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Katherine Paterson is the author of twelve novels for children and young people including *Bridge to Terabithia* and J*acob Have I Loved*, Newbery Winners in 1978 and 1981, and *The Great Gilly Hopkins*, a Newbery Honor Book. *The Great Gilly Hopkins* and *The Master Puppeteer* were National Book Award winners in 1979 and 1977. Her novel, *Lyddie*, set in Vermont and Massachusetts in the 1840's was the 1994 United States representative for writing on the Honor List of the International Board of Books for Young People. Other award winning novels include, *Flip-Flop Girl*, which was an ALA Notable Book, a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, a Parent's Choice Story Book Award winner in 1994 and was named a Notable Book of 1994 by *The New York Times*. Her novel, *Jip, His Story*, is the recipient of the 1997 Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, an ALA Notable Book and a Best Book for Young Adults. *Preacher's Boy*, published in 1999, received the Jefferson Cup from the Virginia Library Association. Ms. Paterson was born in Quinn Jingo, China. She is a graduate of King College, Bristol, Tennessee and holds master's degrees from both the Presbyterian School of Christian Education, Richmond, Virginia and Union Theological Seminary, New York City. The Patersons live in Barre where Dr. Paterson recently retired as pastor of the First Presbyterian Church. They are the parents of four grown children. They have two granddaughters, a grandson, and are expecting another grandchild in the fall.

Mrigaa Sethi '05 won a prize in the 12th annual Amy Awards Contest. The Amy Award is presented to women poets age 30 and under living in the New York City metropolitan area or on Long Island. Winners receive an honorarium and a reading in New York City. Sethi took part in a reading with two other winners this fall at the New York Society Library in New York City. She is currently an MFA candidate at New York University. She is also involved with the Asian American Writers Workshop, the country's largest literary arts nonprofit dedicated to the creation, development, publication and dissemination of Asian American literature.

David Ferry is the Sophie Chantal Hart Professor Emeritus of English at Wellesley College and a Visiting Lecturer in Creative Writing at Boston University. *Of No Country I Know: New and Selected Poems and Translations* won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, the Bingham Poetry Prize from Boston Book Review, the Rebekah Johnson Bobbitt National Prize for Poetry and was a finalist for The New Yorker Book Award and the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award. Ferry's other awards include the Sixtieth Fellowship of The Academy of American Poets, the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award, the Teasdale Prize for Poetry, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, the Ingram Merrill Award, and the William Arrowsmith Translation Prize from *AGNI magazine*. In 1998 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is currently completing his new book, to be called *Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations*.

Guy MacLean Rogers holds a Ph.D. in classics from Princeton University. He has received numerous grants and fellowships, including ones from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Philosophical Society, and All Souls College Oxford. His first book, *The Sacred Identity of Ephesos: Foundation Myths of a Roman City*, won the Routledge Ancient History Prize. Chairman of the Department of History of Wellesley College from 1997-2001, he grew up and still lives in Litchfield County, Connecticut.

Lee Strasberg, born Israel Lee Strassberg, was an actor, director, producer and most importantly acting instructor and teacher. He was born in what is now known as Budaniv, Ukraine on November 17, 1901. His family later immigrated to New York and he later became a naturalised citizen of the United States. During his lifetime he joined with Harold Clurman to form the Group Theater in 1931, it lasted till about 1941. Through the Actors Studio formed sometime in 1947 he trained a large number of film personalities including Marlin Brando, Eli Wallach, Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino, Paul Newman, Marilyn Monroe, Robert DeNiro, James Dean, Patricia Neal and several others. He appeared in front of the camera just 7 times. Of these his most famous role was of 'Hyman Roth' played in the film *The Godfather II*, in which he portrays an elderly Jewish mob boss. Strasberg, died in February 1982.

Harold Clurman has been called the most influential figure in the history of the American theater. Between 1935 and 1980, he directed over forty plays, including Jean Giraudoux's *Tiger at the Gates*, Eugene O'Neill's *Touch of the Poe*t, and Arthur Miller's *Incident at Vichy*. He authored seven books, and from 1953 until his death in 1980 he was a drama critic for *The Nation*. As the passionate and talented leader of the Group Theatre, Clurman invigorated American theater with his political and artistic idealism. Though the Group Theatre lasted only ten years, it produced twenty plays and brought an excitement to the American stage that still remains. After the closing of the Group Theatre, Clurman brought his vision to Broadway, where he was instrumental in teaching some of the most skilled and successful actors of the time. He worked to insure the theater's growth by elevating its productions to the level of any other of the great arts. Working with writers such as Eugene O'Neill, Carson McCullers, and Arthur Miller, he created theater that was at once serious and popular, and uniquely American. In recognition of his great influence and commitment to the arts, he was awarded the rare honor of having a Broadway theater named after him. Today, twenty years after his death, Harold Clurman is considered one of the most respected and influential members of the American theater

Tim Russert was an American television journalist known best for hosting the political affairs talk show,* Meet the Press*. A 1972 graduate of John Carroll University in Cleveland, Russert also held a degree from Cleveland State University's Cleveland-Marshall College of Law (1976). Before he began his TV career, Russert worked for both U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1977-82) and New York's Governor Mario Cuomo (1983-84), both Democrats. He was hired by NBC in 1984, and by the end of the decade was a bureau chief in Washington, D.C. He took over hosting *Meet the Press* in 1991 and within a few years became NBC's go-to guy in Washington and one of the most prominent political journalists in the business. Russert earned millions of dollars as a no-nonsense, working class guy from Buffalo asking tough questions of newsmakers ranging from George W. Bush to Barack Obama. He also published books, including *Big Russ and Me* (2004, about his dad) and *Wisdom of Our Fathers* (2006, a collection of letters about other dads).