About the authors

Amid Amidi
CartoonBrew.com

Amid Amidi is an award-winning historian and critic. He is the author of multiple books including Cartoon Modern: Style and Design in Fifties Animation (Chronicle Books), and the publisher of Animation Blast magazine. He is also co-founder of the popular animation industry blog Cartoon Brew and the online short film site Cartoon Brew Films.

Levi Asher
LiteraryKicks.com

Levi Asher is the founder and editor of a literary blog, Literary Kicks, and a political blog, The Cherry Orchard. Other recent online credits include Pearl Jam, Words Without Borders, History Channel, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. Asher lives in Queens, New York, has three children and enjoys writing poetry, playing guitar, playing poker and posting to way too many blogs at once.

Wendy Boswell
About.com

Wendy Boswell is a writer living just outside of Portland, Oregon with her husband, three kids, one large dog, and three cats. She writes about the wonders of the web at About Web Search (part of the New York Times company), does consulting work for a variety of enterprising startups, and for two years scattered the productivity love over at Lifehacker, one of the most popular and well-read blogs on the webernets. On the less technical and non-efficiency-contributing side, you can find Wendy blogging at Snarky Gossip, Gryffindor Gazette, Stewie's Playground, and Hunky Blog. Wendy has just finished her first book titled The About.com Guide to Online Research, and when not zipping around on the Internet's series of tubes loves to go hiking, watch corny sci-fi, and paint.

Alice Bradley
Finslippy.com

Called "laugh-your-lunch-out-your-nose funny" and "absolute hilarity" by its readers, Finslippy has been nominated for several awards, including Funniest Blog (2005 Best of Blogs) and Best Writing of a Weblog (2006 Bloggie Awards) and has been cited by such publications as Redbook and the New York Times. Finslippy has also been the Featured Blog on Typepad. Alice Bradley, the site's creator, is a fiction and comedy writer who has appeared on Bravo.

Seth Cassel
Flamingnet.com

Seth is a seventeen-year-old high school student in Baltimore, Maryland, and a member of the American Library Association (ALA). Along with his father, Seth is co-webmaster of Flamingnet Book Reviews (www.flamingnet.com), a nonprofit website dedicated to promoting reading and featuring student book reviews. Seth was recently the recipient of the Plum Award from DoSomething.org for his work as a social entrepreneur and the Sagebrush Corporation Award from the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) of the ALA. The Sagebrush Award honors a member(s) of YALSA who has developed an outstanding reading or literature program for young adults. When not working on Flamingnet or studying to keep up with a challenging academic schedule, Seth can be found pursuing tennis, robotics, and photography, or just curled up in his favorite chair with a good book.

Diane Danielson
Downtown Women's Club

Diane K. Danielson is the CEO and founder of the Downtown Women's Club (www.DowntownWomensClub.com), a professional network and career website for businesswomen. She is the co-author of The Savvy Gal's Guide to Online Networking (or What Would Jane Austen Do?) (2007) and Table Talk: The Savvy Girl's Alternative to Networking (2003). In addition, she reviews business books for Entrepreneur magazine, and blogs for www.womensDISH.com and the Boston Globe. Diane and her son live by the ocean in Massachusetts where she often ponders "just what would Jane Austen do?"

Natalie Zee Drieu
Coquette

Natalie Zee Drieu is an author, writer, and award-winning web designer based in San Francisco, CA. Her fashion + digital style blog Coquette is rated one of the "Top 50 Fashion Blogs in the U.S." by FashionIQ and covers her love of fashion, style and technology. This year she's teaming up with Diana Eng from Project Runway Season 2 for an upcoming book, TechStyle: Create Wired Wearables and Geeky Gear, coming to bookstores this summer 2008. Natalie is currently Senior Editor for O'Reilly's CRAFT Magazine and also writes daily for the CRAFT blog at craftzine.com.

Robert Duffy
Donewaiting.com

In 2003, Robert Duffy created music blog donewaiting.com in Columbus OH. In 2005 Robert Duffy is the founder of donewaiting.com, a music blog based out of Columbus OH. In 2005 he started micro-record label Sunken Treasure Records. In October 2008 he's getting married.

