Martha Nichols is the editor-in-chief of Talking Writing, an online literary magazine. Her personal essays and features have been widely published in journals such as Utne Reader, Salon, and the Christian Science Monitor. She teaches in the journalism program at Harvard University Extension School.

Fred Setterberg is the author of Lunch Bucket Paradise: A True-Life Novel and The Roads Taken: Travels Through America’s Literary Landscapes, winner of the AWP Award Series in Creative Nonfiction. He co-wrote Under the Dragon: California’s New Culture and Toxic Nation with Lonny Shavelson.

Andrew Lam is the author of Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora, East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres, and Birds of Paradise Lost. He currently blogs with the Huffington Post and is an editor at New America Media, which he co-founded.

Autumn Stephens is the author of the Wild Women book series, editor of two anthologies of women's writing, and the second-ever NYT Modern Love columnist. A former co-editor of The East Bay Monthly, she is trained in the Amherst Writers method and teaches creative writing in hospitals and privately.

William Wong, a former columnist at the Oakland Tribune; freelance columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Chronicle, Asian Week, and East-West; and blogger at sfgate.com. He is the author of Yellow Journalist: Dispatches from Asian America; Images of America: Oakland's Chinatown.