Dr. Ari Berk is a writer, visual artist, and scholar of literature, history, iconography, and comparative myth. His publications have included academic studies on myth and ancient cultures, as well as popular works on myth for both children and adults. He is the author of The Runes of Elfland, Goblins!, and Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Letters, three books created with artist Brian Froud.

Deeply dedicated to an interdisciplinary approach to teaching, research and writing, Dr. Berk holds degrees in Ancient History and American Indian Studies, as well as a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Culture. He has studied at Oxford University in England, and has traveled widely, making friends in many parts of the world. In the last decade, his work took him to the University of Arizona in Tucson where he taught courses and lectured in the areas of Early Modern Ethnography and Literature, Mythology, and American Indian Literature, History, and Culture. He was appointed to the committee that developed the first American Indian Studies doctoral program in the United States, and worked as the assistant to the Pulitzer Prize winning Kiowa author N. Scott Momaday. He is now a professor in the English department at Central Michigan University, where he teaches Mythology, Folklore, and American Indian Literature.

Dr. Kristen  McDermott is an Assistant Professor of English Literature at Central Michigan University, specializing in Early Modern English Studies (particularly Drama and Theater History) and Shakespeare. Kristen came to CMU after seven years of teaching Renaissance Literature and Shakespeare at Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles, and she received her B.A. in English and Drama from Furman University in South Carolina.

Kris has dedicated her teaching to bridging the gap between scholarly research and an appreciation for the living arts of drama, music, and storytelling. In the classroom, her students explore the physical staging of Shakespeare's plays as well as the texts, using drama games, creative writing, music, and film, among many other media. Her forthcoming book, Masques of Difference: Power, Race and Gender in the Masques of Ben Jonson, which will be published by Manchester University Press, also makes use of her interdisciplinary background in music, drama and literature. She has published scholarly articles on Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, and popular articles on the folklore of the theater in Realms of Fantasy magazine. Outside the classroom, Kris studies classical voice and has performed as soprano soloist in choral masterworks around Atlanta.

Kris, Ari, and their young son Robin live at the edge of a wood in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, with a sprawling library that has been named The Cabinet of Curiosities.