Lynne Cox

Lynne Cox is a world-record-holding long-distance open water swimmer and bestselling author. In Swimming to Antarctica, Cox writes about her experience swimming 25 minutes in the waters of Antarctica. Her second book, Grayson, details her encounter with a lost baby gray whale during an early morning workout off the coast of California. Lynne was named the Los Angeles Times Woman of the Year in 1975, inducted into the Swimming Hall of Fame in 2000, and honored with a lifetime achievement award from UC Santa Barbara. She has been featured
on 60 Minutes and The Discovery Channel and lectures around the world.
www.lynnecox.org

Katherine V. Forrest

Katherine V. Forrest is the internationally known author of 15 works of fiction, including the lesbian classics, Curious Wine and Daughters of a Coral Dawn, the first novel in her Lambda Literary Award-winning lesbian-feminist utopian trilogy. Katherine is best known for the three-time Lambda Literary Award winning mystery series featuring lesbian police detective, Kate Delafield. Her novels are in translation worldwide, and her stories, articles and reviews have appeared in national and international publications.
www.kvforrest.com

LeAnne Howe

LeAnne Howe is an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. She is an American Indian author, playwright, poet, and screenwriter. LeAnne is the screenwriter and on-camera narrator for the 90-minute PBS documentary, Indian Country Diaries: Spiral of Fire, which takes her to the North Carolina homelands of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians to discover how their fusion of tourism, community and cultural preservation is the key to the tribe's health in the 21st century. She also authored two award-winning novels, Shell Shaker and Miko Kings, along with a collection of poetry and prose, Evidence of Red.
www.mikokings.wordpress.com

Carol Lay

Carol Lay, California cartoonist, author and illustrator, writes the weekly comic strip called Way Lay. Way Lay has appeared in many newspapers here and abroad, including The Hartford Courant, The San Francisco Examiner, Los Angeles Weekly, Salon.com, The National Post, and Hong Kong Weekly. Carol has had her work published everywhere from The New Yorker and The Wall Street Journal to More, Salon, and MAD Magazine. Most recently, she wrote an entertaining graphic memoir entitled, The Big Skinny: How I Changed My Fattitude.
www.waylay.com

Graciela Limón

Graciela Limón is a Latina/Chicana writer, educator and activist. She has written critical work on Mexican, Latin American and Caribbean literature. However, she now concentrates her writing efforts on creative fiction that is germane to her interests: feminism, social justice and cultural identity. Her body of work includes In Search of Bernabé, which won the Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award. Graciela also published The Memories of Ana Calderón, Song of the Hummingbird and The Day of the Moon. Erased Faces, which was awarded the 2002 Gustavus Myers Book Award, was published in 2001. Left Alive was released in 2005, and her most recent novel, The River Flows North, came out in April 2009.

Sojourner Kincaid Rolle

Sojourner Kincaid Rolle is a poet, playwright and a mediator. She is the author of seven books of poetry and six plays. Her most recent books, Black Street and Common Ancestry reflect a deep attention to self, family and community. Sojourner's poems have been anthologized, appearing in The Geography of Home, The Poetry of Peace, Poetry Zone I, II, & IV, Rivertalk and others. The Santa Barbara's Dramatic Women Theater Company has produced all of her plays. Her arts reviews and commentaries have appeared in local and regional publications including "Serendipity", an occasional column about poetry writing on Inkbyte, a blog by writers for writers.
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Lisa See

Lisa See is the New York Times bestselling author of Peony in Love, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Flower Net (an Edgar Award nominee), The Interior, Dragon Bones, and the critically acclaimed memoir, On Gold Mountain. Lisa has always been intrigued by stories that have been lost, forgotten, or deliberately covered up, whether in the past or happening right now in the world today. Her new novel, Shanghai Girls, once again delves into forgotten history.
www.lisasee.com