Michael Benson is a writer, photographer, filmmaker, and exhibitions producer. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Smithsonian, ArtForum, and other publications. In the last decade he staged a series of increasingly large-scale shows of planetary landscape photography in the US and internationally, appearing in museums from London, to Brisbane, to Barcelona and beyond. In 2008-10, Benson worked with director Terrence Malick to help produce space and cosmology sequences for Malick’s film Tree of Life, which drew in part from Benson’s book and exhibition projects; the film won the Palm d’Or at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

Nanocosmos: Visions of Inner Space
Forthcoming from Abrams

Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

Cosmigraphics: Picturing Space Through Time

Planetfall: New Solar System Visions

Far Out: A Space-Time Chronicle

Beyond: A Solar System Voyage
(for young readers)

Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes

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Kate Brown is a Professor of Science, Technology and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is the recipient of many fellowships, including those from the John D. Guggenheim Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and her books have won many prizes, including the American Historical Association’s George Louis Beer Prize for the Best Book in International European History and their Dunning and Beveridge prizes. She has written for The New Yorker, among other publications. She is based in Cambridge, MA.

MANUAL FOR SURVIVAL: An Environmental History of the Chernobyl Disaster

Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters

E. Jean Carroll wrote the celebrated monthly advice column “Ask E. Jean” for Elle magazine for over 25 years. The most popular advice columnist in the United States, her “Ask E. Jean” column had over eight million readers. She has been a contributing editor at Esquire, Outside, and Playboy, and has written for Rolling Stone, GQ, and other publications. She received an Emmy nomination for her writing on Saturday Night Live. Her five-part series “I Moved on Her Very Heavily” was published in The Atlantic in 2020. She lives in Warwick, NY. You can subscribe to her Substack here.

What Do We Need Men For?: A Modest Proposal

Mr. Right, Right Now!: Man Catching Made Easy

A Dog In Heat Is A Hot Dog, and Other Rules To Live By

Hunter: The Strange and Savage Life of Hunter S. Thompson

Ted Chapin was president of The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization for 40 years, having been hired by the two families shortly after Richard Rodgers passed away. His career has ranged from assistant director on the original production of Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys to being one of the founders of the Encores! series at New York City Center. He sits on several boards and is the co-chairman of the American Theatre Wing and chairman of the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music. He is a frequent speaker at colleges and has made several film and television appearances.

Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical Follies
2022 edition updated in celebration of Follies’ 50th anniversary

According to a recent profile in The New Yorker, Robert Christgau is “not just the Dean of American Rock Critics…but one of America’s sharper public intellectuals of the past half century, and certainly one of its most influential.” A rock critic since 1967, he was a senior editor and the chief music critic at The Village Voice for over three decades. His Is It Still Good to Ya?: Fifty Years of Rock Criticism, 1967-2017 was a finalist for the 2018 National Book Critics Circle award in the category of criticism; he currently writes a music column for Vice. He lives in New York City. You can subscribe to his Substack here.

Book Reports: A Music Critic on His First Love, Which Was Reading

Is It Still Good To Ya?: Fifty Years of Rock Criticism, 1967-2017

Going Into The City

Da Capo Best Music Writing 2007: The Year’s Finest Writing on Rock, Hip Hop, Jazz, Pop, Country, & More

Christgau’s Consumer Guide: Albums of the Nineties

Grown Up All Wrong: 75 Great Rock and Pop Artists from Vaudeville to Techno

Any Old Way You Choose It: Rock and Other Pop Music 1967-1973

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Broughton Coburn has spent two of the past four decades in the Himalayas, working in development, conservation, writing and filmmaking. The organizations he has worked with include the Agency for International Development, the United Nations, the World Wildlife Fund and the American Himalaya Foundation. Coburn has appeared as an expert panelist on NPR and has lectured at the Museum of Natural History in New York, The National Geographic Society, the Telluride Mountain Film Festival and many other venues. A graduate of Harvard University, he is on the faculty of the Jackson Hole Writers Conference. Coburn currently lives in Jackson, WY.

