John Flinn writes a weekly column and feature articles for the award-winning San Francisco Chronicle travel section. He’s journeyed on assignment to more than 20 countries, including Bhutan, Cuba, the Cook Islands and Croatia, and written more than 400 travel articles. Prior to his job at the Chronicle, Flinn was a feature writer for the San Francisco Examiner, where he was paid to, among other things, fly with the Blue Angels, climb El Capitan, wrestle a bear and go on a date with Miss America.

Amanda Jones is a writer and photographer living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work appears in books, magazines and newspapers worldwide, including Vogue, Travel & Leisure, Town & Country, Islands, Brides, Food & Wine, Condé Nast Traveller, the London Sunday Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle. She has been published in several travel anthologies including Salon.com’s Wanderlust: Real-Life Tales of Adventure and Romance, and Lonely Planet’s literary anthologies The Kindness of Strangers and By The Seat of My Pants.

Karl Taro Greenfeld has written three books about Asia; the newest, China Syndrome: The True Story of the 21st Century’s First Great Epidemic, is out this month from HarperCollins in the US and Penguin in the UK. His previous books were Speed Tribes and Standard Deviations. A longtime staff writer and editor for TIME and Sports Illustrated, his travel writing has appeared in Conde Nast Traveler, Salon, The Wall Street Journal, Details, Arena and TIME, among other publications, and has been anthologized in Lonely Planet travel books.

Franz Wisner is a reformed cubicle worker and the author of Honeymoon With My Brother, the true story of how Franz was left at the altar, then decided to take a two-year, 53-country honeymoon with his younger brother, Kurt. The best-selling memoir is currently being made into a movie by Sony Pictures. In addition, Franz has penned numerous articles and opinion pieces for The San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, Redbook Magazine, and Coast Magazine, among others.

Lea Aschkenas has written for the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Salon.com. She has also contributed stories to Travelers’ Tales Central America, Travelers’ Tales Cuba, The Unsavvy Traveler, and The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2006. In her book, Es Cuba : Life and Love on an Illegal Island, she examines the personal legacy of politics via the window of her relationship with a Cuban man and with the three generations of Cuban women she lived with in the year 2000.

Author and filmmaker Robert Young Pelton has made a career out of traveling through the world’s most dangerous places. In addition to writing a regular column for National Geographic Adventure, Pelton has worked for the Discovery Channel, the National Geographic Channel, ABC News, CBS 60 Minutes, and CNN. As an author, he is best known for his classic underground guide to surviving danger, The World’s Most Dangerous Places, now in its fifth edition.

Joshua Berman co-authored Moon Handbooks: Nicaragua and wrote the latest edition of Moon Handbooks Belize. In addition to “guidebook writer,” Joshua’s varied resume includes wildland firefighter, Outward Bound instructor, freelance writer, and tourism consultant.

Shanti Sosienski has contributed to Outside, National Geographic Adventure, Men’s Journal, FHM, Shape, Dandelion, Sports Illustrated Kids, and Stuff, among other titles. Her niche is taking adventure sports, outdoorsy topics, athletes, and travel and turning these into topics even the armchair weekend warrior can relate to.

Peter Moore has been described as “The Australian Bill Bryson.” His books include The Wrong Way Home, which saw him traveling overland from London to Sydney, Swahili for the Broken-Hearted, an account of a journey from Cape Town to Cairo, and Vroom with a View, where he went in search of Italy’s dolce vita on a 1961 Vespa. At last count he had visited 95 countries and written six books. When he is not traveling he can be found in either Sydney or London.

Taras Grescoe has written articles on travel for The Times, Independent, Condé Nast Traveller (U.K.), National Geographic Traveler and the New York Times. His bestselling first book Sacré Blues: An Unsentimental Journey Through Quebec won the Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-fiction and First Book Award, among numerous other awards. His newest book is The End of Elsewhere: Travels Among the Tourists. He lives in Montreal.

C.M. Mayo is the author of Miraculous Air: Journey of a Thousand Miles through Baja California, the Other Mexico, and Sky Over El Nido, which won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. Mayo’s travel writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, and numerous literary journals, among them, Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, and the North American Review.