William Abrams is a writer and editor with three decades of experience covering arts, culture, history, and human-interest stories. Abrams was born in New York, a city of islands, and it was there his fascination with bridges first developed. Following graduation from the University of Pennsylvania, he and his wife eloped to California and now live in San Diego with their two sons. Death Came Swiftly is Abrams’ first novel.

Lisa J. Aldon is the author of Riddle of the Haunted Hoard, the first novel in the new Pucci Riddle Mystery series. She currently lives in La Jolla, California, where she also works as an engineer and consciousness leadership consultant. She is the author of Transcendent Leadership and the Evolution of Consciousness. Her passions are helping the planet evolve, her family and her dogs. She also loves helping earthbound spirits cross over. She is currently at work on the next book in the series. Visit ljaldon.com

Laura Apetroaei is a Full Stack Developer at SF AppWorks and the WebMaster of TheSagerGroup.net.

Danielle Bacher is a Contributing Editor to Playboyand a journalist known for her immersive reporting. She has contributed to Esquire, Billboard, NY Magazine, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, and Interview, and served as music editor for the OC Weekly. She’s currently represented by ICM and UTA. Her Esquire piece about her autistic brother’s experiences in the dating world was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. She is currently working on a memoir and a scripted TV show taken from her “Wild Nights” column, written for the LA Weekly, which mined her music and entertainment contacts in Hollywood. She received her B.A. in Journalism from Temple University in Philadelphia.

Ryan Basen was an award-winning reporter with the Charlotte Observer who has written features for The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Baltimore Sun. He is the author of several non-fiction books aimed at teens and has coached youth and high school baseball. Basen attended college at Washington University (St. Louis) and earned a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Maryland.

Alex Belth is the editor of Esquire Classic, the magazine’s digital archive, as well as the editor of The Stacks Reader, a website dedicated to preserving great journalism from the Golden Age of magazines. He’s been a contributor to Esquire, Sports Illustrated, Deadspin, and The Daily Beast, and created BronxBanter, one of the original New York Yankees blogs, which the Village Voice called a “New York City treasure.” In a previous life, he worked in film post production for the likes of Ken Burns, Woody Allen, and the Coen brothers.

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 inBaghdad 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.

Michael Botur is the author of four acclaimed short story collections and one collection which hardly anybody read. He has published creative writing in most of New Zealand’s literary journals and has won various prizes for short stories and poems; likewise, he has published journalism in most major newspapers and magazines in that country. He lives in Whangarei with his two kids.

Chip Brown, a former staff writer for the Washington Post, has written for more than 40 national magazines including the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker, National Geographic, Esquire, Harpers, Elle, Smithsonian, Vanity Fair, Outside, Men’s Journal, Travel + Leisure, and Vogue. He is the author of two nonfiction books, Afterwards, You're a Genius: Faith, Medicine and the Metaphysics of Healing and Good Morning Midnight: Life and Death in the Wild. For more info: ChipBrown.com.

Kevin Cannon is an award-winning cartoonist and illustrator whose cartoon maps have appeared in books and newspapers around the world. He may be best known for illustrating and co-writing the critically acclaimed Cartoon Introduction to Philosophy (Hill & Wang, 2015). Cannon lives in Minneapolis with his wife Maggie and son Ulysses.

Teresa Carpenter, the editor of the Modern Library’s critically acclaimed New York Diaries: 1609-2009, is a former senior editor of the Village Voice, where her articles on crime and the law won a Pulitzer Prize. She is the best-selling author of four books, including Missing Beauty and Without a Doubt, with O.J. Simpson prosecutor Marcia Clark. She lives in New York’s Greenwich Village with her husband, Steven Levy, an editor-at-large for Wired.

E. Jean Carroll is a journalist, advice columnist, and author whose “Ask E. Jean” column appeared in Elle magazine for 26 years. She has also been writer for the television show Saturday Night Live and a contributing editor for Esquire, Outside, and Playboy. Carroll is the author of five books, most recently, What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal.

Jan Cherubin is the recipient of fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Vermont Studio Center. She received  an MFA in fiction from Bennington, returning to the college where she studied writing with Bernard Malamud. Her journalism has appeared in The Los Angeles Review ofBooks, Los Angeles, New York, The Forward, and others. Cherubin also does standup comedy at clubs in Los Angeles. The Orphan’s Daughter is her first novel.

