As the drinks columnist for Esquire from 2000 to 2016 and the Daily Beast from 2016 to 2022, David Wondrich was perfectly placed not only to observe the modern cocktail revolution, but also to help push it along. A former English professor with a PhD in comparative literature, he turned his studies to good use in writing books such as the James Beard Award-winning Imbibe!, a biography-with-recipes of pioneering bartender Jerry Thomas, and editing The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails, which the American Library Association deemed the best reference book of 2021. On top of that, Wondrich has helped to train literally thousands of bartenders; been a television guest of Conan O'Brien, Stephen Colbert, and Rachel Maddow; partnered in developing several award-winning spirits (plus his own line of barware); and been voted the #3 most influential person in the bar world by a thousand of his peers. He lives in Brooklyn, New York and Trieste, Italy.

Originally from Northeastern Pennsylvania, Dean Kotz studied painting at West Chester University and has been working professionally in comics since 2009.