Erick Gordon currently teaches English at Credo High School, a public Waldorf school in Sonoma County, California that follows the One Planet Living model. He is the founding director of the Student Press Initiative at Teachers College, Columbia University, and the former director of the New York City Writing Project. In his role as Senior Fellow for Innovation at Teachers College, he co-founded the multimodal learning program, Literacy Unbound. An archive of past projects can be found at www.erickgordon.com.

Fawn Canady is a professor of literacy at Southern Oregon University. She co-directed the NEH Human/Nature summer institute in 2023. Her teaching and scholarship focus on teacher education, multimodality, and literacies, widely defined. Her current projects include work with ECCLPs in climate and environmental literacies in teacher preparation. She is the former Co-Chair of the ELATE Commission on Climate Justice, Inquiry, and Action and will be co-directing the Oregon Writing Project in 2026.

Kim Hester Williams is a Professor of English and American Multicultural Studies at Sonoma State University. She is co-editor of a collection of interdisciplinary essays on race and environment, Racial Ecologies (2018). The book includes a chapter she authored titled, "Earthseeds of Change: Post-Apocalyptic Mythmaking, Race, and Ecology in The Book of Eli and Octavia Butler’s Womanist Parables.”  She has written about the representation of race, gender, and economy in popular culture, literature and film, and most recently in gothic/horror/sci-fi studies. She additionally writes poetry in the tradition of Black feminist eco-poetics.

Troy Hicks is a professor of English and education at Central Michigan University. He directs the Chippewa River Writing Project and collaborates with K–12 colleagues to explore how they implement newer literacies in their classrooms. Dr. Hicks has authored dozens of resources including books, articles, chapters, blog posts, and other media broadly related to the teaching of literacy in our digital age. You can learn more about my work on Twitter @hickstro

John is a principal at Paradigm Studio based on the West coast of the United States. His writing and producing credits include critically acclaimed/award-winning independent feature length films and multi-part series. Subject matter for scripted dramas cover a range of topics including tour-based music culture à la Grateful Dead & Phish and the phenomenon of a Seattle mass-shooting along with documentaries addressing Pacific salmon conservation, American WW II south sea history and the global Jazz art form. His work has been distributed by Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Apple TV, Peacock, Showtime, PBS, AFI, Sundance Now, SXSW, SIFF and the Cannes Film Market. Find his work online at: www.paradigmstudio.film

Lewis Hyde is a poet, essayist, translator, and cultural critic with a particular interest in the public life of the imagination. His 1983 book, The Gift, illuminates and defends the non-commercial portion of artistic practice. Trickster Makes This World (1998) uses a group of ancient myths to argue for the disruptive intelligence that all cultures need if they are to remain lively and open to change. Common as Air (2010) is a spirited defense of our “cultural commons,” that vast store of ideas, inventions, and works of art that we have inherited from the past and continue to enrich in the present.

Hyde’s most recent book, A Primer for Forgetting, explores the many situations in which forgetfulness is more useful than memory—in myth, personal psychology, politics, art, and spiritual life.

Dr. Allison Ford is an environmental sociologist whose work asks how culture and emotions shape our responses to environmental risk, particularly climate change. Her ethnographic research is informed by feminist theory and methodology. Dr. Ford is especially interested in the relationship between structural inequality, culture, emotions, and the reproduction of environmental privilege. Dr. Ford is an Assistant Professor in the Anthropology Department and the Department of Geography, Environmental, and Planning (GEP) at Sonoma State University, where she also serves as affiliate faculty to the Cultural Heritage Resources Management program.

Emilie Gomez is a senior at Credo High School in Sonoma County, Northern California. A dedicated student with a creative sensibility, she brings passion and imagination to exploring the intersection of social and environmental justice. Emilie plans to attend a four-year college next year, where she will continue her studies in biology and environmental science, combining her curiosity and vision to address critical issues facing our planet.