Richard Ben Cramer was an American journalist, author, and screenwriter. He was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting in 1979 for his coverage of the Middle East. His work as a political reporter culminated inWhat It Takes: The Way to the White House, an account of the1988 presidential election that is considered one of the seminal journalistic studies of presidential electoral politics. His next book,Joe DiMaggio: The Hero's Life, was a New York Times bestseller in 2000.

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.

Gay Daly was among the first class of women undergraduates at Yale, graduating summa cum laude in 1971, and staying for graduate school. After teaching at a number of universities, Daly left academics to pursue a career as a writer. While working as a fact-checker and reporter atPeople, she wrote the book Preraphaelites in Love, a history of seven women who modeled for Victorian painters and then married them. Later, while raising her daughters with her husband, the editor Jay Lovinger, Daly worked as a senior editor at Discover. Miss Havilland is her first novel.

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.

Marguerite Del Giudice is a former award-winning staff writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Boston Globe. She has written for a number of national magazines, including cover stories for The New York Times Magazine and National Geographic. A natural-born generalist, she approaches life and her work with a beginner’s mind—her topics ranging over the decades from adventure travel, politics, and murder to the Mafia, UFOs, family, and the mysteries of life. Her short story “The Human Nature” was a finalist for the 2013 American Fiction Short Story Prize, and she once wrote a novel, based on a trip she took around the world, that now sits in a box in her cellar in suburban Philadelphia, where she lives with her husband and two cats now that their sons are happily on their own. She has taught magazine-writing at Temple University, edited a few books, worked as a life coach, and trained in and taught aikido, the Japanese martial art known as “The Way of Peace,” in which she holds the rank of sandan, third-degree black belt. She is currently delving into the nature of reality, purely for her own edification.

Pascale Dellefield is an author, artist, and the owner of owner of Health and Peace Greetings, a greeting card company. Born in Beirut, Lebanon amid the chaos of war and civil unrest, she later moved to France and the U.S and speaks four languages. A retired licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with a deep appreciation for diversity an social consciousness, she lives with her husband and two cats in San Diego. 

Joanna Demkiewiczis a co-founder and editorial director of The Riveter, a women’s long-form 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.

Chris Erskine has been chronicling life in Los Angeles for more than 25 years. As a columnist for theLos Angeles Times, he wrote for the sports, travel, entertainment and lifestyle sections. Best known for his characterizations of suburban family life, he is the author of three books of essays: Surviving Suburbia, Man of the House, and Daditude. The Chicago native has also worked for newspapers in Miami and New Orleans. He once scored 5 points against the Harlem Globetrotters, all in the first half. In the second half, they pants’ed him.

Benji Feldheim is a Chicago-based writer and award-winning journalist whose work on crime, politics, music, food, and other life experiences has appeared in Vice News, Chicago, the Chicago Tribune, Mel Magazine, and others. Feldheim practices Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and plays drums in any bands that will allow him on the stage.

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.

Samuel G. Freedman is an award-winning author, columnist, and educator. Among his ten books have been finalists for the Pulitzer Prize (The Inheritance, 1997) and the National Book Award (Small Victories, 1990) and the winners of the Hillman Prize for Book Journalism (Into the Bright Sunshine, 2023), the New York Public Library's Helen M. Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism (Upon This Rock, 1993), and the National Jewish Book Award (Jew vs Jew, 2000). He has been a professor at Columbia Journalism School since 1990 and wrote both the "On Education" and "On Religion" columns for The New York Times, winning a national award for each. You can find him on the web at www.samuelfreedman.com. 

Alan Friedman is an audio provider, sound designer, editor, mixer, composer, musician, producer, voiceover & mashup artist. During a four-decade career in both the music industry and agency post-production, his work includes multi-platinum records and award-winning podcasts, independent films, and advertisements. For more information please see audiolifer.com

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.

Dr. Beth Gineris is an author, intuitive healer, psychologist, and practitioner of energetic medicine who has treated patients clinically for over 25 years. This is her third book and first novel.

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.

Jeff Grant served for 21 years at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), working at the highest levels of technological intelligence gathering. Later, Grant worked in the private sector, most recently as the VP/General Manager of Space Systems at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems.

