Allen Weinstein was a college professor, historian, author, and international envoy. From 1985 to 2003, he served as president of The Center for Democracy, a nonprofit foundation he created in 1985 to promote and strengthen the democratic process, based in Washington, DC. His international public service activities include chairing the Center’s election observation delegations in El Salvador (1991), Nicaragua (1989-90, 1996), Panama (1988-89), the Philippines (1985-86), and Russia (1991, 1996, 2000).

Professor Weinstein’s international awards included the United Nations Peace Medal (1986) and The Council of Europe’s Silver Medal (twice, in 1990 and 1996), presented by its Parliamentary Assembly. His other awards and fellowships included two Senior Fulbright Lectureships, an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, the Commonwealth Fund Lectureship at the University of London, and a Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Fellowship.

He was University Professor and professor of history at Boston University from 1985 to 1989, University Professor at Georgetown University from 1981 to 1984, and from 1981 to 1983, executive editor of The Washington Quarterly at Georgetown’s Center for Strategic and International Studies. He served as a member of The Washington Post editorial staff in 1981. From 1966 to 1981 he was professor of history at Smith College and chairman of its American studies program. In 1984 he served as president of the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. From 1982 to 1984 he directed the research study that led to creation of the National Endowment for Democracy and was acting president of the endowment. He also held visiting professorships at Brown, Columbia, and George Washington universities.

Weinstein’s books include The Story of America; The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America—The Stalin Era; Perjury: The Hiss-Chambers Case, which received several citations including an American Book Award nomination; Freedom and Crisis: An American History; Between the Wars: American Foreign Policy from Versailles to Pearl Harbor; Prelude to Populism; and among edited collections, Conflict in America; American Negro Slavery; American Themes: Essays in Historiography; and Truman and the American Commitment to Israel.

Weinstein’s articles and essays have appeared in numerous popular and scholarly publications as well as mainstream newspapers and magazines. His television credits include that of historical consultant on two History Channel programs on Soviet espionage (1998-99) and the 1988-89 PBS series Face-to-Face: Conversations on the U.S.-Soviet Summitry (co-host, editor and writer). He was a frequent commentator on CNN, C-SPAN, and other networks. Source – United States Archive

Audrey Thomas was born in Binghamton, New York, and emigrated to Canada in 1959. She is the author of a number of highly praised novels, including, Intertidal Life, an obsessive introspection of a failed marriage, which was published in 1984 and nominated for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction. Thomas has received three honours from the Writers’ Trust of Canada: the Marian Engel Award, the W.O. Mitchell Literary Prize, and the Matt Cohen Award: In Celebration of a Writing Life.

Jennifer Johnston is one of the foremost Irish writers of her, or any, generation. She has won the Whitbread Prize (THE OLD JEST), the Evening Standard Best First Novel Award (for The Captains and The Kings), the Yorkshire Post Award, Best Book of the Year (twice, for The Captains and The Kings and How Many Miles to Babylon? ). She was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize with Shadows on our Skin.

An author, scholar, and diplomat, Jorge Volpi was born in Mexico in 1968 and has a B.A. in law and a Masters in Mexican literature. He is the author of nine novels and collections and is the former cultural attaché and director of the Mexican Culture Institute in Paris. He currently the director of the Festival Internacional Cervatino.

Michael Holroyd (born August 27, 1935, London, England) is a British writer and editor best known for his meticulous, scholarly biographies of Lytton Strachey, Augustus John, and George Bernard Shaw.

Steinunn Sigurðardóttir is an Icelandic poet and novelist. She finished her university studies in 1972 with a BA in psychology and philosophy at University College Dublin. Since then, she has worked as a journalist for radio and television. She has lived in different places in Europe, the United States and Japan.