Elif Batuman was born in New York City, grew up in New Jersey, and went to college at Harvard. She completed a PhD in comparative literature at Stanford University in 2007. She currently lives in San Francisco, and teaches at Stanford in the Interdisciplinary Humanities program.  Her writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's, the London Review of Books, the Guardian, the Nation, and n+1. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, and has a cat called Friday.

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David L. Ulin is book editor of the Los Angeles Times. He is the author of The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith, and the editor of Another City: Writing from Los Angeles and Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a California Book Award.

Miriam Pawel is the author of "The Union of Their Dreams - Power, Hope and Struggle in Cesar Chavez's Farm Worker Movement,'' a groundbreaking narrative history told through eight participants in the movement. She spent 25 years as an award-winning reporter and editor on both coasts, directing coverage that won Pulitzer prizes at Newsday for the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800 and at the Los Angeles Times for the deadly 2003 wildfires. In 2006, she wrote a four-part investigative series for the Times about the United Farm Workers, which led her to delve more deeply into the history of Chavez's movement. She has recently been a fellow at the Alicia Patterson Foundation and a John Jacobs fellow at the Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies.

Jim Newton is editor-at-large of the Los Angeles Times. He serves as a member of the Times’ editorial board, advises on editorial matters and writes and edits for the editorial page and Op-Ed. Previously, he served as editor of the editorial pages, supervising the editorial board as well as the Op-Ed page, Sunday Opinion and Letters to the Editor. A 20-year veteran of the Times, he has covered, among other beats, the LAPD, the administration of Mayor Richard Riordan, federal law enforcement, the 1992 LA riots, and the 1994 earthquake: the latter two were awarded Pulitzer Prizes to the staff. Also an author, Mr. Newton wrote Justice for All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made, a critically acclaimed, best-selling biography of the former chief justice and California governor. He is a Senior Fellow with UCLA’s School of Public Affairs.

Jesse Katz has been writing about Los Angeles for the better part of three decades, first as a staff writer at the Los Angeles Times, then as a senior writer at Los Angeles magazine. In his fifteen years at the L.A. Times, Jesse shared in two Pulitzer Prizes and was a Pulitzer finalist for beat reporting. In nine years at Los Angeles, he received the PEN Center USA’s literary journalism award and the James Beard Foundation’s M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award. He was also a National Magazine Award nominee. His articles have been reprinted in The Best American Magazine Writing and The Best American Crime Writing. He has contributed to The New York Times Magazine, Details, Rolling Stone, Texas Monthly, and Food & Wine. He teaches in the literary journalism program at UC Irvine, and he has volunteered in the juvenile justice system through a program called InsideOUT Writers.

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Father Gregory J. Boyle, S.J. was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1982. He received his Master of Divinity from the Weston School of Theology; and a Sacred Theology Masters degree from the Jesuit School of Theology. In 1988, Father Boyle began what would become Homeboy Industries, now located in downtown Los Angeles. Fr. Greg received the California Peace Prize, the “Humanitarian of the Year” Award from Bon Appétit; the Caring Institute’s 2007 Most Caring People Award; and received the 2008 Civic Medal of Honor from the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. Since 1986, Father Gregory has been the pastor of Dolores Mission in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. The church sits between two large public housing projects, Pico Gardens and Aliso Village, known for decades as the gang capital of the world.  Since Father Greg—also known affectionately as G-dog, started Homeboy Industries nearly twenty years ago, it has served members of more than half of the gangs in Los Angeles. In Homeboy Industries’ various businesses—baking, silkscreening, landscaping—gang affiliations are left outside as young people work together, side by side, learning the mutual respect that comes from building something together.

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Leonard Mlodinow received his doctorate in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, was an Alexander von Humboldt fellow at the Max Planck Institute, and now teaches about randomness to future scientists at Caltech. Along the way, he has written for the television series MacGyver and Star Trek: The Next Generation. His previous books include Euclid's Window: The Story of Geometry from Parallel Lines to Hyperspace, Feynman's Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life, and, with Stephen Hawking, A Briefer History of Time.

K.C. Cole is currently on the faculty at the USC Annenberg School of Journalism. Previously, she was science correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, and many other publications. Cole is also the author of seven nonfiction books, including Mind Over Matter: Conversations with the Cosmos; The Hole in the Universe: How Scientists Peered Over the Edge of Emptiness and Found Everything; and The Universe and the Teacup, the Mathematics of Truth and Beauty. She has been honored with numerous prizes, including the American Institute of Physics Science Writing prize and the Los Angeles Times award for best explanatory journalism.

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Lionel Shriver is the author of The Female Species, Checker and the Derailleurs, Ordinary Decent Criminals, Game Control, A Perfectly Good Family, and Double Fault.  Shriver is also the author of We Need to Talk About Kevin, a novel about a Columbine-style massacre told by the mother of the killer. An international bestseller, Kevin won the prestigious Orange Prize in 2005.  Her book The Post-Birthday World was published to great critical acclaim in 2007/ Shriver’s essays, features, and comment pieces have appeared in many publiciations, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Independent, London’s Times, The Daily Mail, Salon.com, and many others.

