Danyel Smith
August 7-11

Danyel Smith is the new editor-in-chief of Vibe magazine. She’s also a novelist and critic and the former editor-at-large for Time Inc. She has written for Elle, Time, Cosmopolitan, Essence, the Village Voice, the New Yorker, Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, Spin, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Condé Nast Media Group, and the New York Times. Smith is the author of the San Francisco Chronicle-bestselling novel, More Like Wrestling (Crown) and she wrote the introduction for the New York Times bestseller Tupac Shakur. Her second novel, Bliss (Crown) was published July 2005. Danyel comments regularly on pop culture at VH-1, WNYC, and CNN. An MFA candidate (May 2006), Danyel lives in Manhattan with her husband. She was born and brought up in California.

Siddhartha Mitter
August 14 and 15

Siddhartha Mitter is a freelance journalist and cultural critic whose work extends to music, food, race, migration and politics. He covers hip-hop, soul, and world music for the Boston Globe, and has appeared previously on Soundcheck and other WNYC and NPR programs. He contributes to the South Asian-American blog Sepia Mutiny, and his literary writing has appeared in Transition and the Oxford American. He lives in Harlem. Learn more about Siddhartha Mitter on his Web site or on the blog Web site.

Anthony DeCurtis
August 16-18

Anthony DeCurtis is an author and music critic, who has written for Rolling Stone, the New York Times, Relix and other publications. He is the author of In Other Words: Artists Talk About Life and Work (Hal Leonard Publishing Co, 2005) and Rocking My Life Away: Writing About Music and Other Matters (Duke University Press, 1998), and editor of Present Tense: Rock & Roll and Culture (Duke University Press, 1992). He co-edited the third editions of the Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll and the Rolling Stone Album Guide. His essay accompanying the Eric Clapton box set Crossroads won a Grammy in the "Best Album Notes" category, and on three occasions he has won ASCAP's Deems Taylor awards for excellence in writing about music. He has appeared as a commentator on MTV, VH1, the Today Show and many other news and entertainment programs. He holds a Ph.D. in american literature from Indiana University, and teaches every fall in the writing program at the University of Pennsylvania.