Michael Strecker is an award-winning author and standup comedian.

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.

Rien Fertel is the author of four works of nonfiction. He writes about literature for a variety of publications, including the New Orleans Times-Picayune/Louisiana Advocate, where he is the biweekly book critic. He has held a variety of academic positions, most recently as a Visiting Professor of History at Tulane University.

Prof. Richard Campanella, geographer and associate dean for research with the Tulane School of Architecture and holder of the Jean and Saul A. Mintz Professorship, is the author of fifteen books and 300 articles on New Orleans and Louisiana geography, history, urbanism, and related topics.

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 a co-host of "CBS Saturday Morning." She also files reports for "48 Hours" and anchors CBS News Streaming’s “Eye on America.” The award-winning journalist joined CBS News in 2004 and has reported on stories of national and international importance. Her reporting has earned her several prestigious journalism awards including an Emmy for her series of reports on the National Guard's Youth Challenge Academy.

Dean Baquet leads a local investigative Times fellowship. He previously served as executive editor for The New York Times from May 2014 until June 2022. During Baquet's tenure as executive editor, The Times had significant audience and subscriber growth and won 18 Pulitzer Prizes, including two for Public Service. The Times reaches 100 million readers each month and had 6.7 million subscriptions to its print and digital news products as of the end of 2021.

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.