Recorded live at the 2007 New Yorker Festival in New York City.Karen Russell is the author of the story collectionSt. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, which was published in 2006. Her first story for The New Yorker, "Haunting Olivia", appeared in the 2005 Debut Fiction Issue. She is the recipient of a Transatlantic Review / Henfield Foundation Award and is currently at work on her first novel.

Recorded live at the 2007 New Yorker Festival in New York City.Junot Diaz was born in the Dominican Republic and grew up in New Jersey. He is the author of the short-story collection Drown and the novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which released in September; part of both books first appeared in The New Yorker. He is the recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Rome Fellowship in Literature.

Recorded live at the 2007 New Yorker Festival in New York City. George Saunders is the author of the story collections CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, Pastoralia, and In Persuasion Nation; an illustrated novella, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil; and a children's book, The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip. The Braindead Megaphone, a collection of his essays, many of which first appeared in The New Yorker, was released in September 2007.

Recorded live at the 2007 New Yorker Festival in New York City.Major L. Tammy Duckworth serves in the Illinois Army National Guard. In 2004, the Black Hawk helicopter she was co-piloting near Baghdad was attacked with a rocket-propelled grenade, costing her both legs and shattering her right arm. Following her recovery at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, she became an advocate for veterans, testifying multiple times before Congress.

Recorded live at the 2007 New Yorker Festival in New York City. Andy Borowitz has been a contributor to The New Yorker since 1998. His books include Who Moved My Soap?: The CEO's Guide to Surviving in Prison, The Republican Playbook, and The Borowitz Report: The Big Book of Shockers, a collection of articles from his online column.

Recorded live at the 2007 New Yorker Festival in New York City. Jhumpa Lahiri was born in England to Bengali parents and emigrated to the United States as a child. She won a Pulitzer Prize for her debut story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, which included three stories that first appeared in The New Yorker. Her first novel, The Namesake, was published in 2003; a film adaptation by the director Mira Nair was released in 2007.

Recorded live at the 2007 New Yorker Festival in New York City.Jerome Groopman holds the Dina and Raphael Recanati Chair of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and is the chief of experimental medicine at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in Boston. He has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1998 and is the author of several books, including The Anatomy of Hope and Second Opinions.

Recorded live at the 2007 New Yorker Festival in New York City.Seymour M. Hersh has written for The New Yorker since 1971. He is the author of nine books, including The Dark Side of Camelot, The Price of Power, which won a National Book Critics Circle Award, and Cover-Up, about the Army's secret investigation of My Lai 4.

Recorded live at the 2007 New Yorker Festival in New York City.Jonathan Franzen has contributed fiction, essays, and reporting to The New Yorker since 1994. His novel The Corrections, parts of which first appeared in the magazine, won the 2001 National Book Award. He is also the author of the novels The Twenty-Seventh City and Strong Motion; the essay collection How to Be Alone; and The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History, which came out in 2006.

Recorded live at the 2007 New Yorker Festival in New York City. Ian McEwan's novels include The Child in Time, Enduring Love, Amsterdam, which won the Booker Prize for Fiction, and Atonement, which won the National Book Critics' Circle Fiction Award and has been made into a feature film.