Over the last 30 years Eric Hansen has traveled throughout Europe, the Middle East, Australia, Nepal, and Southeast Asia working as a writer and photojournalist. He is the author of Stranger in the Forest, Motoring with Mohammed, Orchid Fever, and The Bird Man and the Lap Dancer. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, Travel + Leisure, Conde Nast Traveler, Outside Magazine, Men’s Journal, and Natural History Magazine.

Gary Lee is veteran staff writer who has reported from over 60 countries for the Washington Post travel section. Among his many awards, he won the 2002 Lowell Thomas Award in travel journalism for coverage of 9/11. A fluent speaker of five languages, Lee has covered Germany and central Europe for Time, written extensively about the environment, and served as chief of the Post‘s Moscow bureau.

L. Peat O’Neil is the author of Travel Writing: See the World, Sell the Story (2nd edition, Writer’s Digest Books, 2005) and a co-author of Making Waves: 50 Greatest Women in Radio and Television (Andrews McMeel, 2001). For nearly two decades, O’Neil worked in the newsroom of The Washington Post and she continues to freelance for periodicals, websites and newspapers, including National Geographic News. O’Neil currently teaches online for UCLA Extension journalism program, and she is at work on a book about walking the Pyrenees.

Richard Bangs is an entrepreneur, world adventurer, international river explorer, Web pioneer and award-winning author. He has led first descents of 35 rivers around the globe, including the Yangtze in China and the Zambezi in Southern Africa.

Tahir Shah is the author of ten books, chronicling a wide range of unusual and outlandish journeys. In addition, he makes documentaries, writes screenplays, works as a journalist and photographer. His most recent book is The Caliph’s House: A Year in Casablanca. He is also the author of In Search of King Solomon’s Mines which takes the reader through Ethiopia on the quest of the source of Solomon’s fabulous wealth. He lives in Casablanca with his wife and two children.

Anastasia M. Ashman and Jennifer Eaton Gokmen are the Istanbul-based co-editors of the nonfiction anthology Tales from the Expat Harem: Foreign Women in Modern Turkey. Anastasia is a cultural essayist who has appeared the Wall Street Journal Asia and the Village Voice. Jennifer is a regular contributor to TimeOut: Istanbul.

A winner of the National Book Award for First Fiction and the Rome Prize in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Bob Shacochis has crisscrossed the globe in his literary pursuits. He is the author of two short story collections, Easy in the Islands and The Next New World; a novel, Swimming in the Volcano; and The Immaculate Invasion, about the 1994 military intervention in Haiti.

Tony D’Souza is the author of the novel Whiteman (Harcourt, 2006), which was a New York Times Editor’s Pick, People Magazine Critic’s Choice, Poets & Writers Best First Fiction, and Border’s Original Voices Selection. A graduate of Notre Dame, he served a two-year Peace Corps stint in Cote d’Ivoire. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Playboy, Salon.com, Esquire, Tin House, McSweeney’s, O. Henry Prize Stories, and The Black Warrior Review.

Jeff Biggers has worked as a writer, radio correspondent, and educator across the United States, Europe, Mexico, and India. He presently divides his time between Illinois and Italy. Winner of the American Book Award and a Lowell Thomas Award for Travel Journalism, he is the author of In the Sierra Madre, and The United States of Appalachia : How Southern Mountaineers Brought Independence, Culture, and Enlightenment to America.

Cynthia Barnes has sampled sambal in Borneo for Endless Vacation, been chased by a bull in Mali for Slate, and joined an archaeological dig for National Geographic. Cynthia’s work also appears in Voyaging, Global Traveler, Humanities, and other national magazines. Her essay “Blame It On Rio” was published in the Travelers’ Tales anthology Whose Panties Are These? She’s at work on her first book, “Blue: Wanders from Arkansas to Timbuktu.”

Tony Horwitz is the author of Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before (Henry Holt 2002), Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (Pantheon 1998), Baghdad without a Map and Other Misadventures in Arabia (E.P. Dutton 1991) and One For the Road: An Outback Adventure (Random House 1988). He has also been a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and a staff writer for the New Yorker. His awards include a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, and an Overseas Press Club award for coverage of the first Gulf War.