As co-founder of The Reduced Shakespeare Company, Jess Winfield's full-length show, "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)" premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 1987 and became an international sensation, leading to multiple world tours and engagements. After leaving the RSC, Winfield spent 10 years writing and producing cartoons for Disney. He left Disney two years ago to write My Name is Will, his first novel. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife.

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Louis Fantasia is the Director of Shakespeare at the Huntington, the teacher-training institute of the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino. Deeply involved with the rebuilding of Shakespeare Globe in London for more than twenty years, Louis was the first American to direct on the reconstructed Globe stage, and served on the Globe's US Board of Directors. He is the author of Instant Shakespeare and was heard for several years as the host of "Theatre Talk" on KCRW. In 2007, he served as President of Deep Springs College.

www.instantshakespeare.com

Steven T. Wax is in his seventh term as the Federal Public Defender for the District of Oregon. A cum laude graduate of Colgate University and Harvard Law School, he was a key part of the Brooklyn, N.Y. District Attorney's prosecution of David Berkowitz, a.k.a. "Son of Sam." Wax and his team are representing seven men held as "enemy combatants" in Guantánamo. He has taught at the Northwestern School of Law of Lewis & Clark College, serves as an ethics prosecutor for the Oregon State Bar, and lectures throughout the country.

Laurie L. Levenson is Professor of Law, William M. Rains Fellow, and Director for the Center for Ethical Advocacy at Loyola Law School. She teaches ethics, criminal law, criminal procedure, trial advocacy and evidence. Professor Levenson served as Loyola's Associate Dean for Academic Affairs from 1996-1999. Prior to joining the LoyolaLaw School faculty in 1989, Professor Levenson served for eight years as an Assistant United States Attorney in Los Angeles. She was Chief of Training and Chief of the Criminal Appellate Sections of the U.S. Attorney's Office. In 1988, she received the Attorney General's Director's Award for Superior Performance.

Professor Levenson received her J.D. from UCLA School of Law and her A.B. from Stanford University. She was Chief Article Editor of the UCLA Law Review and clerked for the Honorable Judge James Hunter, III, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit after graduation.

Professor Levenson is the author of numerous books and articles, including California Criminal Procedure, and California Criminal Law. She has provided legal commentary on several high profile cases, and worked as an expert legal consultant for CBS News, ABC, NBC, CNN and NPR. Professor Levenson lectures regularly throughout the country and internationally for the Federal JudicialCenter, National Judicial College, international bar associations, bar review courses, community groups and legal societies.

Leonard Susskind has been the Felix Bloch Professor in theoretical physics at Stanford University since 1978. The author of The Cosmic Landscape, he is a member of the National Academy of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and recipient of numerous prizes including the science writing prize of the American Institute of Physics for his Scientific American article on black holes.

Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist Rick Loomis has worked for the Los Angeles Times since 1994.  Born in North Carolina and raised in South Florida, Loomis became interested in photojournalism through a high school internship at the Palm Beach Post. After a two-year stint working in the Post photo lab he left to pursue a degree at Western Kentucky University. While in college, Rick twice placed in the top ten in the William Randolph Hearst Journalism Awards.

Loomis has traveled the world documenting conflict and other issues in places like Iraq, Israel, Palestine, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Vietnam, Kuwait, Mexico, Haiti and Cuba. A professional with varied teaching and lecturing experience, Loomis has presented his work at the War and Media Conference in Berkley, CA as well other learning institutions such as UCLA, Western Kentucky University, USC, Elon University (North Carolina); Northern Arizona University; Cal State Fullerton; San Jose State and Ohio University.

He has lectured at various professional gatherings such as the World Press Photo exhibition (Crisis of Images, Images of Crisis), been a keynote speaker at Robert Hanashiro's Sports Shooter workshop, Julia Dean Photo Workshops as well as teaching photography at workshops for students and professionals at the Mountain Workshops (2003-2006) in Kentucky and as a team leader for the Eddie Adams Workshop (2003).

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Louise Steinman is a writer and literary curator. Her memoir, The Souvenir: A Daughter Discovers Her Father's War, was recently published in a new paperback edition by North Atlantic Press/Random House.

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Father Gregory J. Boyle, S.J. is a Jesuit priest who is Founder/Executive Director of Jobs for a Future/Homeboy Industries, an employment referral center and economic development program located in Boyle Heights, a community with arguably the highest concentration of gang activity in Los Angeles.

In 1992, as a response to the civil unrest in Los Angeles, Father Boyle formed Homeboy Industries, to create businesses that provide training, work experience, and above all, the opportunity for rival gang members to work side by side.

Father Boyle was born in Los Angeles. He received his BA in English from Gonzaga University, an MA in English from Loyola Marymount University, a Master of Divinity from the Weston School of Theology, and an STM degree from the Jesuit School of Theology. Before becoming Pastor of Dolores Mission (1986-1992), Father Boyle taught at Loyola High School and worked with Christian Base Communities in Cochabamba, Bolivia. He has also served as Chaplain of the Islas Marias Penal colony in Mexico and Folsom Prison.

He is currently a member of the State Commission on Juvenile Justice, Crime and Delinquency Prevention, and serves on the National Youth Gang Center Advisory Board.

As Executive Director of Jobs For A Future / Homeboy Industries, Father Boyle is a nationally renowned speaker at conferences for teachers, social workers and criminal justice workers about the importance of adult attention, guidance and unconditional love in preventing youth from joining gangs.

Visit the Homebody Industries website

Leslie Schwartz is an award-winning, best-selling literary novelist with two novels and dozens of short stories, articles and essays under her belt. She is President of the Board of Directors for the nonprofit literary organization, PEN USA.  In 2004, she was named Kalliope Magazine's Woman Writer of the Year. Her first novel Jumping the Green won the James Jones Literary Society Award for Best First Novel. Her second novel Angels Crest, a Los Angeles Times bestseller and a Booksense 76 pick, was translated into nine languages and was optioned for film.

Schwartz teaches creative writing at Juvenile Hall, in underserved middle and high school communities and at Homeboy Industries, an employment referral center and economic development program for at-risk and gang-involved youth. She is also currently in the process of establishing a literary magazine and press at Homeboy.

She teaches writing at UCLA extension, the Iowa Summer Writers Festival and at various writers conferences throughout the United States.

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Imani Kai Johnson was born and raised in the Bay Area but later adopted Brooklyn as her home. After receiving her Master's from NYU, she returned to California as an Irvine fellow and doctoral candidate in the Department of American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California where she is currently writing her dissertation on breaking. Her work is an unprecedented analysis of Hip Hop dance circles known as "cyphers" - spontaneous improvisational performance spaces to music in breaking culture. She has conducted her research across the US and in Europe, studying how breaking and cyphers carry the weight of cultural legacies, individual histories, racial and gender politics, and the potential theoretical keys to understanding global community through Hip Hop. Imani's achievements include having been a Scholar-in-Residence at The Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College and a fellow for USC's Urban and Global Studies Initiative.