Moderator: Chris Coursey, journalist

Don Lattin
Don Lattin is a freelance journalist and the author of four books. His most recent work, The Harvard Psychedelic Club: How Timothy Leary, Andrew Weil, Ram Dass and Huston Smith Killed the Fifties and Ushered in a New Age for America, was a national bestseller in 2010. It’s the story of how a young and jealous Andrew Weil got Tim Leary and Richard “Ram Dass” Alpert kicked out of Harvard in the early 1960s. They, along with religion scholar Huston Smith, go on to lay the foundations for the social and spiritual revolution of the sixties and seventies. Lattin's work has appeared in dozens of U.S. magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and the San Francisco Chronicle, where Don covered the religion beat for nearly two decades.

Jonah Raskin
Jonah Raskin teaches at Sonoma State University and is the author or a dozen books, such as Field Days: A Year of Farming, Eating and Drinking Wine in California, and the editor of The Radical Jack London: Writings on War and Revolution. His newest book is Marijuanaland: Dispatches from an American War.

Steven T. Jones
Native Californian Steven T. Jones is the City Editor of the San Francisco Bay Guardian and a full-time newspaperman of 20 years, previously working for Sacramento News & Review, New Times in San Luis Obispo, Auburn Journal, and other publications. He has won numerous writing awards, including a Maggie. His latest book is The Tribes of Burning Man: How an Experimental City in the Desert is Shaping the New American Counterculture.

Patrick Fanning
Patrick Fanning co-founded New Harbinger Publications, one of the premiere publishers of self-help psychology and health books, in 1979. For more than 20 years, he wrote and published self-help books. His latest book, published this year, is Mind & Emotions.

Matthew McKay
Matthew McKay received his Ph.D in clinical psychology in 1978 from California School of Professional Psychology. He co-founded, and was clinical director of Haight Ashbury Psychological Services between 1979 and 2004. Currently he is clinical director of the Berkeley CBT clinic. He has taught at many professional schools in the San Francisco Bay Area, including PGSP and CHS. He has been a professor at the Wright Institute since 2003. Matthew McKay has written more than 30 trade and professional books in the psychology field. Titles include Self Esteem, Thoughts & Feelings, Messages, When Anger Hurts, The Relaxation & Stress Reduction Workbook, Mind and Emotions, Overcoming Situational and General Anger, and others. Dr. McKay is also the publisher at New Harbinger Publications in Oakland, a house specializing in psychology, self-help, and professional books.

Mary Rotman
Mary Rotman is a Publicist at O'Reilly Media. She does a little bit of everything, from writing press releases and entering data to researching potential contacts and managing PR for O'Reilly's publishing partners. In her free time she enjoys reading, crafting, hiking, and biking in gorgeous northern California where she lives with her husband.

Ellen Skagerberg
A bookseller for Copperfield’s Books for the past 19 years, Ellen Skagerberg writes social media content for Facebook and Twitter and is the Consignment Buyer at two Copperfield’s stores. She also judges poetry for the Sonoma County Fair. Her favorite author is Haruki Murakami.

Mark Tauber
Mark Tauber is Senior Vice President and Publisher of HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Prior to joining HarperOne, Mark was a co-founder of Everyday Health, an original, founding team member of Beliefnet.com, and on staff at Oxford University Press. He has published over 55 New York Times bestsellers.

Mark has worked closely on many bestselling books by authors including Tim Teebow, Rob Bell, Billy Graham, Johnny Cash, C.S. Lewis, Paulo Coelho, Marcus Borg, Barbara Brown Taylor, Frederick Buechner, Bart Ehrman, Bishop John Shelby Spong, Jim Wallis and Richard Foster.

Moderator: Historian and journalist Gaye LeBaron
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Ted Calvert
Ted Calvert has been a resident of Healdsburg since 1980. Ted raised his two boys, Christopher and Paco, in Healdsburg, considered then a farm town, or prune town to native residents, but a great place to grow a family. Ted is currently the president of the Healdsburg Museum and Historical Society board of directors. He is the author of Healdsburg Chronicles and The Legacy of Fitch Mountain. While Ted enjoys world travel, he relishes coming home to the Sonoma County lifestyle, in all its seasons.

John LeBaron
Celebrated photographer John LeBaron has expanded his talents to writing in The Ebabias Chronicles, named for the creek behind his West County family home. LeBaron, who is married to Gaye LeBaron, grew up in Valley Ford and is descended from families that settled in the coastal area as early as the 1850s.

The former chief photographer for the Press Democrat and long time photo instructor at Santa Rosa Junior College where he was also chair of the art department, LeBaron continues to be exhibited as a fine art and documentary photographer.

Katherine Rinehart
Katherine J. Rinehart received her master’s degree in History from Sonoma State University in 1994. For the past 17 years, Ms. Rinehart has worked in various positions within the fields of Cultural Resource Management and Historic Preservation and is currently employed by the Sonoma County Library and works in the Sonoma County History Genealogy Department. She is the author of Petaluma: A History in Architecture, a contributor to the Celebrating Petaluma published by the Petaluma Sesquicentennial Committee and the Petaluma Visitors Program. Ms. Rinehart is a regular contributor to the Argus Courier, has her own business specializing in historic research, writing, exhibit coordination and lecturing; was named Petaluma’s Good Egg in 2007 and is past president of the Petaluma Museum Association.

John Schubert
John Schubert has been a Russian River historian for 50+ years. Past president, past editor of the Sonoma County Historical Society; vice-president and current editor of the Russian River Historical Society. Author of Guerneville Early Days, history of the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, column Stumptown Stories in River Area papers.

