Diversity, Ethnicity and Race
 | Diana Abu-Jaber
Author │ Journalist │ Essayist
"I grew up inside the shape of my father’s stories. A Jordanian immigrant, Dad regaled us with tales about himself, his country, and his family that both entertained us and instructed us about the place he’d come from and the way he saw the world. These stories exerted a powerful influence on my imagination, in terms of what I chose to write about, the style of my language, and the form my own stories took.
Selected Books: Origin, The Language of Baklava, Crescent
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 | Marc Acito
Novelist │ Humorist │ Columnist
Embezzlement...blackmail…fraud…high school.
Marc Acito’s first novel, How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater (Broadway Books, 2004), was selected as an Editors’ Choice by The New York Times and was called “a dazzling…thumbs-up winner” by Publishers Weekly. How I Paid For College is a farcical coming of age tale about a talented but irresponsible teenager who schemes to steal his college tuition money when his wealthy father refuses to pay for acting school. Its message resonates with anyone who’s ever had a dream…or a scheme.
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 | Ana Castillo
Author │ Essayist │ Poet
“An always skilled storyteller, [Castillo] grounds her writing in . . . humor, love, suspense and heartache–that draw the reader in.”
–Chicago Sunday Sun-Times
In novels, short stories, poems, and essays, Castillo explores what Ibis Gomez-Vega has called “those segments of the American population often separated by class, economics, gender, and sexual orientation.” Castillo’s works nevertheless transcend boundaries of politics, class, and gender, making her “one of a few Mexican American writers who have attracted the attention of the mainstream reading public” (Ibis Gomez-Vega). Castillo’s prose blends elements of oral history and established literary tradition with innovation and experimentation: she has been called “the most daring and experimental of Latino novelists” (Ilan Stavans).
Selected Books: The Guardians, So Far From God
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 | Connie May Fowler
Bestselling Author │ Novelist │ Memoirist
"When I was a small girl, my parents fought every night. My sister and I would huddle together in our bedroom and I would beg her to read to me so that the sound of their voices might be drowned out. And so she would begin, reading to me from my children's books, night after night. Even then, before I had learned to read, I knew intimately the soul-saving power of literature."
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 | Alex Kotlowitz
Bestselling Author │ Journalist │ Race & Poverty Commentator
Alex Kotlowitz is an award-winning journalist whose bestselling book, There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America (Doubleday, 1991), garnered national recognition for its compassionate and unflinching portrait of Pharoah and Lafeyette Rivers and their lives growing up in a public housing project in inner city Chicago.
No other book, no movie, no TV show so powerfully portrays the children and families who are outside the American dream."
—New Leader
Selected Books: There are No Children Here, Never a City So Real
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 | Christopher Phillips
Bestselling Author │ Founder, Constitution & Socrates Cafés │ Social Entrepreneur
“To date, Phillips has orchestrated discussions on … Solomonic topics at nursing homes, maximum-security prisons, churches, homeless shelters, bookstores and coffeehouses across the country, gently prodding students, urban professionals, unreconstructed slackers, street people and others to share their worldviews and scrutinize their most basic assumptions.”
–Los Angeles Times
Christopher Phillips has a passion for inquiry. A foremost specialist in the Socratic Method, he reminds us that we ought to ask questions – “not about any chance question,” as Socrates put it in Plato’s Republic, “but about the way one should live.”
Selected Books: Constitution Café, Six Questions of Socrates, Socrates Café.
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 | Rebecca Skloot
Bestselling Author │ Journalist │ Educator
Bestselling author Rebecca Skloot spent over ten years doggedly
uncovering the truth about the life, death and ultimate "immortality" of
a poor black tobacco farmer named Henrietta Lacks. On a tumultuous
educational path until a community college biology instructor utter the
words "Henrietta Lacks," Skloot—with remarkable focus and tenacity—set
off on a trajectory that would shine the national spotlight on both and
become the phenomenal book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
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 | Norah Vincent
Bestselling Author │ Cultural Critic │ Journalist
Norah Vincent is a freelance journalist by trade. In 2003, she took a leave from writing her nationally syndicated political opinion columns in order to write her New York Times bestselling book Self-Made Man, the story of a woman living, working, and dating--all while disguised as a man.
Shrewd, sympathetic, and courageous, Self-Made Man is one woman’s take on just how hard it is to be a man, even in a man’s world. With an ever-present five o’clock shadow, a crew cut, wire-rimmed glasses, and her own size 11½ shoes, Norah Vincent spent a year and a half as her male alter ego, Ned, and reported back what she observed incognito. Narrating her journey with exquisite insight, empathy, and humor, Norah ponders the many remarkable mysteries of gender identity as she explores firsthand who men really are when women aren’t around. As Ned, she joins a bowling team, takes a high-octane sales job, goes on dates with women (and men), visits strip clubs, and even manages to infiltrate a monastery and a men’s therapy group. Absolutely engrossing in its reporting and surprising in its analysis, Self-Made Man is a thrilling tour de force of immersion journalism.
Selected Books: Self-Made Man, Voluntary Madness
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 | Jesmyn Ward
Author, Novelist, Memoirist
Jesmyn Ward, whose novel Salvage the Bones won the 2011 National Book
Award for Fiction, has been called “fearless and toughly lyrical” (The
Library Journal). Her unflinching portrayals of young black men and
women struggling to thrive in a South ravaged by poverty and natural
disaster have been praised for their “graphic clarity” (The Boston
Globe) and “hugeness of heart” (O: The Oprah Magazine). Ward's precise
and graceful narratives make her a fitting heir to the rich literary
tradition of the American South.
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 | Edmund White
Novelist │ Memoirist │ Biographer │Social Critic
Edmund White is America’s preeminent gay writer. In biography, social history, travel writing, journalism, the short story, and the novel, this prolific and versatile author has chronicled the gay experience in the United States from the closeted 1950’s through the AIDS crisis. But as William Goldstein wrote in Publishers Weekly, “To call Edmund White merely a gay writer is to oversimplify his work and his intentions.” The acuity, insight, and compassion with which White explores the human condition transcends such a label.
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