field Lenox

Jonathan Alter is an award-winning author, presidential historian, political analyst, and documentary filmmaker whose career in political journalism spans more than four decades. A longtime senior editor and columnist at Newsweek and political analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, he is the author of four biographies and three New York Times bestsellers, including The Defining Moment, The Promise, The Center Holds, and His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, A Life. His latest book, American Reckoning: Inside Trump’s Trial—and My Own, draws on his firsthand reporting from 23 days inside the Manhattan courtroom during Donald Trump’s criminal trial. Alter received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2024 and co-directed the Emmy Award-winning HBO documentary Breslin and Hamill: Deadline Artists.

Kai Bird is an acclaimed biographer and journalist. With Martin J. Sherwin, he won the Pulitzer Prize for biography for American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, which was the inspiration for Christopher Nolan’s Academy Award–winning Best Picture, Oppenheimer. His new biography, co-written with Susan Goldmark (his wife), is American Scoundrel: Roy Cohn's Dark Journey from Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump. For his previous books, which include writings on the Vietnam War, Hiroshima, nuclear weapons, the Cold War, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the CIA, he has been honored with the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Duff Cooper Prize for History, as well as numerous fellowships. He is Executive Director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the CUNY Graduate Center and an elected member of the Society of American Historians.

Susan Goldmark, lead researcher on American Scoundrel (and its co-author with husband Kai Bird), has worked in more than seventy-five countries—in consulting, for nonprofits, and at the World Bank. She was a World Bank Country Director in Nepal and later in Latin America.

Laura Buchwald is a New York City-based writer and editor with ties to the Berkshires. Her first two books, The Coat Check Girl and The Book of Reservations, came out in 2024 and 2025 as part of the Ghost Table Trilogy. She is currently working on the third in the series. Her strong belief in the afterlife plays a role in her fiction and has led her to consult with multiple spiritual mediums. She is co-host of People Who Do Things, a podcast about the creative process.

N. Anthony Coles is a physician-executive and board leader with more than three decades of experience scaling breakthrough biopharmaceutical and life-science enterprises. He currently is Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer of TRATE Enterprises, LLC, a privately held strategic investment firm. He most recently served as Chairperson of the Board at Cerevel Therapeutics from December 2018 until its nearly $9 billion acquisition by AbbVie in August 2024 and was the company’s Chief Executive Officer from September 2019 to June 2023, guiding a pipeline of transformative neuroscience therapies. Earlier in his career, Dr. Coles co-founded and led Yumanity Therapeutics as Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer, advancing a novel discovery platform for neurodegenerative diseases. He previously served as President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairperson of Onyx Pharmaceuticals, stewarding its growth through to acquisition by Amgen; as President, Chief Executive Officer and Director of NPS Pharmaceuticals; as Senior Vice President of Commercial Operations at Vertex Pharmaceuticals; and in senior leadership roles at Bristol-Myers Squibb and Merck. His past public-company directorships include CRISPR Therapeutics, Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings, Campus Crest Communities, and McKesson Corporation, and he has served on the Harvard Medical School Board of Fellows. Dr. Coles currently sits on the Board of Directors of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and is an Emeritus Trustee of Johns Hopkins University. He is Council Chair for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, a Trustee of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a Director of the Council on Foreign Relations. Committed to advancing economic equity, he co-founded and co-chairs the Black Economic Alliance. His contributions to science and society were recognized with election to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2022. Dr. Coles earned his bachelor’s degree from Johns Hopkins University, his medical degree from Duke University School of Medicine, and a master’s degree in public health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He completed residency and fellowship training in internal medicine and cardiology at Massachusetts General Hospital and was a research fellow at Harvard Medical School.

Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD, PhD, is Vice Provost for Global Initiatives and the Diane v.S. Levy and Robert M. Levy University Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Emanuel is an oncologist and world leader in health policy and bioethics. His latest book, published earlier this year, is Eat Your Ice Cream: Six Simple Rules for a Long and Healthy Life. His other books include Prescription for the Future, Reinventing American Healthcare, and Brothers Emanuel: A Memoir of an American Family. He is Special Advisor to the Director General of the W.H.O., Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He was founding chair of the Department of Bioethics at the N.I.H. For President Barack Obama, he served as a Special Advisor on Health Policy to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and National Economic Council. In this role, he was instrumental in drafting the Affordable Care Act. He also served on the Biden-Harris Transition Covid Advisory Board. The most widely cited bioethicist in history, Dr. Emanuel has been honored with election to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Association of American Physicians, and the Royal College of Medicine (UK). In 2026, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society (APS) and selected as The Hastings Center’s 2026 Bioethics Founders Award Honoree. Among many other honors, he has been named the Dan David Prize Laureate in Bioethics, recipient of the AMA-Burroughs Wellcome Leadership Award, the Public Service Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology, Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities. He has received honorary degrees from Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai, Union Graduate College, Medical College of Wisconsin, and Macalester College.

Carol Gilligan is best known as the author of In a Different Voice, a landmark classic that revolutionized the study of girls, women, and human psychology. Her novels are Solstice and Kyra. A University Professor at NYU, she is the author of a number of books on psychology, women’s and girls’ development, and on listening to how people speak about their lives. She did her graduate work in psychology at Harvard, where she was the first Graham professor of Gender Studies and taught for more than 30 years. In 1996, Time magazine named her one of the 25 most influential Americans, and in 2025 she received the Kyoto Prize in arts and philosophy. She lives in New York City and Massachusetts.

Bill Goldstein, who is at work on a biography of playwright/activist Larry Kramer, is the author of The World Broke in Two: Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster, and the Year that Changed Literature. He reviews books for NBC’s Weekend Today in New York and was the founding editor of the books section of The New York Times website. He received a PhD in English from CUNY. His scholarship has been supported by fellowships from the NYPL Cullman Center, Leon Levy Center for Biography, and N.E.H.

Annette Gordon-Reed is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University. She won sixteen book prizes, including the Pulitzer Prize in History and the National Book Award for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. In addition to articles and reviews, her other works include Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy; Vernon Can Read! A Memoir, a collaboration with Vernon Jordan; Race on Trial: Law and Justice in American History, a volume of essays that she edited; Andrew Johnson; and, with Peter S. Onuf, “Most Blessed of the Patriarchs”: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination. Her most recent book is On Juneteenth, and she is editor of the recent collection Jefferson on Race: A Reader. A selected list of her honors includes a fellowship from the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a MacArthur Fellowship, the National Humanities Medal, the National Book Award, the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, the George Washington Book Prize, and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.

Farah Jasmine Griffin is a University Professor at Columbia University, where she also served as the inaugural Chair of the African American and African Diaspora Studies. Her forthcoming book, The Seer: Toni Morrison Among the Ruins, will be published next year. She is also the author of In Search of a Beautiful Freedom: New and Selected Essays; Who Set You Flowin’?: The African American Migration Narrative; If You Can’t Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday; Harlem Nocturne: Women Artists and Progressive Politics During World War II; and Read Until You Understand. With composer/pianist Geri Allen and actor/director S. Epatha Merkerson, she collaborated on two theatrical projects, for which she wrote the book: “Geri Allen and Friends Celebrate the Great Jazz Women of the Apollo” and “A Conversation with Mary Lou.” She has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Cullman Center, and she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She sits on the Board of The Brotherhood-Sister Sol, a social justice organization serving Harlem-based youth.

Tom Hammick lives and works in London and East Sussex. His painting and printmaking, informed by drawing, are shaped by music, poetry and film. While inspired by all living things, his art is a. His work is in many private and public collections worldwide. For many years, he taught painting and printmaking at the University of Brighton. His life revolves around biking to his studio to work, being with family and loved ones, and experiencing life in different parts of the world. He contributed woodcuts to Adam Nicholson’s The Making of Poetry, which describes the intense and extraordinarily productive year from 1797 to 1798 that William Wordsworth, his sister, and his brother-poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge spent together in the Quantock Hills in Somerset. His art is the subject of Julian Bell’s Wall, Window, World.

