Liza Biggers
Liza Biggers is a freelance illustrator who grew up in Florida and spent her teens in Ohio. She received her BA at Wright State University in Ohio before moving to New York City. Life experiences and a love of comics has greatly influenced her art. In March 2006, Liza’s brother, Ethan, was shot by a sniper in Baghdad and succumbed to his wounds in February 2007 after a long battle. Liza never left his side and served as one of his primary caregivers. This experience led to many projects involving Veterans and their families. Today, Liza still resides in NYC and continues to illustrate.
Kevin Curro
Kevin Curro is a cinematographer and camera operator whose work has been featured on MTV/BET JAMS, REVOLT TV, XXL, THE FADER, VICE and more. He honed his skills as a kid growing up filming skateboarding and professional BMX riders. He attended the Academy of Art University. A full-time video editor at the men’s lifestyle ebiz TouchofModern.com, Curro also shoots music videos, commercials and narratives. He lives in Chinatown in San Francisco.
Prince Daniels, Jr
Prince Ahadzie Daniels, Jr is the son of Prince A. Daniels Sr, from Ghana, Africa, and Jo-Ann Keys, from New Orleans, LA. Born in Houston, Texas, he earned his degree in Business Management at the Institute of Georgia Tech and was named to the All-Academic football team, a two-time all-conference tailback and the fourth-leading rusher in Georgia Tech’s history with 3,300 yards. In the 2003 Humanitarian Bowl, he ran for 311 yards and 4 touchdowns, a record that stands. Prince was drafted to the National Football League by the Baltimore Ravens in 2006; he retired three years later due to injuries. Today he is a fitness instructor, motivational speaker, and experienced meditation guide. He frequently travels and teaches in Ghana and is pursuing his masters degree in business from the University of San Diego.
Joanna Demkiewicz
Joanna Demkiewicz is a co-founder and editorial director of The Riveter, a women’s longform lifestyle magazine found both online and in print. She is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism in 2013. She is the publicist at Milkweed Editions, an independent nonprofit press in Minneapolis. She has written for Vox.com, OfNote.com, Women’seNews.org, and Femsplain.com. Follow her on Instagram @yannademkiewicz and Twitter @yanna_dem.
Jack Fisher
Jack Fisher is a physician and professor emeritus of surgery at U.C. San Diego. After twenty years as head of the division of plastic and reconstructive surgery, he retired and earned a masters degree in U.S. political and economic history. Stopping the Road is his third narrative history, a labor of love for California’s Eastern Sierra.
Greg Gerding
Greg Gerding is a noted underground poet and publisher. He graduated from the University of Maryland with a BA in English Language & Literature and a minor in Sociology, and then hit the streets to continue his education as a scholar and scrivener of the real world. I’ll Show You Mine is his seventh book. Previously he has published five books of prose poetry and a collection of essays, Venue Voyeurisms. Gerding founded the University of Hell Press in 2005 as a platform for unconventional artistry, and he has collaborated on projects with both musicians and visual artists. He is well known for organizing poetry readings on both coasts. Gerding was born in Kentucky, has lived and/or worked in nearly every city in America, and currently resides in Portland. For more information please visit www.universityofhellpress.com.
Brad Graft
Brad Graft is a businessman who runs a national chain with his partners. A former U.S. Marine officer, he helped develop a military program that assists wounded servicemen and families of the fallen. He continues to steer fundraising for charities serving this cause. An avid fly fisherman and hunter, for decades he has pursued gamefish and predators in remote places around the world. Also a history buff, his research on the Brotherhood of the Mamluks series took him to the Middle and Far East, where he studied Medieval-era routes and fortresses and trekked the Mongolian steppe on horseback, learning the ways of native hunters and nomadic herders.
Walt Harrington
Walt Harrington, a former long-time staff writer for the Washington Post Magazine, is the author or editor of eight books and the winner of numerous print and broadcast journalism awards, including the Gustavus Myers Center Award for the Study of Human Rights in the United States for his book Crossings: A White Man’s Journey Into Black America. His book, The Everlasting Stream: A True Story of Rabbits, Guns, Friendship, and Family, was made into an Emmy Award-winning documentary broadcast by PBS. His book, Intimate Journalism: The Art and Craft of Reporting Everyday Life, has been widely used in journalism writing classes nationwide. He is a journalism professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. An archive of student work published from his feature writing classes is at www.intimatejournalism.com. His professional website is at www.waltharrington.com.
