Michael Bandler and Steven Lauterbach

Michael Bandler and Steven Lauterbach are writers in the Department of State's Office of U.S. Society and Values.

Fred Chappell

Fred Chappell is a professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and is North Carolina's Poet Laureate. He has written numerous books of poetry and fiction, including First and Last Words, Midquest, More Shapes than One, Brighten the Corner Where You Are, and I Am One of You Forever.

Michael Jay Friedman

Michael Jay Friedman is a program officer in the Bureau of International Information Programs at the Department of State. He is an attorney, and holds a Ph.D. in United States political and diplomatic history from the University of Pennsylvania.

Neil Klopfenstein

Neil Klopfenstein is a U.S. Foreign Service Officer currently serving as director of the Office of U.S. Society and Values in the Department of State. He has hosted Thanksgiving turkey dinners during assignments abroad in Brazil, Norway, and Thailand.

ED Levine

Ed Levine has written about food for Gourmet, Bon Appetit, Business Week, GQ, Travel + Leisure, Fox News, and the New York Times. He is creator and co-host of the television program New York Eats on the Metro Channel.

Sylvia Lovegren

Sylvia Lovegren, a filmographer and writer, is the author of Fashionable Food: Seven Decades of Food Fads (Hungry Minds, 1995)

Ana Menéndez

Ana Menéndez, a Cuban-American writer of fiction, is the author of a 2001 collection of short stories, In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd, and a novel, Loving Che, published in 2004. Before turning to fiction, she spent six years as a journalist for the Miami Herald and the Orange County (California) Register.

Francine Prose

Francine Prose is the author of more than a dozen volumes of literature, including novels, short fiction, non-fiction, and children's stories. The recipient of Guggenheim and Fulbright grants, among others, she is a contributing editor at Harper's magazine and a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal on art. She has taught at a number of venues, including the Iowa Writers' Workshop and The Johns Hopkins University.

April Reynolds

April Reynolds teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. She is the author of Knee-Deep in Wonder, published in 2003, which won the 2004 Beyond Margins Award from the PEN American Center. Her first novel, it traces several generations in the life of an African-American family in the U.S. South.

David Rosengarten

David Rosengarten is an authority on food, wine, and cooking, and the author of the award-wining cookbook, Taste. He is a frequent host on the Food Network, a cable channel shown around the world, and producer of the Rosengarten Report, a newsletter about food.