Gerard Beirne is an Irish author currently living in Canada.

His most recent collection of poems, Games of Chance - A Gambler's Manual, was published by Oberon Press, Fall 2011.

His novel The Eskimo in the Net was published by Marion Boyars in 2003 and was short-listed for the 2004 Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award. It was selected by the Daily Express as Book of the Year.

His collection of poetry, Digging My Own Grave (published by Dedalus Press) was runner-up for the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award. His story, "Sightings of Bono", was adapted for Irish film and featured Bono (of U2), it is now available as an eBook.

Beirne's CD of spoken word poetry - If it's words you're after - was released in 2006. He is a past winner of two Sunday Tribune/Hennessey Literary Awards including as New Irish Writer of the Year 1996. His collaboration with classical composer Siobhán Cleary (Hum), was called "a theatrical tour de force" by The Irish Times.

Beirne was the writer in residence for the 2008-2009 academical year at the University of New Brunswick, where he currently works at the English Department.

John Powers Severin (December 26, 1921 – February 12, 2012) was an American comic book artist noted for his distinctive work with EC Comics, primarily on the war comics Two-Fisted Tales and Frontline Combat; for Marvel Comics, especially its war and Western comics; and for his 45-year stint with the satiric magazine Cracked. He was one of the founding cartoonists of Mad in 1952.

Severin was inducted into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 2003.

John Severin was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, and was a teenager in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, New York City, when he began drawing professionally. While attending high school, he contributed cartoons to The Hobo News, receiving payment of one dollar per cartoon. Severin recalled in 1999:

He attended the High School of Music & Art in New York City, together with future EC Comics and Mad artists Harvey Kurtzman, Will Elder, Al Jaffee and Al Feldstein. After graduating from the High School of Music & Art in 1940, he worked as an apprentice machinist and then enlisted in the Army, serving in the Pacific during World War II.

James "Jim" Harrison (born December 11, 1937) is an American author known for his poetry, fiction, essays, reviews, and writings about food. He has been called "a force of nature", and his work has been compared to that of William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. Harrison's characters tend to be rural by birth and to have retained some qualities of their agrarian pioneer heritage by dint of their intelligence and some formal education. They attune themselves to both the natural and the civilized world, surrounded by excesses but determined to live their lives as well as possible.

Harrison was born in Grayling, Michigan, to Winfield Sprague Harrison, a county agricultural agent, and Norma Olivia (Wahlgren) Harrison, both avid readers.

He became blind in one eye after a childhood accident ("My left eye is blind and jogs like/a milky sparrow in its socket"). When he was 21 his father and sister died in an automobile accident. He was educated at Michigan State University where he received his B.A. (1960) and M.A. (1964) in comparative literature. In 1959, he married Linda King, with whom he has two daughters. After a short stint as assistant professor of English at State University of New York, Stony Brook (1965–66), he became a full-time writer. His awards include National Academy of Arts grants (1967, 1968, and 1969), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1969–70), the Spirit of the West Award from the Mountain & Plains Booksellers Association, and election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2007).

Giovanni Gabrieli (c. 1554/1557 – 12 August 1612) was an Italian composer and organist. He was one of the most influential musicians of his time, and represents the culmination of the style of the Venetian School, at the time of the shift from Renaissance to Baroque idioms.

Gabrieli was born in Venice. He was one of five children, and his father came from the region of Carnia and went to Venice shortly before Giovanni's birth. While not much is known about Giovanni's early life, he probably studied with his uncle, the composer Andrea Gabrieli; he may indeed have been brought up by him, as is implied by the dedication to his 1587 book of concerti, in which he described himself as "little less than a son" to his uncle. He also went to Munich to study with the renowned Orlando de Lassus at the court of Duke Albert V; most likely he stayed there until about 1579. Lassus was to be one of the principal influences on the development of his musical style.

By 1584 he had returned to Venice, where he became principal organist at San Marco di Venezia, also known as Saint Mark's Basilica, in 1585, after Claudio Merulo left the post; following his uncle's death the following year he took the post of principal composer as well. Also after his uncle's death he began editing much of the older man's music, which would otherwise have been lost; Andrea evidently had had little inclination to publish his own music, but Giovanni's opinion of it was sufficiently high that he devoted much of his own time to compiling and editing it for publication.