Author Bios

Lori Horvitz is an American author and professor of literature whose creative nonfiction and memoir work explores identity, family, and the complexities of Jewish American experience. She is a professor of literature at UNC Asheville in North Carolina, where she has taught creative writing and literature for many years. Her essays and personal narratives have…

Lisa Pliscou is an American author best known for her novel Higher Education (1989), a satirical campus novel set at a fictional version of Harvard that became a cult favorite among readers who appreciated its sharp-eyed skewering of academic pretension, privilege, and the particular madness of elite university life. Published when Pliscou was in her…

Cheri K. Erdman is an American author, educator, and body-image activist whose book Nothing to Lose: A Guide to Sane Living in a Larger Body was among the early works in the fat acceptance and size positivity movement, advocating for the dignity and health of people in larger bodies at a time when such arguments…

Lynn Downey is an American historian and author whose book Levi Strauss: A Pioneer of the American West, published in 2016 by University of California Press, is the authoritative biography of the founder of the world’s most famous blue jeans company. Downey served as the official historian of Levi Strauss and Company for more than…

Doris Iarovici is a psychiatrist and author whose book Mental Health Issues and the University Student, published in 2014 by Johns Hopkins University Press, has become a standard reference work for college counselors, administrators, and mental health professionals working with young adults in higher education settings. She is a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at…

Ernest A. Finney Jr. was an American fiction writer and former California Superior Court judge whose literary work won significant recognition within the world of American short fiction. A South Carolinian by origin, Finney worked as an attorney and then as a judge in California’s Central Valley while simultaneously building a serious body of fiction…

Briona Nic Dhiarmada is an Irish scholar and author specializing in the Irish language, Irish cultural history, and the legacy of the 1916 Easter Rising. She is a professor at the University of Notre Dame, where she holds the Thomas J. and Kathleen Walsh Chair in Irish Language and Literature and serves as the director…

Lisa Smith is an American author and former attorney whose memoir Girl Walks Out of a Bar, published in 2016, is a candid and compelling account of her decade-long struggle with alcohol and cocaine addiction while working as a high-functioning lawyer at a major New York City law firm. Smith’s story challenges common assumptions about…

Ijeoma Oluo is an author, speaker, and cultural critic whose 2018 book So You Want to Talk About Race became one of the most widely read and assigned books on race in America, spending years on bestseller lists and becoming a staple of workplace diversity training, university curricula, and book clubs nationwide. Born and raised…

Lawrence Osborne is a British novelist and travel writer whose fiction is characterized by atmospheric settings in the developing world, moral ambiguity, and a coolly stylish prose that draws comparisons to Graham Greene and Paul Bowles. Born in England in 1958, Osborne has lived for extended periods in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and other…