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Over the past 20 years, Douglas A. Blackmon has written extensively about the American quandary of race, exploring the integration of schools during his childhood in a Mississippi Delta farm town, lost episodes of the Civil Rights movement, and, repeatedly, the dilemma of how a contemporary society should grapple with a troubled past. Many of his stories in *The Wall Street Journal* have explored the interplay of wealth, corporate conduct and racial segregation. In 2000, the National Association of Black Journalists recognized Blackmons stories revealing the secret role of J.P. Morgan & Co. during the 1960s in funneling funds between a wealthy northern white supremacist and segregationists fighting the Civil Rights Movement in the South. A year later, he revealed in the Journal how U.S. Steel Corp. relied on forced black laborers in Alabama coal mines in the early 20th century, an article which led to his first book, *Slavery By Another Name*, which broadly examines how a form of neoslavery thrived in the U.S. long after legal abolition. Blackmon joined the Journal in October 1995 as a reporter in Atlanta. Prior to joining the Journal, Blackmon was a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he covered race and politics, and special assignments including the fall of the Berlin Wall and the civil war in the former Yugoslavia. Previously, he was a reporter for the Arkansas Democrat, managing editor of *the Daily Record* in Little Rock, Ark, and a writer for weekly newspapers. Blackmon penned his first newspaper story at the age of 12, for *the Progress*, in his hometown of Leland, Mississippi. He graduated from Hendrix College in Conway, Ark., and lives in Atlanta with his wife and two children.

The driving force behind Vigner's theatrical approach is neither ideological, nor analytical, it is poetic. His direction acts as a luminating force shielding light on these significant writings. Eric Vigner develops a theater that questions the world, its frontiers between the people. Vigner has directed many contemporary playwrights such as Marguerite Dura's *Savannah Bay* at the Comedie-Francaise in Paris (2002) as well as at Espace Go in Montreal (2007), *The Beast in the Jungle* at the Kennedy Center in Washington (2004), and *Pluie d'ete a Hiroshima* (2006) for the 60th Avignon Festival. Vigner develops a new approach of the French classics as well: he directed Racine's *Bajazet* (Comedie-Francaise, 1995), Moliere's *Ecole des Femmes* (Comedie-Francaise, 1999), to name a few. He develops international collaborations, searching for a genuine mutual cultural transmission.

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.

Professor Jeffrey Collins received BA, MA, and PhD degrees from Yale, and a BA and MA from the University of Cambridge. Before arriving at the Bard Graduate Center in 2003, he was associate professor of art history at the University of Washington, Seattle. A scholar of 17th- and 18th-century Italian art, he is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome and recipient of Andrew W. Mellon, Fulbright, and American Philosophical Society Fellowships. He is the author of *Papacy and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Rome: Pius VI and the Arts *(Cambridge, 2004) and has contributed to publications including the *Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians*, *Eighteenth-Century Studies*, *The Burlington Magazine*, and *Ricerche di Storia dell Arte*.

John A. Chandler brings 36 years of trial experience to King & Spalding.

Frances Richey was born in Williamson, West Virginia in the heart of the coal fields in 1950. After graduating from the University of Kentucky, she worked in the business industry for nearly two decades. She had one child, Ben, and raised him as a single mother since he was two years old. When Ben was in high school, Richey realized she needed a new pursuit that would provide a deeper sense of meaning in her life than her corporate job and fill the void that would surely come when Ben left home for college. So, while continuing her nine-to-five job, she began training for certification to teach yoga, and became a hospice volunteer in New York City. Each visit with a patient brought Richey closer to the reality of her mortality, and she soon started writing poems about her experiences there. Before long, she realized that she could change her life in a fundamental way and spend the rest of it doing work she loved: teaching yoga and writing. Her first collection *The Burning Point*, published in March 2004, won the White Pine Press Poetry Prize and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Poems from her new collection,* The Warrior*, have appeared in a two-page spread in *O, The Oprah Magazine*, Nicholas Kristof's *New York Times* column, on the Lives page of *the New York Times Magazine*, and the local PBS show* New York Voices*.

Alan Rabinowitz is a world renowned big cat conservationist who created the world's first jaguar reserve in Belize after being the first scientist to place radio collars on jaguars to monitor their movements and document the jaguars territorial needs. Rabinowitz's pioneering work was highlighted in the National Geographic film In search of the Jaguar. His dream is to create a "Jaguar Corridor" which connects pieces of jaguar habitat from lower Mexico, through Central America, and through South America all the way to Argentina to ensure the vitality of jaguars as a species forever.

Leslie Bennetts has been a contributing editor at *Vanity Fair* since 1988, writing on subjects that have ranged from movie stars to priest pedophilia, industrial pollution and U.S. anti-terrorism policy. Her 2005 cover story on Jennifer Aniston was the best-selling issue in the magazines history to date, and the *People* magazine cover story about Bennetts interview with Aniston was the best-selling issue in the history of *People*. Prior to joining *Vanity Fair,* Bennetts spent fifteen years as a newspaper reporter. She started covering so-called womens issues at *The Philadelphia Bulletin* in the early 1970s, and has continued to write about women, marriage, families and parenting ever since. After five years at *The Bulletin*, where she won many awards for writing and reporting, Bennetts moved to *The New York Times*.

Ralph E. Reed Jr. is president of Century Strategies, a political consulting firm. He has served as president of the Georgia Republican Party since 2001. Reed was Executive Director of the College Republican National Committee (CRNC) 1983-1985, founded Students for America in 1984, and was Executive Director of the Christian Coalition 1989-1997. He lost his 2006 bid for lieutenant governor of Georgia, acknowledging Senator Casey Cagle's victory in Georgia's Republican primary on July 18, 2006. Reed promised to support Cagle's bid for lieutenant governor.