Rafael Jesús González, native of El Paso, Tx., taught Creative Writing & Literature at Laney College, Oakland, where he founded the Mexican & Latin American Studies Department. He was Poet in Residence at Oakland Museum of California and Oakland Public Library in 1996. Four times nominated for a Pushcart Prize, he was honored by the National Council of Teachers of English for his writing in 2003. In 2013 he received a César E. Chávez Lifetime Award, and in 2015 the City of Berkeley also honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2017, he was named the first Poet Laureate of Berkeley.

Nina Serrano (born 1934) is an American poet, writer, storyteller, and independent media producer who lives in Vallejo, California. She is the author of Heart Songs: The Collected Poems of Nina Serrano (1980) and Pass it on!: How to start your own senior storytelling program in the schools (Stagebridge). Her poems are widely anthologized, including the literary anthology Under the Fifth Sun: Latino Writers from California (Heyday Books), and three anthologies of peace poems edited by Mary Rudge from Estuary Press. 

Stephanie S. Tolan is a playwright and Newbery Honor-winning author (Surviving the Applewhites) of twenty-seven books for kids and young adults, co-author of Guiding the Gifted Child, and the author of “Is It a Cheetah?” an essay about gifted children that has been translated into 40 languages.  Tolan has written and spoken about the social, emotional and spiritual needs of the gifted for 40 years—much of that writing collected in the book Out of Sync (Royal Fireworks Press, 2016). Her most recent nonfiction work for adults is Change Your Story, Change Your Life, available through Amazon and Kindle.