Eric Asimov

Eric Asimov has been the chief wine critic for The New York Times since 2004 where his weekly column appears in the Dining section. Formerly editor of the Living section and then Styles of the Times, Mr. Asimov created the $25 and Under restaurant reviews for the Times and co-authored The New York Times Guide to Restaurants 2004. He is the author of four editions of $25 and Under: A Guide to the Best Inexpensive Restaurants in New York.  He lives in Manhattan with his wife and two sons.

Allen Barra

Allen Barra is a sport journalist and author. He writes regularly for The Wall Street Journal and the Daily Beast. His books include Yogi Berra: Eternal Yankee, Last Coach and Inventing Wyatt Earp. He formerly served as an editor of American Heritage magazine. Mr. Barra lives in South Orange, N.J.

Susan Choi

Susan Choi, winner of the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction for her first novel, The Foreign Student, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for her historical fiction novel American Women. She was also a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for A Person of Interest. She is a recipient of fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation, and winner of the PEN/W.G. Sebald Award. She began her career as a fact-checker for The New Yorker and, with David Remnick, edited an anthology of short fiction, Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker. Ms. Choi lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

George Howe Colt

George Howe Colt is the bestselling author of The Big House, which was a National Book Award finalist and a New York Times notable book, and November of the Soul: The Enigma of Suicide. He is married to the American author Anne Fadiman, and lives with his family in Western Massachusetts.

Mariana Cook

Mariana Cook, a fine art photographer, is the last protégé of Ansel Adams. She has photographed many famous and not-so-famous people; the portraits appear in books such as Couples, Generations Of Women and Mathematicians. Ms. Cook departed from portraiture with a book of landscapes and still lifes, Close At Hand, and another called Stone Walls. Her work is in museums around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York city, the National Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. She lives in New York city and Chilmark.

Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy

Kevin Cullen and Shelley Murphy are prize-winning Boston Globe reporters who, between them, have broken the most stories on notorious gangster James (Whitey) Bulger. Mr. Cullen, a columnist for the Metro section, was a member of the 2003 investigative team that won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal. He specializes in writing about ordinary people. Ms. Murphy is a reporter for the Metro section where she covers organized crime, legal affairs, criminal justice and homeland security. Both are currently covering the Whitey Bulger trial.

Joe Eck

Joe Eck is an American gardening expert and designer who writes extensively on the subject. North Hill, the garden that he developed with his partner, Wayne Winterrowd, at their Vermont home has become a tourist destination for visitors from around the world. Mr. Eck and Mr. Winterrowd traveled across the country to design customized gardens for their clients. Their books include A Year at North Hill: Four Seasons in a Vermont Garden, Living Seasonally: The Kitchen Garden and the Table at North Hill and Our Life in Gardens. They were working on To Eat at the time of Mr. Winterrowd’s death.

Melinda Fager

Melinda Fager is a photographer and graphic designer. She spends her summers on Chappaquiddick with her husband, Jeff Fager, the chairman of CBS News and executive producer of 60 Minutes. The island has inspired the lifestyle they share.

Niall Ferguson

Niall Ferguson is a Laurence A. Tisch Professor of history at Harvard University. He is also a senior research fellow at Jesus College, Oxford and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is the author of many books including The World’s Banker: The History of the House of Rothschild, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World and Civilization: The West and the Rest. Mr. Ferguson has written and presented five major television series, including The Ascent of Money. His film, based on his interviews with Henry Kissinger, won the 2011 New York Film Festival prize for best documentary.

Indira Ganesan

Indira Ganesan was born in India and immigrated to the United States when she was five years old. Her first novel, The Journey, was selected as one of 52 finalists in Granta’s Best Young American Novelists. She has held fellowships from The Fine Arts Work Center, The MacDowell Colony, and the Paden Institute for Writers of Color. She lives in Provincetown.

Linda Greenlaw

Linda Greenlaw, writer of both fiction and nonfiction, is America’s only female swordfish boat captain. She was featured in the book and film The Perfect Storm as well as in the Discovery Channel’s Swords: Life on the Line. Ms. Greenlaw, who is currently consulting on a fisheries development program in Kenya, lives on Isle au Haut, Me.

Tony Horwitz

Tony Horwitz is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who has worked for The Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker. The author of several books, including Confederates in the Attic, Mr. Horwitz lives on Martha’s Vineyard with his wife, Geraldine Brooks, and their two sons.

Ward Just

Ward Just is the author of numerous novels, including the National Book Award finalist Echo House and An Unfinished Season, a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize. In May 2013 he was inducted into The American Academy of Arts and Letters. Mr. Just lives on Martha’s Vineyard and in France.

Dick Lehr

Dick Lehr was a reporter for the Boston Globe for nearly two decades where he won numerous journalism awards and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. A professor of journalism at Boston University, he is co-author of Black Mass, which chronicled Whitey Bulger’s life and informed the upcoming film adaptation starring Johnny Depp. His other books include The Fence: A Police Cover-up Along Boston’s Racial Divide, the Edgar Award finalist Judgment Ridge and The Underboss. He lives near Boston and on Martha’s Vineyard with his wife and four children.

Mark Leibovich

Mark Leibovich is the chief national correspondent for The New York Times Magazine. He also contributes to The New York Times’ Style section. In 2011 he received a National Magazine Award for his cover story in The New York Times Magazine on Politico’s Mike Allen. Prior to joining The Times, Mr. Leibovich wrote for The Washington Post and the Boston Phoenix. He lives with his family in Washington, D.C.

Jill Lepore

Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper professor of American history at Harvard University, where she is also the chair of the history and literature program. In 2012, she was named a Harvard College professor, in recognition of distinction in undergraduate teaching. Ms. Lepore’s research and writing focuses on the histories of war and violence, and of language and literacy. Her biography of Benjamin Franklin’s sister, Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin, will be published in October 2013. Her essays and reviews have appeared in leading publications throughout the country. She lives with her family in Cambridge.

