Allison Arieff writes the “By Design” column for the New York Times and is editor at large for Sunset magazine. She is former editor in chief (and founding senior editor) of Dwell, author of the books Prefab and Trailer Travel, and editor of numerous books including Airstream: The History of the Land Yacht, Hatch Show Print, and Cheap Hotels.

Jennifer Maerz is the music editor for SF Weekly. She’s written about music for various publications over the last decade, including Salon, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, and Thrasher.

Andrew Lam is a syndicated writer and an editor with the Pacific News Service, a short story writer, and a commentator on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. He co-founded New America Media, an association of over 2000 ethnic media in America. His book, Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora won the PEN American “Beyond the Margins” Award in 2006.

Joshua Davis is a contributing editor at Wired, whose work has appeared in GQ, Outside, Men’s Health, Maxim, and Food and Wine.

Roman Mars is an independent audio producer, reporter and sound designer based at KALW 91.7 in San Francisco. Before going rogue, Mars spent over three years at WBEZ’s Third Coast International Audio Festival as the project audio producer. If you Google his name you will get several hundred pictures of statues.

Steven Leckart is a contributing editor at Boing Boing Gadgets and a frequent contributor to Wired and Wired.com. Since 2007, he’s edited reviews of more than 535 gadgets and wondrous doodads featured on Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools web site. You can reach him here.

Jon Mooallem is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine who has also written for Harper’s, the Believer and Mother Jones.

Brandon McFarland, 23, has been playing music since an early age. He joined Youth Radio as a high school student learning the tricks of the trade in broadcast journalism, on-air hosting, and music production. Today he fuses all three skills to create something special.

Todd Hido is a San Francisco Bay Area-based artist whose work has been featured in Artforum, the New York Times Magazine, Eyemazing, Metropolis, The Face, I-D, and Vanity Fair. His photographs are in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, as well as in many other public and private collections.

Jennifer Kahn writes for the New Yorker, Wired, Outside, and National Geographic.

Sandy Tolan has reported on land, water, identity and conflict from more than 35 countries. He is the author of The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East, and co-founder of Homelands Productions, producer of international public radio documentaries. He is senior producer for the Working series for Marketplace, and for the upcoming Hunger Chronicles series. He taught journalism at Cal from 2000-2007 and is now associate professor at the Annenberg School at USC.

Peggy Orenstein’s latest book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, will be published by HarperCollins in 2010, unless she blows her deadline which is entirely possible. She is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine.

Christina Seely is an artist and a faculty member in the Photography Department at California College of the Arts. Her latest photographic series, Lux, featured in Pop-Up, is showing at the Photographic Center Northwest in Seattle, will be part of the exhibition The Edge of Intent at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, and will be included in shows in Los Angeles and Cincinnati. For more information visit her here.

 

Christian Bruno is a filmmaker and cinematographer. “STRAND: A Natural History of Cinema,” which was awarded the first-ever HBO Documentary Fellowship from Film Independent in Los Angeles, is his first feature.

Tania Ketenjian & Ahri Golden are internationally recognized and award-winning journalists, and the founders of Thin Air Media, a production company which fosters connection, communication, and empowerment to people through media and events. BORN, their latest public radio special about the postpartum experience in America, is currently distributed by Public Radio International throughout 2009. To learn more, please visit them here.

Lisa Margonelli is a fellow at the New America Foundation and the author of the book Oil On the Brain: Petroleum’s Long Strange Trip to Your Tank, published by Nan Talese/Doubleday in 2007. She has written for the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Wired, and Discover, among other publications.

Larry Sultan’s work blends documentary and staged photography to create images of the psychological as well as physical landscape of suburban family life. His work has been exhibited and published widely and is included in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Art to name a few.

Alex Gibney is the founder of Jigsaw Productions. An Oscar, Emmy and Grammy award-winning producer, he produced one of the top grossing documentaries of all time, “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.” His work as a writer/director includes: the 2008 Oscar-winning film “Taxi to the Dark Side,” the 2006 Oscar-nominated “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” and “Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson,” featuring Johnny Depp.

Todd Lappin is an editorial consultant, writer, and editor. He is also the founder of Telstar Logistics, a fictitious conglomerate that serves global clients via land, air, sea, and space.

Nathanael Johnson is a freelance journalist in San Francisco. He has written stories for NPR, This American Life, New York, Outside, and Harper’s. He began his career as a small-town newspaper reporter in southern Idaho where he covered agriculture, police, and local politics.

Michael Pollan is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine and the author of five books, including The Botany of Desire, The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food. The Omnivore’s Dilemma was named one of the ten best books of the year by both the New York Times and the Washington Post.

The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson & Nikki Silva) are producers of the duPont-Columbia Award-winning NPR series Hidden Kitchens, and two Peabody Award-winning NPR series, Lost & Found Sound and The Sonic Memorial Project. Hidden Kitchens, heard on Morning Edition, explores the world of secret, unexpected, below-the-radar cooking across America—how communities come together though food. The series inspired their first book, Hidden Kitchens: Stories, Recipes and More.

Glynn Washington recently won the Public Radio Talent Quest, a national “American Idol” style search for public radio talent. He is currently launching the smoking hot new show, Snap Judgment, on public radio stations across the country. Additionally, Glynn has composed music for the Kunst-Stoff dance troop, performed live spoken word poetry, sung for a band in Indonesia, written several screenplays, painted a daring series of self portraits, and released a blues album.