Erika Janik is the co-creator and former executive director of Wisconsin Life. She is the author of six books, including Pistols and Petticoats: 175 Years of Lady Detectives in Fact and Fiction, Apple: A Global History, and  Marketplace of the Marvelous: The Strange Origins of Modern Medicine.

Sam Thayer lives in the woods in Northwestern Wisconsin. He teaches workshops on edible wild plants throughout the U.S. and he’s the author of The Foragers’s Harvest and Nature’s Garden.

Jane Hamilton is the author of the award-winning novels The Book of Ruth, A Map of the World, and When Madeline Was Young. She lives in a farmhouse in Rochester, Wisconsin.

Tom Jones is a photographer and enrolled member of the Ho-Chunk Nation. He’s the co-author of People of the Big Voice. The book won a USA Best Books Award for Photography.

Caryl Owen is the former technical director of To The Best of Our Knowledge.

Margot Peters is an award-winning biographer. Her most recent work is Lorine Niedecker: A Poet’s Life.

Rod Clark is a writer and publisher of the literary journal Rosebud.

Lynda Barry is an award-winning author and cartoonist best known for her weekly comic strip “Ernie Pook’s Comeek.” Her graphic novel “What It Is” won the comics industry’s 2009 Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work.

James Mills is a freelance journalist and an independent media producer

Chrys Bocast is a musician with a Ph.D. in Environment and Resources from the Nelson Institute at the University of Wisconsin. She produced the audiobook version of “People of the Sturgeon“, which includes the sounds of sturgeon.

Patricia Monaghan was a poet and essayist. She was published widely on women’s spirituality and mythology and was a senior fellow of the Black Earth Institute.