Gary Brecher is a data-entry clerk in Fresno, California and author of War Nerd. His Wikipedia entry indicates there is some dispute as to whether he is real or the name is a pseudonym.

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Robert Bringhurst has published more than a dozen books of poetry and is the author of The Tree of Meaning, Everywhere Being Is Dancing, and The Elements of Typographic Style, the latter of which has become one of the most influential contemporary texts on typographic design. He lives on Quadra Island off British Columbia.

Psychoanalyst Mikita Brottman’s books on contemporary culture include High Theory, Low Culture and The Solitary Vice: Against Reading. A professor of language, literature, and culture at the Maryland Institute College of Art, she lives in Baltimore.

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Sylvia Brownrigg is the author of several books, including Morality Tale and The Delivery Room. Her works have been included in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times lists of notable fictions, and translated into several languages, and she has won a Lambda award for fiction. Raised in England and California, she continues, with her family, to divide her time between London and Berkeley.

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Michael Brune holds dual B.S. degrees in economics and finance. As executive director of Rainforest Action Network, he oversees and provides strategic decisions for the organization’s programs, including its Freedom from Oil campaign. Brune believes that motivated citizens can promote solutions and collectively pressure policymakers and corporations to change their energy priorities, and offers instruction on how to do so in his book, Coming Clean.

Mark Budman was born and raised in the former Soviet Union. He is the publisher of the flash fiction magazine Vestal Review, which didn’t prevent him from getting a patent for a device that allows scents to be transmitted by multimedia. The author of the novel My Life at First Try, he lives in upstate New York with his wife, two daughters, and one inquisitive male cat.

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Shannon Burke is the author of Safelight and Black Flies and has worked as a paramedic in Harlem. He lives in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Steven Carter is an assistant professor of English at Georgetown College in Kentucky, and is the author of I Was Howard Hughes and Famous Writers School. He lives in Georgetown, Kentucky.

Lisa Crystal Carver was born in 1968 to a drug dealer father and an English teacher mother. Instead of going to college, she toured the U.S. and Europe six times in the performance art troupe Suckdog. They put out three albums, including “Drugs Are Nice,” which Spin called one of the best records of the ’90s. Carver, who lives in New Hampshire, has written for several publications, including Newsday, Playboy, Nerve, Utne Reader, Mademoiselle, Details, and Glamour. Her books include Dancing Queen and Drugs Are Nice.

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Douglas H. Chadwick is a wildlife biologist and the author of eight books on natural history, including The Grandest of Lives; The Fate of the Elephant, a New York Times Book Review Best Book of the Year; True Grizz; and A Beast the Color of Winter. He makes his home in Whitefish, Montana.