Aimee Parkison’s newest book Suburban Death Project, published by Unbound Edition Press, is a collection of stories about people who haunt each other while still alive. Parkison is the author of 7 books and has won the FC2 Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize, the Kurt Vonnegut Prize from North American Review, an Isherwood Fellowship, and a North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship. Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals, in translation in Italian, and in the Best Small Fictions. She teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Oklahoma State University.

K.B. Jensen is an award-winning author, with two novels, Painting With Fire, an artistic murder mystery, and A Storm of Stories, which veers literary and handles love, craziness and impossibility. K.B. lives in Littleton with her family and rescue mutt. She enjoys skiing and writing poetry. A former crime reporter and journalist, K.B. shifted to the publishing world in 2014, and is a senior publishing consultant and youth writing camp director for My Word Publishing. Her new collection of short stories, Love and Other Monsters in the Dark, will be published summer 2022.

Shelley Blanton-Stroud: I grew up in California’s Central Valley, the daughter of Dust Bowl immigrants who made good on their ambition to get out of the field. I recently retired from teaching writing at Sacramento State University and still consult with writers in the energy industry. I co-direct Stories on Stage Sacramento, where actors perform the stories of established and emerging authors, and serve on the advisory board of 916 Ink, an arts-based creative writing nonprofit for children. I’ve also served on the Writers’ Advisory Board for the Belize Writers’ Conference. Copy Boy is my first Jane Benjamin Novel. Tomboy (She Writes Press 2022) will be my second. The third, Working Girl, will come out in November 2023. My writing has been a finalist in the Sarton Book Awards, IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards, Killer Nashville’s Silver Falchion Award, the American Fiction Awards, and the National Indie Excellence Awards. I and my husband live in Sacramento with an aging beagle, Ernie, and many photos of our out-of-town sons and their wonderful partners.

Mark Zvonkovic is a writer who lives in Rosarito Beach, Baja California, Mexico, with his wife Nancy and their two dogs, Finn and Cooper. He has written three novels, A Lion in the Grass, The Narrows, and Belinda, and he also regularly writes book reviews and essays for various  publications. Before retiring to Mexico, Mark practiced law for 35 years at 3 multinational law firms in Houston, Texas and New York City. He attended college at Southern Methodist University and Boston University, and his law degree is from SMU School of Law. Mark grew up as an oil company brat and lived in Latin America, Texas and New York.

Lisa Knopp is the author of seven books of creative nonfiction including Bread: A Memoir of Hunger and What the River Carries: Encounters with the Mississippi, Missouri, and Platte. Her essays have appeared in the best journals including Georgia Review, Seneca Review, Missouri Review, Shenandoah, Gettysburg Review, Creative Nonfiction, and Brevity. Knopp is a Professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. She lives in Lincoln.

Mark Rubinstein is the author of Assassin's Lullaby. Rubinstein, a novelist, physician, and psychiatrist, has written eight nonfiction books, including The Storytellers. He has also written eight novels and novellas, including the Mad Dog trilogy and The Lovers’ Tango. He lives in Wilton, Connecticut.

Elizabeth Gould has long been fascinated with feminine archetypes, mythology, and rites of passage. She has taught and mentored girls at puberty and is the former director of a non-profit dedicated to positive menstrual/menopausal education and awareness. She holds a BA in Art History from Stanford University and an MS in Education from the State University of New York.

Jane Enright is an ordinary person who has survived some extraordinary things. An inspiring and humorous inspirational author, speaker, and positivity expert, Canada-based Enright is a former kindergarten teacher, strategic planner, and university lecturer, as well as the founder and CEO of Everything at My Super Awesome Life Inc. She is also the author of Butter Side Up: How I Survived My Most Terrible Year & Created My Super Awesome Life and Jane’s Jam: Inspiration To Create Your Super Awesome Life.

Ben Ewell was born and raised on a small farm near Brighton, Ohio. He received his BA from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and his JD from UC Hastings College of Law in San Francisco, California. He practices law, specializing in water rights, in Fresno, California, where he resides with his wife, Suzanne. He is the father of five sons. He is also a developer whose projects include a New Town financed by foreign investors. Ben is active in his community, his church, and in politics, and he loves spending time with his family at his ranch in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

Born and raised in a large family in eastern Pennsylvania, Lee Bukowski has always had an interest in reading, writing, and storytelling. She holds a BA in English and Secondary Education from Millersville University and taught seventh grade English and writing for fifteen years. In 2017, she obtained an MFA in English and Creative Writing from Southern New Hampshire University. Currently, she teaches writing at the college level and freelances as a proofreader and editor. When she’s not teaching or writing, she loves reading and traveling, especially visiting her grown daughters in Boston and Fort Lauderdale. Lee lives with her husband in Reading, PA. A Week of Warm Weather is her debut novel.

