Sandra Seaton is the author of the award-winning play The Bridge Party, which dramatizes the way of life of middle-class blacks in the South before the modern civil rights movement. Ms. Seaton collaborated with composer William Bolcom to produce the song cycle for her most recent work, From The Diary of Sally Hemmings. A Professor of English at Central Michigan University in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, Sandra Seaton teaches courses in playwriting, fiction writing, and African American Literature. Her scholarly work, which has been microfilmed by the Tennessee State Archives, focuses on research about African American communities in the South from colonial times through the era of segregation: http://www.grad.cmich.edu/seaton/Sandra_Seaton.htm

William Bolcom, D.M.A., is a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer and pianist. In addition to his stage scores, his numerous compositions have received international acclaim. With an extensive list of commissions, he has earned many honors and is currently named the Ross Lee Finney Distinguished University Professor of Music at the University of Michigan. Professor Bolcom also records albums and performs concerts with his wife, Grammy Award nominated mezzo-soprano Joan Morris: http://www.bolcomandmorris.com/core.html