Jessica Emerson
Austen-tatious

Jessica Emerson (aka "JaneFan") is a technical writer/editor by day and an avid novel reader by night. Recently transplanted from suburban Maryland to the Piedmont Triad area of North Carolina, she is a member of the NC chapter of JASNA as well as three local book clubs (and counting!). She depends upon her supportive husband, loving family, and crazy cats to maintain her sanity. Her Jane Austen fan blog, Austen-tatious , has been in existence since 2003.

Mark Frauenfelder
BoingBoing.net

Mark is a writer and illustrator living in Los Angeles, and the editor-in-chief of MAKE magazine. He is the cofounder of the popular Boing Boing weblog (which has won top awards for three years running at the SXSW conference) and was an editor at Wired from 1993-1998.

For several years, he wrote a monthly technology column for Playboy magazine and has written for The New York Times Magazine, Popular Science, The Hollywood Reporter, and Business 2.0.

Mark is the author of several books, including The Happy Mutant Handbook (1995, Riverhead) a guide to offbeat pop culture, Mad Professor (2003, Chronicle) a book of bizarre science experiments for kids, World's Worst (2005, Chronicle) a guide to the worst stuff on earth, and The Computer, an illustrated history of computers (2005, Carlton books). He's currently writing a guide to online tricks and tips, called Rule the Web (2007, St. Martins).

His illustrations have appeared in Wired, The Industry Standard, Children's Television Workshop, Turner Cable, and Time Warner.

Anastasia Goodstein
Ypulse.com

Anastasia Goodstein is the founder of Ypulse.com, which provides daily news & commentary about Generation Y for media and marketing professionals and is the author of Totally Wired: What teens and tweens are really doing online (St. Martin's Griffin, 2007).

Angela Gunn
USA Today Tech Space

Angela Gunn blogs about science, geek culture and technology for USAToday.com at Tech_Space and edits the security channel at Computerworld.com. She's written columns for publications including Yahoo! Internet Life, Seattle Weekly, Computer Shopper, and ZD Internet Magazine, but these days she can't imagine writing for printed publications ever again. (Ironic for someone whose favorite place in the world is the library.) She was born and raised in Nebraska and goes home whenever the border patrol allows it.

David Gutowski
Largeheartedboy.com

David Gutowski is the author and editor of the (mostly) music blog, Largehearted Boy. Publishing from deep in the American South, this web developer shares daily free and legal music downloads; music, literature, and pop culture news; and features that merge music with literature. The blog's Book Notes series has been called a "coveted marketing spot for authors" by the Wall Street Journal, and asks authors to create and discuss a music playlist for their recently published book. Other features include Note Books, which has musicians discuss books, and weekly CD and DVD release lists.

Kristen Hammond
Mommy Needs a Cocktail

Kristen's only claim to Austen fame is the sheer volume of time she has spent either watching Jane Austen adaptations and reading Jane Austen novels. In fact, much of her 20's was spent lying on the couch watching Pride and Prejudice. Which is probably why she didn't get married until she was in her 30's. She doesn't understand why Colin Firth is trying to move beyond his epic performance and she just may have, on occasion, mentioned that he is the only man who could ever persuade her to leave her husband. When she isn't reading Sense and Sensibility to her 3 year old son, you can find Kristen sharing stories of her half-assed parenting at MommyNeedsaCocktail.com or screen printing smart ass t-shirts in her basement for her online store, Baby Brewing.

