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Mary was an accountant and company director for 20 years before becoming a writer. She wrote her first book in 1981 at the age of 40, while recovering from a broken back which was the result of a riding accident. Mary S. Lovell has written acclaimed biographies of Beryl Markham, Amelia Earhart, Jane Digby, Sir Richard Burton, Betty "Cynthia" Pack, the Mitford Girls and Bess of Hardwick. She returned to accountancy but during the following 5 years she also published two further non-fiction books that were written in her spare time. After a subsequent meeting, Mary decided to write Markham's biography and *Straight on Till Morning*, researched and written in under a year, became an immediate international bestseller. Mary decided to retire from accountancy at this point to write full time. Most of the books she has written since then have made the non-fiction best-seller lists, and *The Mitford Girls* (titled The Sisters in the USA) a biography of the celebrated Mitford sisters, first published in September 2001 (paperback August 2002) has been another international best-seller. Her latest book, *Bess of Hardwick*, was published in the UK in 2005 and is now selling well in paperback. Four of her books are optioned for films. She is presently writing a family biography of the Churchills. Mary is particularly noted for her intensive research methods and all her non-fiction books are extensively annotated. She feels strongly that "biography is history" and deplores biographies in which contentious statements are made about a subject without any verifiable attribution. She also dislikes the increasing trend for biographies which set out to destroy reputations. She regards herself as "a storyteller, rather than a literary writer. Everybody enjoys a good fast-paced story and that is what I try to write, only my stories are fact, not fiction. For me there is always an added frisson of enjoyment when I know that what I'm reading about actually occurred, and is not simply a figment of someone's imagination."

host, The Morning Express, WUMB

Alicia E. Goranson is a local Boston author. Her writing appears in the anthology *Pinned Down By Pronouns* and *Other Magazine*. Her first novel *Supervillainz* is the co-winner of the 2005 Project QueerLit award, and is available from Suspect Thoughts Press. She reads all across the country.

Peter Hessler is an American writer and journalist. He is well known for his two books, *China, River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze *(2001) and *Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present* (2006). Hessler graduated Princeton University in 1992 and won a Rhodes Scholarship to study English language and literature at the University of Oxford. In 1996, he joined the Peace Corps and spent the next two years teaching English at a local college in Fuling, China. Since 1999, he has lived in Beijing as a freelance writer. He is currently married to journalist and writer Leslie T. Chang. In 1999, Peter Hessler started a Yahoo Scholarship Fund which supports students in Sichuan, Chongqing and Tibet.

Since graduating from HGSEs Arts in Education program in 2003, Anika has continued to dedicate her career to promoting arts education through nonprofit work in New York City. In 2003, she interned at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Following her internship, she next worked for Cool Culture, an urban nonprofit organization that partners with cultural institutions to provide education and free admission to families of Head Start students. At Cool Culture, Anika devoted her time toward developing education and outreach programs; of her accomplishments there, she is most proud of the fairs she organized, putting museums and Head Start representatives in direct contact with each other in order to generate new partnerships aimed at promoting arts education. Anika now serves as the School Programs Director at City Lore, a nonprofit organization focused on conveying the richness of New York Citys cultural heritage through educational programs and publications. Demonstrated by the fact that it is a research site for Project Zeros Qualities of Quality: Excellence in Arts Education and How to Achieve It study, City Lore is notable for its long history of bringing high-quality arts experiences to the community.

Marilyn B. Young received her Ph.d from Harvard University in 1963. She taught at the University of Michigan before coming to NYU in 1980 where she is a full professor in the Department of History. Professor Young teaches courses on the history of U.S. foreign policy, the politics and culture of post-war U.S., as well as courses on the history of modern China, and the history and culture of Vietnam.