Teresa Mendez-Faith was born in Asuncion, Paraguay. She received her PhD at the University of Michigan in 1979. She currently resides in New England. An essayist, literary critic and college professor, she teaches Hispanic-American literature at Saint Anselm College, New Hampshire. She has authored several books including Paraguay: Novela y Exilio (1985) and Nuevos contextos: Doce cuentistas contemporaneos de Hispanoamerica (2002), and is co-author of four Spanish textbooks. Teresa Mendez-Faith has been awarded several academic distinctions, including two postgraduate scholarships from the National for Endowment the Humanities, the AAUP Teacher of the Year prize at her college (1990) and, also that same year, the Sears-Roebuck Foundation Teaching Excellence and Campus Leadership Award. Mary McVey Gill received a master's in comparative literature from the University of California at Berkeley. In addition to EN CONTACTO, she has co-authored CINEMA FOR SPANISH CONVERSATION, DE PELICULA! (a high school conversation book based on film), Hablemos espanol (introductory Spanish), TAPESTRY: LISTENING AND SPEAKING II (for English as a second language), STREETWISE SPANISH, STREETWISE SPANISH DICTIONARY/THESAURUS, TUNE UP YOUR SPANISH (a review of Spanish with a lexical emphasis), THE RED-HOT BOOK OF SPANISH SLANG AND IDIOMS, and most recently SPANISH IN YOUR FACE (gestures and vocabulary related to emotions and personality characteristics). She lives in Stanford, California. Brenda Wegmann received a Master's degree in Spanish literature from the University of Wisconsin and taught Spanish for seven years at Boston University and Northeastern University before moving to Canada in 1974. Since then she has lived with her family in Edmonton while teaching Spanish at the University of Alberta in the Department of Extension and writing Spanish and ESL textbooks, as well as trade books. Among her publications (written in collaboration with outstanding co-authors) are the following: PERSPECTIVAS, EN CONTACTO (for intermediate university Spanish), MOSAIC 1 & 2 (ESL readers), PRONTO Y PRACTICO (Practical Spanish for Canadians), STREETWISE SPANISH DICTIONARY / THESAURUS, LAUGH N' LEARN SPANISH (co-authored with cartoonist Lynn Johnston of For Better or For Worse), TUNE UP YOUR SPANISH, and most recently, THE RED-HOT BOOK OF SPANISH SLANG AND IDIOMS.
