The Mash-Up Americans is your guide to hyphen-America. They’re rooted in tradition, looking to the future, and creating culture each day they live it.

Founded in 2013 by Amy S. Choi and Rebecca Lehrer, The Mash-Up Americans is a media company and boutique creative studio. They host their eponymous podcast and understand and connect to the dynamic, diverse, modern American audience. They produce chart-topping podcasts for everyone from HBO, Reese Witherspoon, and Rainn Wilson to The National Domestic Workers Alliance. 

“Everything we do reflects the kaleidoscope of the Mash-Up American experience and, at its core, pursues key questions: How do we define our identity? Who are the Mash-Up leaders, makers, doers and thinkers we need to know now? What are the issues keeping us up at night? What is the new culture that Mash-Ups are creating? And finally, how do we tell stories that help shape the future we want?”

Jeff Chang is a writer, thinker, and cultural organizer who has written extensively on culture, politics, the arts, and music. His Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, was named one of the best nonfiction books of the last quarter century. A new Young Adult edition of the book—co-written with Dave “Davey D” Cook—was published last year.

His other books include Total Chaos: The Art and Aesthetics of Hip-Hop, Who We Be: A Cultural History of Race in Post Civil Rights America and We Gon’ Be Alright: Notes On Race and Resegregation. He is the host of the Edge of Reason, a podcast of artists and ideas by Atlantic: Rethink and Hauser & Wirth. He is finishing a cultural biography of Bruce Lee called Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America (Mariner/HarperCollins).

Eric Kim is a New York Times staff food writer born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. He worked his way through the literary and culinary world to eventually become a digital manager at Food Network and a senior editor at Food52, where he amassed a devoted readership for his “Table for One” column.

He now hosts regular videos on NYT Cooking’s YouTube channel and writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine. A former contributing editor at Saveur, Eric taught writing and literature at Columbia University, and his work has been featured in The Washington Post, Bon Appétit, and Food & Wine. He lives with his rescue pup, Quentin Compson, in New York City.

Vashti Harrison is the #1 New York Times bestselling creator of Little Leaders, Little Dreamers, and Little Legends and the illustrator of Andrea Beaty’s I Love You Like Yellow, Matthew Cherry’s Hair Love, and Stephanie V.W. Lucianovic’s Hello, Star, among others. She received a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor for Lupita Nyong’o’s Sulwe and is also a two-time recipient of the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work for Children.

Vashti received her BA from the University of Virginia and her MFA in Film and Video from Calarts. Her experimental films and videos focus on her Caribbean heritage and folklore. They have shown around the world at film festivals and venues including the New York Film Festival, Rotterdam International Film Festival and Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Actress Julia Stiles will next be seen in CHOSEN FAMILY opposite Heather Graham, who also wrote and directed the indie feature. She can currently be seen as a series regular on Amazon’s THE LAKE, opposite Jordan Garvais and Madison Shamoun, and leading Paramount feature ORPHAN: FIRST KILL, a prequel to the highly successful film, ORPHAN. She was previously seen in the film THE GOD COMMITTEE opposite Kelsey Grammer, and in STX’s highly-acclaimed feature film, HUSTLERS starring opposite Constance Wu and Jennifer Lopez. She also starred in and executive produced the Sky Atlantic hit show, RIVIERA.

For her work on Showtime’s hit DEXTER opposite Michael C. Hall, Julia received Emmy, Golden Globe, and SAG Award nominations.

Jacqueline Woodson is the author of more than thirty books for young people and adults including Another Brooklyn, Red At The Bone and The Day You Begin. She received a 2023 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, a 2023 E. B. White Award, a 2020 MacArthur Fellowship, the 2020 Hans Christian Andersen Award, the 2018 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, and the 2018 Children’s Literature Legacy Award, and was the 2018–2019 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.

Her New York Times bestselling memoir, Brown Girl Dreaming, won the National Book Award, the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor, and the NAACP Image Award. Her books for young readers include Coretta Scott King Award and NAACP Image Award winner Before the Ever After, New York Times bestsellers The Day You Begin and Harbor Me, Newbery Honor winners Feathers, Show Way, and After Tupac and D Foster, and Each Kindness. In 2018, she founded BALDWIN FOR THE ARTS, a residency serving writers, composers, interdisciplinary, and visual artists of the Global Majority. Her most recent novel, Remember Us, is set in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn.

Adam Gidwitz is the creator and narrator of Grimm, Grimmer, Grimmest, a #1 podcast for kids and families, which won best podcast at Kidscreen 2023. Adam wrote the Newbery Honor winner The Inquisitor’s Tale, as well as the New York Times bestseller A Tale Dark & Grimm, which is now an Emmy-nominated animated series on Netflix. His newest book is Max in the House of Spies, which will be published by Penguin Young Readers in February 2024.