Liza Wiemer
Liza Wiemer is an award-winning educator with over twenty years of teaching experience. Her second young adult novel, The Assignment, was published by Delacorte Press on August 25, 2020. To date, The Assignment will also be published in Russia, Poland, Italy, and South Korea. Hello?, her debut contemporary YA novel, was named a Goodreads Best Young Adult Novel of the Month. In addition, Liza has had two adult nonfiction books published and several short stories included in the New York Times bestselling Small Miracles series. She has had articles published in various newspapers and magazines. A graduate of UW-Madison, Liza has two married sons and lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with her husband, Jim.
Carole Stivers
Carole Stivers was born in East Cleveland, Ohio. She received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She went on to post-doctoral work at Stanford University before launching a career in medical diagnostics. She now lives in California, where she's combined her love of writing and her fascination with the possibilities of science to create her first novel, THE MOTHER CODE. While sheltering in place from COVID-19, she’s working on another near-future science fiction novel, this one set largely in Iceland—with gratitude for having visited that amazing country before the pandemic!
Loren Rhoads
Loren Rhoads is the author of five novels, including a space opera trilogy and a paranormal romance duet about a succubus who falls in love with an angel. She's also the author of a nonfiction travel guide to cemeteries, as well as a cemetery memoir called Wish You Were Here. Her most recent book is a collection of horror/dark fantasy/science fiction short stories called Unsafe Words.
Kao Kalia Yang
Kao Kalia Yang is a Hmong-American writer. She holds degrees from Carleton College and Columbia University. Yang is the author of The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir winner of the 2009 Minnesota Book Awards in Creative Nonfiction/Memoir and Readers’ Choice, a finalist for the PEN USA Award in Creative Nonfiction, and the Asian Literary Award in Nonfiction. The book is a National Endowment for the Arts Big Read title and on the roster of the American Place Theatre’s Literature to Life Program. Her second book, The Song Poet won the 2016 Minnesota Book Award in Creative Nonfiction Memoir, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Chautauqua Prize, a PEN USA Award in Nonfiction, and the Dayton’s Literary Peace Prize.
Susan Blumberg-Kason
Susan Blumberg-Kason is the author of Good Chinese Wife: A Love Affair with China Gone Wrong (Sourcebooks, 2014) and co-editor of Hong Kong Noir (Akashic Books, 2018). She is a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Review of Books and the Asian Review of Books. Her work has also appeared in The Frisky, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, and the South China Morning Post. She received an MPhil in Government and Public Administration from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where she researched emerging women’s rights over 100 years ago. Born, raised, and now based in the Chicago suburbs, Susan is an elected trustee of her public library.
Melissa Ferguson
Melissa Ferguson lives in Tennessee, where she enjoys chasing her children and writing romantic comedies full of humor and heart. Her favorite hobby is taking friends and acquaintances and turning them into characters in her books without their knowledge. She is confident you should read all her novels, starting with this one.
David Kouri
David Kouri was born in Houston, Texas in June of 1975. He studied at Los Angeles film school from 2001-2003 and at the Oklahoma City University where he studied under Grey Fredrickson, Academy Award-winning Executive producer of The Godfather parts one and two, Apocalypse Now and The Outsiders. While attending school in Oklahoma he also studied under Fritz Kiersch, director of the original Children of the Corn, Tuff Turf, and many other notable films. David lives with his wife and family in the Texas Hill Country.
Marcia Morris
Dr. Marcia Morris is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Florida, where she has worked with college students for over twenty-five years. She is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and a graduate of Harvard University and Yale School of Medicine. Through media, and public speaking, she is committed to promoting wellness for university students. Her book, The Campus Cure: A Parent's Guide to Mental Health and Wellness for College Students, was published in 2018.
Blake D Bauer
Blake D Bauer is the author of the international bestselling book You Were Not Born To Suffer. Each year he helps thousands of people who cannot find effective support from conventional psychology, medicine, or religion. Blake is a world-renowned teacher and speaker with an extensive background in psychology, alternative medicine, nutrition, traditional healing, and mindfulness meditation. Based on both his personal experience overcoming deep suffering, addiction, and adversity, as well as his professional success with over 100,000 people worldwide, Blake’s pioneering work integrates what he’s found to be the most effective approaches to optimal mental, emotional, and physical health.
Fred Lehr
Fred Lehr: While I am an ordained pastor, what probably describes better is that I am an incurable behavioral scientist. I am entirely consumed with the wonder of how people relate to themselves and to each other. How do organization manage? What are all the ins and outs of family life? What makes it all work?
Rosie Whitehouse
Rosie Whitehouse: I am a journalist and for the last four years I have been specialising in the story of what happened to Holocaust survivors after the Second World War. My new book The People on the Beach: Journeys to Freedom After the Holocaust (Hurst, 2020) traces the story of why and how the Jews left Europe after 1945. I am currently working on a new book about my husband’s family and their experiences in France during World War II.
Janet Ruth Heller
Janet Ruth Heller is president of the Michigan College English Association. She has published three poetry books: Exodus (WordTech Editions, 2014), Folk Concert: Changing Times (Anaphora Literary Press, 2012), and Traffic Stop (Finishing Line Press, 2011). The University of Missouri Press published her scholarly book, Coleridge, Lamb, Hazlitt, and the Reader of Drama (1990). Fictive Press published Heller’s middle-grade chapter book about sibling rivalry, The Passover Surprise (2015, 2016). Her children’s book about bullying, How the Moon Regained Her Shape (Arbordale, 2006; 6th edn. 2018), has won four national awards.
