Katy Simpson Smith was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. She is the author of the novels The Story of Land and Sea, a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice and one of Vogue’s Best Books of 2014; Free Men; and The Everlasting, a New York Times Best Historical Fiction Book of 2020. Her writing has also appeared in The Washington Post, The Paris Review, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Oxford American, Granta, and elsewhere.
Nathaniel Rich is the author, most recently, of two works of nonfiction on environmental themes: Second Nature, which includes the story that serves as the basis for the film Dark Waters; and Losing Earth, a finalist for the PEN/E.O.
Imani Perry is the Henry A. Morss, Jr. and Elisabeth W. Morss Professor of Studies of Women, Gender and Sexuality and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute. Perry is the author of 8 books, including the New York Times Bestseller South to America: A Journey Below the Mason Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation which received the 2022 National Book Award for Nonfiction, the inaugural Inside Literary Prize, and was named one of President Obama’s favorite books of 2022.
Richard Ford was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and (as of December) resumed with his wife Kristina Ford their long-standing residence in New Orleans. He is the author of 13 novels and story collections, plus a memoir about his parents. He has for years written on culture and politics for many European newspapers, including Le Monde, El Pais Corrierre della Sera, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Welt, The Irish Times and The Guardian of London, His fiction has been recognized
Prof. Richard Campanella, geographer and associate dean for research with the Tulane School of Architecture and Built Environment and holder of the Jean and Saul A. Mintz Professorship in Architecture, is the author of sixteen books and over 300 articles on Louisiana geography, history, urbanism, and related topics.
Douglas Brinkley is the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University, a CNN Presidential Historian, and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. He has received seven honorary doctorates in American Studies. He works in many capacities in the world of public history, including for boards, museums, colleges and historical societies. Six of his books were named New York Times “Notable Books of the Year” and seven became New York Times bestsellers.
Jason Berry, an author and documentary filmmaker, gained renown for investigative reporting with Lead Us Not into Temptation (1992), which exposed bishops concealing predator priests. Rolling Stone called it “the bible of the survivors’ movement.”
Michelle Miller is an Emmy Award–winning journalist whose work has been featured across CBS News for more than two decades. She has served as a correspondent for “48 Hours,” anchored CBS News Streaming’s “Eye on America,” and spent many years as a co-host of “CBS Saturday Morning." Her work has spanned major national and international stories and earned multiple prestigious awards.
Thomas Beller is Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at Tulane University, a regular contributor to the New Yorker, and the author of several books, most recently, Lost in the Game: A Book about Basketball, also published by Duke University Press. He is a recipient of a 2024-25 Guggenheim Fellowship, a Robert Silvers Award for Works in Progress, and a New York City Book Award for Biography/memoir for his book, "J.D. Salinger: The Escape Artist."
Ken Auletta launched the Annals of Communications columns and profiles for The New Yorker magazine in 1992. He is the author of twelve books, including five national bestsellers: Three Blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their Way; Greed And Glory On Wall Street: The Fall of The House of Lehman; The Highwaymen: Warriors of the Information Super Highway; World War 3.0: Microsoft and Its Enemies; and Googled, The End of the World As We Know It, which was published in November of 2009.
