Catherine Griffin comes from a family of Sicilian immigrants who always maintained they were the descendants of celebrated Irish patriot, Robert Emmet. As a researcher and historian, she has spent years visiting libraries, archives, and cemeteries in search of the truth about her family's history. On the way she proved her eligibility for Italian citizenship by descent and received her Italian passport; found she was a direct line descendant of Daniel Boone on her non-Sicilian side; and uncovered stories she had never heard about the Irish struggle for independence.

J. Patrick Hanley is reformed lawyer. He started writing out of sheer spite for the soul-killing assignments he was given as a clerk-assuming that if an infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of keyboards could eventually produce Shakespeare, he could come up with something reasonably less ambitious on a somewhat more realistic timeline. He once wrote a fantastic sonnet. He periodically publishes his solo writing at www.godamericai.com. He is an educator who divides his time between Texas and France. When he isn’t teaching or writing, he paints and studies languages.