Linda Murphy Marshall is a multi-linguist and writer with a Ph.D. in Hispanic Languages and Literature and an MFA in Creative Writing. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in The Los Angeles Review, The Catamaran Literary Reader, The Ocotillo Review, Maryland Literary Review, Under the Gum Tree, Critical Read, American Writers Review, Bacopa Literary Review, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Flash Fiction Magazine, Sip Cup, Hobo Camp Review, and elsewhere. She was runner-up in the 2021 Blue Earth Review Flash Creative Nonfiction Contest. In addition, she is a docent at the Library of Congress, served as Translation Editor at the Los Angeles Review, and is a Trustee at the National Museum of Language.

Like his fictional hero, Torn Sagara, L.M. (“Mark”) Weeks was born in Alaska and practices law in Japan. Mark was Managing Partner of the Tokyo office of global law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP for over ten years. He has represented technology companies worldwide in matters of financing, intellectual property, cross-border mergers and acquisitions, and related disputes. Mark speaks, reads, and writes fluent Japanese; has a black belt in aikido; and is an avid motorcyclist and tournament fly-fisherman.

Stephanie Cotsirilos writes about humor, injustice, and resilience. Tapping a multiracial family and her prior careers on Broadway and as a lawyer, she’s author of the novella My Xanthi, short stories, and essays. Her songs and scripts were produced in New York. Since then, she has produced and performed in live and videoed multicultural writers’ series in Portland, Maine, where she now lives. She was the inaugural Krant Fellow at the Storyknife Writers Retreat in Alaska.

FRIEDA HOFFMAN is a transformative coach and mediator, creative consultant, and entrepreneur with a passion for supporting women and courageous leadership. As a coach, she aspires to uplift her clients and break down the barriers that keep so many from stepping into their full potential. As a writer, she aims to cultivate compassion, strength, and a greater sense of connection, particularly for and amongst women. She holds an MA in social work and conflict management from Berlin’s Alice Salomon University, a dual BA in psychology and anthropology from Johns Hopkins University, and is an ICF Professional Certified Coach. Carry Me: Stories of Pregnancy Loss is her first book. She currently resides in Oakland, CA.

Rebecca A. Ward is the author of The Paper Tiger Syndrome. A Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist, she specializes in grief & loss, trauma, stress reduction, and the psychological symptoms associated with chronic and terminal illness. Her work is informed by somatic-based practices, including as a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner (SEP) and also serves as a training assistant for the Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute (SETI). She is also certified in Interactive Guided Imagery and the Integrative Enneagram and have received 20+ years of training in numerous relational, grief, ritual, and spiritual modalities. As an ICF Professional Certified Coach (PCC) and Certified Integral Coach, her work as a management consultant includes nearly 30 years of combined experience in executive coaching and management consulting. She works with leaders across all levels to repair connections and build cohesion and is an expert in leadership presence and embodiment—connecting the work of somatics with the use of language and communication.

Taylor Hahn is a writer and lawyer based in Los Angeles. She is a graduate of Loyola Marymount University and Fordham University School of Law. The Lifestyle is her first novel.

Brooke Lea Foster is an award-winning journalist whose articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post Magazine, The Atlantic, The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, and HuffPost, among others. An alumna of The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College, she is the author of three nonfiction books and the novels Summer Darlings and On Gin Lane.

Linda Stewart Henley is an English-born American. She now lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband Vince. She learned to write fiction by attending Vince’s fiction writing seminars, eighteen-week classes that he teaches every year. Waterbury Winter is her second novel.

Susan Speranza is the author of ICE OUT: A Novel, a modern fable of forgiveness and redemption after a woman finds herself caught in a sinister, dream-like forest habituated by women who have been betrayed by their partners. She was born in New York City, grew up on Long Island, and for a time worked in Manhattan, enjoying the hectic pace and cultural amenities of the City. Eventually, however, Speranza grew tired of it and exchanged the urban/suburban jungle for the peace and quiet of rural Vermont living. In addition to her latest novel, ICE OUT, she authored two other books: The City of Light, a dystopian story about the end of western civilization, and The Tale of Lucia Grandi, The Early Years, a novel about a dysfunctional suburban family. She has also published numerous articles, poems, and short stories. Along the way, she managed to collect a couple of master’s degrees. When she is not writing, she keeps herself busy exhibiting and breeding her champion Pekingese.

Eldridge C. Hanes—Redge to his friends—was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and graduated from Woodberry Forest School in Orange, Virginia, and then from Duke University in 1967 with a BA in Economics. He graduated from the Army Combat Engineering Officer Candidate School at Fort Belvoir in June of 1968 and served three years of active duty, the last of which was in the Republic of Vietnam and earned him the Bronze Star. After the army, Redge worked seven years for Hanes Corporation and then left to start Xpres Corporation, which eventually became The Russ Companies, for whom Redge served as chairman for three years before retiring in 2011. In addition to his business interests, he has served on a number of boards in the education, environmental and arts fields. Redge has published two novels, Billy Bowater and Justice by Another Name, in addition to contributing essays and articles to various publications. His essay “Helen of Marion” appeared in the recent UNC Press anthology, Mothers and Strangers: Essays on Motherhood from the New South. Redge has been married for fifty years to Jane Grenley Hanes. They have a son, Philip, and a daughter, Lara, and are grandparents of five lively and beautiful grandchildren. He lives in Winston-Salem, NC.