Michelle Gagnon, Moderator
Michelle Gagnon’s bestselling novels have been described as “utterly gripping…addictively readable thrillers.” (Chicago Tribune). The Tunnels (June 2007) involves a series of ritualized murders in the abandoned tunnel system beneath a university. Daphne du Maurier Best Suspense Novel nominee Boneyard (July 2008) depicts a cat and mouse game between dueling serial killers. In The Gatekeeper (November 2009), anti-immigration hate groups unleash a domestic terror plot. Kidnap & Ransom (November, 2010) is about the abduction of the world’s foremost hostage negotiator by a Mexican drug cartel. Michelle lives in San Francisco with her family.

Sophie Littlefield
Sophie Littlefield’s first novel, A Bad Day for Sorry, won an Anthony Award and an RT Book Award for Best First Mystery. It was also shortlisted for Edgar, Barry, Crimespree, and Macavity Awards. She writes the post-apocalyptic Aftertime series for Harlequin Luna. She also writes paranormal fiction for young adults. 

Linda Morganstein
Linda Morganstein, author of Harpies' Feast calls herself an overeducated writer who also happens to be the product of a Borscht Belt hotel childhood. In the seventies, she dropped out of Vassar and moved to California. Her mystery series takes place in Sonoma County and features Alexis Pope, self-defense instructor and recovering cynic.

David Hayward
Sonoma County poet David Hayward has won a Pushcart Prize and appeared in Harper’s and other magazines. David says: “Heads You Lose, was co-authored with supposed big deal Lisa Lutz,” and is his first published fiction. He’s now working on a novel of his own, about a family of gamblers.

David Beckman, Moderator
David studied playwrighting at New York’s Circle in the Square Theater and, as an actor, toured with the National Shakespeare Company. In New York, Merely Players showcased his one-act play, What Goes Around, at the Westbeth Theater Center. Becoming Walt Whitman debuted at the Powerhouse Theater in Santa Monica in 1993 and kicked off the fall season at Santa Rosa’s Sixth Street Playhouse in October 2010. His short plays have appeared at the Beast Festival in New York, and the Pegasus Theater’s Tapas Short Play Festival in Monte Rio. For the past three years he’s taught Pegasus Theater workshops in writing short plays.

Keith Baker
Keith Baker is a Sonoma County native who began his acting career at El Molino High School and is a graduate of the BFA Theater Connservatory at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Favorite roles in Sonoma County include the title role in Cyrano, Charlie in The Scene, the title role in Tartuffe, Athos in The Three Musketeers, and Mr. Lockhart in The Seafarer.

Mollie Boice
Mollie Boice was a founding member of Actors Theatre and performed in over 40 of their productions. She is also a set designer, playwright and director. She worked for 30 years for Summer Repertory Theatre, where she was Eleanor in The Lion in Winter, Vivian Bearing in Wit, Jeanette in the Full Monty, the Countess in The Women and in her own one woman show Adventures in Theatre!. For 6th Street, she was in The Grapes of Wrath, Public Exposure, Molly Sweeney, Well and in Hank Williams: Lost Highway. For HMT she has played Ma Williams in Hank Williams: Lost Highway, and MeeMaw in Tammy Wynette: Stand By Your Man. She loves the crazy southern mothers HTM has allowed her to play. Currently, Mollie is retired for SRT and has become a daily painter…and along with her husband Wes are creating Diddley Bows for Blue Americana Twang!

Mike Ott
Mike Ott studied under Thom Andersen at Cal Arts where he received his MFA degree in Film and Video. Mike’s second feature film, LiTTLEROCK has won numerous awards, including the Audience Award at the 2010 AFI Fest and a Gotham Award for “Best Film Not Playing in a Theater Near You,” and a 2011 SPIRIT AWARD for “Someone to Watch.” Presently, Mike teaches film directing at the University of Southern California (USC).

Shawn Pittard
Shawn Pittard has written two screenplays, Blood Atonement and Junk Sick, and is currently studying the art of the pitch. He is also the author of two chapbook collections of poetry, Standing in the River, winner of Tebot Bach’s 2010 Clockwise Chapbook Contest, and These Rivers, from Rattlesnake Press. He lives in Sacramento.

Maxine Hong Kingston, Moderator
Maxine Hong Kingston is Senior Lecturer for Creative Writing at the University of California, Berkeley. For her memoirs and fiction, The Fifth Book of Peace, The Woman Warrior, China Men, Tripmaster Monkey, I Love a Broad Margin to My Life, and Hawai'i One Summer, she has earned numerous awards, among them the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction, the PEN West Award for Fiction, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, and a National Humanities Medal from the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as the title of “Living Treasure of Hawai'i.” I Love a Broad Margin of My Life is her latest book.

Maxine Hong Kingston, Moderator
William "Scott" Morrison has been writing short stories and songs for many years. The Energy Caper, or Nixon in the Sky With Diamonds is his first novel. His short story about the luck of the draw in Nixon's lottery during the Vietnam War, "Draft Night," appears in the anthology Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace edited by Maxine Hong Kingston.

Julie Thi Underhill
Julie Thi Underhill’s writings have been included in Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace Embodying Asian/American Sexualities, and Hayden's Ferry Review. She is a Chancellor's Fellow at UC Berkeley, where she is earning her doctorate. She holds a BA from The Evergreen State College and a MA from UC Berkeley.