 years, from 2008 to 2019. Before that, she was for seven years a regular contributor of classical music and theater reviews to The New York Times. She has also written about music, the visual arts, dance, theater and film for The Wall Street Journal, Opera News, The Los Angeles Times, Town & Country,... Read more

Dr. BJ Miller is a longtime hospice and palliative medicine physician and educator. He currently sees patients and families via telehealth through Mettle Health, a company he co-founded with the aim to provide personalized, holistic consultations for any patient or caregiver who needs help navigating the practical, emotional and existential issues that come with serious illness and disability.

BJ’s been on faculty at his alma mater, UCSF, since 2007 and has worked in all settings of care: hospital,... Read more

Roosevelt Montás is Senior Lecturer in American Studies and English at Columbia University.  He holds an A.B. (1995), an M.A. (1996), and a Ph.D. (2004) in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University.  He was Director of the Center for the Core Curriculum at Columbia College from 2008 to 2018.  Roosevelt specializes in Antebellum American literature and culture, with a particular interest in American citizenship.  His dissertation, Rethinking America: Abolitionism and the Antebellum Transformation of the Discourse of National Identity,... Read more

Allison Moorer is a singer/songwriter, producer, and author who has released ten critically acclaimed albums. Her first memoir, Blood, was released in October 2019 to high praise and received starred reviews in Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus, and Booklist. Her second, I Dream He Talks to Me, was just released in October 2021. She has been nominated for Academy, Grammy, Americana Music Association,... Read more

Beto O’Rourke is a fourth-generation Texan, born and raised in El Paso where he has served as a small business owner, a city council representative and a member of Congress. He founded and currently leads Powered by People, a Texas-based organization that works to expand democracy and produce Democratic victories through voter registration and direct voter engagement. Powered by People has helped register over 250,000 unregistered Texans to vote since its inception in December 2019.... Read more

Trygve Olson is the founder of Viking Strategies LLC, which provides clients worldwide with customized sovereign political risk and public affairs solutions. Mr. Olson focuses his work on developing understanding, devising strategies, and implementing cutting-edge networks and tactics to impact high-level perceptions and ultimate outcomes.

Trygve has spent his career working at senior levels on elections in over thirty countries. In the United States has served in senior leadership positions on three Presidential campaigns,... Read more

Susan Orlean is the author of nine books, including The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup; My Kind of Place; Saturday Night; and On Animals. In 1999, she published The Orchid Thief, a narrative about orchid poachers in Florida, whichwas made into the Academy Award-winning film “Adaptation” starring Nicolas Cage and Meryl Streep. Her book, Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend won the Ohioana Book Award and the Richard Wall Memorial Award.... Read more

Peter Orner is the author of the novels The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo and Love and Shame and Love and the story collections Esther Stories, Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge, and Maggie Brown & Others. His previous collection of essays, Am I Alone Here?: Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.... Read more

Richard Panek is most recently the author of The Trouble with Gravity: Solving the Mystery Beneath Our Feet. His previous books include The 4% Universe: Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Race to Discover the Rest of Reality, which received the 2012 Science Communication Award from the American Institute of Physics. Among his numerous other honors: a Guggenheim fellowship in Science Writing, an Antarctic Artists and Writers grant from the National Science Foundation,... Read more

Alexander Payne is a two-time Oscar-winning writer-director whose films to date are Citizen Ruth, Election, About Schimdt, Sideways, The Descendants, Nebraska and Downsizing.

