Debra “D.L.” Pughe, essayist and museum professional, of Berkeley, California, earned a master’s degree in Philosophy from California State University-Dominguez Hills. She served as the director of exhibitions at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco from 1982 to 1994. Pughe also worked for seven years at The Lawrence Hall of Science, a public science center in Berkeley, California. She lived in Iowa City, Iowa, when her husband, Jon Winet, was a professor at the University of Iowa’s School of Art, Art History, and Design. During that time, Pughe wrote essays focused on Iowa City, including “When Luck Grows Hard: Real Life in the Fiction Capital of America,” on poverty in the Midwest, and “Being in Dog Time,” about how dogs experience time at the Iowa City Animal Care and Adoption Center. She also built displays and miniature tableaus for the Iowa City Library, University of Iowa Hospitals, and the Imagination Station. [Biographical information found on Pughe’s “The Dream of Knowledge” website.]

Mary Slaughter Dyroff was born and raised in Lone Tree, Iowa, and took an interest in animals from an early age. She worked for American College Testing (ACT) and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). She lived in Iowa City, Iowa, Togus, Maine, Washington, D.C., Bedford, Massachusetts, and Viroqua, Wisconsin, before settling back down in her hometown of Lone Tree and beginning Mary’s Farm Sanctuary, a non-profit animal sanctuary with gardens and a community outreach program. At the time of the interview (2019) there were 20 horses, two goats, nine dogs, and 21 cats cared for on the 13 acres at Mary’s Farm.