Pamela Hill Nettleton
Pamela Hill Nettleton is a writer, editor, playwright, scriptwriter, librettist, professor and author. Twenty-three of her books are in publication—including a biography of Shakespeare and three series of children’s books. More than 300 of her award-winning essays and features have appeared in magazines, newspapers, and websites; her video scripts have won more than 11 national awards, her plays have enjoyed repeated performances. Her doctorate dissertation on post-9/11 television masculinity won the 2010 Kenneth Harwood Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Broadcast Education Association, and she was awarded the 2014 Way Klingler Teaching Enhancement Award at Marquette University.
Joyce Hoffmann
Joyce Hoffmann is a an award-winning journalist and author. She has written two books, On Their Own: Women Journalists and the American Experience in Vietnam, and Theodore White and Journalism as Illusion, which won the Frank Luther Mott Research Award in 1995. Following a 12-year career in daily journalism, her work as a freelance writer in the 1980s and 1990s appeared in the Sunday magazine sections of the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Hartford Courant. She has a Ph. D. in American Studies from New York University. She lives in Norfolk, Virginia, where she teaches at Old Dominion University.
Elizabeth Kaye
Elizabeth Kaye is the award-winning author of The New York Times #1 bestselling e-book Lifeboat No. 8: An Untold Tale of Love, Loss and Surviving the Titanic, which was also #1 on Amazon Singles for a record two months. A recipient of the prestigious Alicia Patterson Fellowship, she has been a contributing editor to Esquire, Rolling Stone, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar, John Kennedy’s George magazine, and a frequent contributor to the Arts pages of The New York Times. Kaye is the author of six books, including nonfiction about the American Ballet Theatre and the Los Angeles Lakers. Her memoirs include a coming second edition of Seven Men: Memories of an Unconventional Love Life. She lives at the beach in Los Angeles with her man and their cat.
Siori Kitajima
Siori Kitajima has been an artist her entire life. Her ability to seamlessly combine beauty and utility has led her from the canvas to the computer screen, where she creates strong, well-balanced logos, webpages, user interfaces, and print materials. A recent finalist for a worldwide Information is Beautiful Award, Kitajima has a practical understanding of front-end technology and can code in HTML and CSS. Her work has been displayed in museums and art galleries in Japan, Europe, and the US. She has also been featured in several magazines and websites. For more information, please see www.siorikitajima.com.
Mike Knox
Mike Knox is a writer and stand-up comedian who has performed at The Comedy Store, the Hollywood Improv, and the Pasadena Ice House. A former corrections officer at California State Prison, Los Angeles County, he is currently employed as a parole agent by the California department of corrections and rehabilitation. He lives in Valencia, California, with his wife and daughter; for the gift of their love, he feels both lucky and unworthy.
Brandt Legg
Brandt Legg is a former child prodigy who turned an interest in stamp collecting into a multi-million dollar empire. At eight, Legg’s father died suddenly, plunging his family into poverty. Two years later, while suffering from crippling migraines, he started in business. National media dubbed him the “Teen Tycoon,” but by the time he reached his twenties, the high-flying Legg became ensnarled in the financial whirlwind of the junk bond eighties, lost his entire fortune… and ended up serving time in federal prison for financial improprieties. Legg emerged, chastened and wiser, one year later and began anew in retail and real estate. From there his life adventures have led him through magazine publishing, a newspaper column, FM radio, CD production, and concert promotion. For more information, please see www.BrandtLegg.com.
Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer
Gabrielle Kaplan-Mayer is a freelance writer and educator based in Philadelphia. She directs “Whole Community Inclusion” at Jewish Learning Venture. Her recent books include The Creative Jewish Wedding Book and The Kitchen Classroom. She is a featured blogger for Newsworks Philly Parenting and writes for and edits The New Normal: Blogging Disability. Her work has appeared in The New York Jewish Week, The Jewish Exponent and Kveller.com.
Peter Mehlman
Peter Mehlman, after whom a hypochondriacal giraffe was named in the Madagascar movies, lives in Los Angeles where he writes essays, screenplays, NPR commentaries and hosts the Webby-nominated YouTube series Narrow World of Sports. He grew up in Queens, New York, and graduated from the University of Maryland before writing for the Washington Post and ABC’s SportsBeat with Howard Cosell. He has also written for Esquire, GQ, the New York Times Magazine and virtually every Conde Nast women’s magazine because of his powerful grasp on what women want. He was a writer and co-executive producer of Seinfeld. Associated with the show through nearly all of its nine-year-run, he is remembered for coining such terms as “spongeworthy” and “yada, yada,” the latter of which has been included as an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary.