Donna Murray
You could say my life has been anything but conventional. I always called myself a gypsy, traveling to many places and reinventing myself many times. I have worked with iconic legends like Martha Graham and Elizabeth Taylor, and lived in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Bali, Indonesia. While working with the San Francisco Ballet on the Opening Night Gala in 2010, I left on that dark and rainy evening and stepped into a deep pothole, breaking both my feet. With months of recuperation ahead, I was given the opportunity to write my novel, Wolf Den Hollow: one that had been waiting to be told for over thirty years.
Jeff Spiess
Dr. Jeff Spiess is the author of Dying with Ease: A Compassionate Guide for Making Wiser End-of-Life Decisions. He has spent his medical career with people facing serious illness and death, first as an oncologist, then as a hospice physician. He has lectured extensively and has been recognized as a leader in the field of end-of-life care. He has observed, through extensive clinical experience and innumerable conversations with the dying and those caring for and about them, the burden of unnecessary or avoidable suffering and distress engendered by the American tendency to avoid facing death as an inevitable personal reality. His medical practice and writing are informed by his interest in philosophy and theology, and he finds additional insights in depictions of dying in literature, including sacred texts, music, and popular culture. His writing provides information and inspiration, challenging readers to honestly encounter their own mortality to both die better and live more fully.
Michele Kwasniewski
After graduating from Loyola Marymount University with a BA in Technical Theater, Michele Kwasniewski spent over fifteen years in film and television production. Starting out as a film set assistant on movies such as INDEPENDENCE DAY, FACE/OFF, PRIMAL FEAR, and EVITA, she worked her way up to production manager on TV shows including BIG BROTHER. She is also a proud member of the Producers Guild of America. Michele’s colorful experiences in the industry inspired her to write THE RISE AND FALL OF DANI TRUEHART series. Michele lives in San Clemente, California with her husband, their son, and their disobedient dachshund. RISING STAR is her first young adult novel.
Kevin Myers
Kevin T. Myers is the author of Hidden Falls (Beaufort Books), which came out in July. He proudly hails from Peabody, Massachusetts. He is a former stand-up comic and comedy writer. He has appeared on the Comedy Channel and was featured on 20/20. His jokes have been told at colleges, clubs, on the Tonight Show, and on Broadway. His essay “The Power of Compassion” aired nationally on NPR’s "This I Believe" series. He has worked as a journalist and editor in newsrooms from New Hampshire to Alaska, where he ran the Capital City Weekly. He has worked in higher education as a speechwriter, a spokesperson, and a media, government, and public relations liaison. He is currently the spokesperson for Reed College in Portland, Oregon.
Carol Schlanger
Brooklyn born Carol Schlanger lives in both rural Oregon and West L.A. She has been married for 45 years, has two children and two grandchildren. As an award winning actress and writer, her work has been nominated for an Obie, an Emmy and her memoir Hippie Woman Wild, won the 2020 gold Independent Publisher’s award. She has 3 LA Dramalogue Critics Awards for performance and writing and won the LA Playwright’s Monologue Slam. An artist-in-residence for the Jewish Woman’s Theater, she has been in serious demand as a storyteller and performed in varied well- known venues throughout Los Angeles and New York. An almost graduate of Yale Drama, she has written for Imagine Entertainment, two T.V. pilots for CBS and her plays have been published by the National Organization of Women’s Playwrights and the Theatre of Note. She can chop wood, light a fire and everyone loves her lasagna.
Steven R. Feldman
Dr. Steven R. Feldman is Professor of Dermatology, Pathology, Social Sciences & Health Policy, and Molecular Medicine & Translational Science at the Wake Forest School of Medicine. He serves on the Medical Board of the National Psoriasis Foundation and directed psoriasis education programs for the American Academy of Dermatology. According to Expertscape.com (on January 11, 2019), Feldman was the #1 expert in the world on psoriasis (and on acne and on dermatology!). He is the co-author of the book, WHEN WILL IT EVER GO AWAY: PRACTICAL ANSWERS TO YOUR COVID-19 QUESTIONS.
Diane Nine
Diane Nine is the President of Nine Speakers, Inc. is a full service entertainment agency representing people across the world in a number of areas including the literary, lecture, theatrical, film, and television arenas. Diane is a graduate of George Washington University’s Law School. She is the author of BE AN AUTHOR, and her latest book, MY LIFE WITH HELEN: THE DEAN OF THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS CORPS THROUGH HER AGENT’S EYES.
Barbara Mahany
Barbara Mahany is an author and freelance journalist in Chicago, who writes these days about stumbling on the sacred amid the cacophony of the modern-day domestic melee. She was a reporter and feature writer at the Chicago Tribune for nearly 30 years, and before that a pediatric oncology nurse at Children's Memorial Hospital in Chicago. Her first book, Slowing Time: Seeing the Sacred Outside Your Kitchen Door, has been called “a field guide into the depths of your holiest hours;” Publishers Weekly named it one of their Top 10 religion books for Fall 2014. She has since written three other books, including her latest, THE STILLNESS OF WINTER: Sacred Blessings of the Season (October 2020), a compendium of mediations, essays, recipes, and prayers rooted in the depths of winter’s months, from Abingdon Press.