Josh Green is an award-winning journalist, fiction author, and editor whose work has appeared in Atlanta, Garden & Gun, Indianapolis Monthly, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Los Angeles Review, The Baltimore Review, and several anthologies. His first book, Dirtyville Rhapsodies, was hailed by Men’s Health as a “Best Book for the Beach” and was named a top 10 book of the year by Atlanta. He lives with his wife and daughters in Atlanta.

Walt Harrington is a former staff writer at the Washington Post Magazine, an Emeritus Professor of Journalism at the University of Illinois, and the author or editor of eleven books, including The Detective: And Other Stories and The Everlasting Stream: A True Story of Rabbits, Guns, Friendship, and Family.

L. W. Harris is a DC-based novelist who is a retired public and private sector executive, business consultant, writer, and lecturer. He has been a manager in a Fortune 50 company, the White House, and several local governments. He has lived in Guatemala and traveled extensively in Latin America, East Africa, Asia, Europe and Hawaii. He has a bachelor’s degree from Hamilton College and master’s degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University. Writing as John H. McKoy, the author has previously published two novels: Paying to Play in Hong Kong and Son of the Maya.

Jon Hart is the author of Man versus Ball: One Ordinary Guy and His Extraordinary Sports Adventures. This is his first novel.

Jeff Head is a lawyer practicing in Mobile, Alabama. He is a graduate of the University of Georgia, Cumberland School of Law and New York University. He is an avid reader and fan of crime fiction, and a true crime buff. He is interested in many sports, and has taken up boxing at age 68 to get fitter and fight complacency. An avid fan of Georgia football, he has written I’m a Dawg, You’re a Dawg and we all Picked up a Few Fleas in Athens. Head lives with his wife, Luvie, and takes donuts to his granddaughters most Saturdays in the fall. To this point in his life, no one has been able to knock any sense into him.

Pamela Hill Nettleton is an award-winning academic, writer, and editor. 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 essays and features have appeared in magazines, newspapers, and websites; her books and research have been cited in HuffPost.com, The New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, and Ask Amy. She teaches at two universities in the Midwest and her academic research focuses on domestic violence coverage in media. For more info please see PamelaHillNettleton.com.

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, andTheodore 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 theWashington Post, theChicago Tribune, thePhiladelphia Inquirer, and theHartford 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.

Jerry Izenberg has been a sports reporter and a columnist at the New Jersey Star-Ledger for over seventy years. His best-selling books include Once There Were Giants: The Golden Age of Heavyweight Boxing, No Medals For Trying, and Rozelle: A Biography.  He released his first novel, the well-received After the Fire: Love and Hate in the Ashes of 1967, in 2020, at age 90.  

Nate Jackson is an award-winning music and culture writer from Southern California. He is the Deputy Editor for Arts & Entertainment at the Los Angeles Times. Previously, he served as the Music Editor for OC Weekly for nearly a decade and was also an entertainment reporter for the Times. His work has also been featured in Spin Magazine, the Village Voice, LA Weekly, VICE, Dope Magazine, and others. He currently lives in Long Beach, California with his wife and dog.

Pat Jordan has made his living as a writer since 1963. He presently lives in a small town in upstate South Carolina with his wife of over 40 years, Susan, a writer and former stage actress. They live with two dogs, a house cat, a ménage of feral cats, and a parrot named Florence, after his mother, also a tough old bird. His father, born Pasquale Michele Giordano, was the most profound influence on his life.

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 TheNew Normal: Blogging Disability. Her work has appeared inThe New York Jewish Week,The Jewish Exponent and Kveller.com.

Dr. David Kaufman has served as the on-field neurologist for the Michigan State University football team for over 13 years. He is a tenured professor and is the founding chair of the Department of Neurology and Ophthalmology at Michigan State University. He was recently appointed the Assistant Vice President of Clinical Affairs for the Office of Health Science at MSU. This is his first book.

Elizabeth Kaye is the award-winning author ofThe New YorkTimes #1 bestselling e-bookLifeboat 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 toEsquire, Rolling Stone, Elle, Harper’s Bazaar,John Kennedy’s George magazine, and a frequent contributor to the Arts pages ofThe 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 ofSeven Men: Memories of an Unconventional Love Life. She lives at the beach in Los Angeles with her man and their cat.

