Allison Vesterfelt

Writer

You might be wondering why on earth I'm showing you a picture of my couch. Here's why: It's because this is what it looks like to give up everything.

Simi Singh Juneja

Mother, Writer, Epiphany Finder

If one more sun-kissed expat walks up the steps from yoga class without his shirt on, while the sun is pouring down on his perfect body and long tousled hair, I am going to slap the living daylights out of that mosquito that is terrorizing my ankle. I just murdered a mosquito.

Karen Mack and Jennifer Kaufman

Authors, 'Freud's Mistress'

Did Sigmund Freud, the greatest figure in history to explain human sexuality and desire, have an affair with his wife's younger sister? Six years ago, a German sociologist finally resolved the burning question that has fascinated Freud scholars for the past century.

Annette Insdorf

Director of undergraduate film studies, Columbia University, and author of PHILIP KAUFMAN

Given the highly publicized drama of Roman Polanski's personal life, his superlative work as a filmmaker is sometimes relegated to the back burner.

PEN American Center

Global literary community protecting free expression and celebrating literature

Decisions about self-censorship today are increasingly an international problem that affects writers around the world.

Marcus Chown

Writer and journalist based in London, England

My latest book is about everything... from finance to thermodynamics, sex to special relativity, human evolution to holography. In researching and writing it, I began to appreciate more and more what a wonderful world we live in -one far more incredible than anything we could possibly have invented. Here are just some of the bonkers things I learnt.

Dr Dipesh Navsaria, MPH, MSLIS, MD

Medical Director, Reach Out and Read Wisconsin

Reading builds motivation, curiosity and memory. It nurtures children and encourages them to form a positive association with books and reading later in life.

Richard Steiner

Professor and conservation biologist

Even those in our national parks are hunted and trapped when they cross invisible boundaries, leading to the disintegration of family groups. And ignorant wildlife policies of western state governments continue to sanction the indiscriminate wolf killing that symbolized the wild west of the 19th century.

Emma Ruby-Sachs

Attorney

When I was 11 years old my father handed me a copy of Ender's Game. I'd been reading science fiction for a while and the escape it provided was a life-saver. I was a lonely kid, often unable to connect to other children. I was precocious. I was a nerd. And I was gay.

Paul Brandeis Raushenbush

Senior Religion Editor, The Huffington Post

I playfully asked Joshua Dubois what Biblical figure President Obama most closely resembled, giving him the choice of the Holy Spirit, Jesus or God.

Linda Flanagan

Freelance writer

For any woman who has grappled with competing identities over the years, Spar's book is a refreshing acknowledgement of the impossible expectations women carry around with them, starting in adolescence and extending into old age.

Pam Allyn

Founder and Executive Director, LitWorld & LitLife; author; literacy and education expert and advocate

So, I eat crow on this one. I've been trumpeting the digital revolution for readers for years. But I miss my tattered pages, my rumpled book covers, my heavy backpack, my cherished, cherished book covers.

David Brock

Founder, Media Matters for America

That Benghazi would remain at the forefront of the contentious American political conversation speaks less to any special circumstances of the attack, and more to the insidious nature of a Republican noise machine that has grown in size and decibels over the last four decades.

Beth Feldman

Beth Feldman is the founder of RoleMommy.com and a public relations professional.

"I was two people. I was entertaining people in the living room and trying to find out the meaning of life in my bedroom. And kids don't get credit for having those thoughts and they do. They really do wonder about creation and so it was my way of relating to them on that level."

PureWow

Few things are simultaneously as tight-lipped and wildly ostentatious as the world of fashion. But if you're anything like us, one glimpse sends your voyeuristic tendencies spiraling. This month, the plebeians can peek into the beautiful madness through three new tomes.

Don Tapscott

Advisor to government and business leaders; Author, 'Macrowikinomics'

The solution might be to have the U.S. and Canada come together to form one country where the assets of each and the process of a merger might fix some intractable challenges they both face. This is the thesis of best-selling author and dual citizen of the U.S. and Canada, Diane Francis.

Chris Hoofnagle

Privacy Expert at UC Berkeley Law

The Circle joins Gary Shteyngart's hilarious Super Sad True Love Story in its prediction of the kind of world we might get to live in if we continue to outsource our data and decisions about it to Silicon Valley's technocrats.