Meghan Daum is a weekly columnist on the op-ed page of the Los Angeles Times. She is the author of the bestselling essay collection My Misspent Youth, the critically acclaimed novel The Quality of Life Report, and has written for many publications, including The New Yorker, Harper's, GQ, Vogue, and The New York Times. She has contributed to public radio's Morning Edition and This American Life and is a regular guest host on KPCC's Zocalo: A Cultural Forum for the New L.A.

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Tim O'Brien has been hailed as “the best American writer of his generation” (San Francisco Examiner). The author of eight books, O’Brien received the National Book Award in Fiction in 1979 for his novel Going After Cacciato.  In 2005 The Things They Carried was named by the New York Times as one of the twenty best books of the last quarter century.  It was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. The French edition of The Things They Carried received the prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, and the title story was selected by John Updike for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of the Century.  In the Lake of the Woods, published in 1994, was chosen by Time magazine as the best novel of that year. The book also received the James Fenimore Cooper Prize from the Society of American Historians.  O’Brien’s other works include If I Die in a Combat Zone, Northern Lights, Tomcat in Love and July, July.  His short fiction has appeared in numerous journals, including The New Yorker, Atlantic, Esquire, Playboy, and Harper’s.

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David L. Ulin is book editor of the Los Angeles Times. He is the author of The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith, and the editor of Another City: Writing from Los Angeles and Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a California Book Award.

Violinist BING WANG joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic as Associate Concertmaster in 1994 at the age of 26, becoming the first Chinese violinist to hold such a prestigious position. As a soloist, Wang has won critical praise for her appearances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic.  She appears annually as both concertmaster and soloist at the Hollywood Bowl under the baton of composer John Williams.  In April 2002, she gave her first appearances in China since emigrating to the U.S., performing as a soloist and touring with her hometown orchestra, the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. Bing Wang made her Walt Disney Concert Hall concerto debut in May of 2005. She also performs regularly on the Philharmonic’s Green Umbrella and Chamber Music Society series. Wang began studying the violin with her parents at the age of six.

Violinist JOHNNY LEE joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the start of the 2005/06 season. Previously, he was Assistant Concertmaster of the Charlotte Symphony and Concertmaster of the Canton Symphony. A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Lee began playing violin at the age of five. After graduating from Harvard College with a cum laude degree in Economics, he attended the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he received his master's degree in 2003. As a soloist, Lee has performed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Charlotte Symphony, the Ohio Chamber Orchestra, and the Moscow Chamber Orchestra. Also an avid chamber musician, Lee made his international debut in 2007, performing to sold-out crowds in Seoul, Korea, with the chamber ensemble, Ditto. Along with his regular post with the Philharmonic, Lee is a frequent participant in the Chamber Music Society and Green Umbrella series

Violist DANA HANSEN is a Massachusetts native. She began violin studies at age five and viola at 15. After graduating from Harvard College with a cum laude degree in Modern European History, she attended the Juilliard School, where she received her master's degree in 2003. In Boston, she studied viola and chamber music with James Dunham and Robert Levin. At Juilliard, she studied with Misha Amory and Heidi Castleman. She was a member of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra before joining the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2004.

JASON LIPPMANN joined the Los Angeles Philharmonic during the 2004/05 season after five years of performing as a member of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. Lippmann has also performed with the Baltimore Symphony, both the Cincinnati Symphony and Opera, the New World Symphony, the American Ballet Theatre Orchestra, and the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Lippmann also performs as a chamber and solo musician, most recently on the Philharmonic's Chamber Music Society and Green Umbrella series. A native of Cincinnati, Ohio, Lippmann began his musical studies on the violin at the age of three. He switched to the cello a year later and studied with Norman Johns, Assistant Principal cellist of the Cincinnati Symphony. Lippmann received his Bachelor of Music degree from the Manhattan School of Music.

Anne Bray has been working at the intersection of public art and media art since the mid '70s as an artist, art teacher and curator.  She is an artist, teacher and Director of Freewaves, a media arts organization and festival in Los Angeles.  She developed the concept of the multicultural network of media artists and venues in 1989 and has continued to see the organization through the technological, social and aesthetic changes of the 1990s to now.  As an artist she exhibits her work as temporary installations in public sites and art venues combining personal and social positions via video, audio, stills and 3-d screens at gas stations, malls, movie theaters, on TV, in department stores, and on billboards. She teaches public art and multimedia at Claremont Graduate University and USC.

