LAUREN KESSLER is the author of five works of narrative nonfiction, including Pacific Northwest Book Award winner Dancing with Rose, chosen as one of the best book of 2007 by Library Journal. She is also the author of Washington Post bestseller Clever Girl, Los Angeles Times bestseller The Happy Bottom Riding Club, Full Court Press and Oregon Book Award winner Stubborn Twig. Stubborn Twig was chosen as the first "Oregon Reads" selection, the one book all Oregonians should read in honor of the state’s 2009 sesquicentennial.

Her journalism has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Los Angeles Times Magazine, O magazine, Utne Reader, salon and The Nation. A regular contributor to Writer's Digest, she writes a quarterly column on the art and craft of narrative nonfiction for Etude, the online magazine of narrative nonfiction that she founded and edits. She directs the graduate program in literary nonfiction at the University of Oregon.

KATIE CAMPBELL is a writer and photographer based in Oregon. She worked as an enterprise reporter for newspapers in Minnesota and Florida, before coming to the University of Oregon to study literary nonfiction and documentary film. She is the multimedia editor for Etude and her blog, Telling Stories, contains her musings about literary nonfiction, multimedia and the writerly life. One of her pieces of narrative nonfiction, "The Egg and I," was selected for inclusion in the anthology The Best Creative Nonfiction of 2007.

MICHAEL WERNER is an Oregon-based writer and documentary filmmaker. Before moving to Oregon in 2006 top study narrative nonfiction, he worked as a features writer and editor for publications in Minnesota and Florida. He currently serves as the assistant editor of Etude, an online magazine of narrative nonfiction. Michael is also directing a documentary about World War II-era conscientious objectors for Oregon Public Broadcasting and is producing another documentary about the effects of global warming on Oregon.