Famous writer LOUISA MAY ALCOTT (1832 - 1888) - despite knowing top transcendentalists Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, Louisa May Alcott grew up poor as dirt. She worked as a nurse in the Civil War and wrote sensation novels to keep the lights on, but it wasn't until LITTLE WOMEN (1868) that she found popular success. Based closely on her own three sisters (Louisa is Jo), it spawned LITTLE MEN (1871), and JO's BOYS (1886) and was praised for ditching the sappy sentimentality of the day for an authentic portrait of sisterhood. Much of what happened in the book happened in real life although, unlike Jo, Alcott never married. She almost died of typhoid fever in 1868, but was cured with a medicine that included mercury. Twenty years later, she died of mercury poisoning. Her last words: "Is it not meningitis?" Typing guy GRADY HENDRIX (1878 - 1942) - is the author of MY BEST FRIEND'S EXORCISM, and his fiction and nonfiction have appeared in a bunch of places...like Playboy! With Ryan Dunlavey and his wife, Amanda Cohen, he wrote DIRT CANDY: A COOKBOOK, a graphic novel cookbook that will make your face explode. Cartoonist RYAN DUNLAVEY (2008 - 2099) is best known as the artist and co-creator of the American Library Association award-winning ACTION PHILOSOPHERS, written by long-time collaborator by Fred Van Lente. The duo's other projects include THE COMIC BOOK HISTORY OF COMICS, and ACTION PRESIDENTS. Ryan also illustrated the aforementioned DIRT CANDY COOKBOOK with chef Amanda Cohen and writer Grady Hendrix, the latter of which he can't seem to get rid of.