Mike Palmquist is an Associate Vice Provost for Learning and Teaching at Colorado State University and the Director of CSU’s Institute for Learning and Teaching. A professor of English and University Distinguished Teaching Scholar, he is recognized nationally for his work in computer-supported writing instruction and, in particular, in designing Web-based instructional materials to support writing. His most recent Web-based projects are Writing@CSU (http://writing.colostate.edu), an open-access, educational Web site for writers and writing instructors, and the WAC Clearinghouse (http://wac.colostate.edu), the leading site for communication across the curriculum. He is the author of numerous articles and essays on writing and teaching with technology and writing across the curriculum. In 2004, he received the Charles Moran Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Field, which recognizes "exemplary scholarship and professional service to the field of computers and writing." In 2006, the CCCC Committee on Computers in Composition and Composition named him Outstanding Technology Innovator. He currently serves on the Executive Committee of the National Council of Teachers of English and as chair of the NCTE’s College Section. He is the author of Joining the Conversation: Writing in College and Beyond (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2010); The Bedford Researcher, Third Edition (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009); and Designing Writing: A Practical Guide (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2005).

Gary Parks is an English professor at Shoreline Community College, in Shoreline, Washington. He has been teaching composition, literature, and creative writing for almost twenty years. His research interests include online communication and distance learning, and he helped pioneer his college's first Web-based distance learning courses. A member of NCTE and CCC, he has given presentations at various assessment and distance learning conferences as well as at the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity. He is a contributing author to the Bedford/St. Martin's VirtuaLit Fiction site and has had short stories published in several literary magazines.

Rob Patterson is an Assistant Professor in the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia. He teaches communication, non-profit, and global citizenship segments in McIntire’s integrated core experience, as well as an upper-division course in public speaking and persuasion. Additionally, Patterson regularly teaches rhetoric and speech seminars in the University Seminars (USEM) program at UVA. Patterson received his BA, as a double major in speech communication and political science, from Texas State University, his MA in communication from the University of Oklahoma, and his PhD in communication studies (rhetoric and culture)  from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He has fourteen years of experience teaching communication coursework at four different universities and several years of experience working in the nonprofit sector, most recently as the Associate Executive Director/Chief of Staff for a national higher education accrediting agency in Washington, DC. In this latter role, he worked on a number of international projects and traveled abroad. Patterson has published work in rhetorical theory, political communication, and communication pedagogy. He recently had his guide to using presentation software rereleased (Bedford/St. Martin’s). Patterson won a teaching excellence award from the University of Nebraska Alumni Association in 1997 and holds memberships in both the National Communication Association and the Association for Business Communication. He enjoys canoeing, travel, the outdoors, and especially his family life.

Dr. Venetria K. Patton is Director of African American Studies and Research Center and Associate Professor of English at Purdue University.  Dr. Patton is the author of Women in Chains: The Legacy of Slavery in Black Women’s Fiction (2000), the coeditor of Double-Take: A Revisionist Harlem Renaissance Anthology (2001), and editor of Teaching American Literature: Background Readings (2006).  She is currently working on The Grasp That Reaches Beyond the Grave: The Ancestral Call in Black Women’s Texts.

Linda H. Peterson is the Niel Gray Jr. Professor of English and codirector of the Bass Writing Program at Yale University, where she teaches Victorian poetry and prose.  She is the coauthor of Victorian Women Artists and Authors (1994) and author of Victorian Autobiography: The Tradition of Self-Interpretation (1986) and Traditions of Women's Autobiography: The Poetics and Politics of Life Writing (1999).