Merv Keizer is a former research chief for GQ and US Weekly. He worked previously as a research editor for Conde Nast Traveler and as a researcher for the Washington Bureau of the Baltimore Sun. He currently is a research editor for Smithsonian Magazine and works on non-fiction book and biography projects. He is a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Eddie Kim is a journalist based in San Francisco, writing feature stories and commentary for MEL Magazine. He’s been featured in the Guardian, NPR, and other national outlets for his reporting on politics, violence and pop culture.

Siori Kitajima is the Art Director of The Sager Group. She 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 finalist for a worldwide Information is Beautiful Award 2012, and a winner of the TechCrunch 2016 Disrupt Hackathon, Kitajima has a practical understanding of front-end technology and can code in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. 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 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.

Peter Kravitz was a Philadelphia newspaper reporter in the 1980s before becoming a public-school teacher, golf and wrestling coach, and advisor to an award-winning high school newspaper. He retired from teaching after 32 years, to a warm sendoff from students, former students, and colleagues. He is happily married with great kids. More recently he has published articles in Newsday and The Philadelphia Inquirer and is a regular contributor to Silversage Magazine. So You Wanna Be a Teacher is his first book.

Michael Kun is the author of works of fiction and non-fiction. Among other recognitions, his novel You Poor Monster was a Barnes and Noble  “Discover Great New Writers” selection and was chosen as “Book of the Year” by Baltimore magazine. His novel The Locklear Letters was adapted for a movie entitled “Eat Wheaties!” starring Tony Hale, Elisha Cuthbert and Paul Walter Hauser and is being reprinted with that title in connection with the release of the movie.

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 “TeenTycoon,” 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.

Holly Schroeder Link is an accomplished actress, singer, and writer who works professionally in theater, cabaret, and the voiceover industry. She lives in Nashville with her husband, Will.

Rory Link is a San Diego native and Del Mar resident. A collegiate soccer player at UC Davis, Link studied economics, technology management, and real estate development. Now he is an Ironman competitor, surf shop owner, licensed real estate professional, and banker. A Call from Experience is his first book.

Richard Guy Martin was born in Alabama and educated in the U.S. and in Europe. He lives in Alabama and in Berlin. Fluent in German, Martin has written for The New Yorker, The (London) Observer, Paris Match, The New York Times Book Review, Rolling Stone, Men’s Journal, Esquire, and the (London) Sunday Telegraph magazine. He is a John J. McCloy Journalism Fellow of the American Council on Germany and in 2013 received the Best Foreign Travel Story award from the Society of American Travel Writers.

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 theWashington Post and ABC’s SportsBeat with Howard Cosell. He has also written for Esquire,GQ, theNew 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

Christopher Mele is a veteran newsman who, growing up in the Bronx, knew at the age of 11 that he wanted to cover the news. Over more than three decades, he’s worked in newsrooms in New York and Pennsylvania and is currently a senior staff editor and weekend editor on the Express Team at The New York Times.

Madhav Misra was a senior financial executive in Tehran during the 1970s. He witnessed the Iranian Revolution unfold and evacuated out of the country on one of the last flights in December 1978. He was born in Lucknow, India, and graduated from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi, and Columbia University, New York. In addition to Tehran, he has lived and worked in London, New York City, and San Francisco. He and his wife now divide their time between Marin County, California, Maui, Hawaii, and the Himalayan foothills.Labyrinth of the Wind is his first novel.

Brian Mockenhaupt is a contributing editor atOutside and is the nonfiction editor at theJournal of Military Experience. His work has also appeared inThe Atlantic, Reader’s Digest, Esquire, Pacific Standard, Backpacker andThe New York Times Magazine. He served two tours in Iraq as an infantryman with the 10th Mountain Division. Since leaving the U.S. Army in 2005, he has written extensively on military and veteran affairs, reporting from Afghanistan and Iraq, hometowns, and hospitals. He was the winner of the 2013 Michael Kelly Award for “the fearless pursuit and expression of truth”, and a two-time National Magazine Award finalist for feature writing

Nthikeng Mohlele lives and works in Johannesburg. His debut novel,The Scent of Bliss, was published in 2008 by Kwela Books.

