Fred Setterberg is the coauthor, with Lonny Shavelson, of Toxic Nation, Under the Dragon: California’s New Culture, and five other books, including the award-winning The Roads Taken: Travels Through America’s Literary Landscapes. He has been a staff writer for the East Bay Express and editor of Travelers’ Tales America, and has written for the New York Times, The Nation, and scores of other national and regional magazines. He lives in Oakland, California. Visit his website at fredsetterberg.com.

After beginning her career as a senior science writer for the University of California Natural Reserve System, Elaine Miller Bond went on to write and photograph independently. She is the photographer for The Utah Prairie Dog: Life Among the Red Rocks (University of Utah Press, 2014), and the writer-illustrator of Running Wild (Heyday, 2016), Affimals: Affirmations + Animals (LIT Verlag, 2009) and Dream Affimals (Sunstone Press, 2013). Her work has appeared on the Discovery Channel Canada and been published by Science, NPR, BBC Earth News, The American Naturalist, The Washington Post, Journal of Mammalogy, Berkeleyside, and other scientific and popular media. She has a bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley and a master’s degree from the University of Cambridge. Bond lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Kim Bancroft is a longtime teacher turned editor and writer. She earned a B.A. in English from Stanford, an M.A. in English and a teaching credential from San Francisco State University, and a doctorate in education from UC Berkeley. She has taught at various high schools and community colleges in the Bay Area, at the Universidad de Guanajuato in Mexico, and at Sacramento State. Kim has edited several books, including Ariel: A Memoir by Ariel Parkinson; The Morning the Sun Went Down by Darryl Wilson; and Ruth’s Journey: A Survivor’s Memoir, by Ruth Glasberg Gold. She lives in Willits, California, in a redwood forest and enjoys the nouveau-Thoreau challenges and opportunities of life in a small cabin with a satellite dish on top. She is the great-great-granddaughter of Hubert Howe Bancroft. Read her blog, “Urban Woman’s Guide Back to the Land,” here: urbanwomanbacktoland.blogspot.com.

Malcolm Margolin is the publisher emeritus of Heyday, an independent nonprofit publisher and unique cultural institution, which he founded in 1974. Margolin is author of several books, including The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco–Monterey Bay Area, named by the San Francisco Chronicle as one of the hundred most important books of the twentieth century by a western writer. He has received dozens of prestigious awards among which are the Chairman’s Commendation from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fred Cody Award Lifetime Achievement from the San Francisco Bay Area Book Reviewers Association, the Helen Crocker Russell Award for Community Leadership from the San Francisco Foundation, the Carey McWilliams Award for Lifetime Achievement from the California Studies Association, an Oscar Lewis Award for Western History from the Book Club of California, a Hubert Bancroft Award from Friends of the Bancroft Library, a Cultural Freedom Award from the Lannan Foundation, and a Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists. He helped found the Bay Nature Institute and the Alliance for California Traditional Artists.

Joaquin Miller, born Cincinnatus Hiner Miller in 1837, was a colorful, controversial, and important figure in early California literature.

Naomi Hirahara is a writer of both nonfiction books and mysteries. With Geraldine Knatz, she cowrote Terminal Island: The Lost Communities of Los Angeles Harbor, which won a Bruckman Award for Excellence and an Award of Merit from the Conference of California Historical Societies. Her Edgar Award–winning Mas Arai mysteries have been published in France, Japan, and Korea. A former editor of the Rafu Shimpo newspaper, she also curates historical exhibitions and writes articles and short stories.

Molly Curtis has been an immigration attorney in Los Angeles for twenty years, after having taught English at UCLA and the Los Angeles Unified School District.  She has degrees from Goddard College and People’s College of Law. As a young college student in 1970, she met Lela Rhoades, an 84-year-old Pit River Indian woman, in Redding, California. They became friends and recorded and preserved Rhoades’ history and knowledge of her people in Lela Rhoades, Pit River Woman.

William C. Tweed brings humans closer to nature using the knowledge and skills he developed during thirty years as a chief naturalist, historian, and writer with the National Park Service. His published works include Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Parks: The Story Behind the Scenery (KC Publications, 1980); Challenge of the Big Trees: A Resource History of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks (coauthored with Larry Dilsaver, Sequoia Naturalist History Association, 1990); Death Valley and the Northern Mojave: A Visitor’s Guide (coauthored with Lauren Davis, Cachuma Press, 2003); and Uncertain Path: A Search for the Future of National Parks(University of California Press, 2010). Tweed makes his home in Bend, Oregon.

Tom and Pat Leeson are a husband and wife team whose photographs have appeared in hundreds of US and foreign publications, including National Geographic Society, Time, National Wildlife Federation, Audubon, and Sierra. They live in Vancouver, Washington, with their daughter, Laura.

Donald Quintana is a nature and wildlife photographer based in Los Osos, California. He is a member of the North American Nature Photographers Association. Learn more at donaldquintana.com.

Molly Woodward is a freelance editor by day and a children’s book writer by night, guided by two keen young editors who call her Mama. A past member of Heyday’s editorial staff, Molly also wrote The Babies and Doggies Book and The Babies and Kitties Book, two more board books starring adorable animals.

Chuck Todd is an award-winning illustrator and visual journalist in the San Francisco Bay Area. After more than two decades as a newspaper artist and presentation editor, Chuck has turned his focus to creating illustrations for children’s books, magazines, websites, and comics. Is That a Skunk? is his fourth illustrated wildlife book with author Gary Bogue. See more of Chuck’s artwork at chucktodd.net.