Christopher Ornelas is the co-author of Wings of Resistance: the Giant Kites of Guatemala. “The Magician’s Oath: A Conversation with Pat Hammond on Magic, Science and the Wind," one of his essays about Pat Hammond, appeared in for Discourse at the End of the Line. He graduated from Yale University with a degree in Latin American studies. He is an aspiring monk who loves the forest, handmade paper, and chocolate pie.
Naomi Shihab Nye was born to a Palestinian father and an American mother and lived in Palestine, Jerusalem, and San Antonio, Texas, where she studied at Trinity University. She is the author of numerous poetry books, including You and Yours, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, Fuel, and Red Suitcase. Her honors include awards from the Texas Institute of Letters and the International Poetry Forum, the Carity Randall Prize, the Academy of American Poets’ Lavan Award, and four Pushcart Prizes. She has been a Lannan fellow, a Guggenheim fellow, and a Witter Bynner fellow, and she was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2010. She has traveled to the Middle East and Asia for the U.S. Information Agency three times, promoting international goodwill through the arts. She lives in San Antonio.
Robert Hammond is the co-founder and former executive director of Friends of the High Line. He has worked as a consultant for a variety of entrepreneurial endeavors and nonprofits, including the Times Square Alliance, Alliance for the Arts and National Cooperative Bank (NCB). Hammond is also a self-taught artist. From 2002 to 2005 he served as an ex-oficio trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He received the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome in 2009. He lives in New York City.
