Sarah Ban Breathnach is the author of thirteen books including the New York Times bestsellers Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy, Something More: Excavating Your Authentic Self,  and she is the creator of The Simple Abundance Journal of Gratitude (with a new edition December 2019).  This talk celebrates the 25th anniversary of Simple Abundance, which continues to lead countless women to more fulfilling, harmonious, and joyful lives. She has been a frequent guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show and OWN’s Super Soul Sunday. Additionally, Sarah has been a contributing editor of Good Housekeeping, a nationally syndicated columnist for The Washington Post Writers Group. In 1995, Sarah founded the Simple Abundance Charitable Fund, which has aided over 100 non-profit organizations by awarding over one-million dollars in financial support. 

Mark Hyman, MD, is the founder and director of The UltraWellness Center, the Head of Strategy and Innovation of the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine, a twelve-time New York Times best-selling author, and Board President for Clinical Affairs for The Institute for Functional Medicine. Food is our most powerful tool to reverse the global epidemic of chronic disease, heal the environment, reform politics, and revive economies. “Food Fix “is a hard-hitting manifesto that will change the way you think about — and eat — food forever, and will provide solutions for citizens, businesses, and policy makers to create a healthier world, society, and planet.

Barry Sonnenfeld is a filmmaker and writer who broke into the film industry as the cinematographer on the Coen Brothers’ first three films: Blood Simple, Raising Arizona, and Miller’s Crossing. He also was the director of photography on Throw Mamma from the Train, Big, When Harry Met Sally, and Misery. Sonnenfeld made his directorial debut with The Addams Family in 1991, and has gone on to direct a number of films including Addams Family Values, Get Shorty, and the first three Men in Blacks. His television credits include Pushing Daisies, for which he won an Emmy, and most recently Netflix’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Robert Reich has served in three national administrations and has written fifteen books, including The Work of Nations, which has been translated into twenty-two languages, and the best sellers The Common Good, Saving Capitalism, Supercapitalism, and Locked in the Cabinet. He is a Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. His articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, and he writes a weekly column for The Guardian and Newsweek. He is co-creator of the award-winning film Inequality for All, and the Netflix original Saving Capitalism, and co-founder of Inequality Media. 

Jerry Saltz is the Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic at New York magazine and its entertainment site Vulture. Cindy Sherman says of his new book: “Jerry Saltz is so right-on it scares me.” Art has the power to change our lives. For many, becoming an artist is a lifelong dream. But how to make it happen? In “How to Be an Artist,” Jerry Saltz, one of the art world’s most celebrated and passionate voices, offers an indispensable handbook for creative people of all kinds. From the first sparks of inspiration–and how to pursue them without giving in to self-doubt–Saltz offers invaluable insight into what really matters to emerging artists: originality, persistence, a balance between knowledge and intuition, and that most precious of qualities, self-belief. 

Dean Koontz is the bestselling author whose work spans six decades and garners commercial and critical success. His books are available in 38 languages, and have sold more than 500 million copies to date. He has also been praised as a “literary juggler” by The Times (of London) for his deft ability to blend other genres—horror, romance, humor, science fiction, and mystery—into his acclaimed suspense thrillers and lauded by The New York Times as “psychologically complex, masterful, and satisfying.” Devoted is an epic thriller about a terrifying threat to humanity and the singular compassion it will take to defeat it. 

Terry McMillan is the New York Times bestselling author of I Almost Forgot About You, Waiting to Exhale, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, A Day Late and a Dollar Short, The Interruption of Everything, and the editor of Breaking Ice: An Anthology of Contemporary African-American Fiction. Four of Ms. McMillan’s novels have been made into movies: Waiting to Exhale; How Stella Got Her Groove Back; Disappearing Acts; and A Day Late and a Dollar Short. 

Julia Alvarez  the internationally bestselling author of “In the Time of the Butterflies” and “How the García Girls Lost Their Accents.” She is the author of six novels, three books of nonfiction, three collections of poetry, and eleven books for children and young adults. Her work has garnered wide recognition, including a Latina Leader Award in Literature from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, the Hispanic Heritage Award in Literature, the Woman of the Year by Latina magazine. “In the Time of the Butterflies” was selected by the National Endowment for the Arts for its national Big Read program, and in 2013 President Obama awarded Alvarez the National Medal of Arts in recognition of her extraordinary storytelling.

