Mallory Smith, who grew up in Los Angeles, was a freelance writer and editor specializing in environmental, social justice, and healthcare-related communications. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Sta…
Eric Blehm is the award-winning author of the New York Times bestsellers Fearless and The Only Thing Worth Dying For. His book The Last Season won the 2007 National Outdoor Book Award and was named by…
Ron Rash is the author of the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Finalist and New York Times bestselling novel, Serena, in addition to three other prizewinning novels, One Foot in Eden, Saints at the River, and The Wo…
Jennifer has spent three decades writing award-winning fiction and nonfiction for children. Amongst her titles are picture books: THIS IS MY ROOM (NO TIGERS ALLOWED) and OH, CHICKADEE!; chapter books:…
Jeff Hobbs grew up in Kennett Square, PA and graduated from Yale in 2002 with a BA in English Language and Literature. He is the author of Seeking Shelter (and Amazon Best Book of 2025 so far) and The…
Kate Fagan is an Emmy Award–winning journalist and the #1 New York Times bestselling author of What Made Maddy Run, which was a semi-finalist for the PEN/ESPN Award for literary sports writing. She is…
The Waiter waited his first table at age thirty-one. In 2004 the author started his wildly popular blog, www.WaiterRant.net, winning the 2006 "Best Writing in a Weblog" Bloggie Award. He is interviewe…
Nina LaCour is an award winning and nationally bestselling author of fiction for adults, teens, and children. A former indie bookseller, she lives with her family in San Francisco.
Ibi Zoboi's debut novel American Street was a National Book Award finalist. She is also the New York Times Bestselling author of Pride, My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich, and Punching the Air with co-a…
Shunmyō Masuno is a Japanese monk and garden designer. He is chief priest of the Sōtō Zen temple Kenkō-ji, professor at Tama Art University, and president of a de…
Jim Gaffigan was born in Elgin, Illinois, and raised in Chesterton, Indiana. He attended La Lumiere School in La Porte, Indiana. He is the youngest of six children and often jokes about growing up in …
Amanda Linsmeier has been a book nerd as long as she can remember, and it was that great love of reading—especially R.L. Stine novels and fairytales—that eventually brought her to writing her own stor…
Dr. Steffanie Strathdee is a Canadian-American infectious disease epidemiologist who received her doctoral training at the University of Toronto. She is the Harold Simon Distinguished Professor of Med…
Blythe Roberson is a comedian, a humor writer, and author of How to Date Men When You Hate Men. She has written for The New Yorker, Cosmopolitan, Kinfolk, Esquire, Vice, and for the NPR quiz show Wait…
Lizzie Johnson> is a staff writer at the San Francisco Chronicle, where she has reported on fifteen of the deadliest, largest, and most destructive blazes in modern California history, and covered ove…
Katalin Karikó, PhD, is a Hungarian American biochemist who specializes in RNA-mediated mechanisms. She is an adjunct professor of neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania, and her research was …