X. J. Kennedy is an acclaimed poet, children’s author, college teacher, and textbook author. He has taught freshman composition at the University of Michigan; the University of North Carolina, Greensboro; and Tufts University. Since 1966, more than 2 million students have treasured his introductory literature texts and The Bedford Reader, coedited with Dorothy M. Kennedy and Jane E. Aaron, now in its ninth edition.

Dorothy M. Kennedy is a writer and editor whose articles and reviews have ppeared in both professional and academic journals. She has taught composition at the University of Michigan and Ohio University and, with X. J. Kennedy, is the recipient of the NCTE Teacher's Choice Award for Knock at a Star: A Child's Introduction to Poetry.

Jane E. Aaron is a professional writer and editor as well as an experienced teacher. She is the author of the best selling Little, Brown Handbook and coeditor of the best-selling Bedford Reader, Eighth Edition (Bedford/St. Martin's, 2003). She has served as consultant, editor, or writer on more than a dozen other textbooks for the first-year composition course.

Ellen Kuhl Repetto (M.A., University of Massachusetts Boston) is a freelance editor and writer who has contributed to more than twenty composition readers, handbooks, and rhetorics. She is the author of The Bedford/St. Martin's Textbook Reader (2003), Readings for Discoveries: A Collection of Short Essays (2006), and Hope over Hardship: A History of the Boston Home, 1881 - 2006 (2007).