He grew up in Omaha and studied History and Spanish Literature at Stanford before earning his MFA in Film Production at UCLA, where his thesis film, loosely inspired by a famous Argentine novella,... Read more

Holly Lynn Payne, MFA, MIM, is an award-winning, internationally published author of four novels, private writing coach, and podcaster. As the host and producer of the Page One Podcast, she interviews master storytellers on the critical first page of their books. Notable guests include bestselling authors Dean Koontz, Alka Joshi, Tess Gerritsen, Robert Dugoni, JT Ellison, Tom Barbash, Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket), Kate Manning, Kristen Harnisch, Susanna Hoffs and many more. Her debut, The Virgin’s Knot (Dutton),... Read more

Richard Peña is a Professor of Film and Media Studies at Columbia University, where he specializes in film theory and international cinema. From 1988 to 2012, he was the Program Director of the Film Society of  Lincoln Center and the Director of the New York Film Festival. At the Film Society, Richard Peña organized retrospectives of many film artists, including Michelangelo Antonioni, Sacha Guitry, Abbas Kiarostami,  King Hu, Robert Aldrich, Roberto Gavaldon, Ritwik  Ghatak, Kira Muratova,... Read more

Andrew Penn, MS, PMHNP is a Clinical Professor in the University of California, San Francisco, School of Nursing where his teaching has received the UCSF Academic Senate Distinction in Teaching Award, among other recognitions.  He has practices as a psychiatric/mental health nurse practitioner, treating veterans and training residents at the San Francisco Veterans Administration Hospital. As a researcher, he collaborates on psychedelics studies of psilocybin and MDMA in the Translational Psychedelics Research (TrPR) lab at UCSF,... Read more

Maya C. Popa is the author of Wound is the Origin of Wonder (W. W. Norton, 2022) and American Faith (Sarabande, 2019), which was a recipient of the North American Book Prize and a runner-up in the Kathryn A. Morton Prize judged by Ocean Vuong. She is also the author of two chapbooks, both from the Diagram Chapbook Series: You Always Wished the Animals Would Leave (2018) and The Bees Have Been Canceled (2017).... Read more

Dr. Ken Robbins graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School and completed residencies in both internal medicine and psychiatry. He is board certified in both.

He has been on the clinical faculty at the University of Wisconsin for over 35 years, teaching consultation psychiatry, forensic psychiatry, collaborative psychiatry, psychopharmacology and geriatric psychiatry, primarily. He has also been on the clinical faculty of UC Davis. After establishing a clinical practice at a multi-specialty medical clinic in Madison,... Read more

Jerry Saltz is the Senior Art Critic for New York magazine, where he writes about the constantly shifting dynamics of the art world, from up-and-coming artists to billionaire collectors to the role of criticism. Hailed as a “critic of the people” by Architectural Digest, he democratizes art for a broad audience through his irreverent column and his social media channels, where has nearly one million followers.

In 2018,... Read more

From Greg Sandow: I grew up in New York, fell in love with opera when I was 9, and with rock & roll at 11. Studied singing, went to Harvard, majored in government, was a radical activist in the 1960s. Decided to be a composer, and, having written just two pieces, got by a miracle into the Yale School of Music, where I got a master’s degree.

My composing interest now comes and goes,... Read more

Russell Shorto is a New York Times best-selling author of seven books, including, most recently, Smalltime: A Story of My Family and the Mob. He is also a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine. His books have been published in fourteen languages and have won numerous awards. In 2009 he was given a knighthood by the Dutch government for advancing Dutch-American historical awareness. In 2018 he was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame. ... Read more

Sylvie Simmons is Leonard Cohen’s biographer. Her book I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen – written with Cohen’s participation and support – was hailed on publication by critics and fans alike as the “Bible” on Cohen.  Janet Maslin, in the New York Times, called it: “The definitive portrait, fearless and smart. Mesmerizing. The major, soul-searching biography that Cohen deserves.” The L.A Times called it: “A new gold standard of biographies.”... Read more

Claire Bidwell Smith is a therapist specializing in grief and the author of multiple books including Conscious Grieving and Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief. Led by her own experiences with grief and fueled by her work in hospice and private practice, Claire strives to provide support for all kinds of people experiencing all kinds of loss.

