Kenneth Rogoff is Maurits C. Boas Professor at Harvard University, and former chief economist at the IMF. His influential 2009 book with Carmen Reinhart, This Time Is Different:  Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, shows the remarkable quantitative similarities across time and countries in the roots and aftermath of debt and financial crises. Rogoff is also known for his pioneering work on central bank independence, and on exchange rates. His monthly syndicated column on global economic issues is published in over 50 countries. Rogoff is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has long ranked among the top ten most cited economists, and is an international grandmaster of chess.

Gish Jen's short stories have been included in The Best American Short Stories five times, including in The Best American Short Stories of the Century, edited by John Updike. A fellow of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she has been the recipient of a Lannan Literary Award as well as a five-year Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, and many anthologies and textbooks. Her most recent book is a collection of stories spanning the 50 years since the opening of China to the West, entitled Thank You, Mr. Nixon, and has an autobiographical novel coming out this October, entitled Bad Bad Girl (Knopf).