Pavel Chichikov is a Washington DC-based poet and photographer. He has written for both the secular and the Catholic press on issues as diverse as Russian nuclear weapons systems, Olympic athletes, and miracles. Mysteries and Stations in the Manner of Ignatius is his third book of poems. He is also poetry editor of the popular web site Catholic Exchange. Find his work at users.erols.com/fishhook, pavel.romancatholic.org, and www.pavelreads.com.

Fr. Dwight Longenecker is an American who has spent most of his life living and working in England. He was brought up in an Evangelical home in Pennsylvania. After graduating from the fundamentalist Bob Jones University with a degree in Speech and English, he went to study theology at Oxford University. He was eventually ordained as an Anglican priest and served as a curate, a school chaplain in Cambridge and a country parson.

Realizing that he and the Anglican Church were on divergent paths, in 1995 Fr. Dwight and his family were received into the Catholic Church. He spent the next ten years working as a freelance Catholic writer, contributing to over twenty-five magazines, papers and journals in Britain, Ireland and the USA.

Fr. Dwight is the editor of a best-selling book of English conversion stories called The Path to Rome-- Modern Journeys to the Catholic Faith. He has written Listen My Son—a daily Benedictine devotional book which applies the Rule of St Benedict to the task of modern parenting. St Benedict and St Thérèse is a study of the lives and thought of two of the most popular saints. In the field of Catholic apologetics, Fr. Dwight wrote Challenging Catholics with John Martin, the former editor of the Church of England Newspaper. More Christianity is a straightforward and popular explanation of the Catholic faith for Evangelical Christians. Friendly and non-confrontational, it invites the reader to move from 'Mere Christianity' to 'More Christianity'. Mary—A Catholic Evangelical Debate is a debate with an old Bob Jones friend David Gustafson who is now an Evangelical Episcopalian. Fr. Dwight’s Adventures in Orthodoxy is described as ‘a Chestertonian romp through the Apostles’ Creed.’ He wrote Christianity Pure&Simple which was published by the Catholic Truth Society in England and Sophia Institute Press in the USA. He has also published How to Be an Ordinary Hero and his book Praying the Rosary for Inner Healing was published by Our Sunday Visitor in May 2008. His latest books are, The Gargoyle Code—a book in the tradition of Screwtape Letters and a book of poems called A Sudden Certainty.

Fr. Dwight has contributed a chapter to the third volume of the best selling Surprised by Truth series and is a regular contributor to InsideCatholic, First Things, This Rock and National Catholic Register. Fr. Dwight has also written a couple of children’s books, had three of his screenplays produced, and is finishing his first novel. He’s working on The Romance of Religion and his autobiography: There and Back Again.

In December 2006 he was ordained as a Catholic priest under the special pastoral provision for married former Anglican clergy. See www.dwightlongenecker.com.

Eleanor Bourg Nicholson has, by God's grace, found scope for her English degree through work as a freelance writer and editor. Her editing credits include assistant executive editor for Dappled Things, assistant editor for the Saint Austin Review, annotator for a wide range of Ignatius Critical Editions of classic texts, and editor of the ICE Mansfield Park (under her maiden name, Donlon) and the ICE Dracula. Her writing has been published in the Saint Austin Review, Dappled Things, Touchstone, the National Catholic Register, and on the First Things and The Catholic Thing blogs. She and her husband live in Charlottesville, Virginia. Mrs. Nicholson began The Letters of Magdalen Montague on a whim: part literary exercise and part spiritual therapy in the midst of graduate school. Mrs. Nicholson considers that Magdalen Montague validates her defense of the spiritual significance of the writings of Huysmans (pace her fellow graduate students who dismissed any such reading).

Kevin O’Brien is the founder and artistic director of the Theater of the Word Incorporated, a Catholic theater company. In 2007 Fr. Joseph Fessio of Ignatius Press and Archbishop Raymond Burke, then archbishop of St. Louis, teamed with Kevin to launch the production company to spread the Gospel message through stage, film, television, audio recordings and the internet. The name is inspired by the clandestine theater company run by Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) in Nazi occupied Poland, also called the Theater of the Word. Kevin hosts his own series "Theater of the Word" on EWTN and he and his actors appear regularly on the EWTN shows "The Apostle of Common Sense" and "The Quest for Shakespeare."

Although an atheist at an early age, Kevin’s experiences with the dramatic arts began a conversion process, that, with the help of the writings of G. K. Chesterton, eventually brought him into the Catholic Church.

Most recently Kevin has appeared in two movies, Manalive, based on the novel by G. K. Chesterton, and To Follow the Light: the Conversion of John Henry Newman, both of which are scheduled to be released soon. 

In addition, Kevin has recorded dramatic readings of nearly two dozen audio books for Ignatius Press, and is the only person in history to play every part in a Shakespeare play, which he did for his audio reading of The Merchant of Venice: Ignatius Critical Edition. He is also a writer and frequent contributor to The St. Austin Review and Gilbert Magazine.

For more information, visit www.thewordinc.org   

The internationally acclaimed author of many books, which include bestsellers such as The Quest for Shakespeare (Ignatius, 2008), G.K. Chesterton: Wisdom and Innocence (Ignatius, 1997), Literary Converts (Ignatius, 2000), Tolkien: Man and Myth (Ignatius, 2001), Solzhenitsyn:  A Soul in Exile (Baker Books, 2001), and Old Thunder:  A Life of Hilaire Belloc (Ignatius, 2002), Joseph Pearce is a world-recognized biographer of modern Christian literary figures.  Pearce’s books have been published and translated into several languages.

Pearce converted to the Catholic faith in 1989 as a result of “becoming friends” with several 20^th-century literary figures he researched who had been Christians, and ultimately converts to Catholicism – particularly G.K. Chesterton.  As a younger man, Pearce was “extremely anti-Catholic” and even had opposed Pope John Paul II’s visits to England.  His earlier viewpoint gradually shifted as he learned more about the writings and beliefs of the literary converts he would eventually profile.

As Writer in Residence and associate professor of literature at Ave Maria University in Florida since September 2001, Pearce also serves as Editor of the Saint Austin Review, a trans-Atlantic monthly cultural review (www.staustinreview.com) and series editor of the Ignatius Critical Editions (www.ignatiuscriticaleditions.com).  He is also editor-in-chief of Sapientia Press.

A native of England, Pearce relocated to the United States in 2001 to serve at Ave Maria University. He and his wife Susannah have two children, Leo and Evangeline.   

An accomplished tutor, teacher and speaker, Pearce has participated and lectured at a wide variety of international and literary events at major colleges and universities in the U.S., Britain, Europe, South America, South Africa and Canada.  He is also a regular guest on national and international television and radio programs, and has served as consultant for film documentaries on J.R.R. Tolkien and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. His thirteen-part series, The Quest for Shakespeare, based on his book of the same title, has been broadcast on EWTN.

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