Jordan Blashek & Chris Haugh

A literary powerhouse and master storyteller whose words electrify the soul and ignite the imagination, Isabel Allende will discuss My Name, Emilia del Valle, to be released on May 6, 2025.

Jeffrey Brown is Senior Correspondent and Chief Arts Correspondent for PBS NewsHour, public television’s prestigious nightly news program viewed by millions. During his career with NewsHour he has served as co-anchor, studio moderator, and field reporter on a wide range of national and international issues.

Two-time US Poet Laureate, dubbed “the most popular poet in America” by the New York Times

National Geographic Explorer in Residence, Ethnographer, Writer, Photographer and Filmmaker

Filippenko is an Astrophysicist on a Nobel Prize winning team, as well as the 2007 Gruber Cosmology Prize, 2015 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics to all team members. He was voted the “best professor at UC Berkeley 9 years!”.

Dr. Robert Michael Franklin, Jr. is the author of three books: Crisis in the Village: Restoring Hope in African American Communities (2007); Another Day’s Journey: Black Churches Confronting the American Crisis (1997); and Liberating Visions: Human Fulfillment and Social Justice in African American Thought (1990).

Author, Social Commentator who spent 30 years on Alabama’s death row for a murder he did not commit

Adam Hochschild’s latest release, Rebel Cinderella: From Rags to Riches to Radical, tells the astonishing but forgotten story of an immigrant sweatshop worker who married an heir to a great American fortune and became one of the most charismatic radical leaders of her time.

Hawk Koch‘s Magic Time: My Life in Hollywood, is his personal, entertaining, retelling of his long and important career making and celebrating motion pictures.

Acclaimed Author, Finalist National Book Award in Fiction and Professor at Princeton University

H.R. McMaster retired with thirty-four years of experience as an officer in the U.S. Army commanding troops in Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, and during Desert Storm, followed by a position as National Security Advisor in the White House, and professorships at Stanford University and the Hoover Institution, H.R. McMaster brings us his well-qualified viewpoint of the geopolitical landscape and decades of first-hand knowledge of the global stage today.

John “Mac” McQuown is a self-described anarchist, a legend in the finance industry, an environmentalist, entrepreneur, philanthropist and creator of the Stone Edge Farm Estate Vineyards and Winery in Sonoma.

Naomi Shihab Nye is the author and/or editor of more than 30 volumes.

Colin O’Brady‘s New York Times bestseller The Impossible First: From Fire to Ice – Crossing Antarctica Alone is his story of how he solo-walked 932 miles across Antarctica pulling a sled filled with food that started out weighing 375 pounds.

Acclaimed Author and Physician, “Out of the Fields: My Journey from Farmworker Boy to Pediatrician” has for over 35 years taken care of children like himself as a child

Jeffrey Rosen is the President and CEO of the non-partisan National Constitution Center in Philadelphia where he hosts “We the People,” a weekly podcast of constitutional debate. Author of five books, Rosen graduated from Harvard College, Oxford University,  and Yale Law School.

Daniel M. Russell‘s book, The Joy of Search: A Google Insider’s Guide to Going Beyond the Basics, explains how to frame search queries so they will yield information and describes the best ways to use such resources as Google Earth, Google Scholar, Wikipedia, and Wikimedia. It was published by MIT Press in September 2019.

Julia Flynn Siler is a bestselling author and acclaimed journalist known for her impactful works such as “The White Devil’s Daughters” and “Lost Kingdom: Hawaii’s Last Queen.”

Strock writes the ‘Next Nationalism’ on Substack and hosts the ‘Serve to Lead’ podcast.

Robert Theleen was one of the first foreign directors of a major Chinese State-owned industry, the prestigious Beijing Enterprises.

Andy Weinberger is the author of the Amos Parisman mysteries – An Old Man’s Game and the forthcoming Reason to Kill – and a long time bookseller who owns and runs Readers’ Books in Sonoma, California. Reader’s celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2019 and is “an anchor of the community.”

Damon West‘s memoir The Change Agent: How a Former College QB Sentenced to Life in Prison Transformed His World tells the harrowing story of his sentence to 65 years in a Texas prison after being convicted of drug-related crimes after a lifetime of addiction, and the heartwarming story of his recovery.