Brad Newsham majored in basketball at Principia College (Elsah, Illinois), but emerged bewildered, in 1972, with a degree in history and sociology. He has lived in ten of the United States, visited all fifty, and has circled the globe four times. Since 1985 he has been a San Francisco Yellow Cab driver. His second travel book, “Take Me With You: A Round-the-World Journey to Invite a Stranger Home” was published by Travelers’ Tales in 2000. “Take Me With You” is the story of Brad’s 100-day trip through the Philippines, India, Egypt, Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and South Africa.

Lucy McCauley’s travel essays have appeared in Salon, the Atlantic Monthy, the Harvard Review, and several Travelers Tales anthologies. Once an editor at Harvard Business Review, McCauley has also worked as a freelance writer/editor of academic and business prose for more than a decade, writing case studies in Central and South America for several departments at Harvard University, working as a contributing editor to Fast Company magazine, and as a “book doctor” for publishing houses.

Peter Hessler is a Beijing correspondent for the New Yorker. A native of Columbia, Missouri, he studied English literature at Princeton and Oxford before going to China as a Peace Corps volunteer in 1996. His two year experience of teaching English in Fuling, a town on the Yangtze, inspired River Town, his critically acclaimed first book.

Patrick Symmes is a Contributing Editor at Harper’s and Outside magazines. As a foreign correspondent, he has traveled with Maoist insurgents in Nepal, visited both main guerrilla groups in Colombia, and profiled drug gangs in Brazil. His essays on Cambodia and Columbia have been selected for the “Best American Travel Writing” anthology, and he is the author of “Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey through the Guevara Legend,” an account of a 12,000-mile ride across South America, retracing the journeys and guerrilla campaigns of Che Guevara. He also writes frequently for GQ and Conde Nast Traveler.

Judith Babcock Wylie has been a travel writer and editor for 20 years, and her articles have appeared Travel & Leisure, TWA Ambassador, the London Financial Times, Walking, the Denver Post, the San Jose Mercury News and more than 70 other publications. She teaches travel writing workshops at New York University, UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz. Her latest book “Best Places: California Central Coast” came out in April, 2002.

Richard Sterling is both a travel and food writer. The principal author of Lonely Planet’s World Food series, he has been dubbed the Indiana Jones of Gastronomy for his willingness to go anywhere and court any danger for the sake of a good meal and has written 14 books. Though he lives in Berkeley, California, he is very often politically incorrect.

Jeffrey Tayler, a former Peace Corp worker, is the author of “Siberian Dawn” and “Facing the Congo.” He has published numerous articles in Atlantic Monthly, Spin, Harper’s and Condé Nast Traveler. He is a regular commentator on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” Two of Tayler’s travel essays were selected by Bill Bryson for the inaugural edition of “The Best American Travel Writing 2000”. He lives in Russia.

Christopher P. Baker has written for more than 150 publications as far-ranging as Newsweek, Elle, Islands, National Wildlife, the Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, and the South China Morning Post. His numerous books include best-selling guidebooks to Cuba, Jamaica, Costa Rica, Bahamas, and elsewhere, and he penned the best-selling travelogue, Mi Moto Fidel: Motorcycling Through Castro’s Cuba.

Elliott Hester’s stories have appeared in National Geographic Traveler, Salon.com, Glamour, Maxim, Details and more than 30 newspapers in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States. He also writes Out of the Blue — a syndicated newspaper column that reaches more than 1.5 million readers. Hester’s first book, “Plane Insanity,” was published in January by St. Martin’s Press.

Tanya Shaffer is a San Francisco-based writer and actress. Her most recent solo show, “Let My Enemy Live Long!” based on her travels in West Africa, enjoyed an extended run in the San Francisco area and was awarded a 1999 Bay Area Theatre Critics’ Circle Award for Solo Performance. Tanya was a frequent contributor to the now-extinct travel section of Salon.com.

Larry Habegger began publishing his writing about adventure and offbeat travel in 1980. His travel stories have appeared in magazines and newspapers in the U.S. and abroad, including Outside, Travel & Leisure and the Los Angeles Times. Since 1985 Habegger has co-written a safety and security column, “World Travel Watch,” that has been syndicated in major newspapers in five countries. In 1993 Habegger and partners founded the publishing company Travelers’ Tales.