Louise Steinman has curated the award-winning ALOUD literary series at the Los Angeles Public Library for more than 14 years. She is also the author of The Knowing Body: The Artist as Storyteller in Contemporary Performance and The Souvenir, a memoir of her father.

Laura Miller is a cofounder of Salon.com, where she is currently a staff writer, and a regular contributor to the New York Times Book Review. Her work has appeared in many esteemed publications. Miller is the author of The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia.

Sara Nelson is the former editor-in-chief at Publisher's Weekly and is currently a freelance journalist contributing to TheWrap.com and the Los Angeles Times. She is the author of So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading.

Lizzie Skurnick is a book critic on NPR and her reviews and essays have appeared in an array of publications. Her columns have been published as a book, Shelf Discover: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading. Skurnick writes a column on vintage fiction for Jezebel magazine.

Jane Smiley is the author of more than 10 novels and four works of nonfiction. She is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize and in 2001 was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Smiley's latest novel is Ten Days in the Hills.