Julian de la Motte was born in London. He graduated in Medieval History and Theology from SDUC Lampeter, University of Wales, and gained a postgraduate qualification in Medieval Art from the University of York. After spending three years in Italy as an English teacher he returned to the U.K. and worked as a teacher, teacher trainer, materials writer and specialist in Cross Cultural Training before becoming a Director of Foreign Language training to the U.K. corporate sector. This was followed by a career in International Sales and Marketing, involving extensive overseas business travel. Senlac is his first novel.

Robert Mugge has produced, directed, written, and edited more than three-dozen films and TV series examining various aspects of American and world culture. This is his first book.

Jeremy Norrie is a journalist, filmmaker, and cannabis industry pioneer. He was among the first reporters to cover Mixed Martial Arts; he was the first to demonstrate artesianal hash oil to the public at The Cannabis Cup & to win an international award there for the first concentrate vaporization tool. He later created and hosted numerous competitions and concerts all over the USA & internationally. More recently Norrie has gained note as an award-winning director and producer of documentary films on a range of topics, from martial arts to Bigfoot as well as social topics like mindfulness, bullying, and animal welfare among many others. This is his first book. For more information, please see TheSkyIsland.com.

Richard O’Connor is a former high school All-American basketball player who later became the captain and leading scorer of a Duke freshman team that is the only freshmen basketball team in Atlantic Coast Conference history to go undefeated. After a brief professional basketball career, he turned to writing and became an award-winning journalist who wrote for dozens of publications, including GQ, Esquire, People, Sport, Sports Illustrated and The New York Times. His memoir Taking a Shot was called, by Hall of Fame NBA coach Hubie Brown, “A moving coming-of-age memoir about a kid who made a tough decision, took risks, faced challenges and wound up scoring big points in life.”

George Orlando is a 16-year veteran of professional voice acting, having narrated promotional videos for MetLife, Morgan Stanley, Quick Check, US Army, Sprint, MTV, and Barnes & Noble to name just a few. His first audiobook job was Scary Monsters and Superfreaks, by Mike Sager. A classically trained musician with an incurable rock-n-roll streak, Orlando has for many years toured with and provided guitar tracks for recording artists and continues to perform live solo shows regularly.

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, includingThe Prisionaires.

Pooja Papneyis the Chief Formatter for TSG. She was born and educated in Himachal Pradesh, India. She specializes in format, design, and layout of print books and eBooks. She lives with her family in Delhi.

Stravinski Pierre is a graphic designer living in New York. He has aworked for  Esquire, VIBE, Elle, Popular Mechanics and O.

Kaylen Ralph is an independent journalist and writer, a graduate of the journalism program at the University of Missouri, Columbia. In 2013, she co-founded The Riveter, a longform journalism magazine by women. Starting as a research assistant, Kaylen has been working on The Sager Group’s Women inJournalism series since 2013. Born and raised in Rockford, IL, she calls Chicago home. You can find more of her work at www.kaylenralph.com.

John H. Richardson was born in Washington, D.C., in 1954. He grew up in Athens, Manila, Saigon, Washington, Seoul, Honolulu, and Los Angeles. He is a graduate of the University of Southern California ’77 and Columbia University ’82. His writing has appeared in the Albuquerque Tribune, The Los Angeles Daily News, Premiere, New York, and Esquire. He has taught at Columbia University, the University of New Mexico, and Purchase College and is the author of three books.

Peter Richmond dropped out of ITT Automotive Technical School in Everett Ma. before he was about to flunk out. Seven years later, he resigned his copy-editing gig at the Washington Post just ahead of being washed out for getting the Oriole score wrong in the headlines atop a Tom Boswell story, in every edition, and, a week later, printing the same box score twice in a doubleheader. After that Richmond took a job at a newspaper paper in San Diego, the city with the lowest percentage of newspaper readers of any city in the United States. Eventually he found work at GQ magazine, where he was allowed to write as he pleased for 13 wonderful years, until he got fired from that one, too. Long story. 

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 a dozen books, including anthologies, novels, e-singles, a biography, and university textbooks. He has served for more than three decades as a writer for Esquire. In 2010 he won the National Magazine Award for profile writing. Several of his stories have inspired films and documentaries, including Boogie Nights, with Mark Wahlberg, Wonderland with Val Kilmer and Lisa Kudrow, and Veronica Guerin, with Cate Blanchette. He is the founder and CEO of The Sager Group LLC, which publishes books, makes films and videos, and provides modest grants to creatives. For more information, please see www.mikesager.com.