Saidiya Hartman, a scholar and historian, is the author of Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments; for which she won the National Book Critics Circle Award; Lose Your Mother; and Scenes of Subjection. Her play, Minor Music at the End of the World, will premiere at BAM in December 2026. She has been a MacArthur Fellow, Guggenheim Fellow, Cullman Fellow, and Fulbright Scholar. She is a University Professor at Columbia University and lives in New York City and in the Berkshires.

Maira Kalman is an acclaimed artist and designer. In addition to her new book, Joy, she is the author of The Principles of Uncertainty, My Favorite Things, Still Life with Remorse, Sara Berman’s Closet, and Women Holding Things, among many other titles for adults and children. A frequent contributor to The New York Times and The New Yorker, she has collaborated with artists and authors such as Nico Muhly, David Byrne, Kate Spade, Isaac Mizrahi, Michael Pollan, Daniel Handler, Alex Berman, and Mark Morris. She has illustrated editions of The Elements of Style, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, and Robert Walser’s Microscripts. Her show and store, Shaker Outpost: Design, Commerce, and Culture, was on view at the Shaker Museum in Chatham, NY, this past summer.

Jamaica Kincaid was born on Antigua. Her works of fiction include At the Bottom of the River; Annie John, the coming-of-age story of a ten-year-old girl growing up on Antigua; Lucy, which tells of a teenage girl from the West Indies who comes to North America to work as an au pair; The Autobiography of My Mother; Mr. Potter; and See Now Then, for which she won the Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award. Her memoir, My Brother, is an account of the death from AIDS of her younger brother. A career-spanning collection of essays, Putting Myself Together, was published in 2025. She has also written A Small Place on the effects of colonialism on Antigua. Her fascination with gardening and botany led to My Garden, Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalaya, and An Encyclopedia of Gardening for Colored Children, her collaboration with Kara Walker. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has been honored with the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Prix Femina Étranger. She lives in North Bennington, Vermont.

Adam Moss is the author of The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing. He was previously the long-serving editor of New York magazine, The New York Times Magazine, and 7 Days. As editor of New York, he also oversaw the creation of Vulture, The Cut, Daily Intelligencer, Grub Street, and The Strategist. During his tenure, New York won forty-one National Magazine Awards, including Magazine of the Year. He was elected to the Magazine Editors’ Hall of Fame in 2019.

Vardit Ravitsky is the President and CEO of the Hastings Center, an independent, nonpartisan bioethics research institute that is among the most prestigious bioethics and health policy institutes in the world. She is a senior lecturer on Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Previously, she was a full professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Montreal. She is a past president of the International Association of Bioethics and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. Her research focuses on the ethics of genomics and reproduction, as well as the ethics and governance of health A.I. The author of more than 250 articles and commentaries, she is particularly interested in the various ways in which cultural frameworks shape public debate and policy around bioethical issues.

Dr. Ronald D. Siegel is a part-time Assistant Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School, where he has taught for over 40 years. He is a long-time student of mindfulness meditation and serves on the Board of Directors and faculty of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy. He teaches internationally about the application of mindfulness practice in psychotherapy and other fields, and maintains a private clinical practice in Lincoln, Massachusetts. Dr. Siegel is author of a comprehensive guide for general audiences, The Mindfulness Solution: Everyday Practices for Everyday Problems; co-editor of the critically acclaimed text, Mindfulness and Psychotherapy, 2nd Edition; and of Wisdom and Compassion in Psychotherapy; co-author ofthe professional guide Sitting Together: Essential Skills for Mindfulness-Based Psychotherapy; and author of the recent book, The Extraordinary Gift of Being Ordinary: Finding Happiness Right Where You Are. He is also professor for The Science of Mindfulness: A Research-Based Path to Well-Being produced by The Great Courses and co-director of the annual Harvard Medical School Conferences on Meditation and Psychotherapy and Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy.

