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Marilyn Humphries is an event, portrait, documentary, and annual report photographer from Boston, MA. Her work combines photojournalism and the world of non-profits. She has also documented social change movements in the local Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender community, as well as covering women's issues, labor, and healthcare issues. Her photographs have appeared in Bay Windows, The Boston Phoenix, Boston Spirit Magazine, and South End News, as well as Barron's, MS Magazine, The New York Times, US News and World Report and Business Week.

Frances Fox Piven is Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Political Science at the City University of New York Graduate Center. Her scholarship and activism have centered on social movements, electoral politics, and welfare policy. Piven has served on the boards of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Democratic Socialists of America. She is currently the Editorial Board Chair of the New Press, is a Left Forum board member, and is outgoing President of the American Sociological Association.

Alice K. Wolf is the State Representative from the 25th Middlesex District in Cambridge. She was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1996 after serving the people of Cambridge as Mayor, Vice Mayor, City Councillor and School Committee Member. Representative Wolf's priorities include education, equal rights for gays and lesbians, affordable housing, health care, immigrants rights, gender equity, and serving her constituents. Representative Wolf has received numerous distinguished honors and awards including the 2007 Byron Rushing Freedom of Religion Award from the Religious Coalition for the Freedom to Marry; the 2006 Massachusetts Family Planning Association Leadership Award; the 2005 Champions of Children Award from Massachusetts Advocates for Children; Citizens for Public Schools Activist for Public Schools Award in 2005; and the 2005 Early Education Leadership Award from the Massachusetts Association of Community Partnerships for Children. Born in Austria, Representative Wolf came to America at the age of five with her family, fleeing the Nazi regime. She earned a B.S. from Simmons College and later an M.P.A. from Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. In 2001, she received an honorary Doctor of Education degree from Wheelock College.

Brian Sloan is an independent filmmaker. His first feature, the screwball comedy *I Think I Do*, was praised by *the New York Times* as "hysterically funny and very smart." Brian broke onto the indie scene with the short film *Pool Days*, his NYU thesis project. Dealing with the sexual misadventures of a teenage lifeguard, the film screened at more than fifty film festivals, including Sundance and New Directors. Brian helped assemble a package of three short films (including *Pool Days*) around the theme of teen-agers coming out, *Boys Life*, which eventually spawned three sequels. *A Really Nice Prom Mess* is his first novel. Brian lives in New York City.

John McCain has been a U.S. senator from Arizona since 1987 and was the Republican nominee for president in 2008. A 1958 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, McCain had a 22-year military career as a pilot and officer in the Navy. Five of those years (1967-73) were spent in a Vietnamese prisoner of war camp after he was shot down over Hanoi during the Vietnam War. McCain left the Navy in 1981, was elected to Congress in 1982, and then was elected as U.S. senator from Arizona in 1986. In 2000 he ran for the Republican presidential nomination, but was defeated by George W. Bush. After Bush was reelected in 2004, McCain ran again for the Republican nomination in 2008, this time winning the nomination at the GOP convention. He named Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, but they were defeated by Democratic candidates Barack Obama and Joe Biden. McCain's 1999 book *Faith of My Fathers* told the story of his family's military history and his own experiences as a POW.

David Karp grew up in the Boston area where he attended Boston Latin School and then Harvard College. After receiving a Ph.D. from New York University in 1971, he returned to Boston and Boston College where he is currently a Professor of Sociology. His earlier books on cities, everyday life and aging reflect an enduring interest in how people invest their daily worlds with meaning. These same themes are reflected in his 1996 book on clinical depression entitled *Speaking of Sadness: Depression, Disconnection, and the Meanings of Illness*. *Speaking of Sadness* was the 1996 winner of the Charles Horton Cooley Award from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. In 2001, his book entitled *The Burden of Sympathy: How Families Cope with Mental Illness *was published. This work examines how family caregivers to emotional ill people construct and negotiate moral boundaries of caring. Professor Karps most recent book on mental illness appeared in 2006. Like the previous two books,* Is It Me or My Meds? Living with Antidepressants* is based on in-depth interviews. This book explores the particularly powerful relationship between psychiatric medications and personal identity; the link between pills and personhood.

Eugene Robinson, is a self-described polymath in the best of all possible ways, jacking all trades and mastering a ton. While his articles have appeared in *GQ*, *The Wire*, *EQ*, *Harp*,* Plan B*, *Grappling*, the *LA Weekl*y, *HUH*, *Vice Magazine*, *SF Weekly*, *Raygun*, *Code*, *Decibel*, *Art Forum*, *Corporate Computing*, *Highways*, *MaclLife*, *Hustler*, and a handful of European music magazines, Robinson is also a habitue of stage and screen. Scoring appearances with the likes of Bill Cosby, director Gus Van Sant, interviews with Chris Rock, Laurence Fishburne, Samuel Jackson, and an MTV-Style show on German Viva TV and going on to work with Lydia Lunch, Richard Kern, Marianne Faithfull, Henry Rollins and Steve Albini, the 6'1", 235 pound Robinson, former bouncer, 1998 CAAT Heavyweight Men's Sanshou Champ, 2nd place overall and first place divisional 2003 California Submission Fighting champ, is no stranger to confrontation. His chapter in O'Reilly Traveler's *Tales series on Death*, as well as his brief appearances in Feral Press's *Apocalypse Culture* and Susie Bright's *The Best American Erotica*, marks him as a dangerous and compelling read.

As co-founder of 7 Stages, Del has been a part of the company since its inception in 1979. As artistic director, he has directed over 60 productions at 7 Stages, including *HUSH: Composing Blind Tom Wiggins*, *Athol Fugard's My Children! My Africa!*, *Susan Yankowitz's Night Sky*, *Macbeth*, *The Tempest*, and numerous plays by Sam Shepard. He has also acted in many notable plays. Del directed a very successful production of *One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest* at Teatr Nowy in Poznan, Poland, and he has acted and directed at theaters in Atlanta, New York, London, Paris, Belgrade, Johannesburg and Amsterdam. Del is the author of several plays and has received numerous awards.

Elizabeth Strout is the author of *Abide with Me*, a national bestseller and Book Sense pick, and *Amy and Isabelle*, which won* the Los Angeles Times* Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and *the Chicago Tribune* Heartland Prize. She has also been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize in England. Her short stories have been published in a number of magazines, including *The New Yorker* and *O: The Oprah Magazine*. She is on the faculty of the MFA program at Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina, and lives in New York City.