Run For Your Life: How to Run, Walk, and Move Without Pain or Injury and Achieve a Sense of Well-Being and Joy
with Dr. Mark Cucuzzella

The Vast Unknown: America’s First Ascent of Everest

Himalaya: Personal Stories of Grandeur, Challenge and Hope, from the American Himalayan Foundation
edited by Broughton Coburn

Touching My Father’s Soul
by Jamling Norgay with Broughton Coburn

Triumph on Everest: A Children’s Photobiography of Sir Edmund Hillary

Everest: Mountain Without Mercy

Aama in America: Searching for the Sacred

Nepali Aama: Portrait of a Nepalese Hill Woman

The New York Times bestselling author behind Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain, Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix, and more, Charles R. Cross has written for hundreds of newspapers and magazines, from Rolling Stone to The Times of London. As the editor of Seattle’s The Rocket from 1986 through 2000, Cross chronicled the rise of the Northwest music scene during the heyday of grunge; he now lectures at colleges about journalism and pop culture, and often appears on radio and television as an expert. He lives near Seattle, WA.

Here We Are Now: The Lasting Impact of Kurt Cobain

Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain
2019 edition revised and updated upon the 25th anniversary of Cobain’s death

Kicking and Dreaming: A Story of Heart, Soul and Rock & Roll
by Ann and Nancy Wilson with Charles Cross

Led Zeppelin: Shadows Taller Than Our Souls

Cobain Unseen

Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix

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Anthony DeCurtis is a contributing editor to Rolling Stone, where his work has appeared for more than thirty years. A Grammy Award recipient, he has three times been recognized with the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for excellence in writing about music. A former on-air correspondent and editorial director at VH1, he has contributed to a myriad of television specials and programs; he teaches in the writing program at the University of Pennsylvania.

Lou Reed: A Life

The Soundtrack of My Life 
by Clive Davis with Anthony DeCurtis

Blues and Chaos: The Music Writing of Robert Palmer
edited by Anthony DeCurtis

In Other Words: Artists Talk About Life and Work

Rocking My Life Away: Writing About Music and Other Matters

Ben Fong-Torres began writing for Rolling Stone in 1968, and joined as news editor in 1969. He contributed to the magazine for 23 years and was portrayed as himself in the Cameron Crowe film Almost Famous. Fong-Torres, who also served as a weekend DJ on KSAN radio in San Francisco from 1970 to 1981, has written for dozens of magazines including Esquire, GQ, Parade, Playboy, Sports Illustrated, Travel & Leisure, and MOJO. He has co-anchored KTVU-TV’s coverage of the Chinese New Year Parades since 1997, and won five Emmy awards for his work. He programs music and is a DJ on Moonalice Radio and is Director of Content with Music City San Francisco. He is the subject of the documentary, Like a Rolling Stone: The Life & Times of Ben Fong-Torres, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in June 2021 and is now currently available for streaming on Netflix.

Willin’: The Story of Little Feat

Eagles: Taking It To The Limit

Grateful Dead Scrapbook: The Long, Strange Trip in Stories, Photos and Memorabilia

The Doors

Becoming Almost Famous: My Back Pages in Music, Writing, and Life

Not Fade Away: A Backstage Pass to 20 Years of Rock & Roll

The Hits Just Keep On Coming: The History of Top 40 Radio

The Rice Room: Growing Up Chinese-American from Number Two Son to Rock & Roll

Hickory Wind: The Life and Times of Gram Parsons

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Georgia Freedman is a food and travel writer. She is a frequent contributor to the Wall Street Journal, where she has written about everything from the best dim sum in Hong Kong to making tamales. She has also written for Afar, Lucky Peach, Real Simple, Roads and Kingdoms, and other food and travel publications including Saveur magazine, where she was previously the managing editor and worked with some of the best writers and editors in the food world. She is based in the Bay Area.

Cooking South of the Clouds: Recipes and Stories From China’s Yunnan Province

There’s Always Room for Chocolate: Recipes from Brooklyn’s The Chocolate Room

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Elysa Gardner currently covers cabaret for the New York Times and has at various points been a regular contributor to The New Yorker (as “Night Life” columnist), Rolling Stone, the Los Angeles Times, and VH1. Formerly the theater and music critic for USA Today, her writing has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Spin, Vibe, Billboard, Town & Country, Out, American Theatre, and other publications. Her TV and radio appearances range from NPR to The Today Show. Elysa has served on the Pulitzer Prize drama jury twice, most recently (2017) as chair, and is a board member of the Drama Desk.