Toby Miller is Professor of Media & Cultural Studies at the University of California, Riverside. His teaching and research cover the media, sport, labor, gender, race, citizenship, politics, and cultural policy. Toby is the author and editor of over 30 volumes, and has published essays in well over 100 journals and books. His work has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Swedish, Spanish, and German. He has made many appearances in the print and electronic media and previously worked in broadcasting, banking, and politics, and at NYU. His latest books are Cultural Citizenship: Cosmopolitanism, Consumerism, and Television in a Neoliberal Age, 2007; Makeover Nation: The United States of Reinvention, 2008; The Contemporary Hollywood Reader, 2009; and Television Studies: The Basics, 2010.

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A Member of the Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA) Hall of Fame, Rick Robinson is a long time OOH Media advocate, creative consultant, public speaker, fine artist, teacher and writer. His 23 years in the business have included stints as a local salesperson for Ackerley Airport Advertising SF, Business Development Manager for Gannett Outdoor SF & LA, and National Creative Director at Outdoor Systems & Infinity Outdoor for several years until he opened up MacDonald Media’s LA office in July of 2001.   New York based MacDonald Media plans and buys OOH for Nike, Converse, EA Games, ESPN, J&J, AEG/Goldenvoice, and many others. Rick’s industry achievements include helping launch the now renowned Tall Walls on The Sunset Strip, serving as a 2 time Obie Judge, Founding Chairman of the OAAA Creative Committee, and as Creative Director for the award winning “Big Boy” Power 106 Radio campaign.

Award-winning journalist Christine Pelisek covers government and crime for LA Weekly, where her in-depth investigations of topics ranging from the city’s billboard wars to the use of DNA to track serial killers have won her acclaim. Last year, Pelisek won a Los Angeles Press Club Award for her powerful 2008 cover story "Billboards Gone Wild." Her story delved into the back room deal brokered by Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo and billboard giants CBS Outdoor, Clear Channel and Regency — a lucrative settlement deal that gave the billboard giants the right to “digitally modernize” more than 800 traditional billboards in Los Angeles without a single public hearing or zoning debate. Last year, a Superior Court judge ruled the settlement deal invalid.  Pelisek has been covering the billboard wars in Los Angeles since 2008 and has written countless stories and blog posts on the subject.

John Tehranian is an attorney, academic and author.  He is a partner at One LLP, an entertainment and intellectual property litigation firm in Southern California, and is a tenured Professor of Law at Chapman University, School of Law, where he also serves as Director of the Entertainment Law Center.  He has previously served as Professor of Law at the University of Utah, S.J. Quinney College of Law, and as Visiting Professor of Law at Loyola Law School.  A graduate of Harvard University and Yale Law School, he is the author of numerous works on the interface between law and culture, with a particular focus on issues of intellectual property, entertainment, civil rights and race.  He is the author of the book Whitewashed, an analysis of the social and legal construction of race, and the forthcoming book Infringement Nation, an examination of copyright law in the digital age.

K.C. Cole is currently on the faculty at the USC Annenberg School of Journalism. Previously, she was science correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, and many other publications. Cole is also the author of seven nonfiction books, including Mind Over Matter: Conversations with the Cosmos; The Hole in the Universe: How Scientists Peered Over the Edge of Emptiness and Found Everything; and The Universe and the Teacup, the Mathematics of Truth and Beauty. She has been honored with numerous prizes, including the American Institute of Physics Science Writing prize and the Los Angeles Times award for best explanatory journalism.

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Barbara Isenberg is a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times and Time magazine and has written for such publications as Esquire, Talk and London's Sunday Times.  She received a Distinguished Artist Award from the Los Angeles Music Center, has been a Visiting Scholar at the Getty Research Institute and is associate director of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities at USC.  Her books include Making It Big: The Diary of a Broadway Musical and State of the Arts: California Artists Talk About Their Work, and Conversations with Frank Gehry.

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Kenneth Turan is film critic for the Los Angeles Times and NPR’s Morning Edition as well as the director of the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. He has been a staff writer for the Washington Post and TV Guide and the Times' book review editor. A graduate of Swarthmore College and Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, he is the coauthor of "Call Me Anna: The Autobiography of Patty Duke." He teaches film reviewing and non-fiction writing at USC and is on the board of directors of the National Yiddish Book Center. His books include Sundance to Sarajevo: Film Festivals and the World They Made as well as Never Coming to a Theater Near You and Now In Theaters Everywhere. His latest book is Free For All: Joe Papp, the Public and the Greatest Theater Story Ever Told, co-written with Joseph Papp.

Kit Rachlis was born in Paris and raised in New York City. He earned a B.A. in American studies from Yale in 1975. He has served as music editor and arts editor of the Boston Phoenix (1977-1984), executive editor of New York’s Village Voice (1984 -1988), editor-in-chief of the LA Weekly (1988-1993), and senior editor at The Los Angeles Times Magazine and the paper’s senior projects editor (1994-2000). In 2000, he became editor-in-chief of Los Angeles. During his tenure, the magazine was nominated for a National Magazine Award five times and received more city and regional magazine awards than any other magazine. Rachlis’s writing has appeared in The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll and Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island.