Peri Chickering is a coach, consultant, herbalist, and leadership educator. Working for years in field of wilderness-based leadership, she went on to run her own leadership school in Colorado and then start new schools in South Africa and Bulgaria. Taking her leadership experience from the outdoors inside, Peri has worked with clients in private, governmental, and nonprofit sectors, including Disney Theatrical, USDA Forest Service, World Bank, Stanford Woods Institute, University of Chicago, and Renaissance Reinsurance. She holds a master’s degree in human development and a Ph.D. in human and organizational systems. Now situated in the small town of Hancock, New Hampshire, she, her husband, their cat, and two horses steward 55 acres of beautiful woodlands passed down from her grandmother.

Steve Prentice is a social worker, artist, photographer, and the author of Seventh Generation.

While working with youth and adults, he has seen firsthand the desire to hide from that which is painful. Seventh Generation addresses these concerns through the eyes of a young teenager in a way that is relatable for readers of all ages.

Alexandria Rizik is an award-winning filmmaker and the author of two books, the poetry collection Words Written in the Dark and the children’s book Chocolate Milk. She was born and raised in Scottsdale, Arizona, where she was brought up by a large Armenian family. She received her bachelor of arts in English literature from Arizona State University. Alexandria’s love for writing began when she was a young child: her aunt bought her a journal and told her to write her a story, and the rest is history. Her favorite part about writing is being able to write the happily ever after that doesn’t always happen in real life. Besides writing, Alexandria loves yoga, wine, and family time. She lives in Scottsdale, AZ.

Jennifer Katz was born and raised in South Florida along with a twin brother, a younger sister, and a toy poodle named Muffin. At age twenty-five, she earned her degree in clinical psychology and met Tristram Smith at a job interview. After she was hired, they became friends, and then more. Jenny and Tris married and moved to upstate New York with a son. Widowed at age forty-five, Jenny now lives with her teen daughter. She loves reading, yoga, musical theater, and broccoli. An award-winning professor, she teaches about gender, sexuality, and helping relationships. This is her first book, and she still lives in the New York area.

For most of her life, Pacific Northwest naturalist, photographer, and award-winning author Cheryl Grey Bostrom, MA, has lived in the rural and wild lands that infuse her writing. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications, including the American Scientific Affiliation’s God and Nature Magazine, for which she’s a regular photo essayist. A member of the Redbud Writers Guild, she has also authored two non-fiction books. This is her first novel. She currently resides near Lynden, WA.

Barbara Gregorich writes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. She’s on First and the award-winning Women at Play: The Story of Women in baseball are her best-known books. The F Words is her first YA novel.

Frank Haberle’s debut story collection, Shufflers, about minimum wage transients during the Reagan era, is forthcoming in August from Flexible Press. His short stories have won awards from Pen Parentis (2011), Beautiful Loser Magazine (2017) and the Sustainable Arts Foundation (2013). They have appeared in magazines including Stockholm Literary Review, Necessary Fiction, the Adirondack Review, Smokelong Quarterly, Wilderness House Literary Review, and the Baltimore Review. Frank lives in Brooklyn and works at New Settlement in The Bronx.

Denise Larson is a native Californian: she went to elementary school in the Los Angeles suburb town of Torrance and high school in the San Joaquin Valley city of Manteca, and finally, after college, she put down roots in San Francisco. With a BA in theater from San Francisco State University, she pinned her dreams on becoming an experimental theater artist in the ’70s counterculture milieu of the Bay Area. Along that path she founded Les Nickelettes. For thirteen years, she helmed the feminist theater company and assumed the role of actress, playwright, producer, stage director, and administrative/artistic director. Then she gave it all up to become a mother and teacher. After a twenty-year career in early childhood education, she retired and took up writing. Denise still lives in San Francisco with her husband and their cat. She has also returned to her first love: theater. She is taking an improv class, and collaborating with other performers to form a new theatre group: Cosmic Elders. The author resides in San Francisco, CA.

Kim Fairley was raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. She attended the University of Southern California and holds an MFA in Mixed Media from the University of Michigan. Her first book, Boreal Ties: Photographs and Two Diaries of the 1901 Peary Relief Expedition chronicled the Arctic expedition of her great grandfather, Clarence Wyckoff. Kim lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Janet Luongo writes stories, creates art, and gives speeches and workshops. Raised Unitarian Universalist in New York City, she holds an MSEd from Queens College at CUNY and taught art from kindergarten to college. While teaching at the International School of Geneva over several years, she exhibited paintings in Geneva and Paris. In Connecticut, she taught communication at Sacred Heart University. As an art education curator in Bridgeport museums, her innovative programs garnered grants, awards and media attention for connecting urban and suburban children and developing leadership in underserved teens. Her book, 365 Daily Affirmation for Creativity, with a foreword by Jack Canfield and published in five countries, led to presentations in the US and as far as Xian, China. To make diverse feminist artists visible, she founded a non-profit, which mounted forty exhibits. She coproduced the movie Women Make Art, which was screened at the UNIFEM film festival. Currently, photography is her art. She resides with her husband, Jim, in Norwalk, Connecticut, and they enjoy hiking with their son and family in Colorado.

