Norman Lear was born in 1922 in Connecticut and attended Emerson College before serving in World War II from 1942 to 1945. He began his television-writing career for The Ford Star Revue in 1950, and wrote later for comedies such as The Martha Raye Show and The George Gobel Show. In 1958, Lear cofounded Tandem Productions with Bud Yorkin. The company produced several films, including Divorce American Style, whose screenplay, written by Lear, was nominated for an Academy Award in 1967. Tandem’s first TV series, All in the Family, ran for nine seasons on CBS and earned four Emmy Awards. It was followed by a number of other successful and often groundbreaking comedies, including The Jeffersons, Maude, Good Times, One Day at a Time, and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman. In addition to his work in television, Lear has pursued a number of social causes. In 1981, he founded People For the American Way, a nonprofit organization devoted to the protection of civil liberties. Lear received the National Medal of Arts from President Bill Clinton in 1999.

Claire Barliant earned her M.A. from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College in 2004 and her B.A. in comparative literature from Smith College in 1997. The Brooklyn-based writer has contributed to the publications Afterall, Artforum, ARTNews, Art on Paper, Modern Painters, and The Village Voice. Barliant has also worked as a freelance editor for a variety of publications, as well as for the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and for the author Wayne Koestenbaum and the poet Bruce Hainley.