Marshall Ramsey is the Editor-At-Large for Mississippi Today, a non-profit news website. He’s a two-time Pulitzer Finalist (2002 and 2006) and his work is nationally syndicated by Creators Syndicate. His work has appeared in The New York Times, USA Today and The Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, Miss.).

He is the author several successful books including three cartoon collections, two short story collections (Fried Chicken and Wine and Chainsaws and Casseroles) and the delightful children’s book Banjo’s Dream.

Ramsey’s cartoons, photos, stories and posts are frequently shared on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. He’s also the host of the weekly statewide radio program, Now You’re Talking with Marshall Ramsey and the television program Conversations on Mississippi Public Broadcasting. He has appeared on Fox & Friends, Inside Edition, CBSN and CNN New Day.

Joe Crespino is the Jimmy Carter Professor of History at Emory University. He is an expert in the political and cultural history of the twentieth century United States, and of the history of the American South since Reconstruction.

He has served as the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in American Studies at the University of Tubingen and has been named a Distinguished Lecturer by the Organization of American Historians. Crespino has published three books, has co-edited a collection of essays, and has written for academic journals as well as for popular forums such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, Politico, and the Wall Street Journal.

His most recent book – Atticus Finch: The Biography—Harper Lee, Her Father, and the Making of an American Icon – was published in 2018 by Basic Books.

Maude Schuyler Clay was born in Greenwood, Mississippi. After attending the University of Mississippi she moved to New York City and worked at LIGHT Gallery and then as a photography editor and photographer for Esquire, Fortune, Vanity Fair, and other publications.

She started her color portrait series “Mississippi History” in 1975 when she came upon her first Rolleiflex 2¼ camera. At the time, she was living and working in New York and paid frequent visits to her native Mississippi Delta whose landscape and people continued to inspire her.

When Maude Schuyler Clay returned to live in the Mississippi Delta in 1987, she continued her color portrait work, for which she received the Mississippi Arts and Letters award for photography in 1988, and in 1992. In 1993, she began a series of black and white photographs of the Delta landscape. The University Press of Mississippi published her widely recognized monograph DELTALAND in 1999, which received the Mississippi Arts and Letters Award in 2000.

Her photography is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and The National Museum for Women in the Arts, among others. She continues to live in the Delta with her husband, photographer Langdon Clay, and three children.

Rick Cleveland, a native of Hattiesburg and resident of Jackson, has been Mississippi Today’s sports columnist since 2016. Rick has worked for the Hattiesburg American, Monroe (La.) News Star World, Jackson Daily News and Clarion Ledger as a reporter, editor and columnist.

He also was executive director of the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame and Museum. His work as a syndicated columnist and celebrated sports writer has appeared in numerous magazines, periodicals and newspapers. Rick has authored four books and has been recognized 14 times as Mississippi Sports Writer of the Year.

He was inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame in 2016 and into the Hattiesburg Hall of Fame in 2018. He received the Richard Wright Award for Literary Excellence in 2011 and was inducted into the University of Southern Mississippi Communications Hall of Fame in 2018. In 2000, he was honored with the Distinguished Mississippian Award from Mississippi Press Association. He has received numerous state, regional and national awards for his column writing and reporting.

Curtis Wilkie is a retired newspaper reporter, college professor and historian of the American South. He is the author of numerous books including When Evil Lived in Laurel: The White Knights and the Murder of Vernon Dahmer, The Fall of the House of Zeus, and Dixie: A Personal Odyssey Through Events That Shaped the Modern South.

Historian Douglas Brinkley has written that, "Over the past four decades no reporter has critiqued the American South with such evocative sensitivity and bedrock honesty as Curtis Wilkie." Wilkie spent almost 30 years with the Boston Globe, covered 7 presidential elections, was their White House Bureau Chief, and their Middle East Bureau Chief before 'retiring' to teach at Ole Miss and write books. He now lives in Oxford, MS.

JoAnne Prichard Morris is a Mississippi native born in Indianola in 1944. She is a graduate of the University of Mississippi and did graduate work in folklore and Southern culture at Western Kentucky University. In 1967 she was teaching high school in Yazoo City when she met Willie Morris. She worked as executive editor at the University Press of Mississippi from 1983 to 1997, and in 1990, she became the second wife of the well-known writer Willie Morris, who died in 1999.

Her best known work is Barefootin’: Life Lessons From the Road to Freedom, written with Civil Rights activist Unita Blackwell. She is the co-author of Yazoo: Its Legends and Legacies (1976). She edited the memoir of Elise Varner Winter, William Winter’s wife called Once in a Lifetime: Reflections of a Mississippi First Lady, published in May, 2015.

With a mix of roots rock, heavy blues and country music along with the harmonies of brothers John and Ted Siegel, The Deltaz have made their mark on the Americana-Country genre. Started while the brothers were in their teens, The Deltaz has found success touring across the country and overseas, as well as stared personal tragedy in the face. Being the songwriters that they are, the brothers take their experiences to create vivid storytelling songs, such as their latest single “I’ve Been Rejected,” released on Friday, August 23

We’re brothers John Siegel (Vocals, Drums, Harmonica) and Ted Siegel (Vocals, Guitar). We’re an Americana Blues duo from Los Angeles, CA now based out of Nashville, TN. We’re heavy bluesy, roots-y, harmony driven music.

David Rae Morris was born in Oxford, England and grew up in New York City. His photographs have been published in National Geographic, Time Magazine, Newsweek, USA Today, New York Times, Utne Reader, The Nation, as well as the Angolite, the official Magazine of the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, and Love And Rage, a national anarchist weekly.

In 1999, Morris collaborated with his late father, the noted author Willie Morris, on "My Mississippi," a collection of essays and photographs about the state of Mississippi and her people. His photographs are in many private and public collections including in the permanent collections of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art and the Louisiana State Museum in New Orleans, and Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson. His exhibit, “Do You Know What it Means? The Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina,” opened at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art ten weeks after Katrina made landfall. His post Katrina work was also featured in the book, "Missing New Orleans," published by the Ogden. His 2012 film “Integrating Ole Miss: James Meredith and Beyond” was broadcast on Mississippi Public Broadcasting and received a Special Recognition Award from the Mississippi Humanities Council and a Telly Award. His third film, “Yazoo Revisited: Integration and Segregation in a Deep Southern Town” examines the integration of the public schools in his father’s hometown of Yazoo City, Mississippi. It won the“Most Transformative Film” award at the 2015 Crossroads Film Festival in Jackson, and shown at festivals in Clarksdale, Oxford, Hattiesburg, Gulfport and at the 26th Annual New Orleans Film Festival.

His 2022 book "Love, Daddy: Letters From My Father" was published by the University Press of Mississippi and has won the 2023 photography award from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters. He and his longtime partner, Susanne Dietzel, have an 21 year-old daughter, Uma Rae Morris Dietzel. They live in New Orleans with two cats.