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Born in 1938, in Suffolk, England, Helen Oxenbury attended Ipswich School of Art and Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. Oxenbury is best known for her work as a writer and illustrator of children's books. She has also worked as a stage designer in Colchester, England, 1960 and a television designer in London. Her many honors include the Kate Greenaway Award, British Library Association (BLA), 1969, for *The Quangle-Wangle's Hat*; the Baby Book Award, Sainsbury's, 1999, for *Tickle, Tickle*; the Kurt Maschler Award, 1999, and Kate Greenaway Award, BLA, 2000, both for *Alice's Adventures in Wonderland*; Boston Globe-Horn Book Picture Book Award, 2003, for *Big Momma Makes the World*.

Rev. Cheng Imm Tan is one of Chinatown's multi-tasking crusaders. Blending spirituality with her experiences as an immigrant and Asian woman, she has built her career by encouraging others to realize their inner strengths and potential. Tan is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, yet she speaks from a much larger pulpit. It was Tans tireless work in Boston's Asian community which led to her appointment the as Director of the Mayor's Office of New Bostonians. For the past seven years, the Malaysian-born Tan has assisted immigrants in becoming full participants of the Boston community by providing a variety of resources and information. Tan began her career working in a battered women's shelter. She realized many Asian women were reluctant to leave abusive relationships because language barriers prevented them from getting the necessary help. In 1987, she founded ATASK. The Asian Task Force Against Domestic Violence remains New England's only multilingual emergency shelter and center for Asian victims of domestic abuse.

Marie P. St. Fleur is a former Massachusetts State Representative who represented the Fifth Suffolk district from 1999-2011. Her district consisted of parts of the Boston neighborhoods Dorchester and Roxbury. St. Fleur joined non-profit research and advocacy organization Bessie Tartt Wilson Initiative for Children in November 2013. Ms. St. Fleur comes to her new position after a long career in public service, where she was known as a tireless advocate on behalf of children and families. Her new role allows her to use her experience as an attorney, legislator, and senior leader in municipal government to support grassroots research on early education and the care system, advocate for change, and expand outreach and engagement of families, providers, policymakers, and government agencies and the public in support of this sector. Ms. St. Fleur was appointed by Mayor Thomas M. Menino on June 13, 2010, as the Chief of Advocacy and Strategic Investment for the City of Boston. In that capacity, Ms. St. Fleur led the Mayor Menino Circle of Promise Initiative and oversaw the Department of Intergovernmental Relations, The Office of New Bostonians, The Small and Local Business/Boston Jobs For Boston Residents Policy, and his Diversity and Reentry Initiatives.

She is the daughter of award winning author John McPhee and photographer Pryde Brown, sister of novelists Jenny McPhee and Martha McPhee, architectural historian Sarah McPhee, and Joan Sullivan, founding principal of the Bronx Academy of Letters. McPhee earned a Bachelor of Arts in Art History from Princeton University in 1980, and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Photography from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1986. McPhee was awarded a Fulbright Scholars Fellowship in 1998 for work in India and Sri Lanka and a residency in Idaho from Alturas Foundation 2003-2005. She was also awarded a New England Foundation for the Arts fellowship in 1995 and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship in 1993. Her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum, New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Getty Center, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among many others. McPhee is a Professor of Photography at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She is represented by the Bonni Benrubi Gallery in New York and the Carroll and Sons Gallery in Boston, MA.

Charles Moore is a freelance photographer based in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. He is a frequent lecturer about the civil rights era at universities and workshops. In 1965, after vowing to get away from the violence, Moore had one other Life cover about the staging of the musical, Hello Dolly, for troops in Vietnam. He has preferred to continue freelancing throughout his career rather than seek to join the staff of Life full time. Moore continues to be represented by Black Star and has had more than 100 covers for a variety of magazines including the Saturday Evening Post and Newsweek. In 1989, Howard Chapnick decided to enter Moores work in the first annual Kodak Crystal Eagle Award for Impact in Photojournalism, regarded as one of the most prestigious honors in the industry. Moore was named the winner and the resulting publicity sparked renewed interest in his landmark work from the civil rights movement. In the forward to Moores 1991 book, Powerful Days, The Civil Rights Photography of Charles Moore, Andrew Young, the civil rights leader and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, wrote, The photographs of Charles Moore presented in this brilliant chronicle offer more than simple, visual accounts of the civil rights years. . . . For those of us who remember the pictured events from personal experience, this book is a means by which to sharpen memories, to relive and revisit some of the most meaningful, terrifying and rewarding moments of our lives.

