Caroline Bicks is the Stephen E. King Chair in Literature at the University of Maine and is also on the faculty of the Bread Loaf School of English. She specializes in Shakespeare, gender, and the history of science, and is the author of the books Cognition and Girlhood in Shakespeare’s World and Midwiving Subjects in Shakespeare’s England. Her creative nonfiction has been featured on NPR’s “All Things Considered” and in the “Modern Love” column of the New York Times. Her humorous writing has appeared in the show “Afterbirth: Stories You Won’t Read in a Parenting Magazine,” and on McSweeney’s Internet Tendency  

Michelle Ephraim is Professor of English at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where she teaches courses on Shakespeare, early modern drama, and creative writing. Her memoir, GREEN WORLD: A Tragicomic Memoir of Love and Shakespeare, received the 2023 Juniper Prize in Creative Nonfiction from The University of Massachusetts Press and will be published by them in March 2024.

Professor Ephraim is also the author of the book Reading the Jewish Woman on the Elizabethan Stage and articles on adultery, religious conversion, and other controversial matters in Shakespeare’s plays. She’s written about Shakespeare in North American popular culture and the comic series Kill Shakespeare. Her personal essays and humor pieces have appeared in venues such as Tikkun, Lilith, The Morning News, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Cleaver, and The Washington Post. She lives in Boston with her husband and four children. She’ll tell you more over a cocktail and some salty snacks. You can also check out her website at www.michelleephraim.com.