Brent Staples cultivated a national audience for his essays on race, class, culture and politics while serving as a member of The New York Times Editorial Board from 1990 to 2025. In 2019, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for writing on the legacies of slavery with “extraordinary moral clarity.” Addressing the Times newsroom on the day the Pulitzers were announced, he celebrated his heroic great-great-grandmother Somerville Staples, “who came of age as an enslaved person in the chaos spawned by the Nat Turner slave rebellion of 1831.” He is author of the memoir Parallel Time: Growing Up in Black and White, a finalist for The Los Angeles Times Book Award and winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. He has delivered the W.E.B. DuBois Lectures at Harvard, a three-day address honoring those who have made distinctive contributions to African American history and culture. His most recent honorary doctorate, from Queens College of The City University of New York, cites him for “using his talents to confront racial injustice publicly and for his exceptional example of the value of higher education used for the common good.”

Colm Tóibín is the author of eleven novels, including Long Island; The Magician, winner of the Rathbones Folio Prize; The Master, winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Brooklyn, winner of the Costa Book Award; The Testament of Mary; and Nora Webster; as well as three story collections and several books of essays and criticism, most recently On James Baldwin. His novella, The Long Winter, has recently been made into a film by Andrew Haigh. A sequel to the the novella, The Bridge, will be published later this year. He is the Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University and has been named as the Laureate for Irish Fiction for 2022–2024 by the Arts Council of Ireland. Three times shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Tóibín lives in Dublin, Los Angeles, and New York.

Bessel van der Kolk, author of the bestselling The Body Keeps the Score, is a psychiatrist who has spent his career studying how children and adults adapt to traumatic experiences, and he has translated emerging findings from neuroscience and attachment research to develop and study a range of treatments for traumatic stress. His next book will be Come to Your Senses. In 1984, he set up one of the first clinical/research centers in the U.S. dedicated to study and treatment of traumatic stress in civilian populations, which has trained numerous researchers and clinicians. He did the first studies on the effects of SSRIs on PTSD and was a member of the first neuroimaging team to investigate how trauma changes brain processes. In order to promote a deeper understanding of the impact of childhood trauma and to foster the development and execution of effective treatment interventions, he initiated the process that led to the establishment of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN), a Congressionally-mandated initiative that now funds approximately 150 centers specializing in developing effective treatment interventions, and implementing them in a wide array of settings. He has focused on studying treatments that stabilize physiology, increase executive functioning and help traumatized individuals to feel fully alert to the present—career-long efforts that have resulted in the establishment of the Trauma Center (now the Trauma Research Foundation). He regularly provides training nationally and internationally to mental-health professionals, educators, parent groups, policy makers, and law enforcement personnel.

Niobe Way is a professor of Developmental Psychology at NYU, the founder of the Project for the Advancement of Our Common Humanity, and the co-founder of agapi and the Center for Youth and Connection-by-Design technology. She is the P.I. on the Listening with Curiosity Project and on a 20-year longitudinal study of 1200 Chinese families. She was the President of the Society for Research on Adolescence and received her doctoral degree in Human Development and Psychology from Harvard, where she studied with Carol Gilligan. She is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Foundation and on the board of the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College. Her mixed method and longitudinal research examines the social and emotional development among children and adolescents and how macro ideologies shape families and child development in the U.S. and China. Her latest book is Rebels with a Cause: Reimagining Boys, Ourselves, and Our Culture. Her latest co-edited book is: The Crisis of Connection: Its Roots, Consequences, and Solution. Her book Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection, was the inspiration for the film Close, which was nominated for an Oscar for best foreign film and won the Grand Prix Award. Her forthcoming book is: Our Social Nature in a Anti-Social Culture: A Five-Part Story.