Elizabeth Hinton is professor of history, African American studies, and law at Yale University and Yale Law School. Her research focuses on the persistence of poverty, racial inequality, and urban violence in the twentieth-century United States. Hinton is the author of From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America and America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s. Her articles and op-eds can be found in the pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, New York Magazine, The Boston Review, The Nation, Science, Nature, Time, and elsewhere.

Elsa Julien Lora is a writer, scholar, and artist whose work focuses on the history of American prisons and the texture and intimacy of family life. Her writing has appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, Aperture, and Public Books. She holds a BA from Wesleyan University, a JD from Yale Law School, and a PhD from Harvard University. 

Ghostwrite Mike is the pen name of a carceral state resident, poet, literacy activist, and journalist, ghostinsideknowledge@gmail.com.