Forum Network

Alina Bronsky was born in Yekaterinburg, an industrial town at the foot of the Ural Mountains in central Russia. She moved to Germany when she was thirteen. Broken Glass Park, nominated for one of Europe’s most prestigious literary awards, the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, is her first novel. Alina Bronsky is a pseudonym.

Marc Fitten, Author of Valeria’s Last Stand is the editor of the Chattahoochee Review, Atlanta’s oldest literary magazine.

Joe Garden is the features editor for *The Onion*. *The Onion* is a comedy publication founded by Tim Keck and Christopher Johnson in 1988 when the two were juniors at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. As it broke through to the mass market in 2000, Comedy Central approached it for a buyout that would take the satirical tabloid to New York City and broaden its reach into other forms of media–books, blogs, tweets, and now an iPhone app. In April 2007, The Onion launched “The Onion News Network,” a web video sendup of 24-hour TV news which won a Peabody award in 2009. *The Onion* is read by more than 3 million people a week in print and online.

Lisa Palmieri-Billig, Amercan Jewish Commttee’s Representative in Italy and Laison to the Holy See.

Debbie Unterman describes herself as "a private eye for the soul" -helping people find themselves and restore lost dreams. She is known for her work with survivors of childhood abuse or neglect, her innovative cure for co-dependency, and her style in dealing with sub-personalities, all of which she has written a self-help book about, called Talking to My Selves: Learning to Love the Voices in Your Head.

Dr. Jonathan Chou is the Ronald Giorgio Michaelson-Smythe Professor of Chemistry and Musical Studies in the Howard J. W. Franzenferderlesky School of Ethnomusicology and Science Education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of *Smarts Sounds! Music and Math Class and Chemistry* and *Musical Education: This is What I Research at MIT* and is the co-author, with Jeans James, of *Science and Music*. He does not have time to learn how to play a musical instrument, or even to listen to music.

Mary Flannigan Shultze has taught music to middle school students in the Boston Public System for the last 10 years. She is the recipient of the 2005 Joann Sousa Excellence in Musical Education Award.

Scott L. Parker III represents the 26th Middlesex district in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. Parker is a leading proponent of education reform, and recently authored a bill that would increase funding for music education in Massachusetts primary schools.

Ann Beattie has published seven novels and seven collections of stories. She has been included in John Updike's *Best American Short Stories* of the Century and has received the PEN/Bernard Malamud Award for lifetime achievement in the short story form. She and her husband, Lincoln Perry, live in Maine and Key West, Florida.

Ebenezer Asare is a Jackie Robinson Foundation scholar at Harvard University.

David Mikics is the author of *Who Was Jacques Derrida?: An Intellectual Biography* and the co-author, with Stephen Burt, of *The Art of the Sonnet*.

Michael Gazzaniga is director of the SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind at the University of California Santa Barbara, where he oversees an extensive and broad research program investigating how the brain enables the mind. Previously, he started centers for cognitive neuroscience at Dartmouth College and the University of California-Davis. He is founder and president of the Cognitive Neuroscience Institute, editor-in-chief of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, and a member of the President's Council on Bioethics. His scholarly publication *The Cognitive Neurosciences III* (MIT Press, 2004) is recognized as the sourcebook for the field. He has also published many books accessible to a lay audience, such as *Mind Matters* and *Nature's Mind*, which, along with his participation in the public television specials *The Brain* and *The Mind*, have been instrumental in growing public interest and support for the study of the brain.