CRISTINA GARCIA
was born in Havana, Cuba, and raised in New York City. She has authored Dreaming in Cuban and A Handbook to Luck, as well as The Aguero Sisters, Cubanisimo!, Monkey Hunting and is the editor of Bordering Fires. Writing in beautiful prose with a unique social insight, her novels explore political, personal and familial issues surrounding a dual cultural identity. Cristina is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Hodder Fellowship at Princeton and the Whiting Writers Award. She currently resides in California.

www.lasmujeres.com/cristinagarcia

MARY HERSHEY
is an author of fiction for children and young adults. Her novel, The One Where the Kid Nearly Jumps to His Death and Lands in California (2007), was described by Publisher's Weekly as “…a poignant novel populated with complex, memorable characters.” Mary's first novel, My Big Sister is So Bossy She Says You Can't Read this Book (2005), was selected as a Book of the Week in the Washington Post.
Mary reports that she is an heiress to the Hershey fortune, a lesbian, a coach, a former undercover hooker and a new instructor with the UCLA Extension Writer's Program. (She notes that one of those could very possibly be a big fat lie.)

www.maryhershey.com

GINA NAHAI
is the author of Sunday’s Silence, Moonlight on the Avenue of Faith and Cry of the Peacock. Caspian Rain is her most recent work, published in September 2007. She is a contributing author to The Modern Jewish Girl’s Guide to Guilt, which won the 2005 Jewish Book Award. Gina is also a frequent lecturer on the contemporary politics of the Middle East and has been a regular guest on CNBC. She is currently at work on a new novel, In the Kingdom of the Pearl Canon.

www.ginabnahai.com

NANCY PEARL
loves books so much that she has an endless list of them that she has read, still wants to read and that she recommends to us. She has authored three guides to good reading: Book Lust: Reading for Every Mood, Moment and Reason, More Book Lust and, for children and teens, Book Crush. Nancy also reviews books for Seattle’s NPR-affiliate KUOW and on local television. She founded the “If All Seattle Read the Same Book” project, now imitated nationwide, including the local “Santa Barbara Reads” program, and is honored as the “shushing librarian” action figure doll complete with computer and book cart. Want a good book to read? Nancy has suggestions…

www.nancypearl.com

TANYA SHAFFER
is an award-winning playwright, solo performer and author. Her most recent play, Baby Taj, based on her travels in India, was selected by the San Francisco Chronicle, the Oakland Tribune and the San Jose Mercury News as one of the Top Ten Plays of 2005 and nominated for a Bay Area Theatre Critics' Award and an American Theatre Critics' Association Steinberg Award. Her solo show, Let My Enemy Live Long! garnered a Bay Area Theatre Critics' Award for solo performance. The San Francisco Chronicle selected her book, Somebody's Heart is Burning: A Woman Wanderer in Africa, as one of the Best Books of 2003.

www.tanyashaffer.com

MONIQUE SONOQUIE
is a storyteller, writer, director and producer of documentary films. She is Chumash, Apache , Yaqui, Zapotec, and Irish. She is dedicated to keeping the stories and languages of her people alive, expanding the traditional oral tradition of storytelling to include the written word and 21st century methods such as film, video, and sound recording. Her book The Beginning of the Chumash: A Chumash Oral History is based on the creation story as told by Chumash elder, Semu Hurate, and is written in English with inclusion of Chumash words.

www.woodsontheweb.com