MAGIC TO DO: Pippin‘s Fantastic, Fraught Journey to Broadway and Beyond

Richard Gehr has been writing about music, books, film, television and other aspects of popular culture for more than two decades. He edited artists such as David Lynch and Gary Panter at the Los Angeles Reader in the ‘80s, and has published scores of articles about comics for Artforum, Metropolis, and The Village Voice. He also has written for Rolling Stone, Blender, Vibe, O, The New York Times Book Review and Spin, and has contributed to several books. He is based in New York City.

I Only Read It For The Cartoons: The New Yorker’s Most Brilliantly Twisted Artists

The Phish Book

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Richard Goldstein is a commentator on popular culture and its relationship to politics and sexuality. He is widely regarded as the founder of rock criticism. For many years, he was the executive editor of The Village Voice, and his work has also appeared in numerous publications, including The New York Times, New York magazine, The Nation, Harper’s, Artforum, Vogue, Rolling Stone, Salon, The Los Angeles Times, The Advocate, and Tikkun. He has been a guest commentator on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, NY1, C-SPAN, ABC (Nightline), and NPR (All Things Considered). Goldstein is an adjunct professor at Hunter College, where he currently teaches courses on popular culture and the Sixties. He is based in New York City.

Another Little Piece of My Heart

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Jane Gottesman was a sports journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle prior to curating the national “Game Face” book and exhibition. She has worked for ABC Sports as a writer, researcher and associate producer on the series A Passion to Play, and “Women in the Game” segments on Wide World of Sports. She is the Founding Director of Working Assumptions, a foundation that explores how humanity is reflected in daily routines — work, play, service, and family — where we connect with others, share common ground, and are open to transformative change, through the arts. She is based in Berkeley, California.

Game Face: What Does a Female Athlete Look Like?

Shirley Halperin is the Executive Editor of Music at Variety. An editor, writer, and frequent television commentator, she has worked at Billboard, Entertainment Weekly, The Hollywood Reporter, Rolling Stone, and High Times, and has appeared on MTV, VH1 and E!. She is based in Los Angeles.

American Idol: Celebrating 10 Years (The Official Backstage Pass)

Reefer Movie Madness: The Ultimate Stoner Film Guide
with Steve Bloom

Pot Culture: The A-Z Guide to Stoner Language and Life
with Steve Bloom

Jewly Hight is a music journalist, critic, and the Editorial Director of the Nashville-based NPR Music radio station WNXP. She is an NPR/NPR Music contributor and her work has also appeared in The New York Times, NYMag.com/Vulture, Slate, Billboard, The Oxford American, MTV.com, and numerous other outlets. She won the inaugural Chet Flippo Award for Excellence in Country Music Journalism in 2015 and is the author of Right by Her Roots: Americana Women and Their Songs. She is based in Nashville.

Janet Hopson, an award-winning science writer, has authored and co-authored numerous science titles, including Get Fit, Stay Well!, The Nature of Life, Essentials of Biology, and Scent Signals: the Silent Language of Sex. She holds an M.A. in Science Writing from the University of Missouri School of Journalism and her writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Smithsonian, Newsweek, and Science News, among many other publications. She lives in northern California.

The Magic Trees Of the Mind: How to Nurture Your Child’s Intelligence, Creativity, and Healthy Emotions form Birth to Adolescence
with Marian Diamond

Bill Ivey is a writer, teacher, nonprofit executive, and long-time public servant. He is Senior Research Fellow with Americans for the Arts, a Washington-based arts advocacy group, and Visiting Research Scholar in the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology at Indiana University. He is past-president of the American Folklore Society and today serves that organization as Senior Advisor for China. Ivey served as chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts in the Clinton-Gore administration, and was team leader for arts and culture in the Barack Obama presidential transition. In 2002 he became founding director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University, and since 2001 has been a trustee of the Center for American Progress, a Washington “think-tank.” Ivey is also a four-time Grammy nominee (Best Album notes), and has produced and written television shows for CBS and PBS. He is based in Nashville, Tennessee and Calumet, Michigan.