Wendy Kaminer, a lawyer and social critic, writes about law, liberty, feminism, religion, and popular culture. Her latest book is *Worst Instincts: Cowardice, Conformity and the ACLU*, (Beacon Press.) A former Guggenheim fellow and recipient of the Smith College Medal, she is the author of seven previous books, including *Free for All: Defending Liberty in America Today*; *Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety*; *True Love Waits: Essays and Criticism; It's All the Rage: Crime and Culture*; *I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional: The Recovery Movement & Other Self-Help Fashions*; and *A Fearful Freedom: Women's Flight from Equality*. Her articles and reviews, dating back to the 1980s, have appeared in numerous publications including *The New York Times*, *The Atlantic Monthly*, *The Wall Street Journal*, *The Village Voice*, *The American Prospect*, *Dissent*, *The Nation*, *The Wilson Quarterly*, *Free Inquiry*, Slate.com, thefreeforall.net , and spiked-online.com. Her commentaries have aired on National Public Radio. Before embarking on her writing career, Ms. Kaminer briefly practiced law, as a criminal defense attorney for the New York Legal Aid Society and a staff attorney in the New York City Mayor's Office. Law has remained one of her primary subjects, and her writings on such apparently disparate topics as feminism, criminal justice, free speech, religion, spirituality, and popular culture are shaped by common concerns for liberty, individualism, ethics, and rationality. A former board member of the American Civil Liberties Union, Kaminer is an ardent civil libertarian and currently serves on the advisory boards of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education and the Secular Coalition for America. She does not twitter.

Charles Vert Willie is the Charles William Eliot Professor of Education, Emeritus. He is a sociologist whose areas of research include desegregation, higher education, public health, race relations, urban community problems, and family life. Before coming to HGSE, he was chairman of the Department of Sociology and vice president of student affairs at Syracuse University. He was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the President's Commission on Mental Health and has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Social Science Research Council. He also has served as vice president of the American Sociological Association and president of the Eastern Sociological Society. Willie has served as a consultant, expert witness, and court-appointed master in major school desegregation cases in larger cities such as Boston, Hartford, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Kansas City, Little Rock, Milwaukee, San Jose, Seattle, and St. Louis; and in other municipalities such as St. Lucie County and Lee County, Florida, and Somerville, Cambridge, and Brockton, Massachusetts. Willie is the author or editor of over 100 articles and 30 books on issues of race, gender, socioeconomic status, religion, education, urban communities, and family relations. Willie identifies himself as an applied sociologist who is concerned with solving social problems.

Gore Vidal was born in 1925 to West Point aeronautics instructor Gene Vidal and his wife Nina. Young Gore spent much of his childhood with his blind grandfather, Senator T.P. Gore of Oklahoma. He is also a cousin of Tennessee ex-senator and ex-vice president Al Gore . Vidal would later became the stepbrother and confidant of Jacqueline Kennedy when his mother married Jackie's ex-stepfather, Hugh D. Auchincloss. After graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy in 1943, Gore joined the US Army Reserves. Some of his Army experiences inspired his first novel, *Williwaw*, which was published when he was just 19. Subsequent novels would prominently feature gay male characters, and Gore found soon found his books had staying power on bestseller lists. In 1960, he unsuccessfully ran for Congress, backed by celebrity supporters like Paul Newman & Vidal's ex-fiance Joanne Woodward . Another unsuccessful foray into politics would occur in 1982 when he ran for governor of California. In addition to being an accomplished writer, he is also a novice actor. His biggest roles to date have been in *Gattaca* (1997), *Bob Roberts* (1992), and *With Honors* (1994).