Contributors

Stanley Booth’s books include The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones and Rythm Oil: A Journey Through the Music of the American South . Last year, his Newsweek.com eulogy for Atlantic Records boss Jerry Wexler was republished in Best Music Writing 2009 . He has written for Esquire , Rolling Stone , and GQ . We sent him to South Carolina to write about Rotarian Beatrice Brown Rivers who, when she was 13, signed a petition that led to one of the landmark cases in Brown v. Board of Education .

Deputy Senior Editor Janice S. Chambers has worked at The Rotarian for 11 years. She has edited some big writers – Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Nicholas Kristof – and some big interviews – Bill Gates and Desmond Tutu – but in this issue she did something even bigger: landing Rotarians around the world. Her idea was to spread the word that the magazine had designated 10 October 2009 as a Day in the Life of Rotary, then ask Rotarians to send their photos to us. Thousands of images and stories came in, and the results are in the 19-page photo essay designed by Creative Director Deborah Lawrence. It is a portrait of Rotarians unlike any other.

Jason Grotto is an investigative reporter for the Chicago Tribune , where he has covered issues from public housing and medical care for the uninsured to war contracting in Iraq. He has been writing our Facts of the Matter column since its inception in 2009. Before joining the Tribune in 2007, he was a member of the Miami Herald’s investigative reporting team for eight years. He is a two-time winner of the Investigative Reporters and Editors award for investigative reporting.

Jennifer Grotz’s story, illustrated by Greg Clarke, is the first in a new series called Rotary Stories. In each installment, the storytellers will describe how Rotary played a significant role in their lives. Grotz is the author of Cusp and recently completed a manuscript entitled The Needle . Her poems and translations (from the French and Polish) have appeared in Ploughshares , New England Review , TriQuarterly , and The Best American Poetry 2009 . She teaches at the University of Rochester and serves as the assistant director of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.