Pam Mandel is a freelance writer and photographer. She’s been blogging since 1997. She’s written travel stories for Conde Nast Traveler online, Afar, World Hum, Gadling, Perceptive Travel, and a handful of food, travel, and in-flight magazines. She’s worked on two guidebooks — BC and Hawaii — for Thomas Cook. She’s a cofounder of Passports with Purpose, a group that works with travel bloggers to raise money for NGO projects around the world.

Andrew McCarthy is an editor-at-large for National Geographic Traveler. He’s written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, Travel+Leisure, and many others. He was named “Travel Journalist of the Year” by the Society of American Travel Writers in 2010. His memoir, The Longest Way Home, debuted in September of 2012. He is also an actor , having appeared in dozens of movies and on television.

Rachel Friedman is the author of The Good Girl’s Guide to Getting Lost: A Memoir of Three Continents, Two Friends, and One Unexpected Adventure (Bantam Books, 2011). She has written for The New York Times, New York and Bust magazines, Nerve.com, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, among others. She is a contributor to the The McSweeney’s Book of Politics and Musicals (Vintage, 2012).

Peter Chilson is the author of two books about Africa: The travelogue Riding the Demon: On the Road in West Africa, and the fiction collection Disturbance-Loving Species, which won the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference prize for short fiction. His essays and fiction have appeared in The American Scholar, Ascent, Audubon, Best American Travel Writing, Gulf Coast, North American Review, thesmartset.com, and elsewhere.

Doug Mack is a freelance writer based in Minneapolis and the author of the travel memoir Europe on 5 Wrong Turns a Day: One Man, Eight Countries, One Vintage Travel Guide (Perigee Books/Penguin). His stories tend to focus on fresh, offbeat takes on familiar topics and places, and have appeared in such publications as World Hum, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Onion AV Club, and the Lonely Planet travel writing anthology A Moveable Feast: Life-Changing Food Adventures Around the World.

Lisa Napoli is the author of Radio Shangri-La: What I Discovered on my Accidental Journey to the Happiest Kingdom on Earth. She has been a reporter and back-up host for Marketplace, the public radio show, and was one of the first journalists to chronicle the dawn of the Internet age at the NY Times and MSNBC. She can now be heard each day on the legendary public radio station, KCRW in Santa Monica.

Gary Buslik is the author of A Rotten Person Travels the Caribbean, and The Missionary’s Position. His new novel, Akhmed and the Atomic Matzo Balls, is scheduled for launch this spring. His shorter work appears in many travel and literary anthologies, often in Best Travel Writing.

Richard Grant is a freelance journalist based in Arizona and the author of three travel books. His first book, American Nomads: Travels with Lost Conquistadors, Mountain Men, Cowboys, Indians, Hoboes, Truckers, and Bullriders, won the Thomas Cook travel-writing award. It was followed by God’s Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre, and most recently Crazy River: Exploration and Folly in East Africa.

Jamie Maslin has hitchhiked from England to Iran, traveled throughout Asia, and couch-surfed all over Latin America. Author of Iranian Rappers and Persian Porn: A Hitchhiker’s Adventures in the New Iran, he has been banned from re—entering The Islamic Republic of Iran. His newest books is Socialist Dreams and Beauty Queens: A Couchsurfer’s Memoir of Venezuela. He lives in London, England.

Eamonn Gearon is a writer, analyst and Arabist who has spent most of the past two decades living, working and traveling across the Greater Middle East, from Kabul to Casablanca, including a number of solo, camel-powered explorations of the Libyan Desert. His first book — The Sahara: A Cultural History — was published to great acclaim last year in the UK and USA.

Lavinia Spalding is the author of Writing Away: A Creative Guide to Awakening the Journal-Writing Traveler, chosen one of the best travel books of 2009 by the L.A. Times, coauthor of With a Measure of Grace, and editor of Travelers’ Tales’ The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2011. A regular contributor to Yoga Journal, her work has also appeared in a wide variety of print and online publications, including Sunset Magazine, Post Road, and World Hum. She lives in San Francisco.