Seth Stevenson is a contributing writer for Slate. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, Newsweek, and Rolling Stone. He’s received multiple Lowell Thomas awards from the Society of American Travel Writers, and he’s been excerpted three times in the Best American Travel Writing series. His first book, Grounded: A Down to Earth Journey Around the World, was published in April of 2010.

Carl Hoffman is the author of The Lunatic Express: Discovering the World . . . via Its Most Dangerous Buses, Boats, Trains, and Planes. A contributing editor at National Geographic Traveler, Wired, and Popular Mechanics, his stories about travel, adventure and technology – and often the nexus between them — have also appeared in Outside, Men’s Journal, National Geographic Adventure and Smithsonian.

Bonnie Tsui is the author of American Chinatown: A People’s History of Five Neighborhoods. A graduate of Harvard University and a former editor at Travel + Leisure, she is a frequent contributor to the New York Times and has written for the Atlantic Monthly, National Geographic Adventure, and Conde Nast Traveler. She is also the editor of A Leaky Tent Is a Piece of Paradise, a collection of essays on the outdoors.

Peter Delevett is an editor, erstwhile columnist and occasional travel writer at the San Jose Mercury News. Delevett has frequently been featured on radio and television, and his work has appeared at WorldHum.com and in Travelers’ Tales, the Honolulu Advertiser, the New Orleans Times-Picayune and the Miami Herald, among many others.

Catharine Hamm has been part of The Los Angeles Times Travel section since 1999, serving as travel editor since 2003. She launched the “On the Spot” travel consumer column early in 2007, and it now appears in newspapers and on websites across the country. She was born in Syracuse, N.Y., but counts Virginia, Hawaii, the Philippines, Kansas, and, of course, California as among the 34 places she has called home.

Peter Rudiak-Gould’s first travel book, Surviving Paradise: One Year on a Disappearing Island, was published in November of 2009 by Union Square Press. He is a doctoral student in Anthropology at Oxford University, conducting research on Marshallese reactions to the threat of devastating sea level rise caused by global warming. Originally from Berkeley, California, he now lives in Oxford, England.

Peter Ferry is an editor, writer and teacher. His travel pieces have appeared in the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun Times. His short fiction has appeared in StoryQuarterly, Fiction, the New Review of Literature and McSweeney’s. His first novel, Travel Writing, which is built around five travel pieces, was published in 2008 by Harcourt. He lives in Evanston, Illinois.

Pauline Frommer is the creator of the Pauline Frommer Guidebooks, a new series for budget-conscious travelers. She also co-hosts The Travel Show heard on over radio stations nationwide; appears weekly on CNN.com to discuss travel; and authors a bi-weekly column on MSN.com.

Robert Reid has updated updated 21 Lonely Planet guidebooks — including New York City, Central America, Trans-Siberian Railway and Myanmar (Burma) — and created his own experimental free guidebook to Vietnam. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, World Hum and Wanderlust.

David Farley is the author of An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church’s Strangest Relic in Italy’s Oddest Town and the co-editor of Travelers’ Tales Prague and the Czech Republic: True Stories. His writing appears in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Conde Nast Traveler, National Geographic Traveler, New York, and Slate.com, among other publications.

Eve Brown-Waite was born and bred in New York until she joined the Peace Corps, fell in love with her recruiter and then, in an effort first to win his heart (and then, because she was married to him) lived in Ecuador, Uganda and Uzbekistan. First Comes Love, Then Comes Malaria: How a Peace Corps Poster Boy Won My Heart and a Third World Adventure Changed My Life, published by Broadway Books, tells the story of what ensued.