ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Since age four, Chicago-based songwriter/performer Andrew Bird has been playing music ranging from classical to early country blues. He has spent the past thirteen years writing pop music infused with unconventional violin, glockenspiel, guitar, and his trademark whistling. He’s released eleven albums, most recently the widely lauded Noble Beast (2009), and is currently recording his next album due out in the spring of 2012.

 

Arthur Bradford’s first book, Dogwalker, was published by Knopf in 2001. He is the creator and director of the documentary news series How’s Your News?, which has been broadcast on HBO and MTV. His first children’s book, Walrus and Slugs Together, is due out from McSweeney’s in the spring of 2011.

 

Neil deGrasse Tyson has written nine books including New York Times bestseller Death by Black Hole and Other Cosmic Quandaries and The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America’s Favorite Planet. He hosts the PBS program NOVA scienceNOW and was voted “Sexiest Astrophysicist Alive” by People magazine in 2000. Tyson is the first occupant of the Frederick P. Rose Directorship of the Hayden Planetarium and lives with his wife and two children in New York City.

 

Daniel Engber is a senior editor at Slate. His scientific method for distracting free-throw shooters in the NBA was featured in the New York Times Magazine’s “Year in Ideas” issue for 2005, and his Web site, Crying While Eating, was featured on The Tonight Show. His work has been anthologized in the Best of Technology Writing series, and made him a finalist for a James Beard Foundation Award in 2010 and the winner of a Sex-Positive Journalism Award in 2008.

 

Jonathan Goldstein is the host and producer of CBC Radio’s WireTap, and the author, most recently, of Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bible!

 

John Hodgman is a writer, humorist, and former minor television celebrity. He is the author of The Areas of My Expertise and More Information Than You Require and hosts the podcast Judge John Hodgman. To keep an update of his activities visit www.areasofmyexpertise.com.

 

Arthur Jones is an animator, graphic designer, illustrator, and writer who was born in Texas, raised in Missouri, and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. You can see more of his work at www.byarthurjones.com.

 

Starlee Kine, cocreator of the Post-it Note Reading series from which this book originated, is a frequent contributor to public radio’s This American Life. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications including the New York Times Magazine and Wired. She is currently working on her first book, entitled It IS Your Fault for Riverhead Books.

 

Chuck Klosterman has published four nonfiction books, an anthology of his journalism, and the novel Downtown Owl. He has written for GQ, Esquire, SPIN, the New York Times Magazine, Washington Post, ESPN, The Believer, The Guardian, the Akron Beacon Journal, and the Forum of Fargo-Moorhead. His second novel, The Visible Man, will be released in the fall of 2011.

 

Laura Krafft is an artist/writer/performer from Evanston, Illinois, whose primary media are television and embroidery.

 

Beth Lisick is the author of four books, including the New York Times bestseller Everybody Into the Pool. She cofounded the Porchlight Storytelling Series in San Francisco and occasionally appears on stages and screens.

 

Marie Lorenz is an artist living in Brooklyn. She currently teaches printmaking at the Yale University School of Art. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, including solo projects at Artpace in San Antonio, Texas; Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, England; Locust Projects in Miami, Florida; and the Jack Hanley Gallery in New York. In an ongoing artwork entitled The Tide and Current Taxi, she ferries people around New York City in her handmade boat.

 

David Rakoff is the author of several books, the most recent being Half Empty. A regular contributor to public radio’s This American Life, he has written for the New York Times, GQ, Salon, Wired, the Wall Street Journal, and Outside, among numerous other publications.

 

David Rees is an artisanal pencil sharpener. From 2001 to 2008, he wrote Get Your War On.

 

Mary Roach is the author of Stiff, Bonk, and, most recently, Packing for Mars. She currently has no pets.

 

Kristen Schaal is a comedian, writer, and actor. Some highlights: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Flight of the Conchords, Toy Story 3, and her own Comedy Central Presents special. She is coauthor of The Sexy Book of Sexy Sex with Rich Blomquist.

 

Jeff Simmermon is a writer and storyteller who has contributed to This American Life and regularly appears onstage at the Moth and other storytelling shows around New York. He thinks he may have been contacted by an extraterrestrial intelligence a few times in his early twenties and quietly panics that God is disappointed in him when he hasn’t created enough art. Jeff also runs a blog packed full of stories, art, and other weirdness at www.andiamnotlying.com.

 

Andrew Solomon is a lecturer in psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, where the ndeup is often invoked but seldom prescribed. His most recent book, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression—which propelled him quite unexpectedly into close encounters with the Senegalese spirit world—won the National Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His next book, to be published in 2012, is Far from the Tree: A Lineage of Love. He lives in London and New York with his husband and son.

 

Hannah Tinti is the author of Animal Crackers, and cofounder and editor in chief of One Story magazine. Her bestselling novel, The Good Thief, is a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, winner of the John Sargent Sr. First Novel Prize, and a recipient of the American Library Association’s Alex Award. Recently she joined the cast of NPR’s Selected Shorts.

 

David Wilcox is a writer whose work has appeared on public radio’s This American Life and in the pages of the Chicago Reader. He currently lives in Los Angeles, but you can find him online at www.thisisdavidwilcox.com.