Rick Hamlin

A native of Pasadena, California, Rick and his wife, the writer Carol Wallace, live in New York City, where they've raised their two boys. Classmates at Princeton University, "just friends," Carol got a job in publishing in New York, and Rick went to Italy, where he lived in Florence for two years. "We kept in touch by mail," he explains. They saw each other again back in New York, where Rick was working in the theater, and they wrote each other more when he moved to Los Angeles. "We really fell in love through the mail."

Rick and Carol sing in their church choir, and he teaches Sunday school to fifth and sixth graders. He's always working on some book. Another romance? It seems likely. "When you start thinking about what makes people fall in love," he says, "there's no end of possibilities."