Mary Rechner is the author of Nine Simple Patterns for Complicated Women. She is the director of youth programs at Literary Arts in Portland, Oregon.

Nina Ozlu Tunceli is both chief counsel of government and public affairs at Americans for the Arts as well as the executive director of the Americans for the Arts Action Fund, which administers the only ARTS PAC in the country to raise political funds to elect a pro-arts majority in Congress.

Tina Cane is a poet, teacher, and the founder/ director of Writers in the Schools, RI. She is the author of The Fifth Thought. Her poems and translations have appeared in many journals, including Tupelo Quarterly and Two Serious Ladies.

Shannon Buggs serves on the board of Writers in the Schools and founded the Meta-Four Houston youth slam poetry team. She earned degrees from Harvard and Northwestern universities and worked for more than fifteen years as a newspaper journalist. She is now a University of Houston director of communication.

Stacy Parker Le Melle is the author of Government Girl: Young and Female in the White House and the creator of The Katrina Experience: An Oral History Project. She is the workshop director for the Afghan Women's Writing Project, and she cofounded Harlem's First Person Plural Reading Series.