Barnaby Conrad (1922-2013) was an American author, artist, nightclub proprietor, bullfighter, and filmmaker. After graduating from Yale, Conrad served from 1943 to 1946 as the U.S. vice consul in Seville, Málaga, and Barcelona. While in Spain, he studied bullfighting and became the only American to have fought in that country, Mexico, and Peru. In 1947, he served as secretary to Sinclair Lewis, the first American author to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. John Steinbeck chose Conrad’s 1952 novel Matador as his favorite book of the year, and it was translated into over 20 languages. Conrad started the Santa Barbara Writers Conference in 1973, inviting well-known authors such as Eudora Welty, Ray Bradbury, Gore Vidal, Joan Didion, and Ross Macdonald. His charcoal portraits of Truman Capote, James Michener, and Alex Haley are in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.

Editor: Barnaby Conrad III (b. 1952) majored in painting at Yale and became an artist, art critic, and author of twelve non-fiction books, including Absinthe: History in a Bottle, Ghost Hunting in Montana, and Jacques Villeglé and the Streets of Paris. A former magazine editor at Horizon and Forbes Life, he was a special correspondent in Paris for the San Francisco Chronicle and now teaches aspiring authors at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. He and his family live in Accomac, Virginia and San Francisco.

Gary L. Rose, Ph.D., is Professor of Politics and Scholar in Residence at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut. A college instructor for nearly five decades, Professor Rose has authored and edited fifteen books on presidential politics, Constitutional law, and Connecticut’s state and local government. His Constitutional law book, Shaping a Nation (2010), published in English and Chinese, was recommended by the National Association of Scholars for colleges and universities that have common reading programs. Professor Rose’s book, Haywire (2017) meticulously tracked every dimension of the 2016 presidential contest and is one of the most comprehensive and detailed treatments of a presidential election ever written. His acclaimed book The American Presidency Under Siege (1997) was favorably reviewed in the American Political Science Review. In addition to his teaching and writing, Professor Rose provides routine political commentary for national, state and local media. His comments have been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, and the Hartford Courant. He has appeared as a political commentator on NBC Nightly News, Fox News, and several local news shows in Connecticut. A recipient of several teaching and scholarship awards, Professor Rose often serves as a speaker for civic and business organizations. In 2011, he was named Connecticut Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE).

Elizabeth Weiss is a controversial and world-renowned anthropology professor, specializing in the analysis of human skeletal remains. For much of her career she was based at San Jose State University, where she curated one of the largest collections of skeletal remains in the US. She is the author of numerous books and articles, and she played an essential role in bringing the Smithsonian’s traveling exhibition "What Does it Mean to be Human?" to the San Francisco Bay Area. She's been featured in the New York Times, Science and USA Today, and has been interviewed on Fox News and Newsmax. She currently lives in New York City, where she holds a visiting fellowship with Heterodox Academy.

Richard Rex retired from the University of Utah. He is the author of a collection of Chaucer essays titled The Sins of Madame Eglentyne, as well as Alice Muriel Williamson: The Secret History of an American-English Author and The Literary Career of W. B. Trites (Academica Press). He lives with his wife, Ines, on the Olympic Peninsula, in Port Angeles, Washington.

Henry F. Fradella is Professor in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Arizona State University, where he also holds affiliate appointments as a professor of law and as a faculty member in the interdisciplinary program on law and behavioral science. He earned a B.A. in psychology from Clark University; a master’s in forensic science and a law degree from George Washington University; and Ph.D. in justice studies from Arizona State University. He researches substantive and procedural criminal law, the dynamics of legal decision-making, and the consequences of changes in legal processes. As part of interdisciplinary teams, his research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Justice. He is the author or co-author of 15 books including Sex and Privacy in American Law (Academica); LGBTQ+ Issues in Criminology and Criminal Justice (Routledge); Punishing Poverty: How Bail and Pretrial Detention Fuel Inequalities in the Criminal Justice System (University of California Press, named a “Best Book” of 2019 by the Vera Institute of Justice); Stop and Frisk: The Use and Abuse of a Controversial Police Tactic (New York University Press, winner of the 2019 American Society of Criminology Division of Policing’s Outstanding Book Award); Sex, Sexuality, Law, and (In)Justice (Routledge); Mental Illness and Crime (Sage); Defenses of Excuse in American Law (Academica); a criminal law casebook (Oxford), and four textbooks (Oxford and Cengage). His more than 125 articles, book chapters, reviews, and scholarly commentaries have appeared in outlets such as the American Journal of Criminal Law; Applied Psychology in Criminal Justice; Berkeley Journal of Criminal Law; The Conversation; The Crime Report; Criminal Law Bulletin; Criminal Justice Policy Review; Criminology and Public Policy; Critical Criminology; Federal Courts Law Review; Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice; Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice; Journal of Homosexuality; Journal of Law and Sexuality; Law and Psychology Review; New Criminal Law Review; Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law; Police Quarterly; Policing: An International Journal; Western Criminology Review; Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice; and law reviews affiliated with Arizona State University; Benjamin Cardozo Law School; Chapman University; the City University of New York; Lewis & Clark University; the University of Nevada, Las Vegas; the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Pepperdine University; Rutgers University; Seattle University; the University of Florida; and Willamette University. Dr. Fradella previously edited Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law & Society and the Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice. He has served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Criminal Law Bulletin since 2019.

