The winner of the 2003 Elizabeth O'Neill Verner Award given to the outstanding arts writer in the state, and a two-time winner from S.C. of the National Partners of the Americas Journalist Fellowship to Cali and Bogota, Colombia, Dottie Ashley reviews theater and dance, writes about local arts organiztions and once a year covers New York theater. With a masters degree from the University of South Carolina, she worked for 15 years at The State newspaper in Columbia where she won the 1985 American Dance Festival Critics Award to Duke University. She has covered the Spoleto Festial USA since its founding in 1977.

James Beck joined the Charleston newspapers in 1971. He has served as sports editor of The News and Courier, and executive sports editor and systems editor of The Post and Courier. He served as a member of the Associated Press Sports Editors national executive committee. As systems editor, The Post and Courier became one of the first newspapers in the United States to fully paginate with a front-end system. He has written a tennis column for the newspaper since the 1970s. For 2003, he was recognized as the national winner of the U.S. Tennis Association's Media Excellence Award, the first person from the nine-state Southern Section to win this award. He is a native of Bamberg, and holds an undergraduate degree from Limestone College and a masters in business administration from The Citadel. He and his wife, Carrol, have two daughters, Danielle, who attends the Charleston School of Law, and Nicole, a student at
Wofford College.

Charlie Bennett is the University of South Carolina beat writer for the Post and Courier and has more than 25 years experience covering college sports. Bennett got his start at the Anderson Independent-Mail in 1980. He has also worked for the Aiken Standard, the Greenville News, and spent seven years at the New Orleans Times-Picayune. In addition to his present assignment covering the Gamecocks, his beat experience includes stints covering the University of Georgia, Clemson, LSU, Tulane, the Southeastern Conference and the New Orleans Saints. A native of Rock Hill, Bennett lives in Columbia.

Rebekah Bradford is a former columnist for Romantic Times magazine, a member of Romance Writer's of America, an avid reader of romantic fiction and a novelist in search of a publisher. She is a 1993 graduate of Columbia College and recently moved to Charleston from Boston where she lived for a decade.

Bryce Donovan is the humor columnist for The Post and Courier. That doesn't mean his stuff is funny, it just means he's funnier than anybody else we have here. Each week he ventures outside the building to try out new, weird and exciting things for his "It beats working" column. When he's done, he sits down at a computer and writes a first-person account of just how much company time he wasted.

Michael Fussell graduated from the Univeristy of Georgia in 1999 with a degree in Journalism. He worked for several technology companies and dot com startups in the Atlanta area as a programmer and web developer before joining The Post and Courier in November of 2004.

A 1984 graduate of the Honors College at the University of South Carolina, Jeff Hartsell has covered high school, college and professional sports, including The Masters golf tournament, since joining The Post and Courier. Hartsell has won awards from the South Carolina Press Association and twice has been named state sportswriter of the year by the National Sportswriters and Sports Broadcasters Association. He lives in Mount Pleasant with his wife, Dora, and four children.

Elsa McDowell is the public editor. She welcomes questions and comments about The Post and Courier's policies and the accuracy and fairness of its news content and presentation. She writes a Sunday column in which she discusses issues of concern to readers.

Mike Mooneyham, a writer and editor with The Post and Courier since 1979, is one of the nation's foremost authorities on professional wrestling and pens the longest-running wrestling column in the country. A former radio wrestling talk show host, Mooneyham is a frequent guest on sports talk shows throughout the U.S. He began writing for national wrestling magazines and other sports publications during the '60s and has interviewed many of the industry’s most influential figures of the past half century. He recently co-authored the New York Times best-seller "Sex, Lies and Headlocks."

Gene Sapakoff writes columns and covers a variety of sports subjects (and sometimes non-sports subjects) for The Post and Courier. An Oregon native and graduate of Colorado State U., he moved to the Lowcountry to study history and eat Frogmore Stew. He has won many national writing and reporting awards. Since 1997 he has won South Carolina Press Association awards in eight different categories. His work has appeared in The Sporting News, Sport, Sports Illustrated, California, Us, Baseball America and Pro Football Weekly. His SI feature on Charleston's 1955 Cannon Street All-Star team has been optioned as a movie.

Deidre Schipani has a 26-year career in culinary arts, teaching and writing. For the past 10 years, she has been manager of culinary services for Lunds and Byerly's, a chain of 23 upscale supermarkets in the upper Midwest. She directed the company's School of Culinary Arts, managed retail culinary services and oversaw publications, resource material and a Web site.

Schipani was a restaurant critic and food writer for the 70,000-circulation Minnesota Monthly magazine from 1991-96. She wrote a food and wine column for Patuxent Publishing Co., a group of weekly newspapers in the Baltimore-Washington, D.C., area, from 1981-88.

She was a recipe developer for "Prevention's Quick and Healthy Low Fat Cooking: Featuring All American Food" (Rodale Press, 1995) and was the editor, test kitchen manager and food writer for The Byerly Bag, a supermarket publication, from 1997 to 2006. From 1982-86, she owned and operated a full-service catering business in the Baltimore-Washington area.

Schipani received a diploma, with honors, in classical French cooking from the L'Academie de Cuisine in Bethesda, Md., in 1982. She has a bachelor's degree in biology and chemistry from Rosemont College in Pennsylvania and master's degree in education, magna cum laude, from Loyola College in Baltimore. She also took courses in restaurant management from Howard Community College in Maryland, attended the International Association of Culinary Professionals Master Class Program and has earned the highest level of certification, Certified Culinary Professional, from the IACP, demonstrating competency in food safety, nutrition, food science and world and U.S. cuisines.

Teresa Taylor is an assistant features editor for The Post and Courier who oversees the Food, Home & Garden and Petc. sections. However, her first love and primary responsibility is the food beat, which she took over in 2003 after more than 20 years at the newspaper in other editing positions. She writes stories for Wednesday's Food section and a recipe exchange column for home cooks called “Now We’re Cooking,” which appears in Sunday editions. Taylor joined the company in 1983 as a copy editor for The News and Courier, having previously worked for Gannett's Westchester-Rockland newspaper group in White Plains, N.Y. She became weekend editor in 1987, news editor of The Evening Post in 1990, and executive business editor of The Post and Courier in 1991.

A native South Carolinian who graduated from Wando High School, Larry Williams became The Post and Courier's Clemson beat reporter in January of 2004. He spent the previous five years at The Augusta Chronicle, where he covered college sports. Williams has won awards from the Associated Press Sports Editors, Georgia Sports Writers Association and South Carolina Press Association. He got his start in the business at the High Point (N.C.) Enterprise, where he covered college sports. Williams, 29, lives in the Clemson area with his wife, who is a reporter for The Greenville News.

Wevonneda Minis writes genealogy columns and lifestyle features. She has 15 years of experience researching family history in the United States, Republic of Guinea, England, Scotland and the Bahamas. She teaches workshops for the Family History Center of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and serves on a Lowcountry database initiative to make 18th and 19th century records about African Americans more accessible. In addition, she is a member of the National Genealogical Society, South Carolina Genealogical Society and South Carolina Historical Society. She graduated from Regis College in Weston, Mass. and formerly covered environmental policy in Washington, D.C.