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Robert Perkins is an accomplished storyteller, having most recently been a featured presenter at the New England Sharing the Fire Festival. His stories are for ages from 12 and up.

John McCutcheon has emerged as one of the most respected and loved folksingers. As an instrumentalist, he is a master of a dozen different traditional instruments, most notably the rare and beautiful hammer dulcimer. His songwriting has been hailed by critics and singers around the globe. His thirty recordings have garnered every imaginable honor including seven Grammy nominations. McCutcheon has produced over twenty albums of other artists, from traditional fiddlers to contemporary singer-songwriters to educational and documentary works. His books and instructional materials have introduced budding players to the joys of their own musicality. Furthermore, his commitment to grassroots political organizations has put him on the front lines of many of the issues important to communities and workers.

Ellen Schattschneider (Department of Anthropology, Brandeis University) is a sociocultural anthropologist specializing in psychoanalytic, phenomenological and practice approaches to culture. She has strong ethnographic interests in East Asia, especially Japan. She received undergraduate training in philosophy, psychology and anthropology at Sarah Lawrence College, and graduate training in anthropology at the University of Chicago. Her principal ethnographic work has been conducted in the Tsugaru region of northern Tohoku, Japan (1991-92, 1997, 1999 and 2002). Dr. Schattschneider's academic writings give particular attention to ritual performance, gender and embodiment, spirit mediumship, sacred landscapes, visuality and the power of images, popular religious experience and comparative capitalist cultures. Her new book, *Immortal Wishes: Labor and Transcendence on a Japanese Sacred Mountain* (2003) explores healing, self-fashioning and embodied psychodynamic processes on a sacred landscape associated with a Shinto shrine founded by a rural Japanese woman in the 1920s. Her current research project, *Facing the Dead: Japanese Bride Dolls in the Mirror of War*, examines contemporary Japanese practices of spirit marriage and doll dedication, with close attention to traumatic popular memories of World War II and its legacies. She has been awarded a Fulbright grant for research in Japan during 2003-04 on this topic.

Liza Ketchum has been making up stories ever since she was a little girl. She lived on a dirt road in Vermont with few other children nearby. Not having a television until she was much older, Liza had to make her own entertainment. During her junior year at Sarah Lawrence College, she studied with a wonderful writing teacher named Harvey Swados. He sent his students on strange, exciting assignments in New York City, wandering all over the city, taking notes on conversations and soaking up smells, textures, and tastes. From the class, Liza learned that some of the best writing comes from experience. She also studied education in college, and ran her first writing workshop for children. After graduation, Liza worked in special education in Washington, D.C., then lived in England and wrote a book about some of their most exciting schools. When she returned to Vermont, Liza started my own pre-school, using some of the teaching ideas she had seen in England. Her first novel, *West Against the Wind* was published in 1987 and she has been writing for young readers ever since. Liza also carry on her love of teaching by visiting schools, and by running writing workshops for students of all ages. In 2001, she joined the faculty of the Vermont College MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults, where she considers herself privileged to teach adult writers who are also creating stories for young readers.

Jack Gantos was born in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania. While in college, he and an illustrator friend, Nicole Rubel, began working on picture books. After a series of well-deserved rejections, they published their first book, *Rotten Ralph*, in 1976. *Rotten Ralph* was a success and marked the beginning of Jack's career as a professional writer. This surprised a great many people who thought he was going to specialize in rehabilitating old bookmobiles into housing for retired librarians. Jack continued to write children's books and began to teach courses in children's book writing and children's literature. He developed the masters degree program in children's book writing at Emerson College and the Vermont College M.F.A. program for children's book writers. He now devotes his time to writing books and educational speaking.

Rosanna Warren is the Emma Ann MacLachlan Metcalf Professor of the Humanities and a Professor of English and Romance Studies at Boston University. She received the 92nd Street YMHA/YWHA The Nation Discovery Award in poetry (1980), the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writer's Award for Poetry (1993), the Lamont Prize from the Academy of American Poets for her book Stained Glass (1993), the Witter Bynner Prize for Poetry of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1993), and the May Sarton Award from the New England Poetry Club (1995). In 1997 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2004 the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded Professor Warren the 2004 Award of Merit of Poetry, given once every six years to an outstanding poet. In 2005 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has also received grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the American Council of Learned Societies. Professor Warren served as Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1999-2005. In the fall of 2000 she was *The New York Times* Resident in Literature at the American Academy in Rome. Her other books are *Snow Day* (1981), *Each Leaf Shines Separate* (1985), *The Art of Translation: Voices From the Field* (1989), for which she was editor and contributor, and a translation of Euripides' *Suppliant Women* (with Stephen Scully, 1995). She has edited two volumes of William Arrowsmith's translation of the poems of Eugenio Montale (Cuttlefish Bones, 1992 and Satura 1998), and three anthologies of verse by prison inmates (*In Time* with Teresa Iverson, 1995; *From This Distance* with Meg Tyler, 1996; and *Springshine* with Meg Tyler, 1998). Other publications include *The Notes of Andre Derain*, an edited translation and essay, and articles on John Ashbery, Giacomo Leopardi, Gerard de Nerval, Stephen Spender, Derek Walcott, Apollinaire, and Umberto Saba. Her most recent book of poems is *Departure* (2003). In 2008 she published a book of literary criticism, *Fables of the Self: Studies in Lyric Poetry*. Photo credit to Michelle DeBakey. In 2004 Professor Warren received the Boston University Metcalf Award for Excellence in Teaching. In 2006 Professor Warren received the Ellen Maria Gorrissen Berlin Prize at the American Academy in Berlin.

Commissioner Bornheimer was first appointed to the Board by Governor Paul Cellucci in 1998. A long time library supporter, she served as project manager of the Alden Library Project in Duxbury, as the first president of the Duxbury Friends of the Library, Library Trustee, and for 20 years as President of the Duxbury Free Library, Inc. A graduate of Harvard College, she also has her JD from Boston University School of Law. A lawyer and trustee, she is on the board of the Boston Athenaeum and the Americans for Libraries Council, where she chairs the Development Committee.

Barry Costa-Pierce is a professor of Fisheries and Aquaculture and director of the Rhode Island Sea Grant College Program at the University of Rhode Island. Costa-Pierce is also one of the four international editors of Aquaculture, and manages over 540 scientific manuscripts in aquaculture each year. He has over 140 publications, including the editing or authoring of 14 scientific books and monographs and is author of a recent book titled *Ecological Aquaculture*, defined as the ecological design, engineering, systems and trophic ecology of aquatic food production systems. His current research is funded by NOAA, the World Bank, FAO, WWF, the Packard Foundation, and the state of Rhode Island and examines northern bluefin tuna/California sardine aquaculture/ranching/capture fisheries in Baja California, Mexico; zoological and fisheries interactions of blue mussels with pea crabs in southern New England, USA; the development of scientifically credible sustainability indices for mariculture projects worldwide; the nutrient impacts of salmon aquaculture on pelagic ecosystems; and the inclusion of fisheries/aquaculture science into the "sustainable seafoods" movement. Before coming to URI, Costa-Pierce was a lecturer in the graduate program at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. From 1985 to 1993 he was a director and research scientist for the International Center for Living Aquatic Resources Management (ICLARM) based at the Institute of Ecology in Bandung, Indonesia then directed for 3 years ICLARM's Africa office in Malawi. He has a PhD in Oceanography from the University of Hawaii and a MS in Zoology from the University of Vermont.