2007 U.S. Poet Laureate Charles Simic, the author of eighteen collections of poetry, is also an essayist, translator, editor, and professor emeritus of creative writing and literature at the University of New Hampshire. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1990 for his book of prose poems The World Doesn''t End, and his 1996 collection, Walking the Black Cat, was a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry. His most recent poetry volume is That Little Something (2008). Simic held a MacArthur Fellowship from 1984-1989, and has also held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA. In 2007, the same day he was appointed Poet Laureate, Simic received the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets for "outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry."

Farai Chideya is a multimedia journalist who has worked in print, television, and online; her latest book is Trust: Reaching the 100 Million Missing Voters. She currently hosts NPR's "News and Notes." Susan Faludi is the author of Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man and Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. Her most recent book, The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America, examines the post-9/11 outpouring in the media, popular culture, and political life. A regular columnist for The Nation, Katha Pollitt's writing has also appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, Ms., and The New York Times, among other venues. Her volume of personal essays, Learning to Drive and Other Life Stories, has just appeared in paperback. Dina Titus has taught American and Nevada government in the Department of Political Science at UNLV for 30 years. She is presently a candidate for Nevada's third congressional district.