Emily Mitchell, author of the novel The Last Summer of the World and, most recently, Viral: Stories, teaches at the University of Maryland and lives in Washington, D.C. Joy Russo-Schoenfield, a former writer and editor at the Palm Beach Post, Newsday and CBS Sportsline.com, oversees Olympics and international sports coverage for ESPN digital and print media. She lives in Burlington, Connecticut. Anne Milligan, an employment lawyer in Portland, Oregon, has represented clients in eight federal districts and before the Bureau of Labor and Industries. She is a former writer and content manager for Run Oregon. Pete Danko reports on renewable energy and local business in Portland, Oregon, and is a wine-industry marketing and public relations consultant. His work has appeared in publications including the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times. The nomadic Vanessa Runs, who roams the land in an RV, is a self-described "author, trail nerd, elevation junkie and mountain-loving dirtbag.” Her books include Daughters of Distance and The Summit Seeker. Steve Kettmann, a former columnist for the Berliner Zeitung, is the author most recently of Baseball Maverick: How Sandy Alderson Revolutionized Baseball and Revived the Mets. He lives in Soquel, California. Dahlia Scheindlin, an international public opinion researcher and political strategist, has consulted on campaigns in more than a dozen countries. She was raised in New York City and currently resides in Israel. Heather Semb, a former resident intern at the Wellstone Center in the Redwoods writers' retreat center in Northern California, is preparing to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. This is her first published essay. T.J. Quinn, a former Chicago White Sox and New York Mets beat writer, is an investigative reporter for ESPN. He lives in New Jersey. Former Wellstone Books intern Kelsey Eiland, a recent graduate of the University of California at Santa Cruz, works at the UCSC Arboretum and hopes to pursue a career in teaching. Bonnie D. Ford, a former sports features writer for the Chicago Tribune and Cleveland Plain Dealer, is an enterprise and investigative reporter for ESPN.com. She splits her time between suburban Philadelphia and rural Maryland.