Talia Schaffer is a Distinguished Professor of English at Queens College CUNY and the Graduate Center CUNY. She is the author of Communities of Care: The Social Ethics of Victorian Fiction (2021), shortlisted for the Literary Encyclopedia Book Prize, Honorable Mention for the NAVSA prize for the Best Book in Victorian Studies; Romance’s Rival: Familiar Marriage in Victorian Fiction (2016), which won the NAVSA prize for the best book of the year; Novel Craft: Victorian Domestic Handicraft and Nineteenth-Century Fiction (2011); and The Forgotten Female Aesthetes; Literary Culture in Late-Victorian England (2001). Her co-edited volumes include The Routledge Companion to Victorian Literature (2020), with Dennis Denisoff; a special issue of Victorian Review, “Extending Families,” with Kelly Hager (2013); and Women and British Aestheticism with Kathy A. Psomiades (1999). She has also edited Literature and Culture at the Fin de Siècle (2006) and Lucas Malet's 1901 novel, The History of Sir Richard Calmady (2003). Schaffer has published more than 50 articles on topics including Victorian familial and marital norms, disability studies, ethical readings, women writers, material culture, popular fiction, and aestheticism.

Lesley Peterson was until her retirement Professor of English at the University of North Alabama, where she taught Shakespeare and Jane Austen. She has also developed and taught creative writing programs for young people and for seniors. Currently she is Editor of the Journal of Juvenilia Studies. She presents regularly at JASNA AGMs, is one of this year's JASNA travelling lecturers, has published on Jane Austen in Persuasions and elsewhere, and recently co-edited Austen’s “Sir Charles Grandison” for the Juvenilia Press. She is writing a book on Jane Austen as dramatist.

Diana Birchall worked for many years as a story analyst for Warner Bros Studios, evaluating novels. Reading popular manuscripts went side by side with a lifetime of Jane Austen scholarship, and resulted in her writing Austenesque fiction both as homage and close study of Jane Austen’s style. She is the author of Mrs. Darcy’s Dilemma, In Defense of Mrs. Elton, Mrs. Elton in America, The Bride of Northanger, and hundreds of short stories. She and Syrie James have co-written several Austenesque comedy plays, which have been performed in many cities. Diana's own "You Are Passionate, Jane," a dialogue between Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte in Heaven, has been performed for many appreciative JASNA audiences as well as at Chawton House Library in England. Find out more about Diana on her Facebook page: www.facebook.com/diana.birchall. Syrie James is the international bestselling author of thirteen critically acclaimed novels of historical and contemporary fiction, including The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen, The Missing Manuscript of Jane Austen, Jane Austen's First Love, and The Secret Diaries of Charlotte Brontë. A life member of the WGA, JASNA, and the Historical Novel Society, Syrie has sold 20 screenplays to film and television and written, directed, and performed in original plays across North America and off-Broadway in New York. Syrie has spoken at numerous JASNA events and at Chawton House Library in England. Her books have been translated into 21 languages and won many awards including the Audiobook Audie. Syrie is currently writing a new series of Historical Mystery Romances set in 19th Century England that will be published in 2025. Learn more about Syrie on her website: www.syriejames.com.