Tony Labat, I WANT YOU, a project for Live Art at SFMOMA. Design by MendeDesign. Photography by George Westcot.

Beth Lisick has published poems, essays, and a short fiction collection; she wrote a weekly nightlife column for SF Gate for eight years. Her stage and screen collaborations with writer/performer Tara Jepsen have yielded some uncomfortable moments, most recently the short film Diving for Pearls. Beth co-organizes the Porchlight Storytelling Series, a monthly show for amateur storytellers in San Francisco. Her book Everybody Into the Pool was a New York Times bestseller; her latest book about her adventures in the self-help biz is called Helping Me Help Myself: One Skeptic, 10 Self-Help Gurus, and a Year on the Brink of the Comfort Zone.

Tara Jepsen is a writer and performer from San Francisco. She’s toured extensively with the all-female cabaret Sister Spit’s Rambling Road Show, and the short film Diving for Pearls (in collaboration with Beth Lisick), won “Most Innovative Short”  at the Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival (2004). She co-curates and co-hosts San Francisco’s longest running queer open mic, K’vetsh, with Kirk Read. Tara recently completed the first run of her live stage show, written and performed with Beth Lisick, Getting in on the Ground Floor and Staying There.

Don and Phil, or R. Donald Nash and Phil Spalding, hail from San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood, where they have been running their boutique design firm for over thirty years. They’ve worked with princes and princesses, real and figurative, and aren’t afraid to nudge a client toward a more adventurous chair. Though they’ve never fallen on the same side of the great Hummel vs. Lladro debate, they do agree on Italian opera, convertibles (preferably silver and Mercedes), and their shih tzus Betty and Veronica.