Adam Mansbach

Adam Mansbach is the author of The New York Times bestseller Go the _ to Sleep, which has been translated into 40 languages and will be released as a feature film from Fox 2000. His novels include The End of the Jews and Angry Black White Boy. Rage is Back was Amazon.com’s January 2013 Book of the Month.  He is currently adapting the children’s classic The Pushcart War for Park Pictures, and his debut thriller, The Dead Run, will be published in September. Adam lives in Berkeley, Calif.

Moisés Naím

Moisés Naím is a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and an internationally syndicated columnist. While he was editor in chief of Foreign Policy, the magazine won the National Magazine Award for general excellence three times. He also served as Venezuela’s minister of industry and trade, and as executive director of the World Bank. He lives in Washington, D.C.

Kitty Pilgrim

Kitty Pilgrim worked as New York-based anchor and correspondent for CNN for 24 years and was part of the CNN team that broadcast continuously in New York during the September 11 attacks. Ms. Pilgrim has won awards in the television industry, including an Emmy and a Peabody. Her novels are “fact-based fiction.”

Tom Reiss

Tom Reiss won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for his biography The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo. Mr. Reiss’s earlier biography, The Orientalist, the story of Lev Nussimbaum, a Jewish man “who transformed himself into a Muslim prince and became a best-selling author in Nazi Germany,” became an international bestseller. As a journalist, Mr. Reiss has written for The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. He lives with his wife, Julie Just, and daughters in New York city.

Richard Russo

Richard Russo won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls. In addition to a number of other novels and a collection of short stories, Mr. Russo has written for both the big and small screen, including the teleplay for Empire Falls. He lives with his wife in Camden, Me., and in Boston.

Russ Rymer

Russ Rymer is the author of Genie: A Scientific Tragedy, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and American Beach, a New York Times Notable Book. He is currently a writer in residence at Smith College, and has contributed to The New Yorker, National Geographic and The New York Times Magazine. Paris Twilight is his first novel. He lives with fellow author Susan Faludi.

Maggie Shipstead

Maggie Shipstead has written both fiction and nonfiction about topics that range from the South Pacific to ballet, to cowboys, to circumnavigation of the globe. Her short fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories and American Short Fiction, among other places. Ms. Shipstead is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. Seating Arrangements, winner of the 2012 Dylan Thomas Prize and the L.A. Times Prize for First Fiction, is her first novel.

Susan Richards Shreve

Susan Richards Shreve is the author of 14 novels, a memoir and 29 books for children. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment grant, and is co-chairman of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. She participated in the 2009 Martha’s Vineyard Book Festival with Warm Springs, her memoir on her years spent at Warm Springs Polio Foundation. She lives in Washington, D.C.

Mark Slouka

Mark Slouka is the author of Lost Lake, a New York Times Notable Book. His short stories have appeared multiple times in the yearly anthology The Best American Short Stories. He is a contributing editor at Harper’s and lives in Brewster, N.Y.

Jonathan Sperber

Jonathan Sperber is the curators’ professor of history at the University of Missouri. He has written extensively on the social, political and religious history of 19th century Europe. In April 2013 Mr. Sperber appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to discuss his first biography, Karl Marx: A Nineteenth Century Life. He lives in Columbia, Mo.

Rose Styron

Rose Styron is a poet, journalist, translator, human rights activist and mental health advocate. She has published three books of poetry: Thieves’ Afternoon, From Summer to Summer and By Vineyard Light. Her international series of conversations with publicly engaged novelists and poets, Writer’s World, was produced by Voice of America. She currently serves on the boards of the Academy of American Poets, the Association to Benefit Children and The Brain and Creativity Institute at University of Southern California. She lives on Martha’s Vineyard.

J. Courtney Sullivan

J. Courtney Sullivan is the author of Commencement and Maine, the latter of which was named a Best Book of the Year by Time magazine and a Washington Post Notable Book for 2011. Her nonfiction has appeared in many publications. She lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Jeanne Theoharis

Jeanne Theoharis is professor of political science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. She is the author of numerous books and articles on the civil rights and Black Power movements, the politics of race and education, social welfare and civil rights in post-9/11 America.

Laura Wainwright

Laura Wainwright was a longtime children’s librarian and elementary school teacher in the Boston area before moving to Martha’s Vineyard with her husband and two children in 1997. They live in the Vineyard farmhouse that has been in her husband’s family for four generations. Her essays have appeared regularly in the Martha’s Vineyard Times. Home Bird is her first book.

David Wessel

David Wessel is economics editor for The Wall Street Journal and writes the Capital column, a weekly look at the economy and forces shaping living standards around the world. He appears frequently on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition and on WETA’s Washington Week. Mr. Wessel has shared two Pulitzer Prizes, one for Boston Globe stories in 1983 on the persistence of racism in Boston, and the other for stories in The Wall Street Journal in 2002 on corporate wrong-doing. His book In Fed We Trust: Ben Bernanke’s War on the Great Panic was a bestseller. Mr. Wessel lives with his wife, Naomi Karp, in Washington, D.C.

Sean Wilentz

Sean Wilentz is a historian who has written books and commentary on music, politics and the arts. He is currently the George Henry Davis professor of American history at Princeton University, where he has taught since 1979.  The winner of the Cotsen Family Distinguished Teaching Fellowship at Princeton (1993), he has also received numerous research awards. A contributing editor at The New Republic, Mr. Wilentz writes widely on music and the arts as well as history and politics. He received a Grammy nomination for his work on the musician Bob Dylan. Mr. Wilentz lives in Princeton, N.J., and is married to Christine Stansell.