Michael Eric Dyson is the author of many books including the bestselling Is Bill Cosby Right?: Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind?; Come Hell or High Water, Mercy, Mercy Me: The Art, Loves, and Demons of Marvin Gaye; Holler if You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur; Why I Love Black Women; and I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr. Dyson is the Avalon Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania. He lives in Philadelphia.

Gregory Rodriguez is an Irvine senior fellow at the New America Foundation. He has written widely on issues of race, immigration, ethnicity, politics and America's changing demographics in such leading publications as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, where he is a Sunday Op-Ed columnist. The Economist has praised him for "decisively changing the understanding of the Latino experience in the United States," and Esquire magazine recently listed him among the "Best and Brightest" Americans under 40 who will revolutionize the way we think. His essay "Mongrel America," which first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, was included in The Best American Political Writing of 2003. The author of two groundbreaking studies, "The Emerging Latino Middle Class" (1996), and "From Newcomers to New Americans: The Successful Integration of Immigrants into American Society" (1999), Rodriguez is currently at work on a major book on how contemporary Mexican immigration will change the way Americans view race. It is scheduled to be published simultaneously in English by Pantheon and in Spanish by Editorial Planeta Mexico in 2007.

Harriet Rochlin, a native of Los Angeles, has been researching, writing, and lecturing on Jewish roots in the Spanish, Mexican and American West for more than three decades. Her landmark social history, "Pioneer Jews: A New Life in the Far West," is now in its twentieth year and eleventh printing. Rochlin turned to fictions to probe the inner lives of these pioneers as they progressed from Jewish newcomers to Jewish westerners. The resulting Desert Dwellers Trilogy has won praise for historical authenticity, lively storytelling, and graphic details.

Lisa Margonelli writes about the global culture and economy of energy. Her book about the oil supply chain, Oil On the Brain: Petroleum's Long Strange Trip to Your Tank, was published by Nan Talese/Doubleday in 2007. The book was recognized as one of the 25 Notable Books of 2007 by the American Library Association.

Ms. Margonelli has been published in The Atlantic, New York Times online, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Wired, Discover, Salon, Business 2.0, San Francisco Magazine, and California Monthly, among other publications. Her column, "Money Tales," which combined economics and oral history in the San Francisco Chronicle online, won an Excellence in Journalism award from the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists in 2003. In 1999-2000, she was awarded a Sundance Fellowship. She is a graduate of Yale University.

Dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker Yvonne Rainer was one of the founders of the Judson Dance Theater in 1962. Since 1972, she has completed seven feature-length films, one of which, Privilege (1990), won the Filmmakers Trophy at the 1991 Sundance Film Festival and the Geyer Werke Prize at the 1991 International Documentary Film Festival in Munich. Her work was recently seen in the exhibition Yvonne Rainer: Radical Juxtapositions: 1961-2002.

Irene Borger's articles have appeared in many publications including Vogue, O, and on The Wall Street Journal's arts page. From 1982 - 1990, under the name L.N. Halliburton, she wrote bi-weekly restaurant reviews for the Los Angeles Times. She founded the writing program at AIDS Project Los Angeles and served as artist-in-residence for ten years. The editor of From a Burning House published by Washington Sq. Press/Pocket Books. Borger serves as a writing consultant to wellness and psychoanalytic institutes throughout the United States; she is writing a book on listening.

Benjamin Black is the pen name of acclaimed author John Banville, who was born in Wexford, Ireland, in 1945. He was educated at a Christian Brothers' school and St Peter's College in Wexford. He was literary editor of the Irish Times between 1988 and 1999. Long Lankin, a collection of short stories, was published in 1970. It was followed by Nightspawn, and Birchwood, both novels.

Banville's fictional portrait of the 15th-century Polish astronomer Dr Copernicus (1976) won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (for fiction) and was the first in a series of books exploring the lives of eminent scientists and scientific ideas. The second novel in the series was about the 16th-century German astronomer Kepler (1981) and won the Guardian Fiction Prize. The Newton Letter: An Interlude (1982), is the story of an academic writing a book about the mathematician Sir Isaac Newton. It was adapted as a film by Channel 4 Television. Mefisto (1986), explores the world of numbers in a reworking of Dr Faustus.

The Book of Evidence (1989), which won the Guinness Peat Aviation Book Award and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction, Ghosts (1993) and Athena (1995) form a loose trilogy of novels narrated by Freddie Montgomery, a convicted murderer. The central character of Banville's 1997 novel, The Untouchable, Victor Maskell, is based on the art historian and spy Anthony Blunt. Eclipse (2000), is narrated by Alexander Cleave, an actor who has withdrawn to the house where he spent his childhood. Shroud (2002), continues the tale begun in Eclipse and Prague Pictures: Portrait of a City (2003), is a personal evocation of the magical European city.  His latest book The Sea (2005) won the 2005 Man Booker Prize.

Tara Ison's first novel, A Child out of Alcatraz, was a Finalist for the 1997 Los Angeles Times Book Awards, "Best First Fiction."  Her second novel, The List (Scribner), was published in 2007. 

