Erika Robuck is the national bestselling author of The Invisible Woman, Hemingway’s Girl, Call Me Zelda, Fallen Beauty, The House of Hawthorne, and Receive Me Falling. She is also a contributor to the anthology Grand Central: Postwar Stories of Love and Reunion, and to the Writer’s Digest essay collection Author in Progress. Her forthcoming novel, Sisters of Night and Fog, is about real-life superwomen of WWII, Virginia d'Albert-Lake and Violette Szabo. In 2014, Robuck was named Annapolis’ Author of the Year, and she resides there with her husband and three sons.

Dr. Lilian “Doc” Alessa is a President’s Professor at the University of Idaho and is Affiliate Faculty with The Texas A&M and George Mason University Systems. She has previously served as a Defense Intelligence Senior Level-equivalent Special Advisor for Advanced Data and Analytics, through an Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) arrangement, with the Department of Defense. Additionally, she served as Deputy Chief of Global Strategies with the Department of Homeland Security, Office of Strategy, Policy and Plans. She is currently Chief Scientist with Joint Special Operations University, also providing arctic expertise to the Department of Defense. She has over 25 years of experience working with Academic, Federal, State, Local, Tribal and Territorial partners (FSLTTP) across Canada and the United States, focused on national security, defense and the resilience of systems, people and communities.