Henry David Thoreau is one of the most widely recognized names in American letters. Born in 1817, he wrote extensively on naturalism, transcendentalism, philosophy, global and American politics, and abolition. He is best known for is the author of Walden, a seminal text on living simply in a natural environment, and Civil Disobedience, an essay arguing for the individual right to resist a morally unjust state. He died in 1862.

Lewis Hyde is a poet, essayist, translator, and cultural critic. A MacArthur Fellow and renown author, his previous books include The Gift, Trickster Makes This World, and A Primer for Forgetting. Hyde is a trustee of MacDowell and a founding director of Creative Capital. He was previously the director of undergraduate creative writing at Harvard University and taught writing and American literature for many years at Kenyon College. Now retired, he and his wife, the writer Patricia Vigderman, live in Cambridge, Massachusetts.