Nthikeng Mohlele
Nthikeng Mohlele lives and works in Johannesburg. His debut novel, The Scent of Bliss, was published in 2008 by Kwela Books.
Cass Paley
Cass Paley is president of Cassel Productions. Among his credits are Wadd: the Life and Times of John C. Holmes, which won Best Feature documentary at the 1999 South by Southwest Film Festival. He has also worked as a production coordinator on “Saga of Western Man” (ABC), and production manager on the Emmy Award-winning National Geographic special “Journey to the Outer Limits.” As project coordinator for Unicorn Films, Paley oversaw production and post-production of many ABC World of Entertainment specials, including “Darryl F. Zanuck, Filmmaker,” and “Fred Astaire Salutes the 20th Century Fox Musicals.” Paley, a 1971 graduate of Emerson College, began his professional career as a film traffic coordinator and production assistant at ABC TV, in the award-winning documentary division in New York. For the past 12 years, Paley has been the archivist for the Roy Orbison estate while actively creating new documentaries, including The Prisionaires.
Stravinski Pierre
Stravinski Pierre is a graphic designer living in New York. He is the deputy art director for Elle. He has also worked for Esquire, VIBE, Popular Mechanics and O.
Kaylen Ralph
Kaylen Ralph is the co-founder and editorial development director of The Riveter, a longform women’s lifestyle magazine found both online and in print. She works as a personal stylist for Anthropologie and writes for Rewire.org, OfAKind.com and Girlboss.com. Born and raised in Rockford, IL, she now calls Chicago home. Follow her on Instagram @kaylenralph and on Twitter at @kaylenralph.
Mike Sager
Mike Sager is a best-selling author and award-winning reporter. A former Washington Post staff writer under Watergate investigator Bob Woodward, he worked closely, during his years as a contributing editor to Rolling Stone, with gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. Sager is the author of more than ten books, including anthologies, novels, biography, and textbooks. He has served for two decades as a writer for Esquire. In 2010 he won the National Magazine Award for profile writing for his article “The Man Who Never Was.” Several of his stories have inspired films and documentaries; he is the founder and CEO of The Sager Group LLC. For more information, please see www.mikesager.com.
Miles Sager
Miles Sager is the Creative Director of The Sager Group’s visual branch, TSG Films. Trained in film and video production at San Francisco’s Academy of Art University, he is a former junior video producer at Silicon Beach startup Dollar Shave Club. Sager’s documentary work has been featured on such sites as Esquire, High Times, San Diego CityBeat, SF Weekly, and PlayboyMobile.com. He has also directed, shot and edited a number of commercials and music videos, seen elsewhere on this site. Born in Washington, DC, he grew up in San Diego, where he attended La Jolla Country Day School. He lives in Los Angeles.
Olivia Simonton
Olivia Simonton was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia and started acting at a young age. Her formal training in theater includes work with The Company Acting Studio and the Alliance Theater. As a teen she was signed with J. Pervis Talent and Click Models of Atlanta. She went on to attend Columbia College Chicago, with a major in Theater Acting. Simonton moved to Los Angeles in 2016 to pursue acting and modeling full time, while also gaining work experience in other areas of film. She is a producer and Head of Operations for TSG Films.
Patsy Sims
Patsy Sims is the author of The Klan, Cleveland Benjamin’s Dead: A Struggle for Dignity in Louisiana’s Cane Country, and Can Somebody Shout Amen!: Inside the Tents and Tabernacles of American Revivalists, which was named a Noteworthy Book of 1988 by The New York Times Book Review. She also co-authored the narration for the award-winning documentary “The Klan: A Legacy of Hate,” which was nominated for an Academy Award. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post Magazine, Texas Observer, the Discovery Channel’s TDC magazine, and most major American newspapers. Her most recent book is the anthology Literary Nonfiction: Learning by Example. She has received numerous awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and two Associated Press Awards for investigative-interpretive reporting for her long-form narrative journalism. She is currently on leave from Goucher College’s limited-residency MFA in Creative Nonfiction Program, which she has directed since 2001. Her current project is a book about a Texas prison farm.
Matt Tullis
Matt Tullis is an assistant professor of digital journalism and English at Fairfield University. He is the host and producer of Gangrey: The Podcast and is an associate editor for River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative. He has been noted in Best American Sports Writing three times, and Best American Essays once. He lives with his wife and two children in Newtown, CT.
