John Cribb made his first contribution to a Hub City Writers Project book in 2008 with an essay in Stars Fell on Spartanburg: Hub City's Celebrity Encounters. During his career, he has tackled writing jobs ranging from speechwriting to television script consulting to developing online history courses. In recent years he co-edited The Human Odyssey, a three-volume world history textbook. In 2008 he co-authored The American Patriot's Almanac, a national bestseller.

Peter Caster is an assistant professor of literature and film at the University of South Carolina Upstate and the author of the book Prisons, Race, and Masculinity in Twentieth-Century U.S. Literature and Film, published by The Ohio State University Press in 2008. He has written scholarly articles for the Drama Review, English Language Notes, Papers of the Bibliographical Society, and several collections on popular culture and teaching. 

Dot Jackson was born to Appalachian parents in Miami in 1932 and gave up her college studies of music and dance to become a writer. She turned an abiding curiosity into a lifelong career in newspapers, where she covered the mountain regions of the Carolinas, Georgia, Virginia and Tennessee, going from murder trials to snake-handling prayer meetings to some of the hardest-fought environmental battles of our times.

Thomas R. McDaniel, an essayist in Hub City's Stars Fell on Spartanburg, is senior vice president at Converse College. Among his 250-plus publications are eight books and thirty textbook chapters, as well as articles in over 50 different journals in education, humanities, and the social sciences. Presently, he serves as Executive Editor for The Clearing House. He co-authored with Nan McDaniel and Sandra Thomas At Home in South Carolina.