Sherry Lee Linkon is a professor of English and American Studies at Georgetown University, where she directs both the Writing Program and the American Studies Program. Trained in American Studies, her research and teaching cover a wide range of fields, including American literature and culture, interdisciplinary teaching and learning, urban studies, and working-class studies. Her latest book, The
Half-Life of Deindustrialization: Working-Class Writing about Economic Restructuring (Michigan, 2018), examines contemporary writing that reflects the continuing effects of deindustrialization on ideas about work, place, and working-class culture.

John Russo is a Visiting Researcher at the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University. Before moving to Washington, he was a Professor of Management and Coordinator of the Labor Studies Program in the Williamson College of Business Administration at Youngstown State University. Russo has written widely of labor and social issues and is recognized as a national expert on labor unions, work, and working-class politics. For his many activities, Dr. Russo is one of the few professors at YSU to have ever received Distinguished Professorship Awards in each of four areas: research and scholarship, teaching, university service, and public service.

Together, Linkon and Russo have produced two books: Steeltown USA: Work and Memory in Youngstown (University Press of Kansas, 2002) and the edited collection New Working-Class Studies (Cornell UP, 2004). They also co-directed the Center for Working-Class Studies at Youngstown State University for 17 years.