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.

Adam A.F. Sherman is a San Francisco-based writer and avid social justice activist. While continuing to struggle with anxiety and underdeveloped social skills, Adam has resolved to demonstrate to the world, and to future generations, that being limited does not mean staying limited. This is his first book.

Paul Harry Simons is a spiritual medium who heals, teaches, and trains people from all walks of life in ways of moving energy to create better outcomes. For more info, please see www.Mediumpaul.com

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 is the author of three nonfiction books, including The Klan and Can Somebody Shout Amen! Inside the Tents and Tabernacles of American Revivalists , named a noteworthy book of 1988 by The New York Times Book Review. She is the editor of Literary Nonfiction: Learning by Example and coauthor of the narration for Academy Award–nominated documentary The Klan: A Legacy of Hate. She is the editor of TSG’s highly acclaimed The Stories We Tell: Classic True Tales by America’s Greatest Women Journalists. Prior to writing books, she worked as a staff writer and editor for The New Orleans States-Item, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post Magazine, Oxford American, Texas Observer, among other publications. She has been a recipient of creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the District of Columbia Commission on the Arts and two Associated Press Awards for investigative-interpretive reporting. “No Twang of Conscience Whatever,” about the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers in Mississippi, was named a Notable Essay of 2014 by The Best American Essays. She directed Goucher College’s MFA program in creative nonfiction from 2001–2014.

Howard Jay Smith is an award-winning writer from Santa Barbara, California. Meeting Mozart is his fourth book. He was recently awarded a John E. Profant Foundation for the Arts, Literature Division Scholarship, The James Buckley Excellence in Writing Award. Smith is a former Bread Loaf Scholar and Washington, D.C.Commission for the Arts Fellow, who taught for many years in the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program and has lectured nationally. His articles and photographs have appeared in the Washington Post, the Beethoven Journal, Horizon, the Journal of the Writers Guild of America, and the Ojai Quarterly. While an executive at ABC Television, Embassy TV, and Academy Home Entertainment, he worked on numerous film, television, radio, and commercial projects. He serves on the board of directors of the Santa Barbara Symphony and is a member of the American Beethoven Society.

Ivan Solotaroff wrote magazine features for three-plus decades, until the internet largely superannuated the job description. A Senior Writer at several publications, he feels his best writing, as with the enclosed, was for the Village Voice, though unfortunately at a rate one couldn't live on. He's the author of two books as well, No Success Like Failure, a collection of articles, and The Last Face You'll Ever See, on contemporary American executioners.

Paul Solotaroff has been a senior writer at Rolling Stone for thirty years (and at Men’s Journal for almost twenty). He broke the NFL concussion scandal, the Aaron Hernandez story, the horror-show conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital and has written a series of stories that helped free innocent men who were doing life without parole in state prisons. Winner of the National Press Club Award, two Genesis Awards and a dozen selections to the Best American Sportswriting anthologies, he is a Pulitzer Prize and National Magazine Award finalist, as well as the best-selling author of four books. More recently, he has been the creator/producer of prestige docu-series: Free Meek (Amazon); How to Fix a Drug Scandal (Netflix); USA vs El Chapo (Facebook Watch), and the Sundance-winning 3 ½ Minutes.

Todd South is a former U.S. Marine and a veteran of the Iraq War. A daily and long form journalist since 2004, he holds both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the craft. In 2014 he was named a Pulitzer Prize finalist in the Local Reporting category for a series of stories about the criminal justice system and witness intimidation in gang cases.

Glenn Stout is an author and editor of more than 100 books. Founding editor of The Best American Sports Writing and The Year’s Best Sports Writing, his biography of Trudy Ederle, Young Woman and the Sea has been translated into four languages and in 2024 was made into a major motion picture of the same name by Disney. He is also author of Tiger Girl and the Candy Kid: America’s First Gangster Couple, Fenway 1912, Nine Months at Ground Zero, a New York Times’ bestseller, and many others. A longtime editor and writing coach, he is director of the Archer City Writer’s Workshop at the Larry McMurtry Literary Center. A dual citizen of the United States and Canada, he lives in Vermont.

