Agent Backstory, known for his uncanny ability to provide detailed background histories for nearly anyone or anything, will provide you with valuable intel during your mission. He earned his code name during his days as the head dungeon master of his high school D&D club where his elaborate campaigns would often take entire academic years. While the other children were playing sports and videogames, Backstory was in the library stacks researching world history and writing and self-publishing verse as his bard/warrior poetic alter ego, “The Broadsword Minstrel.” It was during a family trip to New York City that Backstory fell in love with spoken word poetry after witnessing a busker performing on the 4 train. Afterwards, he would travel to New York City’s lower east side every week to compete in the Wednesday night poetry slam at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, a passion which connected him to the vibrant voices and poetic legacy of New York City’s streets. In poets such as Allen Ginsberg, Miguel Piñero, Langston Hughes, and Walt Whitman, Backstory discovered a lineage of creative talents whose work offered pathways to new understandings of the world around him. It also became clear that for many, these progressive ideas were frequently controversial and that for every poet was an opponent who would seek to suppress or demonize that which he/she didn’t understand or agree with. Now, as a college professor and Great Companions agent, Backstory has committed himself to defending all writer’s freedom of expression, while working to preserve written works against forces intent on their suppression and destruction.