Sarah Jordan is a National Magazine Award-nominated writer who lives in Philadelphia. She has written extensively on arts & entertainment, culture, innovation, style, and design. Sarah has written for national and regional magazines and newspapers including Philadelphia Magazine, Philadelphia Inquirer, Parents, Parenting, Philadelphia Style Magazine, The Magazine Antiques, New Jersey Life, Philadelphia Weekly, Seven Arts Magazine, and Playbill. She is also a contributor to TimeOut Philadelphia, Billy Penn, Philadelphia Citizen, Hidden City Philadelphia.

She has authored the humorous The Teen Owner’s Manual: Operating Instructions, Troubleshooting Tips, and Advice for Parents (Quirk). The previous year, she wrote The Pregnancy Instruction Manual: Essential Information, Troubleshooting Tips, and Advice for Parents-to-be (Quirk). Sarah is also the co-author of The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Parenting and The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook: Weddings.

Along with being a finalist for the American Society of Magazine Editors’ (ASME) National Magazine Awards for Leisure Interests, Sarah has been honored as a Gold Medal winner of the National City and Regional Magazine Award for Leisure/Lifestyle and a Pennsylvania Newspaper Association Keystone Award winner for Feature Story. Sarah is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and has received a Bachelor of Arts as well as a Masters of Arts in English. Additionally, Sarah is an avid reader, sports fan, Francophile, coffee aficionado, world traveler, and friend to animals (particularly cats).

Melissa Jensen is an award-winning university teacher and writer, with roots in San Francisco and heart in the world of words. She has over a decade's experience in the University of Pennsylvania classroom (even more if you count her own undergraduate and graduate student years there), currently as English Department faculty teaching 19th, 20th, and 21st century literature. For many years, she taught both undergrads and grads in Penn's Creative Writing Program, with frequent focus on the personal essay. She was inaugural faculty for the Penn Summer Prep high school program, and remains on the roster there, again, with strong emphasis on essay writing, especially the college application essay.

Melissa is also the multi-published author of Young Adult novels, including The Fine Art of Truth or Dare and the upcoming Across from Solitude. Her books have been official selections on such lists as New York Public Library's Teen Reading and FYA.

Mother of adolescents, devoted possessor of too many books and too much technology, she lives in a beloved two-hundred-year-old house in Philadelphia where much is tilted, mysteriously shadowed, or creaky. She would often rather be in London, and spent several years with her family dividing their time between Pennsylvania and Dublin, Ireland. Like Sarah, she is much about animals but prefers (and shares the creaky house with) bunnies.