Claire’s three books of nonfiction have been published in 19 countries, and received many accolades and critical praise.... Read more

Stuart Stevens grew up in Mississippi, a seventh generation Mississippian. For a very long time he’s been driven by a fascination and love of politics, film, and, writing and has pursued those interests throughout his life. 

He attended Colorado College; Pembroke College, Oxford; Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English; UCLA Graduate Film School, and the American Film Institute, where he received a diploma signed by Charlton Heston. 

It Was All A Lie: How The Republican Party Became Donald Trump is his eighth book.... Read more

Laurie Stone is author of six books of fiction, memoir, criticism, and hybrid writing, most recently Streaming Now, Postcards from the Thing that is Happening (Dottir Press 2022), longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. She was a longime writer for The Village Voice, theater critic for The Nation, and critic-at-large on Fresh Air. More recently, she has written regularly for N+1, ... Read more

Matt Strain recently left Adobe, where over the course of 17 years he led teams across marketing, strategy, new business, and research. He is now focused on helping “real people” prepare for the opportunities with AI. 

The New York Times recently highlighted Matt’s unique AI-generated book, which used AI to blend Chinese medicine and mixology, propelling him into the realm of micro-AI celebrity. But Matt is no stranger to innovation. As a seasoned tech executive,... Read more

Cheryl Strayed is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, which was made into an Oscar-nominated film and documents her solo hike along the Pacific Crest Trail and the transformative experiences she encountered during her journey.

Cheryl has authored other notable works, including Tiny Beautiful Things, a collection of advice columns offering compassionate insights to readers facing life’s challenges.... Read more

James Surowiecki is a journalist and the author of The Wisdom of Crowds. He was the business columnist for The New Yorker for seventeen years, and has written for a wide variety of publications, including The New York Times Magazine, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, and The New York Review of Books. He was a writer and co-producer of two documentaries on the history of college football for ESPN.... Read more

Jonathan Taplin‘s extraordinary journey has put him at the crest of every major cultural wave in the past half century: he was tour manager for Bob Dylan and the Band in the ’60s, producer of major films in the ’70s, an executive at Merrill Lynch in the ’80s, creator of the Internet’s first video-on-demand service in the ’90s, and a cultural critic and author writing about technology in the new millennium.

Taplin is the Director Emeritus of the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab and author of The Magic Years: Scenes from a Rock and Roll Life and Move Fast and Break Things: How Facebook,... Read more

Robert A.F. Thurman is the Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religion at Columbia University, President of the Tibet House U.S., a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and promotion of Tibetan civilization, and President of the American Institute of Buddhist Studies.

Time chose Professor Thurman as one of its 25 most influential Americans in 1997, and The New York Times hailed Thurman to be “considered the leading American expert on Tibetan Buddhism.”

Thurman is known as a talented popularizer of the Buddha’s teachings.... Read more

Richard Toon was director of the Museum Studies program at Arizona State University until he retired in 2019. He was especially interested in the way museums, which are not seats of formal learning, act as authorities and organize knowledge. For the past 18 years, he’s shared a writing and teaching partnership with Laurie Stone. His creative writing has appeared in such publications as Defunct, Superstition Review, and  Int/AR Journal and in such books as The Face in the Mirror, ... Read more

Nicole Tung is a freelance photojournalist. She graduated from New York University, double majoring in history and journalism, and freelances for international publications and NGOs, working primarily in the Middle East and Asia. After covering the conflicts in Libya and Syria extensively from 2011, focusing on the plight of civilians, she spent 2014 documenting the lives of Native American war veterans in the US, as well as former child soldiers in the DR Congo, the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong,... Read more

Dr. Eric Verdin is the President and chief executive officer of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. A native of Belgium, received his Doctorate of Medicine from the University of Liege and completed additional clinical and research training at Harvard Medical School. He has held faculty positions at the University of Brussels, the National Institutes of Health, the Picower Institute for Medical Research, and the Gladstone Institutes. He is also currently a professor of medicine at University of California,... Read more

Alexander Vindman, a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel, was most recently the director for Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Russia on the White House’s National Security Council. Previously, he served as the Political-Military Affairs Officer for Russia for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and as an attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, Russia. While on the Joint Staff, he co-authored the National Military Strategy Russia Annex and was the principal author for the Global Campaign for Russia.... Read more

Lisa Immordino Vreeland has been immersed in the world of fashion, art and culture for the past 25 years.