Alan Zweibel is an original Saturday Night Live writer, who has won multiple Emmy and Writers Guild Awards for his work in television, which also includes It’s Garry Shandling’s Show (which he co-created and produced), The Late Show With David Letterman and Curb Your Enthusiasm. His theatrical contributions include his collaboration with Billy Crystal on the Tony Award winning play 700 Sundays, Martin Short’s Broadway hit Fame Becomes Me and six off-Broadway plays including Bunny Bunny – Gilda Radner: A Sort of Romantic Comedy, which he adapted from his bestselling book. Alan has written eleven books including the 2006 Thurber Prize winning novel The Other Shulman, the popular children’s book Our Tree Named Steve, the novel Lunatics that he co-wrote with Dave Barry and a parody of the Haggadah titled For This We Left Egypt? that he wrote with Dave Barry and Adam Mansbach. 

Nancy Silverton is the co-owner of Osteria Mozza, Pizzeria Mozza, Chi Spacca, and Mozza2Go, in Los Angeles, Singapore, and Newport Beach, California. She is the founder of the La Brea Bakery and the only chef ever to be awarded both the Outstanding Chef and Outstanding Pastry Chef awards from the James Beard Foundation. She was featured in Chef’s Table on Netflix, and was chosen by both Fortune and Food & Wine magazines as one of the “Most Innovative Women in Food and Drink.”

Stephanie Danler is the author of the bestselling novel, Sweetbitter, set in the restaurant and food industry. Sweetbitter was turned into a series on Starz.  She appeared at Live Talks Los Angeles in conversation with Teri Hatcher when Sweetbitter was published. Stray is Danler’s memoir of growing up in a family shattered by lies and addiction, and of one woman’s attempts to find a life beyond the limits of her past. It is a moving, sometimes devastating, brilliantly written and ultimately inspiring exploration of the landscapes of damage and survival.

Tori Amos is a Grammy-nominated, multi-platinum singer-songwriter, pianist, composer, and, with Ann Powers, the New York Times bestselling author of Tori Amos: Piece by Piece. She has released fifteen studio albums, including her latest, Native Invader, in 2017. Her book “Resistance: A Songwriter’s Story of Hope, Change, and Courage,” is a timely and passionate call to action for engaging with our current political moment and handling it with intelligence, grace, and integrity.

Laura Lippman has been recognized as one of the most gifted and versatile crime novelists working today. Her series novels, stand-alones and short stories have all won major awards, including the Edgar and the Anthony, and her work is published in more than 20 countries. A former Baltimore Sun journalist, she has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, O, The Oprah Magazine, Real Simple, Glamour and Longreads.  In My Life as a Villainess, a collection of new and previously published nonfiction essays exploring motherhood as an older mom, her life as a reader, her relationships with her parents, friendship, her childhood and school years, her newspaper career, her experiences as a novelist and other topics. She finds universal touchstones in an unusual life that has as many twists as her award-winning crime fiction.

Charlie Kaufman is the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of films including Anomalisa; Synechdoche, New York; Adaptation; Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; and Being John Malkovich. He won an Oscar for his work on Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and has been nominated three additional times. He is also a three-time BAFTA winner for screenwriting, and he has been nominated for three Golden Globe Awards, among many other film honors. “Antkind” is his bold and boundlessly original debut novel.

“Memoirs and Misinformation” is a fearless semi-autobiographical novel, a deconstruction of persona. In it, Jim Carrey and Dana Vachon have fashioned a story about acting, Hollywood, agents, celebrity, privilege, friendship, romance, addiction to relevance, fear of personal erasure, our “one big soul,” Canada, and a cataclysmic ending of the world–apocalypses within and without.

Lisa Napoli’s “Up All Night” is an entertaining inside look at the founding of the upstart network that set out to change the way news was delivered and consumed. Mixing media history, a business adventure story, and great characters, “Up All Night” tells the story of a network that succeeded beyond even the wildest imaginings of its charismatic and uncontrollable founder, and paved the way for the world we live in today.

Over the past 35 years, Robbie Conal has made more than 100 street posters — from oil portraits — satirizing politicians and bureaucrats. He has also taken on censorship, war, social injustice, and environmental issues. Conal recently began applying his wit on celebratory portraits of his personal heroes Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, Martin Luther King, Jr., James Baldwin, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Greta Thunberg, Ruth Bader-Ginsburg, and Maya Angelou. “Robbie Conal: Streetwise 35 Years of Politically Charged Guerrilla Art” features every image in Robbie Conal’s storied poster campaigns — gnarled, gut retching, and emotionally laden —  and is the definitive history of  “America’s foremost street artist” (Washington Post) with a foreword by Shepard Fairey.