Tom Fields-Meyer is author of the critically acclaimed memoir "Following Ezra: What One Father Learned About Gumby, Otters, Autism, and Love from His Extraordinary Son," a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and The Washington Post. The coauthor (with Barry M. Prizant) of "Uniquely Human: A Different Way of Seeing Autism," and former senior writer for People, he lives in Los Angeles, where he teaches in the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program.

Sarah Bunin Benor is a Professor of Contemporary Jewish Studies at Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, where she teaches mostly masters students in the School of Jewish Nonprofit Management and undergraduates at the University of Southern California. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University in Linguistics in 2004. She is the author of Becoming Frum: How Newcomers Learn the Language and Culture of Orthodox Judaism (Rutgers University Press, 2012) and Hebrew Infusion: Language and Community at American Jewish Summer Camps (Rutgers University Press, 2020), as well as many articles about Jewish languages, Yiddish, and American Jews. Dr. Benor has received several fellowships and prizes, including the Dorot Fellowship in Israel, the Wexner Graduate Fellowship, and the Sami Rohr Choice Award for Jewish Literature. She is founding co-editor of the Journal of Jewish Languages and co-editor of Languages in Jewish Communities, Past and Present (De Gruyter Mouton, 2018) and We the Resilient: Wisdom for America from Women Born Before Suffrage (Luminare Press, 2017). She founded and directs the HUC-JIR Jewish Language Project, which includes the Jewish Language Website and the Jewish English Lexicon. Her current projects analyze Hebrew use at Jewish supplementary schools and the names Jews give their children and their pets. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Mark, and their daughters, Aliza, Dalia, and Ariella.