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The first of her biographies, *Eliot's Early Years* (1977), began as a student thesis. The British Academy awarded it the Rose Mary Crawshay prize. A sequel, *Eliot's New Life*, was published at the time of the poet's centenary (1988). The two books were rewritten as one, *T.S.Eliot: An Imperfect Life* (1999), with new material collected over twenty years. A memoir of three women who died young, *Shared Lives* (1992), is about women's friendship going back to schooldays in the Cape Town of the fifties. The last book was *Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft* (2005). Lyndall is now approaching Emily Dickinson by way of the Dickinson feud. The feud exploded over adultery, but came to focus on the poet. Rival ca Lyndall is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and member of PEN. She is married to Professor of Cellular Pathology, Siamon Gordon; they live in Oxford and have two grown-up daughters.

Betty Burkes is a life-long educator and activist. Her work as an educator has included the Peace Corps in Africa, public schools in California and private schools in England. She founded and coordinated the Montessori Paradise pre-school on Cape Cod for 12 years offering young children an environment in which peace-making and social justice mingled with the affirmation of childhood. Betty co-founded and ran a Summer Arts and Music program from 1986-1999. Her activism and grassroots organizing has taken place internationally and nationally with the Womens International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) where she was president of the US Section of WILPF for 3 years and served on the National Board from 1989-2002, conducting workshops on educating and organizing for action around oppression issues. From 2002-2006, Betty worked with a joint project of the UN Department for Disarmament Affairs and The Hague Appeal for Peace. The HAP/DDA project involved supporting the local initiation of peace education projects in 4 communities internationally (in Cambodia, Albania, Peru and Niger) in which weapons reduction projects were launched. Those projects have been sustained beyond the end of the project due to the full integration and leadership within the local communities.

She arrived in Boston in her early 20's and embarked on a career in advertising, writing direct mail programs and TV commercials. She began writing articles for the "Catholic Left" which appeared in *The Boston Globe*, *The Phoenix* and *Boston After Dark*. In the 60's she discovered St. Philips/Warwick House, a Boston based Catholic civil rights and anti war movement ministry. On Easter Sunday in 1974, Kip founded Rosie's Place, the country's first drop-in emergency shelter for women. Today, Rosie's Place has evolved from providing shelter, to offering solutions. In addition to founding Rosie's Place, Kip was a founder of the Boston Food Bank, the Boston Women's Fund, and Healthcare for the Homeless. In 1980, Kip and Fran Froehlich co-founded the Poor People's United Fund and they have been working as a team ever since. In 1981 they co-founded Community Works, from 1988 to 1990 they were fellows at the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College and from 1993 through 2002 they taught a class in Ethics, Moral Principles and Social Policy at UMASS, Boston. Kip has been the recipient of many awards and honorary degrees over the years, and today she works tirelessly, continuing to focus her energies on eliminating the root causes of poverty. She continues to work closely with the Board of Directors and staff at Rosie's Place, and with Fran Froehlich, continues as Co-Director of Poor People's United Fund. Kip is a founding member of the Ethical Policy Project.

Anne Sebba is a biographer, lecturer, journalist and former Reuters foreign correspondent. Her first job was at the BBC World Services in the Arabic Department. She has written eight books, several short stories and introductions to reprinted novels. She is a member of the Society of Authors Executive Committee and is working on a biography of Wallis Simpson. In September 2007 she launched her major new biography - *Jennie Churchill: Winston's American Mother* published by John Murray in the UK to widespread acclaim. In November W.W. Norton published it in the US as *American Jennie: the Remarkable Life of Winston Churchill's Mother*. In 2008 Anne was consultant for the Channel 4 film, *Lady Randy: Churchill's Mother*, broadcast to coincide with the launch of the paperback. Anne started her working life as a foreign correspondent for Reuters, partly in Rome, and in 1993 wrote a history of women reporters called *Battling for News: The Rise of the Woman Reporter* and is regularly invited to lecture on the subject in university media departments. In 1990 *Laura Ashley: A Life By Design* was published in UK and US and also reached several bestseller lists. This was a biography of a businesswoman, wife, mother and proto-feminist who became one of the leading influences on British twentieth century design and marketing.

Carol Thompson was appointed the High's first Fred and Rita Richman Curator of African Art in September 2001. Since her arrival at the High, she has curated Embodying the Sacred in Yoruba Art (2007), African from the Glassell Collection, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2004), and For this World and Beyond: African Art from the Fred and Rita Richman Collection (2002). Thompson has taught at New York University, Vassar College, City College in Harlem, Fashion Institute of Technology and other institutions. Thompson's in-progress dissertation at New York University studies African art as p across diverse contexts both within Africa and beyond. She received her M.A. in art history with a specialization in African Art from the University of Iowa (1988) and her B.A. in art history from Hamline University in Minnesota (1980). She is the author of *African Art Portfolio: Masterpieces from the 11th to the 20th Century*(1993) and *For this World and Beyond: African Art from the Fred and Rita Richman Collection* (2002). Thompson is a Research Fellow at the Center for Public Scholarship, Emory College

Kai Ryssdal took the reins as host of Marketplace in August 2005. He previously hosted the *Marketplace Morning Report* for more than four years. Before joining *Marketplace*, Kai was a reporter and substitute host for* The California Report*, a news and information program distributed to public radio stations throughout California by KQED-FM in San Francisco. His radio work has won first place awards from the Radio and Television News Directors Association and the national Public Radio News Directors Association. After graduating from Emory University in Atlanta, Kai spent eight years in the United States Navy, first flying from the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt, and then as a Pentagon staff officer. Before his career in public radio, Kai was a member of the United States Foreign Service and served in Ottawa, Canada, and Beijing, China.

James Hanken studies the evolution of morphology, developmental biology, and systematics. Most work by his group focuses on amphibians but otherwise addresses a wide range of topics, taxa, and methodologies. His current subjects include the evolution of craniofacial patterning in vertebrates; the developmental basis of life-history evolution; systematics, taxonomy and evolution of African frogs and neotropical and Asian salamanders; and amphibian declines and conservation. His active field programs are maintained in Mexico, Argentina, China, Africa, and Sri Lanka, and his laboratory serves as a community research facility for NSF's AmphibiaTree project.

Joe Conason is national correspondent for *The New York Observer*, where he writes a weekly column distributed by Creators Syndicate. He is also a columnist for Salon.com, and the Director of the Nation Institute Investigative Fund. His books *Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth*, and *The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton, with Gene Lyons*, were both national bestsellers. His latest book, *It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush*, was released in February 2007. His writing and reporting have appeared in many publications, including *Harpers*, *The Guardian*, *The Nation*, and *The New Republic*. He also appears frequently on television and radio (notably as a regular Friday guest on "Air America's The Al Franken Show"). He lives with his wife in New York City.