Reid Buckley, founder and head of the Buckley School of Public Speaking, graduated from Yale. During the 1960s and 1970s, he toured the United States, taking on liberal columnist Max Lerner. He is the author of the novels The Eye of the Hurricane, and the fiction trilogy Canticle of the Thrush, Servants and Their Masters, as well as several books on speaking and writing. He has also written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The National Review. He lives in South Carolina.

Christopher Buckley is a novelist, essayist, humorist, critic, magazine editor, and memoirist. His books include Thank You for Smoking, The Judge Hunter, Make Russia Great Again, and The Relic Master. He worked as a merchant seaman and White House speechwriter. He was awarded the Thurber Prize for American Humor and the Washington Irving Medal for Literary Excellence.