Educator, author, and poet Emilie Lygren grew up among oaks, scrub, and seashore in central California. She has cowritten dozens of outdoor science activities and publications with the BEETLES Project. Her poetry has been published in several journals, including Askew and The English Leadership Quarterly. Overall, Lygren seeks to spark curiosity and connection through her writing and teaching. For her outdoor science work, visit beetlesproject.org.

Dr. James N. Hogue is a research associate at the NHM with a PhD in aquatic ecology from Utah State. He is manager of the biological collections in the department of biology at California State University, Northridge, and is also a part-time lecturer there.

Founded in 2004, Hmong American Writers’ Circle (HAWC) has served as a forum to discover and foster creative writing within the Hmong community. HAWC coordinates monthly writing workshops and provides educational/professional support and networking opportunities to emerging writers in California’s Central Valley. Its members have partaken in writing residencies at Hedgebrook and conferences such as Kundiman, Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, and Tinhouse, and have published their work with Random House, New Rivers Press, Heyday, Swan Scythe Press, and the Minnesota Historical Society Press. Their writings have also appeared in literary journals such as Ploughshares, North American Review, In the Grove, Paj Ntaub Voice, Hyphen Magazine, and Alaska Quarterly Review, among many others. Through the years, HAWC’s efforts and achievements have been geared toward the creation of a visible body of Hmong American literature and the establishment of a Hmong literary culture. To find more information about HAWC, visit hmongwriters.org.

Frances Bransten Rothmann (1914–1984) was born and raised in San Francisco. She graduated from Barnard College in 1937. In addition to The Haas Sisters of Franklin Street, she authored the book My Father, Edward Bransten: His Life and Letters (Judah L. Magnes Museum, 1982).

Jared Farmer is a professor of history at Stony Brook University who specializes in the environmental history of the American West. He is the author of two previous books: Glen Canyon Dammed: Inventing Lake Powell and the Canyon Country (University of Arizona Press, 1999) and On Zion’s Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape (Harvard University Press, 2008). He is the winner of nine book prizes, numerous fellowships, and the Hiett Prize in the Humanities.

Founded in 1881, the Los Angeles Times is the largest news-gathering organization west of the Mississippi. Now read by more than 50 million unique visitors monthly, The Times’ journalism has won forty-four Pulitzer Prizes, six of which were gold medals for public service. The editorials collected in this book are the work of The Times’ editorial board, which is responsible for determining the positions of the paper on the important issues of the day. Unlike articles written by the paper’s reporters in its news pages, editorials are works of opinion. They are unsigned because they represent the consensus of the board. The opinions expressed in these editorials were reached through a process of discussion and deliberation by editorial writers Kerry Cavanaugh, Mariel Garza, Robert Greene, Carla Hall, Karin Klein, Scott Martelle, and Michael McGough, working with editorial page editor Nicholas Goldberg and deputy editor Jon Healey.

Lawson Fusao Inada is regarded by many as the poet laureate of Japanese America.He is co-editor of Aiiieeeee!(1983) and The Big Aiiieeeee! (1991) and author of Legends from Camp (1992) and Drawing the Line (1997). Inada is a multiple recipient of NEA Poetry Fellowships and has read his works at the White House. He has been Professor of English at Southern Oregon State College since 1966.

Patricia Wakida’s published books, essays, stories, and poetry include: Only What We Could Carry: The Japanese American Internment Experience, Generations Experience; A Japanese American Community Portrait, Letters of Intent,  the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Nikkei Heritage, Kyoto Journal, Santa Barbara Review, and the International Quarterly.

William Hohri is a Nisei born in San Francisco in 1927. He was interned at the Manzanar camp during his high school years and graduated from the University of Chicago after the war. He is the author of Repairing America: An Account of the Movement for Japanese-American Redress (1988) and was a columnist for the Rafu Shimpo newspaper.

Angela Y. Davis is a writer, lecturer, and activist. She is Distinguished Professor Emerita of History of Consciousness and Feminist Studies at the University of California–Santa Cruz. Her most recent book is Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Palestine and the Foundations of a Movement.

The seven muralists who created Maestrapeace—Juana Alicia, Miranda Bergman, Edythe Boone, Susan Kelk Cervantes, Meera Desai, Yvonne Littleton, and Irene Pérez—collectively possess well over one hundred years of mural expertise and have played an active, often leading role in the Bay Area and national mural movement. Every member has been a community activist, organizer, or teacher, serving diverse communities and arts organizations from Harlem to the fields of the United Farm Workers, from Nicaragua to India, from Palestine to Native America.

Eva Slater was born in Berlin in 1922. Heavily involved in the hard-edge art movement in Los Angeles during the 1950s and 1960s, she ultimately became a scholar of American Indian basketry. She died in 2011.