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Caroline Kennedy is an attorney and the editor of *the New York Times* best selling *A Family Christmas*; *A Patriot's Handbook*; *The Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis*; *A Family of Poems - My Favorite Poetry for Children*; and *Profiles in Courage for Our Time*, and the co-author of *The Right to Privacy and In Our Defense: The Bill of Rights in Action*. From 2002-2004, Ms. Kennedy served as chief executive for the Office of Strategic Partnerships for the New York City Department of Education where she helped raise more than $65 million in private support for the city's public schools. She currently serves as the Vice Chair of The Fund for Public Schools. Ms. Kennedy is also the President of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation and a member of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award Committee. She is a Director of the Commission on Presidential Debates, and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and serves as Honorary Chairman of the American Ballet Theatre. Ms. Kennedy was born on November 27, 1957. She is a graduate of Harvard University and Columbia Law School. She lives in New York City with her husband Edwin Arthur Schlossberg, president of Edwin Schlossberg Inc., a multi-disciplinary design company that specializes in interactive exhibit design and museum master-planning. Kennedy and Schlossberg were married on July 19, 1986. They have three children.

Mary Lefkowitz, one of the best-known classical scholars in this country, received her PhD in Classical Philology at Radcliffe College (Harvard University) in 1961. She returned to her alma mater as an instructor in Greek in 1959 and, after serving in various other academic ranks, in 1979 became the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities, a position she held until her retirement in 2005. Dr. Lefkowitz's articles and reviews have appeared in *The New York Times Book Review*, *The Times Literary Supplement*, *The New Republic* and *The New York Review of Books*, and she has been asked to contribute op-eds to *The New York Times*. She is the author of *Not Out of Africa* (1996), and co-editor with a Wellesley colleague, Guy MacLean Rogers, of *Black Athena Revisited* (1996). Because they deal with highly controversial theories about the origin of ancient Greek civilization, both books were widely reviewed and generated considerable discussion. Dr. Lefkowitz appeared on national radio talk shows, on CBS television's *60 Minutes*, and was the subject of interviews in *The Boston Globe* and *The Washington Post*. *History Lesson* (2008), her book about the intellectual issues raised by the controversy, is according to *Booklist*, "A clear-eyed look at the perils and promise of contemporary academic life." According to *The New York Times Book Review*, the thought-provoking Greek Gods, *Human Lives* (2003) is precisely an attempt to write the gods back into Greek myths. She is also known for her work on women in antiquity: *Heroines and Hysterics* (1981); *Women in Greek Myth* (1st Ed. 1986); and *Women's Life in Greece and Rome*, co-edited with Maureen B. Fant, (1st Ed. 1982). Dr. Lefkowitz has also written about the 5th century BC Greek lyric poet Pindar (*The Victory Ode* (1976) and *First-Person Fictions* (1991) and about fiction in ancient biography (*The Lives of the Greek Poets*, 1981).

Scott Kraus is Vice President of Research at the New England Aquarium, where he has conducted a wide range of research on North Atlantic Right Whale biology and conservation since 1980. The photocatalog of individual right whales that he created has been the cornerstone of many current studies.

U.S. poet, scholar, and critic, Adrienne Rich was a student at Radcliffe College when her poems were chosen for publication in the Yale Younger Poets series; the resulting volume, *A Change of World* (1951), reflected her formal mastery. Her subsequent work traces a transformation from well-crafted but imitative poetry to a highly personal and powerful style. Her increasing commitment to the women's movement and a lesbian/feminist aesthetic influenced much of her work. Among her collections are *Diving into the Wreck* (1973, National Book Award) and *The Dream of a Common Language* (1978). She also wrote compelling books of nonfiction, including *Of Woman Born *(1976; National Book Award), *On Lies, Secrets, and Silence* (1979), and *What Is Found There* (1993).

Clarice (Dollie) McLean is the founding executive director of the Artists Collective, Inc. of Hartford, CT. She was raised in New York City, where she studied dance under Katherine Dunham, Jon Leone Destine, Asadata Dafora, and Martha Graham. In 1970 she and her husband Jackie McLean enlisted local artists bassist Paul Brown, dancer Cheryl Smith, and visual artist Ionis Martin to join them in establishing the Artists Collective, Inc. in Hartford, CT.

Jack Lynch is a professor of english at Rutgers University and a Johnson scholar, having studied the great lexicographer for nearly a decade. He is the author of *The Age of Elizabeth in the Age of Johnson* (Cambridge University Press) and the editor of *A Bibliography of Johnsonian Studies*, 1986-1998. He has also written journal articles and scholarly reviews addressing Johnson and the 18th century.

Gay Talese is the bestselling author of eleven books. He was a reporter for *the New York Times* from 1956 to 1965, and since then he has written for *the Times*, *Esquire*,* The New Yorker*, *Harper's Magazine*, and other national publications. Gay Talese was born in Ocean City, New Jersey, and currently lives in New York City. His groundbreaking article "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" was named the "best story *Esquire* ever published," and he was credited by Tom Wolfe with the creation of an inventive form of nonfiction writing called "The New Journalism." His most recent book, *A Writer's Life*, was published by Knopf in 2006 and reissued in trade paperback by The Random House Publishing Group in July 2007.