NELL JOSLIN is a native of Raleigh, North Carolina and received her MFA from North Carolina State University. Besides a fiction writer, she has been a public school teacher, medical librarian, copy editor, freelance journalist, stay-at-home mom, and attorney (although not all at the same time). She currently lives in Raleigh. Find her online at mea…

Kristen Perrin is originally from Seattle, Washington, where she spent several years working as a bookseller before moving to the UK to do a master's and PhD. She lives with her family in Surrey, where she can be found poking around vintage bookstores, stomping in the mud with her two kids, and collecting too many plants. Her middle grade novel Att…

Nancy Townsley lives in a floating home along the Multnomah Channel near Portland, Oregon. Her debut novel, Sunshine Girl, was inspired by her long career as a newspaper journalist. She continues to have a keen interest in the cultural and political changes altering the media landscape, channeling that fascination into writing fiction and nonfictio…

Ling Ling Huang is a writer and violinist. She plays with several ensembles, including the Oregon Symphony, Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra, ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, and the Experiential Orchestra, with whom she won a Grammy Award in 2021. Her debut novel, Natural Beauty, was a Good Morning America Buzz Pick, a New York Times Editors’ Choi…

Clay Stafford is an American bestselling and award-winning author, poet, screenwriter, and playwright; film and television producer, director, showrunner, actor; book, film, and stage reviewer as well as public speaker. He has sold nearly four million copies of his books overall and has had his work distributed in sixteen languages. He is founder a…

Robert Bailey is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of the Jason Rich series, which includes Rich Justice, Rich Waters, and Rich Blood; the Bocephus Haynes series, which includes The Wrong Side and Legacy of Lies; and the award-winning McMurtrie and Drake legal thriller series, including The Final Reckoning, The Last Trial, Between Black an…

Alex Kenna is a mystery writer, prosecutor, and amateur painter. Before law school, Alex studied painting and art history at Penn. She has also worked as a freelance art critic and sold art in a gallery. Originally from Washington DC, Alex lives in Sierra Madre, California with her husband, two sons, and giant schnauzer, Zelda, who is frequently mi…

Nancy Kricorian, who was born and raised in the Armenian community of Watertown, Massachusetts, is the author of four novels about post- genocide Armenian diaspora experience, including Zabelle, which was translated into seven languages, was adapted as a play, and has been continuously in print since 1998. Her essays and poems have appeared in The …

William Luvaas has published four novels: The Seductions of Natalie Bach (Little, Brown) Going Under (Putnam), Beneath The Coyote Hills (Spuyten Duyvil), and Welcome To Saint Angel (Anaphora Lit. Press); and three story collections: A Working Man’s Apocrypha (Univ. Okla. Press) Ashes Rain Down: A Story Cycle (Spuyten Duyvil), The Huffington Post’s …

Elizabeth Rose Quinn is a novelist and screenwriter. She graduated with a BA in English from UC Berkeley and a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy. Born and raised in Berkeley, California, Elizabeth lived in Los Angeles for fifteen years while working in production and writing for television. She is married with two children and currentl…

Dennis James Sweeney is the author of How to Submit: Getting Your Writing Published with Literary Magazines and Small Presses (New World Library, February 2025, Paperback). He has an MFA from Oregon State University and a PhD from the University of Denver. Originally from Cincinnati, he lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he teaches Creative Wri…

Stuart Nadler is the author of Wise Men, The Inseparables, and Rooms for Vanishing, and the short story collection The Book of Life. His work has been named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus and Amazon, a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writer selection, a finalist for the Mark Twain Prize for the American Voice, and has been translated across …

A native of Traverse City, Michigan, STEPHANIE CARPENTER is the author of Missing Persons: Stories, which won the 2017 Press 53 Award in Short Fiction; her work has also appeared in journals including Copper Nickel, The Missouri Review, and Witness. She's an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Michigan Technological University. Moral Treatme…

Acclaimed as the Oliver Sacks of fiction and the Michael Crichton of brain science, Lisa Genova is the New York Times bestselling author of More or Less Maddy, Still Alice, Left Neglected, Love Anthony, Inside the O’Briens, and Remember: The Science of Memory and the Art of Forgetting. Still Alice was adapted into an Oscar–winning film starring Jul…

Jordyn Taylor is the former deputy digital editor at Men’s Health magazine and the award-winning author of the young adult novels The Paper Girl of Paris, Don't Breathe a Word, and The Revenge Game. She is also an adjunct professor of journalism at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. Jordyn was born and raised in Toronto, C…

Kim (Freilich) Dower (City Poet Laureate of West Hollywood from October 2016 – October 2018) has published six highly acclaimed collections of poetry all from Red Hen Press. Her most recent book, What She Wants: Poems on Obsession, Desire, Despair, Euphoria, was called “witty, sultry and thoughtful” by the Washington Post, and her bestselling, I Wo…

Jessica Soffer is the author of This Is a Love Story and Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots. She grew up in New York City, attended Connecticut College, and earned her MFA at Hunter College. Her work has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, Real Simple, Saveur, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue, and on NPR’s Selected Shorts. She teaches creative writi…

Philip Kenney is an author and psychotherapist. His most recent work is a novel entitled, The Mercy Dialogues. That work examines the power of dialogue, in the service of love, to bridge seemingly impossible divisions between people. Prior to that, in 2022, his chapbook of haiku entitled, Only This Step, was published by Finishing Line Press. In 20…

Rachel Kaplan, MA, MFT, is a licensed psychotherapist with a thriving practice in the San Francisco Bay Area. Creator and host of the acclaimed podcast Healing Feeling Sh*t Show, she is active on a variety of social media channels and has published multiple features in Common Ground. Kaplan has studied yoga, meditation, and hands-on healing practic…

Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew is the author of Swinging on the Garden Gate: A Memoir of Bisexuality & Spirit, now in its second edition; the novel Hannah, Delivered; a collection of personal essays, On the Threshold: Home, Hardwood, and Holiness; the chapbook, A Map to Mercy, due out winter 2025; and three books on writing: Writing the Sacred Journey: T…

Kate Winkler Dawson is a seasoned documentary producer, podcaster, and true-crime historian whose work has appeared in The New York Times, WCBS News and ABC News Radio, “PBS NewsHour,” and “Nightline.” She is the creator of three hit podcasts (BB has about 1.5 million downloads a month): “Tenfold More Wicked” and “Wicked Words,” and the cohost of t…

Nancy Slonim Aronie has been a commentator for National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. She was a Visiting Writer at Trinity College in Hartford, CT, wrote a monthly column in McCall’s magazine and was the recipient of the Eye of The Beholder Artist in Residence award at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Nancy won teacher of the …

Bill Kenower will be hosting an in-person Fearless Writing Retreat January 26-31 in Portland, OR. Space is limited! Hope to see you there: Bill's website: https://www.williamkenower.com/ Retreat website: https://www.portlandretreathouse.com/fearless-writing-with-bill-kenowerBy Author magazine

GARY GOLDSTEIN is an award-winning writer for film, TV, and the theatre, with more than 30 produced screen and stage credits. His first novel, the romantic comedy The Last Birthday Party, won an IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award for Excellence in Fiction. Gary's second novel, the family drama The Mother I Never Had, was named one of the "Must-Read Books…

Since coming through Clarion West in 2005, Cat Rambo’s 300+ fiction publications have included stories in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld Magazine, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and frequently appear in year’s best of collections. They work across genre, writing literary, thriller, science fiction, slipstream, fantasy, magic realism, hist…