Professor Dirst is the founder and artistic director of Ars Lyrica Houston, a Grammy-nominated ensemble specializing in Baroque chamber and dramatic works. He is associate professor of musicology at the…

Gregory Barnett is co-director of the Collegium Musicum and chair of musicology in the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University. He earned a BA at Oberlin College and a MFA…

Carl Cunningham was classical music and dance critic for three decades for The Houston Post.  He currently writes program notes for Playbill magazine, The Houston Symphony and other classical music…

Charles Ward became classical music critic for the Houston Chronicle in 1974 and covered all arts in Houston for nearly 34 years before retiring in 2008.  He also reported on…

Maggie Galehouse regularly interviews authors and writes about all things literary as the books editor for the Houston Chronicle. She grew up in New England and earned a PhD in…

Christoph Wolff is a professor emeritus at Harvard University.  He is director of the Bach Archive in Leipzig, the world’s preeminent center of Bach scholarship.  Born and educated in Germany,…

Houstonian Katherine Center is the author of four bittersweet novels about love and family--The Bright Side of Disaster, Everyone is Beautiful, Get Lucky, and The Lost Husband---and she has just…

Stephen Fried is an award-winning investigative journalist, personal essayist, and adjunct professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.  He is author of five books: Thing of Beauty: The Tragedy…

John Ninnemann is Professor Emeritus of Biology and former Dean of Arts and Sciences at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. He has spent the last decade studying the Anasazi…

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is the author of fifteen books, including two prize-winning story collections, Arranged Marriage and The Unknown Errors of Our Lives, four volumes of poetry, and the bestselling…