Rebuilding an Enlightened World: Folklorizing America

Handmaking America: A Back to Basics Pathway to a Revitalized American Democracy

Arts, Inc.: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights

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Diane and Bernie Lierow live outside of Nashville, Tennessee. The story of their daughter, Dani, was the subject of a Pulitzer Prize-winning article in the St. Petersburg Times.

Dani’s Story: A Journey From Neglect to Love
by Diane and Bernie Lierow with Kay West

Kurt Loder is a longtime film critic, music journalist and television presence and the author of I, Tina, with Tina Turner, and Bat Chain Puller, a collection of his work from Rolling Stone, where he was an editor for nine years. He was an anchor and correspondent for MTV News, as well as the writer and host of MTV’s The Week in Rock for more than a decade. He currently writes about movies for Reason Online and has also guest-starred as himself in numerous films. His writing has appeared in Esquire, Details, New York Magazine, and Time. He currently lives in New York City.

The Good, the Bad and the Godawful: 21^st Century Movie Reviews

Kembrew McLeod is a Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa. He has published and produced several books and documentaries about music and popular culture, and his writing has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Slate, Salon, SPIN, MOJO and Rolling Stone. Kembrew’s documentary Copyright Criminals aired on PBS’s Emmy Award-winning Independent Lens series and his 2007 book Freedom Of Expression® received an American Library Association book award. He was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar Fellowship to support the writing and research of his book The Downtown Pop Underground. He is based in Iowa City.

The Downtown Pop Underground: New York City and the literary punks, renegade artists, DIY filmmakers, mad playwrights, and rock ’n’ roll glitter queens who revolutionized culture

Blondie’s Parallel Lines (33 1/3)

Pranksters: Making Mischief in the Modern World

Cutting Across Media: Appropriation Art, Interventionist Collage, and Copyright Law
with Rudolf Kuenzli

Creative License: The Law and Culture of Digital Sampling
with Peter DiCola

Freedom of Expression®: Resistance and Repression in the Age of Intellectual Property

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Dennis McNally received his Ph.D. in American History from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Desolate Angel, his thesis, became a biography of Jack Kerouac published by Random House in 1979. It brought him to the attention of Jerry Garcia, who tapped McNally to be the band’s official biographer in 1980. McNally assumed publicist duties in 1984 and worked for the organization until 2008. His most recent book, On Highway 61, was awarded an ASCAP Deems Taylor/Virgil Thompson award. He lives in San Francisco.

Jerry On Jerry: The Unpublished Jerry Garcia Interviews

On Highway 61: Music, Race, and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom

A Long Strange Trip: The Inside Story of the Grateful Dead

Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation, and America

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Paula Mejia is the Arts Editor at the Los Angeles Times. She is the author of a book about The Jesus and Mary Chain’s Psychocandy for Bloomsbury Press’s 33 1/3 series (October 2016). Her work has appeared in The Criterion Collection, Newsweek, The New York Times, NPR, Texas Monthly, and Vulture. She has served on panels about music, digital archiving, film and journalism at South By Southwest, the Experience Music Project, the Mezipatra Film Festival and the New Museum, respectively. She is based in Los Angeles, California.

Joan Morgan is an author and cultural critic who coined the phrase “hip-hop feminism.” A former Executive Editor of Essence, Morgan is a widely sought-after lecturer and commentator on the intersection of women’s issues and hip-hop. An award-winning journalist and provocative cultural critic, she began her professional writing career freelancing for The Village Voice and has been published by Vibe, Interview, Ms., GIANT, More, Spin, and numerous others. She has appeared on VH1, MTV, BET, and CNN and has taught at Duke University, The New School, and Vanderbilt University. She received her PhD in American Studies from New York University and is currently the Program Director of the Center for Black Visual Culture at NYU. She is based in New York City.

