Sylvia Boorstein earned a Master's Degree in Social Work from the University of California Berkeley in 1967 and began working as a psychotherapist. From 1970 to 1984, she taught psychology, Hatha Yoga, and introduced and taught the first Women's Studies course at the College of Marin in Kentfield, California. In 1974, Boorstein received her Ph.D. in Psychology from Saybrook University. She is author of Happiness is an Inside Job.

Michael Krasny, PhD, is host of the award winning Forum program on KQED Radio, the San Francisco affiliate of National Public radio. He is also Professor of English at San Francisco State University and author of Off Mike: A Memoir of Talk Radio and Literary Life; Sound Ideas (with Maggie Sokolik) and, most recently, Spiritual Envy: An Agnostic’s Quest. He is featured in the sixteen lecture set “Short Story Masterpieces,” CDs and DVDs produced by The Teaching Company. He is a recipient of the S.Y. Agnon Gold Medal for Intellectual Distinction from the Hebrew University and the Eugene Block Award for Human Rights Journalism.

Don Lattin is a freelance, award-winning journalist and a leading reporter on United States' religious figures and movements. He has taught religion writing at the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley. Lattin's work has appeared in dozens of U.S. magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and the San Francisco Chronicle. His most recent work, The Harvard Psychedelic Club – How Timothy Leary, Andrew Weil, Ram Dass and Huston Smith Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America, was a national bestseller in 2010.

Dani Shapiro's most recent books include Black & White, Family History and Slow Motion, a best-selling memoir. Her short stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Tin House, Elle, Bookforum, Oprah, Ploughshares, and have been broadcast on National Public Radio. She is a contributing editor at Travel + Leisure and guest editor of Best New American Voices 2010. Her new memoir, Devotion, was published in February, 2010.