San Francisco Bay-area poet Jack Foley has published eighteen books of poetry, five books of criticism, a book of stories, and a 1300-page “chronoencyclopedia,” Visions & Affiliations: California Poetry 1940-2005. With his late wife, Adelle, he became known for his multi-voiced “choruses,” a practice he has continued with his new life partner, Sangye Land. He has presented poetry on Berkeley, California radio station KPFA regularly since 1988 and is a host of KPFA’s literary program, “Cover to Cover.” He has received two Lifetime Achievement Awards, one from Marquis Who’s Who and one from the Berkeley Poetry Festival. The city of Berkeley declared June 5, 2010 “Jack Foley Day” in Berkeley. In addition, he is the first recipient of the K.M. Anthru International Literary Prize from the Kerala, India-based magazine, LITTERATEUR RW. His most recent books are Grief Songs, a book dealing with his sorrow at his wife’s death; When Sleep Comes: Shillelagh Songs, poems ranging from traditional to experimental verse; Duet of Polygon, a collaboration with Japanese poet Maki Starfield; and the companion volumes, The Light of Evening, a brief autobiography, and A Backward Glance O’er Travel’d Roads, a psychobiography dealing with “the growth of a poet’s mind,” and Creative Death, a book of poems. In 2019, poets/scholars Dana Gioia and Peter Whitfield published Jack Foley’s Unmanageable Masterpiece—a book of essays discussing Visions & Affiliations. Poet Olchar E. Lindsann writes, “Jack Foley’s constantly evolving and exploratory writing has been a mainstay of the American avant-garde for many decades, and his detailed histories of California poetic communities demonstrate an engaged poetic historiography.” In 1994 Lawrence Ferlinghetti remarked at the conclusion of Jack’s radio interview with him, “Jack Foley is doing great things in articulating the poetic consciousness of San Francisco.”

Bruce D. Abramson is Executive Director of New Student and Graduate Admissions at New College of Florida. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Columbia University, a J.D. from Georgetown University, and has served on the faculty of the University of Southern California and as a research adjunct at Carnegie Mellon University. He has spent decades as an independent troubleshooter, problem solver, economic analyst, and strategic consultant; published widely in the scholarly literature of computing, management, and law; and written over 250 columns on politics and public policy. His previous books have addressed technology policy, innovation law, Middle East politics, political philosophy, and the corruption of higher education.

Jon W. Tuttle is Distinguished Professor of English at Francis Marion University, specializing in Modern and American Drama. He is also Director of University Honors, the Nellie Cooke Sparrow Writer-in-Residence, and an FMU Trustees Research Scholar. He has received the South Carolina Governor’s Award in the Humanities and both the Founders Award and Lifetime Service Award from South Carolina Theater Association. He has served on the boards of the South Carolina Academy of Authors, the Florence Regional Arts Alliance, and the Jasper Project. For over a decade, he was Playwright-in-Residence and Literary Manager at Trustus Theater in Columbia, South Carolina. He is the editor of David Kranes: Selected Plays.

Peter Martins was the Ballet Master in Chief of New York City Ballet for 35 years, the only person to preside over the company as long as its founder, George Balanchine. Born in Denmark, Martins began his association with NYCB in 1967, when he was invited to dance the title role in George Balanchine’s Apollo during the company’s appearance at the Edinburgh Festival. He then performed as a guest artist for three years before joining the company as a principal dancer in 1970. Prior to his retirement from dancing in 1983, Martins performed a wide variety of roles and was lauded for his outstanding partnering skills and noble stage presence. In 1981, Martins was named Ballet Master, a title he shared with Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, and John Taras. From 1983 to 1989, he served as Co-Ballet Master in Chief with Robbins, running day-to-day operations. He assumed sole directorship of the company in 1990 and was also Chairman of the Faculty of the School of American Ballet, NYCB’s official school. In 2000, founded the New York Choreographic Institute.
Martins began his career as a choreographer in 1977. He has created nearly 90 ballets set to music by composers as diverse as Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Wynton Marsalis, and John Adams. His full-length productions for New York City Ballet include The Sleeping Beauty (1991), Swan Lake (1999), Romeo + Juliet (2007), and La Sylphide (2015). Martins’ autobiography, Far From Denmark, was published in 1982. Among other awards, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark made him a Knight of Dannebrog, a Knight of the First Order, and, in 2013, a Commander of the Knights of Dannebrog, Denmark’s highest civilian honor. In 2008, the French government made him a Commander in the Order of Arts and Letter. That same year, Martins was inducted into the National Museum of Dance’s Hall of Fame, in Saratoga Springs, New York.

Jose Martinez, Ph.D. is Professor of Sociology (ret.) at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor. He is the author of Inequality in American Education: The Entrenchment of a Two-Tiered System; Diversity, Funding, and Standardized Testing in American Education; Covid-19 and the Transformation of American Society; and Football in American Society. He has contributed chapters in texts such as Diversity in the Workforce. Dr. Martinez holds degrees in education, history, and psychology, and his doctorate is in sociology. He has taught for over thirty years. The media calls on him regarding social issues, and he was a regular co-host on the PBS program Hispanic Perspectives. He also has held administrative and other positions in agencies at all levels: the federal, state, county, local, and school district.