Kansas O'Flaherty ... Secret Agent

Toni Schlesinger, creator and writer of "Kansas," is a New York-based journalist, fiction writer, theater artist and columnist, most recently for the New York Observer and for eight years for the Village Voice where she originated and wrote her award-winning "Shelter" column, which was collected along with new essays in her book "Five Flights Up" -- the inside life of New York -- published by Princeton Architectural Press.

Tom Bachtell, longtime New Yorker magazine illustrator, and swing dancer, and pianist, created the drawings for "When I Knew" (Robert Trachtenberg, editor, HarperCollins -- Lambda Literary Award Finalist). His work also has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, New York magazine, the New York Observer, Time, Newsweek, Town & Country, and Entertainment Weekly.