Susan Van Allen is the author of 100 Places in Italy Every Woman Should Go (Travelers’ Tales). She’s written about Italian travel for NPR, magazines (including Tastes of Italia and Town & Country), newspapers, and websites. Van Allen also writes for television, and was on staff of the Emmy winning sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond. When she’s not in Italy, she’s based in Los Angeles, where she lives with her husband.

Wayne Curtis is a contributing editor at The Atlantic, Preservation and Down East magazines, and he’s also written for the New York Times, Canadian Geographic, American Archeology, Men’s Journal, Yankee, American Heritage, VIA, and This American Life. He’s also author of And a Bottle of Rum: A History of the New World in Ten Cocktails (Crown 2006). He lives in New Orleans, but flees the heat and yellow fever each summer for the pines of eastern Maine.

Ted Conover is the author of five books including Rolling Nowhere: Riding the Rails with America’s Hoboes, Coyotes: A Journey Across Borders With America’s Illegal Migrants, Whiteout: Lost in Aspen, Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing (winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), and, most recently, The Routes of Man: How Roads Are Changing the World and the Way We Live Today.

Poet, travel writer, novelist and teacher Linda Watanabe McFerrin is a contributor to numerous journals, newspapers, magazines, anthologies and online publications including the San Francisco Examiner, the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, Modern Bride, Travelers’ Tales, Salon.com, and Women.com. She is the author of two poetry collections and the editor of the 4th edition of Best Places Northern California.

Joe Ray is a freelance food and travel writer and photographer based in Paris and Barcelona. He is a frequent contributor to the Boston Globe‘s travel section, Agence France Presse Lifestyle, and the Asian editions of American Express magazines Centurion and Platinum. He was named the 2009 Travel Journalist of the Year by the Society of American Travel Writers Foundation, is a certified Sherry Educator, a Knight of Cava and has successfully navigated the streets of Palermo by car.

Jennifer Baggett, Holly Corbett and Amanda Pressner journeyed across four continents and more than a dozen countries, sharing their experiences with other aspiring vagabonds on their blog, LostGirlsWorld.com, which attracted the attention of book publishers and was transformed into a travel memoir, The Lost Girls: Three Friends. Four Continents. One Unconventional Detour Around the World..

Tim Leffel is author of several books, including The World’s Cheapest Destinations (in its 3rd edition) and Travel Writing 2.0: Earning Money from your Travels in the New Media Landscape. He is the editor of the narrative webzine Perceptive Travel and runs several travel blogs, including Practical Travel Gear and the Cheapest Destinations Blog.

Julia Dimon is a TV host, writer and travel expert who has traveled around the world four times, through six continents, across over 80 countries. Julia is co-creator and co-host of Word Travels, a 39-episode TV series broadcast nationally on OLN in Canada and internationally on National Geographic Adventure in over 40 countries worldwide. This show follows the real lives of two travel writers as they jet set around the world, under pressure and under deadline.

Tom Vater is the author of Beyond the Pancake Trench: Road Tales from the Wild East , and several travel guidebooks, including Moon’s Moon Cambodia. His articles are published in a wide range of publications including The Asia Wall Street Journal, Marie Claire and Penthouse. He has co-written several documentary screenplays, including The Most Secret Place on Earth: The CIA’s Covert War in Laos.

Beth Whitman is the author of Wanderlust and Lipstick: The Essential Guide for Women Traveling Solo. She has trekked the Himalayas in Nepal and Bhutan, ridden a motorcycle solo from Seattle to Panama, helped build a playground for an orphanage in Vietnam; and maneuvered the back roads of France’s Dijon region in a rental car. When she’s not traveling, she calls Seattle home.

Matthew Gavin Frank is the author of Barolo (The University of Nebraska Press), a food memoir based on his illegal work in the Italian wine industry. Recent work appears in The New Republic, Epoch, Crazyhorse, Indiana Review, North American Review, AGNI, The Best Food Writing 2006, The Best Travel Writing (2008 and 2009), Creative Nonfiction, Gastronomica, and others.