Susan Schoenberger is the award-winning author of A Watershed Year and The Virtues of Oxygen. With a linotypist as a grandfather, she has ink in her blood and worked as a journalist and copyeditor for many years, including The Baltimore Sun and 12 years with The Hartford Courant. She currently serves as Director of Communications at Hartford Seminary, a graduate school with a focus on interfaith dialogue. She lives in West Hartford, Connecticut, with her husband Kevin. They have three grown children and a small dog named Leo.

Ever since Esme discovered Nancy Drew, she's wanted to solve mysteries. As a mystery author, she's finally found a way to make that dream come true. Esme lives in Raleigh, NC with her family. When she's not writing or dreaming up new mysteries for her sleuths to stumble upon, you can find her dancing her calories away in Zumba, patronizing her local bookstores or visiting the beach, the mountains and all historical sites in between.

Susan J. Farese, MSN, RN, (Veteran), a native of NJ, is owner/president of SJF Communications, San Diego, CA. Ms. Farese has diversified experience in health care/communications, including military and civilian nursing practice, management, education/training, research and consulting. SJF Communications provides Public Relations, Social Media, Websites, Writing, Acting, Filmmaking, Mentoring and Photography. Clients include theatres, musicians, filmmakers, authors and businesses. Susan is the author of the book “Poetic Expressions in Nursing: Sharing the Caring” (1993 and 2021) and has written poetry and articles on a variety of topics. She is on the Advisory Board for San Diego Film Week, and is a member of SAG-AFTRA, Veterans in Media & Entertainment, San Diego Writers, Ink, Southern California Writers Association and the San Diego Press Club.

Yang Huang grew up in China and has lived in the United States since 1990. Her novel MY GOOD SON won the University of New Orleans Publishing Lab Prize. Her linked story collection, MY OLD FAITHFUL, won the Juniper Prize, and her debut novel, LIVING TREASURES, won the Nautilus Book Award silver medal. The New York Times said, “As with her previous books, ‘Living Treasures’ and ‘My Old Faithful,’ Huang’s latest explores the generational push-pull of family life in post-Tiananmen China.” She works for the University of California, Berkeley and lives in the Bay Area with her family.

Victor Piñeiro is a creative director and content strategist who's managed @YouTube and launched @Skittles, creating its award-winning zany voice. He's also designed games for Hasbro, written/produced a documentary on virtual worlds, and taught third graders. Time Villains is his first novel.

Elizabeth Gonzalez James's stories and essays have appeared in The Idaho Review, The Rumpus, PANK, and elsewhere and have received numerous Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations. Her debut novel, MONA AT SEA, was a finalist in the 2019 SFWP Literary Awards judged by Carmen Maria Machado, and is forthcoming June 2021.

Dana Mack just published her first work of fiction, All Things That Deserve To Perish: A Novel of Wilhelmine Germany. A musician, journalist, and historian, she is the author of two non-fiction books, The Assault on Parenthood: How Our Culture Undermines the Family (Simon & Schuster; Encounter Paperbacks) and The Book of Marriage: The Wisest Answers to the Toughest Questions (Eerdmans). Her essays have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, The New Criterion, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Christian Science Monitor, and many other publications. She lives in New Canaan, Connecticut with her husband.

Faith Fuller Wilcox believes that self-expression through writing leads to healing. Her writing is reflective of a growing body of medical research about “narrative identity,” which illuminates that how we make sense of what happens to us and the meaning we give to experiences beyond our control directly impact our physical and psychological outcomes. Faith learned these truths firsthand when her thirteen-year-old daughter, Elizabeth, was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer that took her life. Faith’s journey from grief and despair to moments of comfort and peace taught her life-affirming lessons, which she shares today through her writing. Faith is the author of Hope Is A Bright Star: A Mother’s Memoir of Love, Loss, and Learning to Live Again that will be published in June 2021. Faith is also the author of Facing Into The Wind: A Mother’s Healing After the Death of Her Child, a book of poetry.

Simonetti grew up in the New York suburbs just outside of the city. After earning a BS in marketing, she spent several years writing press releases, until she left her corporate job to focus on her passion for crafting fiction. She lives on Cape May Harbor with her husband. When not on her paddle board or yoga mat, she can be found at the beach trailing the shoreline for seashells, scribbling in her notebook, and channeling dolphins for meaningful conversation.

Mary Camarillo’s debut novel “The Lockhart Women” was published on June 1, 2021 by She Writes Press. It recently won First Place in the 2021 Next Generation Indie Awards for First Novel. Her prose and poems have appeared in publications such as “The Sonora Review,” “166 Palms,” the “Tab Journal,” and “The Ear.” She lives in Huntington Beach, California with her husband who plays ukulele and their terrorist cat Riley.