Maria Popova is a reader and writer, who writes about what she reads on Brain Pickings -- her one-woman labor of love. It is an inquiry into what it means to live a decent, substantive, rewarding life, and a record of her own becoming as a person. In 2021, the site archive was included in the Library of Congress. Maria has contributed articles to The New York Times, Wired UK, and The Atlantic, among others, and is the co-editor of A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader and author of Figuring.Ping is based in Brooklyn and has illustrated for clients big and small. Her work has been recognized by fancy institutions as well as her parents. Laying on a sun-baked rock near a body of water is a good feeling.

Maria Popova is a reader and a writer, and writes about what she reads on Brain Pickings (brainpickings.org), which is included in the Library of Congress permanent web archive of culturally valuable materials. She is the author of Figuring, co-editor of A Velocity of Being: Letters to a Young Reader, and the creator and host of The Universe in Verse—an annual charitable celebration of science through poetry at the interdisciplinary cultural center Pioneer Works in Brooklyn.

Ping Zhu’s illustrations are frequently seen in the New York Times and other reputable publications, but also some questionable ones. She is a graduate of ArtCenter and gave tours there as a work-study job. In 2013, she won the ADC Young Guns award for being simultaneously young and talented. Though she is no longer eligible for “30 Under 30” accolades, her goal in life is to create work that will ideally age well like a fine wine. Or even an okay wine. Ping’s children’s book debut, The Strange Birds of Flannery O’Connor, A Life, published in June 2020 and was selected by the New York Times as a Best Children’s Book of 2020.