(l-r) Saree Makdisi, Amy Wilentz, Sandy Tolan

In a public dialogue moderated by Sandy Tolan, these authors each have a stake in the outcome of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as do all Americans, for the United States expends billions each year on Israel, Egypt and other countries of the Middle East, whether to keep the peace or stay close to perceived American interests. Watch an introductory video clip of a similar conversation between Makdisi, Tolan and Wilentz below.

Three articulate writers—all longtime observers and writers on the Middle East—join in a frank and informative conversation about the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Saree Makdisi is a professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA. He is a frequent op-ed essayist for the Los Angeles Times and other publications, and speaks on Middle East affairs on NPR, PBS and in public lectures around the world. A member of Levantine Cultural Center's national advisory board, he lives in Los Angeles.

Visit Saree Makdisi's blog

Amy Wilentz is the author of The Rainy Season: Haiti Since Duvalier; Martyrs' Crossing, and I Feel Earthquakes More Often Than They Happen: Coming to California in the Age of Schwarzenegger. She is the winner of the Whiting Writers Award, the PEN Martha Albrand Non-Fiction Award, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Award, and also a 1990 nominee for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Wilentz has written for many publications including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Time magazine, The New Republic, Mother Jones, Harper's, Vogue and The London Review of Books. She is the former Jerusalem correspondent of The New Yorker and a long-time contributing editor at The Nation. She teaches in the Literary Journalism program at the University of California at Irvine.,

Visit Amy Wilentz's website

Since 1982, radio and print journalist Sandy Tolan has reported from more than 30 countries, including American Indian country, along the U.S.-Mexico border, across New England, in Latin America, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Asia. He is a co-founder of Homelands Productions, a production company focusing on documentary work for public radio. He is a lead producer for the Homelands series Working, which profiles workers around the world. He has written for more than 40 newspapers and magazines, and produced hundreds of documentaries and features for NPR and Public Radio International. He has garnered more than 25 national and international journalism awards, including a duPont-Columbia Silver Baton, a United Nations Gold Medal award, and dozens of others. He is the author of two books: Me and Hank: A Boy and His Hero 25 Years Later; and The Lemon Tree: An Arab, a Jew,and the Heart of the Middle East, which was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle award, and which won Booklist's "Top of the List" award in nonfiction.

Visit Sandy Tolan's website