Julia Scheeres has written for the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, New York Times, and Wired, and has twice been a finalist for journalism awards presented by the USC Annenberg School for Communication. Her memoir, published by Counterpoint, is Jesus Land. She lives in San Francisco, California.

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Bob Schildgen writes the popular “Hey Mr. Green” environmental advice column for Sierra magazine, where he was managing editor and book review editor for many years. The best of this column is available in the book Hey Mr. Green. A cofounder of Pacific View Press (a multicultural book publisher), he has written articles for a variety of publications, including the Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle. He lives in Berkeley, California.

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Matthew Sharpe is the author of the novels The Sleeping Father and Jamestown, as well as the short-story collection Stories from the Tube. He teaches creative writing at Wesleyan University. His stories and essays have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, Zoetrope, BOMB, McSweeney’s, American Letters & Commentary, Southwest Review, and Teachers & Writers. He lives in New York City.

April R. Silver is the editor of the anthology Be a Father to Your Child: Real Talk from Black Men on Family, Love, and Fatherhood,as well as a well-known entrepreneur, activist, and writer. She is the founder of Akila Worksongs and the artists-activist organization Co-Motion. The cofounder of HipHop Speaks!, a frequent guest on national media, and the co-host of “My Two Cents” on BETJ, she lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Author of Typo: The Last American Typesetter or How I Made and Lost 4 Million Dollars, David Silverman moved up the ranks from tech geek to owner and president of Clarinda, the largest American owned typesetting and publishing company before it ceased operations due to overseas competition in 2003. He has published articles on technology and publishing in industry publications, including Wired magazine and Publishers Weekly. Silverman currently works as an executive at Citigroup where he is responsible for—what else—disaster recovery.

Lalania Simone is the author of Urban Soul Warrior, as well as an artist, mystic, and restaurant owner in Denver. She grew up in a poor neighborhood riddled with gangs and drugs, and became both street-smart and book-smart. She has spent the last ten years dedicated to training and assisting any who seek skills and techniques to make a deeper connection with their self and the universe.

Barbara Sjoholm’s books include Incognito Street: How Travel Made Me a Writer and The Palace of the Snow Queen: Winter Travels in Lapland. Her travel writing has appeared in the New York Times, Smithsonian, and Slate, among other publications. She has translated several books from Norwegian, including the stories of Cora Sandel, for which she won a Columbia Translation Award. She lives in Port Townsend, Washington.

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Gary Snyder is the author of over twenty collections of poetry and prose. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1975 and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992 and 2005, he has been awarded the Bollingen Poetry Prize, the Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award, and the 2004 Japanese Masaoka Shiki International Haiku Grand Prize. He has lived in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada since 1970.

Eric Sorensen is a journalist with twenty-five years of daily newspaper experience, including five years as the science reporter for the Seattle Times. He currently lives in Kenmore, Washington, and is the author of Seven Wonders for a Cool Planet: Everyday Things to Help Solve Global Warming.