Upon graduating from college, Crilley embarked on a series of jobs teaching English in the Far East. While living in Japan, in the fall of 1992, he invented Akiko and fashioned her first adventure, a 33-page comic book story entitled “Akiko on the Planet Smoo” which would go on to be published by Sirius Entertainment of Dover, New Jersey.

In 1998, Crilley was chosen by “Entertainment Weekly” magazine for a spot on the “It List”, their annual issue dedicated to the “100 most creative people in entertainment,” sharing the honor with Chris Ware as one of two comic book creators to be featured that year. Since that time Crilley as written and Illustrated a series of novelized adaptations of “Akiko” for young readers for Random House Children’s Books. The first in the series, “Akiko on the Planet Smoo”, was published in March of 2000; the tenth, “Akiko and the Missing Misp”, hit stores in November of 2008.  Other publications include: “Billy Clikk: Creatch Battler.” The second book in the series, “Billy Clikk: Rogmasher Rampage,” hit stores in the fall of 2005. His novels have been featured in USA Today, the New York Daily News, and Disney Adventures Magazine, as well as on CNN Headline News.

Crilley’s latest creation, the four-volume manga series “Miki Falls,” was published by HarperCollins over a period of just eight months from 2007 to early 2008. Kirkus reviews called it “stellar” and the American Library Association put it on their official list of recommended graphic novels. It has since been optioned for film development by Paramount Pictures and Brad Pitt’s Plan B production company.

Ron Kovach is senior editor of The Writer magazine, where his many duties include planning issues, evaluating queries, working with writers, and editing and headlining copy. He has done in-depth interview articles with many well-known authors, including David McCullough, Gay Talese, Anne Lamott, Julia Glass and Jimmy Carter. He came to the magazine in 2001; before that he was in newspapers for 24 years in a variety of editorial roles. At various  times he has been an active freelance writer, with articles in The Washington Post and many other publications.

David Carter attended college at Emory University, where he majored in religion while also taking many French courses.  He received his MA in South Asian Studies from the University of Wisconsin. Soon after moving to Wisconsin, he became a gay activist. Carter is the founder of the Madison Committee for Gay Rights and cofounded The United and served as one of their spokespersons.  He and two friends  started what was apparently the nation’s second gay television series, Glad To Be Gay, and, for a spin-off of that program, Nothing To Hide, he interviewed one of his favorite writers, Allen Ginsberg. Through the activism of this period, a grass roots movement was created that resulted in Wisconsin passing the first statewide gay rights law.

Carter moved to New York in 1985 where he began working for Chelsea House Publishers, then the nation’s premier publisher of young adult multicultural books.  While there he proposed the creation of two new series, a lesbian and gay biography series and a lesbian and gay studies series, both of which he helped Chelsea House launch before leaving the company.

Hired by Allen Ginsberg to edit his interviews, Carter published the compilation of those interviews as Spontaneous Mind (2001) after Ginsberg’s death.    Carter is also the author of Stonewall: The Riots That Sparked the Gay Revolution (2004). In 1998, Carter received a grant from the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation to research a nomination to put the site of the Stonewall Riots on the National Register of Historic Places. The nomination, written by Carter and three preservationists resulted in the Stonewall site getting on the National Register in 1999, the first time that a site was listed because of its role in LGBT history. The following year the site was declared a National Historic Landmark, the highest recognition given by the United States government.

David Carter is researching his next book, a biography of the pioneering gay activist Dr. Frank Kameny, who was responsible for getting the American Psychiatric Association to declassify homosexuality as a mental illness and who coined the phrase “Gay Is Good” before the Stonewall Riots.