Mary Paniccia Carden is Professor of English and Dean of the College of Education, Arts, and Humanities at PennWest University. She is the author of Women Writers of the Beat Era: Autobiography and Intertextuality (University of Virginia Press, 2018), which explores the autobiographical practices of Beat-associated women. She published a previous article on Joanne Kyger, as well as work on Joyce Johnson, Diane di Prima, Jack Kerouac, and Neal Cassady. Other publications include essays on Toni Morrison, William Faulkner, Louise Erdrich, Willa Cather, and Jane Smiley. Her research interests include women's autobiography and poetry of the #MMIW movement.

Jane Falk, retired Senior Lecturer from the Department of English, University of Akron, has written essays on the work of a number of members of the Beat Generation, most notably Joanne Kyger, Philip Whalen, and Michael McClure, as well as on Beat writing practices and Beats and film. Her dissertation, The Beat Avant-Garde, the 1950?s, and the Popularizing of Zen Buddhism in the United States (2002), Ohio State University, grew out of a class on Zen and the Beats Falk took with Kyger at Naropa University's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. In addition to taking classes with Kyger, Falk had the opportunity to interview her several times.