Ayana of The Vintage Guidebook

Ayana is a former personal stylist with a penchant for mid-century fashion. She is the writer behind The Vintage Guidebook, a blog discussing beauty, clothing, styling, and lifestyle with a vintage twist, helping readers channel decades past and bring out the unmistakable flair of yesteryear.

Damianne Scott

Damianne Candice Scott (Dami) is the creator of Black Girl Loves Jane, a Facebook group born from “celebrating that it was perfectly wonderful to be an African American woman who loved Austen novels and other classic literature”. She has been a guest speaker for Jane Austen Society of India and her first novel, Persuaded, aims to be published in late 2021.

Joanna Sotomura

Joanna Sotomura is an actress who starred as the titular character in the Emmy-winning comedy web series Emma Approved, an adaptation of Jane Austen’s 1815 novel Emma. She has also landed roles on the CBS series’ Life in Pieces, Hawaii Five-O, The Good Place, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, and a voice acting credit for Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare.

Lauren Burke

Lauren Burke is the cohost of Bonnets at Dawn, a weekly podcast and “literary thunderdome” in which she and her cohost Hannah Chapman compare and contrast Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters. She and Chapman also cowrote Why She Wrote: A Graphic History of the Lives, Inspiration, and Influence Behind the Pens of Classic Women Writers.

Chris Oswald

Ros and Chris Oswald are the hosts of The Regency Rum Bluffers, a Youtube channel focused on taking a light hearted look at all things Regency, such as music on an original Square Piano, items on fashion, Regency characters, food and drink, Jane Austen and more.

Bianca Hernandez

Social media mage by day, and nerd of many fandoms by night, Bianca Hernandez is a lady of many interests. She works professionally in social media managing brand marketing and audience engagement and fights for a more inclusive Jane Austen community.

Danielle Hyatt Perry

Danielle Hyatt Perry is the proprietress of Timely Tresses, a company that specializes in historic millinery. Perry creates original patterns based on extant bonnets and antique fashion plates. Each style is designed and researched with the utmost care to faithfully represent historic fashion. She has also presented at the Heritage Sewing & Skill Building Group.

Professor John Mullan

John Mullan is a broadcaster, journalist, and professor of Modern English Literature at University College London. His books include What Matters in Jane Austen?, How Novels Work and The Artful Dickens. He published a new edition of Austen’s Sense and Sensibility for Oxford World’s Classics in 2017 and is currently completing a new edition of Emma.

Lisa Brown

Lisa Brown is a dance caller, teacher, and the creator of Jane Austen-themed bingo, which she calls for JASNA regions across North America. Brown is regularly called upon to give presentations on British historical topics related to the long 18th century and is the proprietress of Regency Rentals, a Regency Era costume rental business.

Shari Savoy, MD

Shari Savoy is an avid fan of Jane Austen and the English Regency period, which led her to the idea of purchasing the Teel House. Savoy and her sister Dee fell in love with Teel House and have been managing the house since 2014. They shared their enthusiasm for Teel with friends and family and the Friends of Teel community was born.

Christine (Sewstine)

Christine is a historical costumer, seamstress and embroiderer. She is the proprietress of Sewstine, a shop “for embroidery lovers from an embroidery lover”. Her elaborate creations are the product of a process mixing modern technology and historically accurate sewing techniques.

Hannah K. Chapman

Hannah K. Chapman is the cohost of Bonnets at Dawn, a weekly podcast and “literary thunderdome” in which she and her cohost Lauren Burke compare and contrast Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters. She and Burke also cowrote Why She Wrote: A Graphic History of the Lives, Inspiration, and Influence Behind the Pens of Classic Women Writers.

Julia Matson

Julia Matson is the proprietress of Bingley’s Teas, a tea shop that offers over 100 teas, including a specialty line of teas created just for Jane Austen fans. Through Bingley’s, Matson provides tea workshops, events with local authors and tea talks. She has over ten years of tea experience and education within and outside of the United States.

Mariam Wassif

Mariam Wassif is a scholar and teacher of British literature of the long eighteenth century, from Milton to the Romantics. Along with teaching writing and British literature at Cornell University and at institutions of higher education in France, she has also worked as a writing tutor helping researchers develop articles and dissertation chapters.

Soniah Kamal

Soniah Kamal is an award-winning novelist, essayist, public speaker and author of Unmarriageable: Pride & Prejudice in Pakistan. She was also a keynote speaker at the 2020 Jane Austen Festival, where she spoke on the universality across time and cultures.

Cynthia Settje

Cynthia Settje has had a passion for sewing, historical fashion, film, and theater costumes since her early teens. She’s also the proprietress of Redthreaded, a costume business specializing in high quality historically inspired costumes, gowns, corsets, and millinery,

Hope Greenberg

Hope Greenberg is a costume historian, historic costumer and public speaker. She has presented on the topic of Austen-era fashion for national conferences, JASNA-VT, the Jane Austen Summer Program at UNC, history and literature courses, libraries and more, with a focus on the evolution of fashion and the language that describes it.

Dr. Juliette Wells

Juliette Wells is an American author, editor, and Jane Austen scholar. She is a member of the editorial board of the Jane Austen Society of North America and her work focuses on women's writing and 18th and 19th century British literature, especially that of Jane Austen. She has also edited official publications of Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and Persuasion.

Ros Oswald

Ros and Chris Oswald are the hosts of The Regency Rum Bluffers, a Youtube channel focused on taking a light hearted look at all things Regency, such as music on an original Square Piano, items on fashion, Regency characters, food and drink, Jane Austen and more.

Aydrea Walden

A former newspaper reporter, Aydrea Walden created and starred in the Webby-nominated series Black Girl in a Big Dress. You can hear Aydrea discuss television writing, animation, her love of English country dancing, and her whole deal with Renaissance Faires on the podcasts: Typin’ Toons and On the Page.