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.

Sue Peabody (PhD, University of Iowa) is associate professor of history at Washington State University, Vancouver. Her influential book There Are No Slaves in France (1996) examines the legal history of French slavery and race in the eighteenth century. Peabody's current research focuses on the legal concept of "Free Soil" in the wider Atlantic world.

Theda Perdue is professor of history and American studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her publications include Slavery and the Evolution of Cherokee Society, 1540–1865 (1979); Nations Remembered: An Oral History of the Five Civilized Tribes (1980); Cherokee Editor (1983); Native Carolinians (1985); The Cherokees (1988); Cherokee Women: Gender and Culture Change, 1700–1835 (1998); Sifters: Native American Women's Lives (2001); The Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Southeast (2001); and "Mixed Blood" Indians: Racial Construction in the Early South (2003).

Joe Perry (Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) is Associate Professor of modern German and European history at Georgia State University. He has published numerous articles and is author of the recently published book Christmas in Germany: A Cultural History (2010). His current research interests include issues of consumption, gender, and television in East and West Germany after World War II.