Susan Zakin is the author of several books, including Coyotes and Town Dogs: Earth First! and the Environmental Movement (Viking). Her writing has appeared in GQ, Vogue, Salon, and The New York Times.

Brian Cullman is a musician, producer, and writer. As a producer, he has worked with Lucinda Williams and Taj Mahal, Ollabelle, and Persian-Indian group Ghazal, and collaborated with Youssou N'dour on a record for Senegalese guitar wizard Jimi Mbaye. He has written for Creem, Crawdaddy, Musician, Rolling Stone, The Paris Review, Spin, and Details, winning the ASCAP/Deems Taylor award three times. His most recent CD is Winter Clothes.

Bill Dowell was a foreign correspondent for Time magazine and NBC News, and an associate producer for National Public Radio's All Things Considered. As Time's Southeast Asia Bureau Chief, based in Hong Kong, and as a Paris bureau correspondent, he reported on Africa, the Middle East and India.

Steve Erickson is the author of ten novels and a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Riverside. He has written for Esquire, The New York Times, McSweeney's, and the BBC. He covers media and the arts for Los Angeles magazine.

Matt Cooper was senior editor at Newsweek, managing editor for White House coverage at National Journal, and is a former reporter for Time, where he made national news when he was held in contempt of court, along with New York Times reporter Judith Miller, for refusing to name his sources on the story of Valerie Plame, the CIA agent whose assets were put at risk when Bush administration officials leaked her identity.

Paul Cullum is the author of several books. He has written for the LA Weekly, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Film Threat, Arthur, Black Clock, and hundreds of other marginally subversive magazines. He was the frontman for the band Wild Blue Yonder. And, yes, he's from Texas.

J.C. Hallman is the author of six books, including The Devil is a Gentleman and The Hospital for Bad Poets. He has written for Harper's, Tin House, GQ, The New Republic, and The Baffler. He has taught creative writing at a number of universities. He is teaching nonfiction for JOTPY.

Tom McNichol has written for Washington, D.C.'s City Paper, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Wired. He is the author of several books, most recently AC/DC: The Savage Tale of the First Standards War. He worked for NPR and he can use that voice anytime he wants to.

Luisita Lopez Torregrosa has been an editor at The New York Times. Her books include Before the Rain: A Memoir of Love and Revolution and The Noise of Infinite Longing. She was written for Vanity Fair, Vogue, NBC News, and many others.

Terry Tempest Williams is the author, most recently, of Erosion: Essays of Undoing. She is a writer, activist, and icon of the American Southwest. She teaches at Harvard Divinity School.

Cole Coonce has written about drag racing, drag queens, drum machines, sex machines, ketamine, Kraftwerk, the Land Speed Record, the record business, the Civil War, Erwin Rommel, bicycles, Japanese drifters, high plains drifters, UFOs, quantum mechanics, shade-tree mechanics, and famous nobodies who slept on his couch. He is currently producing and directing documentaries on motorsports but often adheres to the speed limit.