Henry Jenkins
Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins

Henry Jenkins is the Co-Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program and the Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities. He is the author and/or editor of twelve books on various aspects of media and popular culture, including Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture, The Wow Climax: Tracing the Emotional Impact of Popular Culture, Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture, Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture, and From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games. Jenkins writes regularly about media and cultural change at his blog, henryjenkins.org. He is one of the principal investigators for The Education Arcade, a consortium of educators and business leaders working to promote the educational use of computer and video games and of the Knight Center for Future Civic Media, a joint effort with the MIT Media Lab to use new media to enhance how people live in local communities. He is one of the principle investigators for GAMBIT, a lab focused on promoting experimentation through game design, and of Project nml, a MacArthur Foundation funded project that develops curricular materials focused on promoting the social skills and cultural competencies needed to become a full participant in the new media era. Jenkins has a MA in Communication Studies from the University of Iowa and a PhD in Communication Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

M. Kennedy
Fussy.org

M. Kennedy was born and raised on Velveeta and Spam in the suburbs of the American West. She has driven cross-country six times in a Volkswagen. She has two Web sites: Fussy, her personal blog, and yogabeans! where she uses her son's actions figures to demonstrate the great primary series of Ashtanga yoga. Her husband believes she could develop her unlimited potential if only she'd disable her e-mail.

Heather Laurence
Solitary Elegance and GimletBlog

A sixth-generation Seattleite, Heather Laurence will always be a little wet behind the ears. Her web site Solitary Elegance is best known as a resource for all Northanger Abbey-related radio plays, stage plays, and screenplays. Her own screenplay, Northanger Ranch, received an Honorable Mention at the 2006 Gloria Film Festival. She also maintains her family blog >(GimletBlog) and writes for AustenBlog.

Justin Lindsay
UglyOverload.com

Justin Lindsay has been blogging now for two years. He began with a family blog, which highlighted the antics of his four children, but soon moved on to another passion of his -- the animal kingdom. He graduated from UC Davis with a degree in history, is an accountant by trade, and is an aspiring novelist. He enjoys Northern California, where he spends time with his wife and children.

Kyle MacDonald
Oneredpaperclip.com

Originally from Belcarra, British Columbia, Canada, Kyle MacDonald has planted more than one hundred thousand trees, delivered more than one thousand pizzas, but eaten only one scorpion. He has also traded one red paperclip for a house only once. When he's not stealing a flag from the Prime Minister's office or promoting Alberta Beef by hitch-hiking in a parade, you might find him leaving his wallet in El Segundo or hanging out in Bangkok modeling Italian Soccer jerseys to fund 4am Red-Bull and Rum-fueled urban hitchhikes. He also enjoys writing third-person bio pages for his website and loves to stand on street corners in Montreal hawking shoddily-bound English literature to Francophones in sub-zero temperatures.

His mom still cuts his hair.

Born: October 3, 1979

Merlin Mann
43Folders.com

Merlin Mann is the editor and primary contributor for 43 Folders.

His writing has been featured in popular magazines, including WIRED, Business 2.0, Popular Science, and MacWorld.

Merlin writes and consults on a Macintosh computer in the Parkside District of San Francisco.

43 Folders has been featured in The New York Times Magazine, The Economist, The NBC Nightly News, Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and many more national and international media outlets.

Of the over 30 million sites currently tracked by Technorati.com, 43 Folders is consistently ranked in the top 100.

Terrie Miller
CritterGeek.com

Terrie Miller publishes CritterGeek.com and CitizenSci.com. She lives in Northern California with her husband Steve, dog Laika, cats Buddy and Scout, snakes Ringo and Dash, and lots of bird feeders. In her day job she's the online manager for the Maker Media division of O'Reilly Media, Inc.

Moxie
Ask Moxie

Moxie (not her real name) is a mother of two who lives in New York City. Five years ago, she was joking that the sweetest job in the world would be syndicated advice columnist. Now she's an internet advice columnist (instant syndication!) at www.AskMoxie.org helping people deal with how to be parents the way they want to be. When not answering questions about looking at potty training in a meta way, Moxie works for a small software company, picks Lego pieces out of the bottoms of her feet, and watches innumerable episodes of Word Girl and Fetch with Ruff Ruffman.

Laurel Ann Nattress
Austenprose

Laurel Ann is a life-long acolyte of Jane Austen, who thinks that Austen's flighty character Harriet Smith is greatly mis-understood because she can relate to her perspective first hand! Never one to shy away from a good adventure, one day she jumped on the internet and started a blog, www.austenprose.wordpress.com, to honor her favorite authoress and just blather a bit about "important nothings". She delights in introducing neophytes to the charms of Miss Austen's prose as a bookseller at Barnes & Noble, who kindly support her in her passion by allowing her to order far too many Jane Austen books into the store in her attempt to sell them to the most unlikely customers. She lives in a country cottage near Seattle, Washington with her two kitties Molly and Herman who frequently walk across her computer keyboard trying to edit her bad grammar and spelling.