Jerry Tisserand (1931–2008) was a lifelong resident of Evansville, Indiana. In 1955, he purchased his first camera when stationed overseas in the Army. He continued to photograph for the next four years, then put his camera away for good. After working numerous sales jobs, he became a stockbroker in 1968 and retired from that position in 1997. Tisserand “has a way of selecting winners before they reach the winner’s circle,” the Evansville Press reported in 1986. This is his first book.

Michael Tisserand is a New Orleans-based author whose most recent book,Krazy: George Herriman, a Life in Black and White, received the Eisner Award and was named aNew York Timesnotable book. His previous books includeThe Kingdom of Zydeco, which received the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for music writing, and theHurricane Katrina memoirSugarcane Academy. More information about Tisserand and his work can be found at MichaelTisserand.com.

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.

Daniel Voll has written for Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Esquire, where he was a long-time contributing editor. A National Magazine Award finalist, his articles are included in Esquire’s Big Book of Great Writing and Best American Non-Required Reading, edited by David Eggers. Also a filmmaker, Voll produced the documentaries Soldiers in the Army of God for HBO (shortlisted for the Oscar), Brave Miss World for Netflix (2014 Emmy nomination), Freeway: Crack in the System(2016 Emmy nomination), and most recently, he executive produced the critically acclaimed 2020 documentary series, Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult. A Duke graduate, Voll earned his MFA from the UC-Irvine. He lives in Santa Monica, CA, with his wife, filmmaker Cecilia Peck, and their two children,

Joyce Wadler is a New York City humorist and journalist who created and wrote the “I Was Misinformed” humor column for The New York Times, where she was a staff reporter for 15 years. Before going to the Times Ms. Wadler was a feature writer and crime reporter for newspapers and magazines, as well as an author and screenwriter. She was the New York correspondent for The Washington Post, a contributing editor for New York and Rolling Stone, a staff writer at People and The Daily News Magazine, and a reporter at Dorothy Schiff’s New York Post.  Her books include My Breast, her memoir about breast cancer, which she later adapted as a CBS television movie, and Liaison, the story of the French civil servant and the Chinese opera singer which inspired the play M. Butterfly.

Bill Walk is a Memphis trial lawyer and has enjoyed a varied practice over the past 31 years. He worked as a criminal defense attorney, defended doctors and hospitals, represented insurance companies, and, for the last 15 years, specialized in advocacy for persons who have suffered serious, sometimes catastrophic, personal injuries due to the negligence of doctors, hospitals, or other persons. Mr. Walk received both his undergraduate degree in Engineering Technology (Architecture) and Juris Doctor from the University of Memphis. He is married to Margaret Walk and has four children.

Russ Witcher grew up in Red Boiling Springs, Tennessee, just south of the Kentucky border. He graduated in 1980 with a journalism degree from Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green. He continued his studies at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, graduating with a master’s degree in communication in 1985. Russ began his teaching career that year as a journalism instructor at Enterprise State Junior College in Enterprise, Alabama. Returning home to Tennessee in 1989, he began teaching journalism at Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville, Tennessee. While teaching at Tennessee Tech, he continued his graduate studies part-time and obtained his doctoral degree in communication from University of Tennessee-Knoxville in 2000. He is currently a full professor of communication at Tennessee Tech and has published four books previously, all pertaining to the Vietnam War and Watergate era. He lives in Cookeville with his wife, Tera, and teenaged son, Jackson.

George R. Wolfe is the founder of both The LaLa Times, dubbed “The Onion for LA., and LA River Expeditions, a group that advocates for endangered rivers. His activist work has been featured in The New York Times, PBS, BBC, and in the documentary Rock the Boat: Saving America’s Wildest River. Wolfe’s first novel, Blake’s Bible, was selected for the Jack Straw Writers Series, and several exhibitions. Into the River of Angels is Wolfe’s second novel. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, dog, and cat.

Motoi Yamamoto is a Japanese artist known for working with salt, often in the form of temporary, intricate, large-scale installations. He forged a connection to the substance while mourning the death of his sister, when he began to create art from salt in an effort to preserve his memories of her. Past exhibitions include MoMA PS1, State Hermitage Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo. For more information: s