Her first book was accompanied by her directorial debut of the documentary of the same name, Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel (2012). The film had its European premiere at the Venice Film Festival and its North American premiere at the Telluride Film Festival. It went on to win the Silver Hugo at the Chicago Film Festival and the fashion category for the Design of the Year Awards—otherwise known as “The Oscars” of design—at the Design Museum in London.... Read more

Brooke Warner is the publisher of She Writes Press and SparkPress, president of Warner Coaching Inc., and author of Write On, Sisters!, Green-light Your Book, What’s Your Book?, and three books on memoir. Brooke is a TEDx speaker, cohost of the weekly writing podcast “Write-minded,” and the former executive editor of Seal Press. She is the former Chairperson of the Independent Book Publishers Association and sits on the boards of the Bay Area Book Festival and the National Association of Memoir Writers.... Read more

L.A. Native Sam Wasson studied Film at Wesleyan University and at the USC School of Cinematic Arts before publishing his first book, A Splurch in the Kisser: The Movies of Blake Edwards, which film critic Andrew Sarris deemed “the critical resurrection of Blake Edwards.”

Sam is also the author of Paul on Mazursky, Fosse, Improv Nation: How We Made A Great American Art, The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood and Fifth Avenue,... Read more

Lewis Watts is a photographer, archivist/curator and Professor Emeritus of Art at UC Santa Cruz. He is the author of “Harlem of the West: The San Francisco Fillmore Jazz Era” (2017) and “New Orleans Suite: Music and Culture in Transition” (2013).

His work has been exhibited at and is in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; the UC Berkeley Art Museum, CA; the Citè de La Musique, Paris, France; the Ogden Museum of Southern Art,... Read more

Rick Wilson is a renowned political strategist, infamous ad-maker, writer, speaker, and political commentator.

In December 2019 Rick co-founded the Lincoln Project, a political action committee whose goal is to hold accountable those who would violate their oaths to the Constitution and would place their loyalty to others before their loyalty to the American people and democracy.

Rick has authored two New York Times bestsellers. His first book, Everything Trump Touches Dies,... Read more

Simon Winchester is the acclaimed author of numerous New York Times best-selling books, including The Professor and the Madman, The Perfectionists, The Men Who United the States, Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World, and The Map that Changed the World. His most recent book is Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic. In a career spanning five decades,... Read more

Meg Wolitzer is the New York Times–bestselling author of The Interestings, The Uncoupling, The Ten-Year Nap, The Female Persuasion, The Position, The Wife, and Sleepwalking. She is also the author of the young adult novel Belzhar. She lives in New York City.

... Read more

Matthew Zapruder is a poet, translator, professor, and editor known for his captivating literary contributions. Born in Washington, DC in 1967, he holds degrees in Russian literature, Slavic languages and literature, and an MFA in poetry. Zapruder has authored acclaimed works like Father’s Day and Why Poetry while also editing contemporary poetry at Wave Books, which he co-founded. From 2016-2017 he held the annually rotating position of Editor of the Poetry Column for the New York Times Magazine,... Read more

Larissa Zimberoff is an investigative reporter covering the intersection of food, business and technology. She’s written on the promise of fake eggs, the potential of peas, and how artificial intelligence saved a winery. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Wired, Time, Bloomberg Businessweek, Insider and many more publications.

She worked in the tech industry in San Francisco for over a decade before moving to the east coast and embarking on a new career.... Read more