Joe Pagetta
JoePagetta.com

A native of Jersey City, NJ, Joe Pagetta currently handles media relations for Nashville Public Television and the Nashville Film Festival. Like many English majors -- he has a B.A. from St. Peter's College -- he's had a diverse working career that has included stints as a sports and news reporter, a retail designer and a music business marketing professional, among other things. Through it all, he's remained a singer-songwriter, writer and a sponge for the arts, notably of the film, music and literature variety. When he's not busy trying to relate with the media, or maintaining the NPT Media Update blog, he posts his essays and blogs on his own web site and accompanying Cultural Sponge Blog at joepagetta.com.

Erica Perl
Author

According to Washingtonian magazine, award-winning children's books author Erica S. Perl is "a writer to watch" (translation: count your silverware after she leaves your house). Her most recent children's book, Ninety-Three in my Family, received the Reuben Award for Best Illustrated Book and was a Book Sense Pick and Slate magazine Best Book of 2006. Erica's children's books blog, Pajamazon, can be found at offsprung.com and at ericaperl.com. When Erica is not writing, she can often be found at elementary schools and libraries, where she gives presentations to children about writing, reading and other bad habits.

Eric Prescott
AnAnimalFriendlyLife.com

Eric Prescott is the editor and author behind An Animal-Friendly Life, which recently spun off a monthly column for TasteBetter.com. His writing has also been featured in numerous newspapers and magazines, including The Los Angeles Times and VegNews. An inveterate polymath, Eric occasionally gets out from behind the computer to speak to students and other groups about the benefits of an animal-free diet; to produce, direct and act (sometimes all at once); and to help run film festivals seeking to make the world a better place. A recent transplant to Boston, MA, Eric co-founded and runs the Boston Vegan Association.

Myretta Robens
Republic of Pemberley

Myretta Robens has lived in Regency England since she was old enough to read Jane Austen. Unfortunately, no eligible peers presented themselves and she never could get vouchers for Almacks, so she was forced to make her way in trade.

In 1996, Myretta fell in love with an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and went looking online for others with same malady. She found Amy Bellinger and, together, they built the Republic of Pemberley, a site that has grown to unexpected size and popularity. Myretta still manages it.

Eventually, Myretta decided to try her hand at her own version of the period. Kensington Publishing published Once Upon a Sofa and Just Say Yes in 2005. Her second book was a finalist for The Romance Writers of America's prestigious RITA award. In her spare time, Myretta is a technology manager at Harvard University.

Alex Salkever
Hawaiirama.com

Alex Salkever is the founder and editor of Hawaiirama, a travel and events blog covering the Hawaiian Islands. He launched Hawaiirama in the summer of 2006. He's lived in Hawaii since 1994. Alex was formerly a technology editor at BusinessWeek.com. Aside from covering technology, he has written articles for a wide variety of publications including Conde Nast Traveler, Travel & Leisure , Wired , Outside , the Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, and Sunset Magazine. He is also an avid surfer who has ridden waves all over the world and spends as much time as possible in the water.

Victoire Sanborn
Jane Austen's World

Until a few years ago, Victoire Sanborn lived a rather sedate life, reading, painting, traveling the world over, watching movie marathons in her jammies, eating out with friends at exotic restaurants, and spending holidays with her family. Then she discovered blogging. These days you will find her more often than not perched on a comfortable chair in front of her computer in Richmond, Virginia, searching the Internet for all things Jane Austen. To put bread and butter on her table, and kibbles in her terrier's food dish, she works as a professional development specialist at a local university to provide nonprofit organizations with technical training. An admirer of Jane Austen since she was fourteen years old, Victoire intends to never outgrow her love for the author. Thanks to her newfound passion, she now owns her very own Jane Austen action doll.