Anthony R. Petrosky, the Associate Dean of the School of Education at the University of Pittsburgh, holds a joint appointment as a Professor in the School of Education and the English Department.  Along with Stephanie McConachie, he codirects the English Language Arts Disciplinary Literacy Project in the Institute for Learning (IFL) at the Learning Research and Development Center.  As a part of this Institute project, he has worked with professional learning and curriculum development in English for school and district leaders in the public schools of Austin, Dallas, Denver, New York City, Fort Worth, Prince George’s County, and Pittsburgh.  McConachie and Petrosky are the coeditors of Content Matters:  A Disciplinary Literacy Approach to Improving Student Learning, a 2010 collection of reports on the IFL Disciplinary Literacy Project, as well as coauthors of chapters in the book.  Petrosky served on the Reading and English Common Core Standards Project for the Chief States School Officers to develop common core reading and English standards for the US.  In conjunction with this project, he also is a member of the Gates Foundation funded Aspects of Text Complexity Project to develop procedures for assessing text complexity for the common core reading and English standards.  He was the Principal Investigator and Co-Director of the Early Adolescence English Language Arts Assessment Development Lab for the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, which developed the first national board certification for English teachers.  He has also served as Co-Director of the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project.  He was a researcher for the MacArthur Foundation funded Higher Literacies Studies, where he was responsible for conducting and writing case studies on literacy efforts in the Denver, Pittsburgh, Toronto, and the Ruleville and Mound Bayou school districts in the Mississippi Delta.  He is past Chair of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Committee on Research and a past elected member of the NCTE Research Foundation.  His first collection of poetry, Jurgis Petraskas, published by Louisiana State University Press (LSU), received the Walt Whitman Award from Philip Levine for the Academy of American Poets and a Notable Book Award from the American Library Association.  Petrosky’s second collection of poetry, Red and Yellow Boat, was published by LSU in 1994, and Crazy Love, his third collection, was published by LSU in the fall of 2003. Along with David Bartholomae, Petrosky is the coauthor and coeditor of four books: Facts, Artifacts, and Counterfacts: Theory and Method for a Reading and Writing Course; The Teaching of Writing; Ways of Reading:  An Anthology for Writers; and History and Ethnography:  Reading and Writing About Others.

James Phelan is a professor of English and chair of the English department at the Ohio State University.  He is editor of the award-winning journal Narrative,  and has written and edited several books on literary theory, including Worlds from Words (1981), Reading People, Reading Plots (1989), and Narrative as Rhetoric (1996), and has published a memoir of teaching literature in the academy, Beyond the Tenure Track (1991).  With Gerald Graff, he is coeditor of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: A Case Study in Critical Controversy (1995).

Christopher Phelps is associate professor of American Studies at the University of Nottingham in England. A specialist in twentieth-century American intellectual and political history, he is author of Young Sidney Hook: Marxist and Pragmatist (1997) and edited and introduced Max Shachtman's Race and Revolution for Verso (2003). He has twice received the Fulbright Award: in 2000 to teach American philosophy and intellectual history in Hungary, and in 2004-2005 to serve as Distinguished Chair in American Studies for Poland. He has written articles and reviews for many periodicals, including Times Higher Education, The Chronicle of Higher Education, New Politics, and The Nation.

William H. Phillips received his BA from Purdue University, his MA from Rutgers University, and his PhD in dramatic literature and film studies from Indiana University. He has taught introductory film courses at the University of Illinois, Urbana; Indiana University, South Bend; California State University, Stanislaus; and the University of Wisconsin--Eau Claire. His publications include the books Analyzing Films (1985), Writing Short Scripts (Second Edition, 1999), and Writing Short Stories: The Most Practical Guide (2002).

James L. Pinson has taught journalism for about twenty-five years at the Missouri School of Journalism and at Eastern Michigan University,and has addressed various press groups on the subjects of grammar and other editing skills. He has also worked for newspapers in Colorado, Missouri, and Michigan, and has a doctorate in journalism and a master's in creative writing.

Richard Polenberg is professor of history at Cornell University, where he has received the Clark Distinguished Teaching Award and was appointed Goldwin Smith Professor of American History in 1986. He has been a Fulbright Visiting Professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and has published widely on twentieth-century American history, including The World of Benjamin Cardozo: Personal Values and the Judicial Process (1997); Fighting Faiths: The Abrams Case, the Supreme Court, and Free Speech (1989), for which he won the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award and the Gustavus Myers Foundation's Outstanding Book Award; and One Nation Divisible: Class, Race, and Ethnicity in the United States since 1938 (1980).

Evelyn Posey is a Professor in the Department of English at the University of Texas at El Paso. She has served as an associate vice president for instructional design and technology integration, associate dean in the College of Liberal Arts, director of English education in the department of English, and director of the West Texas Writing Project.  Posey has published articles in journals such as Computers and Composition, The Journal of Developmental Education, and Teaching English in the Two-Year College.