Her short fiction, essays and book reviews have appeared in Tin House, The Kenyon Review, Nerve.com, Black Clock, The Mississippi Review, LA Weekly, the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine and Book Review, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Chicago Tribune, the San Jose Mercury News, and numerous anthologies.  She is also the co-writer of the movie Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead. 

Ison received her MFA in Fiction & Literature from Bennington College.  She has taught Fiction and Screenwriting at Washington University in St. Louis, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, Goddard College, Antioch University Los Angeles, and UC Riverside Palm Desert's MFA in Creative Writing program.

Elaine Pagels is a preeminent figure in the theological community whose impressive scholarship has earned her international respect. The Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University, Pagels was awarded the Rockefeller, Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellowships in three consecutive years.

As a young researcher at Barnard College, she changed forever the historical landscape of the Christian religion by exploding the myth of the early Christian Church as a unified movement. Her findings were published in the bestselling book, The Gnostic Gospels, an analysis of 52 early Christian manuscripts that were unearthed in Egypt. Known collectively as the Nag Hammadi Library, the manuscripts show the pluralistic nature of the early church and the role of women in the developing Christian movement. The Gnostic Gospels won both the National Book Critic’s Circle Award and the National Book Award and was chosen by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best books of the 20th Century.

In her most recent New York Times bestseller, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, Pagels focuses on religious claims to possessing the ultimate truth. Pagels is also the author of The Origin of Satan, which chronicles the evolution of Jewish and Christian concepts of evil and Adam, Eve and the Serpent, which examines the creation myth and its role in the development of sexual attitudes in the Christian West. Her new book, Reading Judas, co-authored with Karen King, is the first book to illustrate how the newly discovered text provides a window onto understanding how Jesus’ followers understood his death, why Judas betrayed Jesus, and why God allowed it. Pagels earned an M.A. from Stanford University and Ph.D. with distinction from Harvard.

Karen L. King is the Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Harvard University in The Divinity School.  She took her BA with honors in Religious Studies at the University of Montana, Missoula.  She completed her Ph.D. in History of Religions:  Early Christianity at Brown University. After completing her doctorate, she taught for 14 years at Occidental College in Los Angeles, before moving to her current position at Harvard University. Trained in comparative religions and historical studies, her teaching and research specialties in the history of Christianity lie in women's studies, orthodoxy and heresy, and the Nag Hammadi literature.  Her publications include The Secret Revelation of John; The Gospel of Mary of Magdala:  Jesus and the First Woman Apostle; What is Gnosticism?; Revelation of the Unknowable God; Images of the Feminine in Gnosticism (ed.); and Women and Goddess Traditions in Antiquity and Today.

Verlyn Klinkenborg was born in Colorado in 1952 and raised in Iowa and California. He graduated from Pomona College and received a Ph.D. in English Literature from Princeton University. He is the author of Making Hay (1986), The Last Fine Time (1991), The Rural Life (2003), and Timothy: Or, Notes of an Abject Reptile (2006). He is a visiting professor at Bard College and the visiting writer in residence at Pomona College, and has been a member of the editorial board of the New York Times since 1997. Mr. Klinkenborg lives in rural New York state.

Philip G. Zimbardo is an internationally recognized scholar, educator, researcher and media personality, winning numerous awards and honors in each of these domains.  He has been a Stanford University professor since 1968, having taught previously at Yale, NYU and Columbia.  Zimbardo's career is noted for giving psychology away to the public through his popular PBS-TV series, Discovering Psychology, along with many text and trade books, among his 300 publications.  He was recently president of the American Psychological Association.

The New York Times describes Irshad Manji as “Osama bin Laden’s worst nightmare.” She takes that as a compliment.  Irshad is the best-selling author of The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith.  Her book has been published in 26 countries, including Pakistan, India, Lebanon and Turkey. In those countries that have banned The Trouble with Islam Today, she is reaching readers by posting free translations on her website: www.muslim-refusenik.com.

As a scholar, Irshad is currently Senior Fellow with the European Foundation for Democracy. She recently served as Visiting Fellow at Yale University and Writer-In-Residence at the University of Toronto.  She continues to present to audiences as diverse as Cambridge University, Amnesty International and the Pentagon.

 As a journalist, Irshad’s columns are distributed worldwide by the New York Times Syndicate.  In April 2007, she will present “Faith Without Fear,” her documentary film about reconciling Islam with freedom. As an activist, Irshad is president of “Project Ijtihad,” an Internet initiative to revive Islam’s own tradition of dissent and debate. In that capacity, the World Economic Forum has selected her as a Young Global Leader. Oprah Winfrey recently honored Irshad with the first annual Chutzpah Award for “audacity, nerve, boldness and conviction.” Ms. magazine named her a Feminist for the 21st Century, and New York-based Immigration Equality gave her its Global Vision Prize.  Above all, the Jakarta Post in Indonesia -- the world’s largest Muslim country -- identifies Irshad as one of three Muslim women creating positive change in Islam today.