Simran Sethi
Treehugger.com

Simran Sethi is an award-winning journalist who reports on sustainability. She is the contributing author of Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy, the companion guide to the PBS series Ethical Markets. Simran is the host/ writer of Sundance Channel's broadcast and broadband environmental programming The Green and anchors the news for TreeHugger.com - the largest environmental site on the web.

Simran presents a weekly environmental segment on Air America Radio and is the featured eco-expert on the syndicated green home makeover show, The EcoZone Project, airing on CBS and Fox affiliates. Simran holds an MBA in sustainable management from the Presidio School of Management and graduated cum laude with a BA in Sociology and Women's Studies from Smith College.

Lori Smith
Jane Austen Quote of the Day

Lori Smith fell in love with Austen when she was in college and happened to pick up a copy of Pride and Prejudice at a used book sale somewhere. She is author of A Walk with Jane Austen, which Publishers Weekly called an "engaging, deeply personal and well-researched travelogue." The book traces her month-long journey following Austen's life and writing through England, exploring themes of love and loss, faith, family and hope, with Jane's story and Lori's woven together. She runs austenquotes.com and followingausten.com (where you'll find excerpts of the book), and writes from her home in Virginia with her sweet, shy black lab named Bess.

Margaret Sullivan
AustenBlog.com

Margaret C. Sullivan is the Editrix of AustenBlog, a compendium of Jane Austen and her work in popular culture. She also is the author of The Jane Austen Handbook: A Sensible Yet Elegant Guide to Her World, a guide to everyday life in the world of Jane Austen's novels, and created and helps to maintain Molland's (mollands.net), a resource and community website for fans of Jane Austen and her novels. By day she is a web content coordinator for a large international law firm, and by night she lights candles in front of her shrine to Henry Tilney, who is a very smart beau indeed. Her personal website is Tilneys and Trap-doors.

Phillip Torrone
Makezine.com

Phillip Torrone is a New York City based author - he is currently the senior editor for MAKE Magazine, a contributing editor to Popular Science and writer for Howtoons. In his spare time he designs open source electronics and uses high powered laser beams.

Laurie Viera Rigler
janeaustenaddict.com

Laurie Viera Rigler is the author of Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, a comedy, love story, and exploration of identity in which a modern L.A. girl wakes up as an Englishwoman in Austen's time. Says USA Today: "A devotee of all things Austen... discovers the reality of life in Regency England: rampant body odor, sexual and class repression and a style of medical care involving bloodletting.... Despite the smells, little in [her] current lifestyle--including most of the men--can compete with the erotic charge of dancing in a candlelit ballroom."

In addition to writing the upcoming sequel to Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict, Laurie runs janeaustenaddict.com, which she describes as "diversions for Austen fans who dearly love a laugh." Janeaustenaddict.com includes a blog that celebrates the novels and more, a discussion forum, a collection of clips and trailers from Austen film adaptations and parodies, and information about Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict and the sequel.

When not re-reading Austen or writing books inspired by Austen, Laurie teaches writing workshops, including classes in storytelling technique at Vroman's, Southern California's oldest and largest independent bookstore.

John Watson
flagrantdisregard.com

John Watson is a father of two (a girl and a boy) and is self-employed as a software developer, a writer, and a photographer (in no particular order). He writes honestly and openly about the experiences of raising two young children at his blog flagrantdisregard.com where he has been accused by some readers of inciting a strong desire to have children (read with caution). He is also the photographer and writer behind the educational photography blog photodoto.com and is the creator of fd's Flickr Toys, a very popular collection of fun, free online toys for playing with digital photographs at bighugelabs.com. John lives in the suburbs of Los Angeles with his family.

Molly Wizenberg
Orangette.net

An Oklahoma native, Molly Wizenberg is a food writer and photographer living in Seattle. She publishes food stories and recipes on her blog Orangette, which has been called "downright addictive" by the Chicago Tribune. She is currently writing her first book, to be published in fall 2008 by Simon & Schuster. Her favorite things are grapes, butter, salami, and, at least once a day, a cold glass of milk with some graham crackers and chocolate.