Dennis McBride grew up in Boulder City, Nevada, and received both his BA and MA from UNLV. He is well-known as an expert in the history of Hoover Dam and has done several histories of Boulder City. He has chronicled and collected the history of the LGBTQ community in Las Vegas since the late 1970s, and his work culminated in the manuscript "Life in the Neon Closet: A History of Gay Las Vegas" published in 2017.

Denise Duarte was born in 1960 and is an activist and artist in Nevada. She led the Nevada Women's Lobby and Stand OUT for Equality, both important advocacy groups for women's and LGBTQ+ rights in Nevada.