She Begat This: 20 Years of the Miseducation of Lauryn Hill

When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip Hop Feminist Breaks it Down

Dan Nadel is the Curator at Large for the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, University of California, Davis. He is the author of numerous books, including the forthcoming Return to Romance from New York Review Comics. Nadel was the co-editor of The Comics Journal from 2011 through 2017; he is published frequently in Art in America, The New York Review of Books, and Artforum. As a curator, Nadel has mounted exhibitions across the nation and world. Nadel’s work as a packager has been recognized with a Grammy Award for Package Design, an Eisner Award for Best Comics-Related Publication, and a National Endowment for the Arts Design Innovation Grant, 2004. Nadel has lectured at institutions including Columbia University, MoMA, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Rhode Island School of Design. He received a fellowship from The Leon Levy Center for Biography in support of the writing and research of his forthcoming biography of R. Crumb. He is based in Brooklyn, NY.

Only Human: A Biography of Robert Crumb
Forthcoming from Scribner

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Robert K. Oermann is an award-winning multimedia music journalist. He writes weekly columns for Music Row magazine and has been published in more than 100 other periodicals including Entertainment Weekly, Esquire, Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter, TV Guide, The Tennessean and USA Today. Oermann is also a TV and radio script writer/director for dozens of national productions. His honors and awards include the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award, the Media Achievement Award from the Country Music Association, Country Music People’s International Media Award, Goldmine’s Best Historical Writer, and SESAC’s Journalistic Achievement Award. He has authored eight books and penned liner notes for more than 100 albums and boxed-sets. Oermann has lectured on popular music, journalism and country music at many colleges and universities, and lives in Nashville with his wife and co-author Mary A. Bufwack.

Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics
by Dolly Parton with Robert Oermann

Behind the Grand Ole Opry Curtain: Tales of Romance and Tragedy

Little Miss Dynamite: The Life and Times of Brenda Lee
by Brenda Lee and Julie Clay with Robert Oermann

Finding Her Voice: Women in Country Music
with Mary A. Bufwack

The Century of Country: An Illustrated History of Country Music

America’s Music: The Roots of Country

Robert Palmer was the first chief pop music critic for The New York Times, a frequent contributor to Rolling Stone, and his articles have appeared in many other publications. Few music writers have been as influential as Robert Palmer, who throughout his long career proved himself an authority on jazz, blues, rock, punk, avant-garde and world music criticism, discovering new artists and scenes years (sometimes decades) ahead of fashion. An author of several books, he taught American music at Yale, Bowdoin, the Smithsonian Institution, Brooklyn College, Carnegie Mellon and the University of Mississippi. Robert Palmer died in 1997.

Blues and Chaos: The Music Writings of Robert Palmer 
edited by Anthony DeCurtis

Deep Blues: A Musical and Cultural History

Patricia Pearson is an award-winning author and the recipient of three Canadian National Magazine Awards, the Arthur Ellis Award for best Canadian nonfiction crime writing, and a North American Travel Journalism Association award. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Toronto Life, Reader’s Digest, The Toronto Star, National Post, The Guardian, The New York Times, More, The Globe and Mail, The Daily Telegraph, Business Week, NPR, CBC Television, The History Channel, and TV Ontario, among many others. In 2003, she was a finalist for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, Canada’s version of the Mark Twain prize. She lives in Toronto.

Wish You Were Here: A Murdered Girl, a Brother’s Quest and the Hunt for a Serial Killer
with John Allore

Opening Heaven’s Door: Investigating Stories of Life, Death, and What Comes After

A Brief History of Anxiety: Yours and Mine

Area Woman Blows Gasket: And Other Tales from the Domestic Frontier

Believe Me

Playing House

When She Was Bad: How And Why Women Get Away With Murder

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Bruce Porter has written for The Washington Post, The New York Times, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Newsweek, and many other publications. Porter worked for many years as a professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and is currently a visiting professor for the Bard College Prison Initiative. He lives in New York City.

Snatched: From Drug Queen to Informer to Hostage–A Harrowing True Story

Blow: How a Small-town Boy Made $100 Million with the Medellin Cocaine Cartel and Lost It All

One of the nation’s most notable music critics, Ann Powers has been NPR Music’s critic and correspondent since April 2011. Powers served as chief pop music critic at the Los Angeles Times from 2006 until she joined NPR; prior to the Los Angeles Times, she was senior critic at Blender, a pop critic at The New York Times, and a senior editor at The Village Voice. The co-author of Tori Amos’ New York Times bestselling memoir, she won the 42nd annual ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award in 2010. She is based in Nashville, TN.

