Rubén Martínez, an Emmy-winning journalist and poet, is the author of several books, including Crossing Over: A Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail and The New Americans. His new book is Desert America: Boom and Bust in the New Old West. He lives in Los Angeles, where he holds the Fletcher Jones Chair in Literature and Writing at Loyola Marymount University.

Alison Hawthorne Deming is author for four books of poetry and four books of nonfiction with Zoologies: On Animals and the Human Spirit forthcoming. Her work has been widely anthologized including in The Norton Book of Nature Writing and Best American Science and Nature Writing. Long dedicated to conversations between art and science, between environmentalism and social justice, she is coeditor with Lauret E. Savoy of The Colors of Nature: Culture, Identity and the Natural World. Former director at the University of Arizona Poetry Center, Alison is currently a professor at UA.