Jeff Sharlet is the New York Times bestselling author or editor of eight books. His latest is The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War (2023), a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist for Nonfiction, one of The New York Times 100 Books of the Year, and a New Republic book of the year. In 2020, he published This Brilliant Darkness: A Book of Strangers.  “Gorgeous,” says The New York Times, “[t]he book ingeniously reminds us that all of our lives — our struggles, desires, grief — happen concurrently with everyone else’s, and this awareness helps dissolve the boundaries between us.” Sharlet’s other books include Sweet Heaven When I Die, C Street, The Family — the basis for a 2019 Netflix documentary series, The Family, of which he is narrator and executive producer — and, with Peter Manseau, Killing the Buddha;and two edited volumes, Radiant Truths, and (with Manseau) Believer, Beware. His writing on Russia’s anti-LGBTQ crusade earned the National Magazine Award for Reporting, and his writing on anti-LGBT campaigns in Uganda earned the Molly Ivins Prize and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission’s Outspoken Award, among others. He has also been the recipient of numerous fellowships from MacDowell. Sharlet is an editor-at-large for VQR, and is or has been a contributing editor for Vanity Fair, Harper’s and Rolling Stone, and a contributor to publications including The New York Times Magazine, GQ, Esquire, Mother Jones, Bookforum, and others. At Dartmouth College, he is the publisher of 40 Towns and is the Frederick Sessions Beebe ’35 Professor in the Art of Writing.

Nathan Schneider is an associate professor of media studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he leads the Media Economies Design Lab. His most recent book is Governable Spaces: Democratic Design for Online Life.