Untitled Ann Powers Reader

Forthcoming from University of Texas Press

Traveling: On the Path of Joni Mitchell
Forthcoming from HarperCollins/Ecco March 2024

Good Booty: Love and Sex, Black and White, Body and Soul in American Music

Da Capo Best Music Writing 2010: The Year’s Finest Writing on Rock, Hip Hop, Jazz, Pop, Country & More
editor

Tori Amos: Piece by Piece
by Tori Amos and Ann Powers

Weird Like Us: My Bohemian America

Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Pop and Soul
co-edited with Evelyn McDonnell

A writer for Rolling Stone magazine for over twenty-five years, and frequent contributor to Sound + Vision, Outside, and Men’s Journal, Parke Puterbaugh is also the author of numerous travel books, one of which earned an award from the Society of American Travel Writers in 2004. He has worked as a writer and editor for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame + Museum since its inception and co-edited I Want to Take You Higher: The Psychedelic Era for the museum. He lives in Greensboro, N.C.

Carolina Beach Music
Forthcoming from The University of North Carolina Press

Phish: The Biography

Mark Richardson has been writing about music, culture, and technology for more than 20 years and and is currently a rock and pop music critic at the Wall Street Journal. He served as the Editor-in-Chief and Executive Editor of the online music magazine Pitchfork from 2011-2018. During his tenure as Editor-in-Chief, Pitchfork won a National Magazine Award for General Excellence in Digital Media, and Mark has served as a judge for the National Magazine Awards since 2014. He is the author of Zaireeka, a book in the 33 1/3 series about the Flaming Lips album of the same name. Mark taught a course on music writing at Columbia College Chicago and his work has appeared in publications including the Village Voice, Washington City Paper, and MetroTimes Detroit. He has served on panels and delivered lectures on music and cultural criticism to students and professionals throughout the U.S. and internationally.

Ira Robbins is a native of New York City. In 1974, while getting a degree in electrical engineering, he co-founded the music magazine Trouser Press, which he ran for a decade. (Visit trouserpress.com for more on that.) In addition to serving as the pop critic for Newsday and freelancing for countless music magazines in the US and UK, he has edited eight books, played guitar and sang in the new wave cover band Utensil, and worked in radio. He is the author of two novels: Kick It Till It Breaks and Marc Bolan Killed in Crash: A Musical Novel of the 1970s.

Michael Rogers began his career as a writer for Rolling Stone and went on to co-found Outside magazine. He then launched Newsweek’s technology column, winning numerous journalism awards, including a National Headliner Award for coverage of the Chernobyl meltdown. For ten years he was vice president of The Washington Post Company’s new media division. His work in interactive media ranges from early ground-breaking projects for LucasFilm and Apple to dozens of Internet ventures. He has been named to the Magazine Industry Digital Hall of Fame, and has also received the World Technology Network Award for Lifetime Achievement in Media and Journalism. Rogers recently completed two years as futurist-in-residence for the New York Times and is a columnist for NBC.com. He is also a best-selling novelist whose fiction explores the human impact of technology. He lives in New York City where he works on book and television projects.

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Suze Rotolo was an artist based in New York City. She died in February 2011.

A Freewheelin’ Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties

Dr. Riam Shammaa is a pioneer scientist in regenerative and translational medicine and holds multiple patents in the field. He conducted the first successful spinal discs repair using stem cells in Canada. He also pioneered non-surgical hip and knee repairs for avascular necrosis using stem cell transplants. He is the founder of the Canadian Centres for Regenerative Therapy (CCRT), the first recognized private cell therapy centers in Canada. Dr. Shammaa is also a co-founder of Freyja Therapeutics, a clinical–stage company with a platform based on umbilical cord stem cells for the treatment of inflammatory diseases. He is an active member of the boards of directors of multiple biotechnology companies.

Looks Can Kill: A Doctor’s Journey through Steroids, Addiction and Online Fitness Culture
with Patricia Pearson

Sylvie Simmons is a widely regarded writer and rock historian. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including The Times, The Guardian, The Mirror, Rolling Stone, The Independent, The Radio Times, Harp, Blender, San Francisco Chronicle, Americana, and MOJO. Simmons has appeared in several radio, television, and film documentaries and has written a number of liner notes for artists ranging from David Bowie to Emmylou Harris, Leonard Cohen to the Red Hot Chili Peppers; she is a recipient of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award. Simmons is from London and is currently based in San Francisco.

