Her essays are widely anthologized, and she writes for numerous publications including The New York Times. Her book, Adventure Divas: Searching the Globe for a New Kind of Heroine, based on her experiences as an international correspondent, was named an “Editors’ Choice” and a ‘Notable Book of the Year’ about exploration by the New York Times. Morris is the executive producer/writer/director of the award-winning prime-time PBS documentary series, “Adventure Divas.” Featured destinations in this series include Cuba, India, New Zealand and Iran. She also hosts the documentary series’ “Lonely Planet Treks in America,” “Treks in a Wild World,” and “Globe Trekkers.” Destinations in these programs include Borneo, Lapland, the Swiss Alps, Zambia, Niger, Syria, and Ukraine, among others. Morris also hosted the series “Outdoor Investigations,” in which she investigated the scientific side of today’s environmental and natural world mysteries.

Sharon Lerner, co-founder of PowderKeg, is a journalist and author who has covered a wide range of issues of concern to women for more than a decade. Sharon is a Senior Fellow at Demos, where she is working on a book about local solutions to American families’ problems. Lerner’s 2010 book, The War on Moms: On Life in a Family-Unfriendly Nation, puts a human face on American family policy. The LA Times called the book “a page-turner for working moms,” and NPR called it “A stinging account of how public policy and private businesses have failed to adapt to working mothers.” Lerner has worked as a writer, reporter, public radio producer and Village Voice columnist. Her written work has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, The American Prospect, The Nation, Salon.com, DoubleX/Slate.com, and Ms. among other publications. www.sharonlerner.com

Jessica Maria Tuccelli is a writer, filmmaker, and women’s rights and welfare advocate. In March 2012, Viking/Penguin will publish her debut novel, Glow, a Georgia mountain-saga about the complex bond of mothers and daughters across a century In film, Tuccelli’s lighting finesse can be seen in over 100 commercials, film shorts, and documentaries, most notably the Emmy Award-winning How Do You Spell God? (HBO), Kids are Punny (HBO), Sesame Street (PBS), The American Experience (PBS), and Zoom (WBGH). Tuccelli’s commitment to women’s empowerment began as leader of the Association of Women Students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and continues today with her involvement with Women for Women International, a philanthropic organization dedicated to helping women in war torn regions rebuild their lives. http://jessicamariatuccelli.com/

Kio Stark writes fiction, talks to strangers, and writes about the way humans relate to technology—and to each other, mediated by technology. She teaches at NYU’s graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP). Her first novel, Follow Me Down, was published by Red Lemonade in 2011. Long obsessed with photography, she wrote the introduction to Least Wanted: A Century of American Mugshots, a collection of vernacular police photography. Stark is currently working on Don’t Go Back to School: a handbook for learning almost anything and her second novel. She once spent a racetrack season in Miami interviewing old thugs, and they all told her they knew where Jimmy Hoffa is buried. www.kiostark.com

Sheri Holman has written four award-winning and bestselling novels published by Grove/Atlantic, including The Dress Lodger, a New York Times Notable Book and longlisted for the Dublin IMPAC Award; The Mammoth Cheese, named a Publisher’s Weekly and San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year and shortlisted for the UK’s Orange Prize, and most recently, Witches on the Road Tonight (Grove/Atlantic, 2011), lauded by Cathleen Schine in the New York Review of Books, Jane Smiley in the Los Angeles Review of Books, named a NYTBR Editor’s Choice, and Independent Publisher’s Gold Medalist for Literary Fiction.

Sheri has written a novel  for middle grade readers, Sondok: Princess of the Moon and Stars which won an Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Gold Medal, and with Jungsoo Kim, was awarded the Daesan Foundation Translation Prize for “The Sobbing Drum of Nakrang:  Plays of Inhoon Choi.”  She is currently at work on another novel for young readers and her first graphic novel about human experimentation on the World War II American homefront.  Sheri is a founding member of The Moth (www.themoth.org) and currently serves on its curatorial committee. www.sheriholman.com