Martha McCulloch-Williams was born near Clarksville, Tennessee, in Montgomery County. After moving to New York, she wrote regularly for magazine assignments and published short stories, serials, poetry, and essays in various outlets, including Harper's Monthly, Harper's Bazaar, and McClure's. In 1892 she published her first book, Field Farings: A Vagrant Chronicle of Earth and Sky. The same year she also published The Tenant of Woodfell: A Story of Fate, which was followed by Two of a Trade (1894), Milre (1894), A Man and His Knife: Passages from the Life of James Bowie (1898) and Next to the Ground, Chronicles of a Countryside (1901). Her domestic books earned her the reputation as an authority on household topics; in 1895 she published The Capital Cook Book, and in 1913, at the age of sixty-five, she published Harper's Household Handbook and Dishes & Beverages of the Old South.

John Egerton (1935-2013) was a journalist well-known for his writing on civil rights, southern culture, and food. He authored or edited more than twenty books during his storied journalism career, and his Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South won the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award.

Sheri Castleis a food writer and author of three cookbooks on southern food, including The Southern Living Community Cookbook, which was a finalist for the IACP Cookbook Award.