Face It
by Debbie Harry with Sylvie Simmons

I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen

Too Weird for Ziggy

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Michael Sragow is a film critic for Film Comment, a programmer for The Criterion Channel, and the curator of the Moviegoer series for the Library of America. He edited the Library of America’s two volumes on James Agee’s fiction and nonfiction writing, as well as Produced and Abandoned: The National Society of Film Critics Write on the Best Films You’ve Never Seen. A former movie columnist for Salon and film critic for The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, The Boston Phoenix, The Los Angeles Herald Examiner, The San Francisco Examiner, The San Francisco Weekly, The Baltimore Sun, the Orange County Register, The Atlantic and The New York Times, he is based in Los Angeles. 

Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master

John Swenson wrote about popular music for over 50 years, specializing in the music of New Orleans; many of his articles won press club awards and have been anthologized. He was a syndicated music columnist for more than 20 years at United Press International and Reuters, published 14 books and worked as an editor for Crawdaddy, Rolling Stone, Circus, Rock World, and OffBeat magazines. He also edited several classic reference books for Rolling Stone Press. He died in March 2022.

New Atlantis: Musicians Battle for the Survival of New Orleans

Switched on Pop is a podcast on the Vox Media Podcast Network analyzing contemporary pop music. It has been listed as a top music podcast by NPR, The Guardian, Buzzfeed, Forbes, Entertainment Weekly, Christian Science Monitor, AV Club, and Chicago Reader. Switched on Pop has been cited, and Charlie and Nate have appeared as experts, in The Atlantic, VICE, Houston Press, Fuse, The Stranger, OZY, Portland Mercury, and Billboard. Journalists, musicians, composers, musicologists and philosophers have all appeared as guests on the show.

Nate Sloan is a musicologist, performer and educator based in Los Angeles. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University and currently teaches at the University of Southern California. Nate is co-host of the music podcast Switched on Pop and a pop music panelist on Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) Radio’s Day 6. Nate is also an award-winning performer and composer. His two-man vaudeville act “The Gideon and Hubcap Show” has played at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and at the Soho Theatre in London, and Nate composed the score for the 2014 SXSW Short Doc prize film Slomo.

Charlie Harding is the co-host of Switched On Pop, a songwriter and longtime musical collaborator with his co-host Nate Sloan. Charlie also works in the humanitarian sector, serving as the Director of Product Management at Ushahidi, which builds crowdsourcing software to help people raise their voices. Previously, Charlie worked for Google and Google.org where he worked on internet access software and infrastructure projects to bridge the digital divide in the developing world. He also co-founded Runa, a social enterprise tea company that works with over 2,000 indigenous farming families. He is based in Los Angeles.

SWITCHED ON POP: How Popular Music Works, and Why it Matters

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John Szwed was director of the Center for Jazz Studies and is a former professor of Music and Jazz Studies at Columbia University in New York; he is also the former John M. Musser Professor of Anthropology, African American Studies, and Film Studies at Yale University. He has authored or edited eighteen books and his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Village Voice, and many other publications. He has received fellowships from the John M. Guggenheim Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. He has produced several recordings and has appeared in a number of documentaries and television specials; as a jazz musician, he played the bass and trombone professionally for over a decade. He received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from Ohio State University and currently lives in Philadelphia.

Cosmic Scholar: The Life and Times of Harry Smith
Forthcoming from Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra

Billie Holiday: The Musician and the Myth

Alan Lomax: The Man Who Recorded the World

So What: The Life of Miles Davis

Jazz 101: A Complete Guide to Learning and Loving Jazz

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A pioneer of pop music journalism, Jaan Uhelszki is a three-time ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor Award recipient, as well as a two-time award winner from the Music Journalists Association. As a co-founder of Creem, she helped to usher in a new era and style in rock journalism in the late Sixties. Still active as a journalist, her work has appeared in top publications such as Mojo, Uncut, Q, USA Today, Rolling Stone, the Village Voice, and Paste, among others. In addition to her bylined work, Uhelszki regularly appears as a music authority on television and radio, as well as on industry panels and at workshops. She recently co-wrote and produced the award-winning documentary Creem: America’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll Magazine, and Rivers and Roads: The Head And The Heart – Live from Pike Place Market. Currently, she is working on a new film about the rock scene in Los Angeles from 1981-1992.

