Doug Chiang is the Design Director for the Star Wars prequels. He studied film at UCLA before becoming a Clio Award-winning commercial director and designer. He has also won an Academy Award for his work on Death Becomes Her and is currently the head of the Episode II Art Department.

Allen Say, whose Grandfather's Journey won the 1994 Caldecott Medal, was born August 28, 1937 in Yokohama, Japan and then moved to the United States in 1953 at the age of sixteen. He attended Aoyama Gakuin, Tokyo, Japan for three years; Chouinard Art Institute for one year; the Los Angeles Art Center School for one year; the University of California, Berkeley for two years; and the San Francisco Art Institute for one year.

Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club won enthusiastic reviews and spent eight months on the New York Times best-seller list. The paperback rights sold for $1.23 million. The book has been translated in 17 languages, including Chinese. Her subsequent novel, The Kitchen God's Wife (1991) confirmed her reputation and enjoyed excellent sales. Since then Amy Tan has published two books for children, The Moon Lady and The Chinese Siamese Cat and another novel The Hundred Secret Senses.

Ronald Takaki is a true pioneer in the field of ethnic studies. During the 1960's there was a growing demand for the development of ethnic programs at universities across the United States and it was Takaki who was one of the first to step forward and put together a curriculum. In the fall of 1967, Takaki offered the school's first African American history course. He went on to become very involved in the organization of the Black Students Union and acting as the group's faculty advisor. Takaki was also involved with Chicano and Asian American student affairs.

Badami earned a Bachelor's Degree in English at the University of Madras. She then studied journalism in Sophia College in Bombay ("South"). After her schooling the author had various jobs before she became a full fledged writer. She worked as a copywriter for advertising agencies in Bombay, Bangalore, and Madras, and she wrote for newspapers and magazines for seventeen years (Kozminuk). Badami also wrote many stories for children's magazines. In 1984 the author married. She bore a son three years later, and her family moved to Calgary in 1991. Today Ms. Badami and her family live in Vancouver, where the author is working on a follow-up to Tamarind Mem ("South," Kozminuk).

In 1988, Le Ly Hayslip founded the "East Meets West Foundation", a humanitarian relief organization, which physically and emotionally helps to rebuild lives on both sides of the world. Her book, "When Heaven and Earth Changed Places", moved award winning filmmaker, Oliver Stone, a Vietnam veteran himself, to fund the building of Mother's Love Clinic for homeless children in Le Ly's village in Da Nang. With the further help from actor-comedian, Robert Kline and Senator John Kerry, money has been raised to build Peace Village, a medical center for children.