Sam Richardson, is a Taos-based artist, storyteller and writer. His art is displayed in a number of venues and he is a free-lance feature writer for publications in New Mexico and Texas. He has taught journalism for The University of New Mexico and taught art at Austin Community College. He is also known as a storyteller and occasionally does public performances in Taos. Among his topics is presidential humor. Sam’s last stop before moving to Taos a number of years ago was the Big Bend of Texas where he edited newspapers, was a contributor to state dailies, exhibited in regional art galleries, and operated his own guide service and tour company, running wilderness tours in the Big Bend and into old Mexico. His newspaper columns won four Texas press awards. His book about his time in the Big Bend, Twelve Lessons of the Desert, has been a consistent seller in Texas markets and to followers of his blogs and social media pages. His newest books Characters Who Never Got Their Own Comic Strip, An Adult Coloring Book and My Little Book of Caricatures, Third Edition, have just been released this year and are starting to gain momentum in book markets. Iris Keltz was raised in New York City with a family that stressed the Jewish narrative of suffering in a two-thousand-year Diaspora culminating in the Nazi Holocaust. She grew up believing that tiny Israel surrounded by dangerous enemies was greening an empty wasteland in order to create a safe haven for world Jewry. Another truth was revealed to her when she married into a Palestinian family and found sanctuary with them during the 1967 Six-Day War. Thirty-two years later she returned to the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel to bear witness to the repercussions of that war. Her first book, Scrapbook of a Taos Hippie: Tribal Tales from the Heart of a Cultural Revolution (Cinco Puntos Press, 2000) is an award winning historical memoir documenting the counterculture through vignettes, oral histories, photographs, newspaper articles, and other cultural memorabilia. It was named one of the top ten reads in New Mexico Magazine’ Centennial Issue. As a freelance journalist, Keltz’s articles, op-eds, and essays have appeared in print and electronic media, locally, nationally and internationally. She has spoken about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on radio, in universities, synagogues, churches, high schools, and civic centers, and as part of a national lobby with the Tikkun community in Washington, DC. She is a founding member of Jewish Voice for Peace-Abq and Friends of Sabeel-New Mexico.