Jessica Vitkus is an award-winning television producer and writer. Her work has appeared in Domino, Slate, Elle, Martha Stewart Living and InStyle. Jessica was a producer for MTV News and Specials, wrote for Pop-Up Video and DL Hughley Breaks the News, and wrote and produced field segments for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. She co-wrote MTV teen dramady My Life As Liz and executive-produced the Too Cute series for Animal Planet and Double Divas for Lifetime. Recently, she was a Field Producer for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. She is based in New York City.

CRAFTING CHANGE: Handmade Activism, Past and Present

Moregasm: Babeland’s Guide to Mind-Blowing Sex By Claire Cavanah and Rachel Venning

Elijah Wald has been a folk blues guitarist since childhood and a writer for more than thirty years, and his work has appeared in publications such as the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Tower Pulse, Songlines, Sing Out, Living Blues, and The Boston Globe, where he served as world music critic throughout the 1990s. He won a Grammy in 2002 for his album notes for The Arhoolie Records 40th Anniversary Box, and has produced several albums and recorded two of his own. He has taught blues history at UCLA and lectured widely on American, Mexican, and world music. He holds an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in ethnomusicology and sociolinguistics. Wald is based in Philadelphia, PA.

JELLY ROLL BLUES
Forthcoming from Hachette Books

Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties

Talking ‘Bout Your Mama: The Dozens, Snaps, and the Deep Roots of Rap

The Blues: A Very Short Introduction

How The Beatles Destroyed Rock & Roll: An Alternative History of American Popular Music

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David Wild has been a contributing editor to Rolling Stone for over two decades. A former editor and writer for Esquire, he has been active in writing and producing for television – his credits include working on the Grammy, Emmy and Oscar award shows and he was nominated for an Emmy for America: A Tribute to Heroes. He has written liner note essays for dozens of artists including the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Frank Sinatra, Simon & Garfunkel, Randy Newman and others. Wild has also appeared frequently as a pop culture commentator on shows for Bravo, A&E, MSNBC, VH-1 and MTV, and has lectured on pop culture at dozens of universities around the county. He lives in Los Angeles.

Everybody’s Brother
by CeeLo Green with Big Gipp and David Wild

Diary of a Player: How My Musical Heroes Made a Guitar Man Out of Me
by Brad Paisley with David Wild

He Is…I Say: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Neil Diamond

Heart Full of Soul: An Inspirational Memoir About Finding Your Voice and Finding Your Way
by Taylor Hicks with David Wild

Friends ’til the End: The Official Celebration of All Ten Years

The Showrunners: A Season Inside The Billion-Dollar, Death-Defying, Madcap World of Television’s Real Stars

Seinfeld: The Totally Unauthorized Tribute…Not That There’s Anything Wrong With That

Friends: The Official Companion

Chris Willman is Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic at Variety. He was previously Entertainment Weekly’s chief music critic and enjoyed long tenures with the Los Angeles Times, Billboard, and TV Guide. He is the author of Rednecks & Bluenecks: The Politics of Country Music, cited by Stephen King as one of the three best music books of all time. Other accolades include wins at the SoCal Journalism Awards and Entertainment Journalism Awards. The L.A. Press Club named him its Entertainment Journalist of the Year in 2020. He lives in Los Angeles.

Rednecks and Bluenecks: The Politics of Country Music

Comics writer, critic, journalist and teacher Douglas Wolk is the author of the Eisner Award-winning Reading Comics and All of the Marvels and the host of the podcast “The Voice of Latveria.” A National Arts Journalism Program Fellow, Wolk has written about comic books, graphic novels, pop music, and technology for the New York Times, Rolling Stone, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Believer, Slate, and Pitchfork. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

All of the Marvels: A Journey to the Ends of the Biggest Story Ever Told

Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean

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