Michael Koch, born in New York City of Slavic and Jamaican heritage. He is a painter, poet, translator, amateur percussionist and avid salsero.

Gerald Nicosia is a biographer, historian, poet, playwright and novelist. His biography of Jack Kerouac, Memory Babe, won the Distinguished Young Writer Award from the National Society of Arts and Letters and was called a “great book” by Allen Ginsberg and “by far the best of the many books published about Jack Kerouac’s life and work” by William Burroughs. It is still widely regarded as the definitive work on Kerouac. His book Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans’ Movement won numerous honors and was named one of the Los Angeles Times “Best Books of the Year” in 2001. He is currently at work on a biography of Ntozake Shange. Nicosia lives in Corte Madera, California.