Dr. Anne Curzan is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of English at the University of Michigan. She earned a B.A. in Linguistics from Yale University and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan. Professor Curzan has won several awards for teaching, including the University of Michigan's Henry Russel Award, the Faculty Recognition Award, and the John Dewey Award. Her research interests include the history of English, language and gender, corpus linguistics, historical sociolinguistics, pedagogy, and lexicography. In addition to writing numerous articles, reviews, and edited volumes, Professor Curzan is the author of Gender Shifts in the History of English and the coauthor of How English Works: A Linguistic Introduction and First Day to Final Grade: A Graduate Student's Guide to Teaching. Beyond her teaching and research interests, she is a member of the American Dialect Society and sits on the usage panel for the American Heritage Dictionary. She can also be found talking about language in her column, Talking About Words, in Michigan Today and on the segment, That's What They Say, on Michigan Radio.

Dr. Hannah B. Harvey is an award-winning teacher, an internationally recognized performer, and a nationally known professional storyteller. She earned her Ph.D. in Performance Studies/Communication Studies at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she was also a teaching fellow. While teaching at Kennesaw State University, she received an Honors Program Distinguished Teacher award and an Alumni Association Commendation for Teaching Impact. As a performance ethnographer, Dr. Harvey develops oral histories into theatrical and solo storytelling works that highlight the true stories of contemporary Appalachian people. Her ongoing fieldwork with disabled coal miners in southwest Virginia culminated in a live ethnographic performance of their oral histories, Out of the Dark: The Oral Histories of Appalachian Coal Miners, earning her a directing award from adjudicators at the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival in 2007 and three year-end awards from professional critics in 2005. Her written research has been honored by the American Folklore Society and been featured in Storytelling, Self, Society, of which she is managing editor. Dr. Harvey has delivered award-winning performances and has conducted workshops at festivals and universities in the United States and around the world. She has performed as a featured teller at the National Storytelling Festival in Tennessee; received accolades for her performances at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland; and led intercultural workshops at the University Hassan II, Ben M'Sik, in Casablanca, Morocco.

Professor Kevin Flanigan is a Professor of Education in the Literacy Department at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. He earned his B.A. in History from Mary Washington College, his M.Ed. from James Madison University, and his M.Ed. in Reading Education from the University of Virginia. After working as a middle grades teacher and reading specialist, he received his Ph.D. in Reading Education from the University of Virginia, with a dissertation on emergent readers' developing concept of word in text.

In 2011, Professor Flanigan was nominated for the U.S. Professors of the Year Award. In 2009, he and his colleagues at West Chester University received an Educator 500 award for innovative teaching.

Professor Flanigan's research focuses on developmental word knowledge, vocabulary development and instruction, and interventions for struggling readers. He presents frequently at national and international conferences and works with schools to implement effective literacy instruction. He is coauthor of Words Their Way with Struggling Readers, Vocabulary Their Way (2nd edition), and Developing Word Recognition. Professor Flanigan is on the authorship team for the Vocabulary Their Way middle school program. He has published articles in many professional journals, including The Reading Teacher, the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, and the Journal of Literacy Research.

Dr. Gary K. Wolfe is a Professor of Humanities in Roosevelt University's Evelyn T. Stone College of Professional Studies. He earned his B.A. from the University of Kansas and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Dr. Wolfe has earned many awards, including the Pilgrim Award from the Science Fiction Research Association, the Distinguished Scholarship Award from the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, the Eaton Award from the Eaton Science Fiction Conference, the British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Non-Fiction, the Locus Award for Non-Fiction, and the World Fantasy Award for criticism and reviews. He has been nominated for the prestigious Hugo Award from the World Science Fiction Convention, twice for his nonfiction and three times for the podcast he co-hosts with Jonathan Straham. A reviewer for Locus magazine since 1991 and the Chicago Tribune since 2013, and author or editor of a dozen books, Dr. Wolfe also edited the 2012 Library of America's American Science Fiction: Nine Classic Novels of the 1950s and edits a series of monographs on science fiction authors for the University of Illinois Press.

Angus Fletcher is a Professor of English and Film at The Ohio State University and a core faculty member at Project Narrative. He has previously taught at Stanford University, the University of Southern California, and Yale University. He holds a Ph.D. in English from Yale.

Professor Fletcher's academic research into story science has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He has received teaching awards from Yale and the University of Southern California, and he was listed as one of Hollywood's top educators by Variety magazine.

Professor Fletcher is the author of more than a dozen feature screenplays and television pilots, including a J. R. R. Tolkien biopic for the producers of The Lord of the Rings series, an adaptation of The Longest Journey for the estate of E. M. Forster, and an adaptation of The Variable Man for the estate of Philip K. Dick. He has also published several academic books and more than two dozen articles. His most recent book is Comic Democracies: From Ancient Athens to the American Republic.