Arlene Mark grew up in western Pa. steel country before making her way to NYC to begin her career. After working in fashion, marrying, and committing to her family, she lived in London, Caracas, and Toronto with husband and three children before settling in CT. She has an MA in special education, a certification in school psychology and interned at NY State Psychiatric Institute. Her work has appeared in Highlights for Children, Spider, Skipping Stones, Adolescence, Their World, and Greenwich Magazine. She is the author of To the Tower, A Greenwich Adventure, coauthor of Paraverbal Communication with Children: Not Through Words Alone and has served as a Greenwich Time contributing editor writing articles about children’s emotional lives. Her eight grandchildren are enthusiastic fans. When not writing, Arlene can be found lobstering with her husband, Reuben, visiting schools in Asia and Latin America, reading (mostly books for kids), and screening new films.

Renee Linnell is a serial entrepreneur who has founded or cofounded five companies and has an MBA from New York University; before that she was a model and professional dancer. Her mission is to remind people Who They Truly Are and to reignite their passion for being alive. What began as writing for catharsis in 2013—as she struggled to regain her sanity after being brainwashed in a Buddhist cult—turned into her first memoir, The Burn Zone: A Memoir (She Writes Press, 2018). Still on Fire is the sequel.

Mike Trigg was born in Kentucky and raised in Wisconsin. He earned a BA from Northwestern University and an MBA from University of California, Berkeley. Over his twenty-five-year career in Silicon Valley, he has been a founder, executive, and investor in dozens of venture-funded technology start-ups, as well as a contributor to TechCrunch, Entrepreneur, and Fast Company. He lives in Menlo Park, California, with his wife and two sons. Bit Flip is his first novel.

L.B. Wells is the pseudonym of a very successful Board-Certified Surgeon, an ambitious physician who overcame the resistance of the male-dominated world of surgery to become successful. The pseudonym gives her the freedom to explore the raw truths of her life, including the male prejudices that made her life so difficult. Wells has written a novel entitled, “The White Coat Effect,” that unleashes the ambition necessary for a woman to push through the long road to becoming an esteemed surgeon while discovering sexuality and forbidden love for the first time.

Sarah Adlakha is a native of Chicago who now lives along the Mississippi Gulf Coast with her husband, three daughters, two horses, and one dog. She started writing fiction shortly after retiring from her psychiatry practice. Her debut novel, She Wouldn’t Change a Thing, was a CNN most anticipated book of 2021. Midnight on the Marne is her second novel.

As a kid, Joanne Tubbs Kelly moved around a lot, but she always felt at home when she had her nose stuck in a book. As an adult, she provided marketing communications services to high-tech companies. Now that she’s retired, she lives in Boulder in the home she and her husband, now deceased, remodeled from top to bottom. She delights in puttering in her garden and walking and hiking where she can wallow in the beauty of Boulder’s Flatirons and Colorado’s high peaks. Whenever she’s not in her garden or out walking, you can usually find her up to her old tricks: hiding out somewhere with her nose stuck in a book.

Laura Vosika is a writer, poet, musician, podcast host, and mother of 10. Her time travel series, The Blue Bells Chronicles, which ranges across modern and medieval Scotland, has garnered praise for its historical accuracy and the very real personalities inhabiting its pages, along with comparisons to writers as diverse as Diana Gabaldon and Dostoevsky. Her poetry has been published in The Moccasin and The Martin Lake Journal 2017.

Laura has been featured in newspapers, on radio, and TV, has spoken for regional book events, and hosts the popular podcast Books and Brews. As a musician, Laura has performed as on trombone, flute, and harp, in orchestras, and big bands. She lives in the north woods of Minnesota with her husband and their small and dainty Irish Wolfhound.

Kate Stollenwerck, a fifth-generation Texan, was born and raised in Dallas. She graduated from Northwestern University and the University of Texas at Austin School of Law.  She practiced law for several years in Chicago before deciding to stay home with her kids. Once her youngest went to school full-time, she dusted off some old manuscripts and pursued her long-held dream of being a writer.

Kate now lives in Florida with her husband, three children, and their crazy cat.  Hello, Goodbye is her first novel.

National award-winning author Penny Goetjen writes murder mysteries where the milieus play as prominent a role as the engaging characters. A self-proclaimed eccentric known for writing late into the night, transfixed by the allure of flickering candlelight, Ms. Goetjen embraces the writing process, unaware what will confront her at the next turn. She rides the journey with her characters, often as surprised as her readers to see how the story unfolds. Fascinated with the paranormal, she usually weaves a subtle, unexpected twist into her stories.

Erin La Rosa has written many highly engaging... tweets, as a social media manager. But on her way to writing romance, she's also published two humorous non-fiction books, Womanskills and The Big Redhead Book. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and three daughters (one human, two felines).

Rebecca Stirling lives between Colorado and Kauai with her two children. She teaches creative art and writing classes to help spread the knowledge and ingenuity of world cultures. She continues to sail and travel, read and write, and has a love for the stories individuals, cultures, and our earth have to tell.

Jackson Bliss is the winner of the 2020 Noemi Press Award in Prose and the mixed-race/hapa author of Counterfactual Love Stories & Other Experiments (Noemi Press, 2021), Amnesia of June Bugs (7.13 Books, 2022), and the speculative fiction hypertext, Dukkha, My Love (2017).  His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Tin House, Ploughshares, Guernica, Antioch Review, ZYZZYVA, Longreads, TriQuarterly, Columbia Journal, Kenyon Review, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Witness, Fiction, Santa Monica Review, Boston Review, Juked, Quarterly West, Arts & Letters, Joyland, Huffington Post UK, The Daily Dot, and Multiethnic Literature in the US, among others.  He is the Distinguished Visiting Writer at Bowling Green State University and lives in LA with his wife and their two fashionably dressed dogs. 

Since childhood, Victoria Lilienthal has been captivated by symbols, rituals and the myths that inspire growth. She studied Intellectual History at University of Colorado at Boulder and is a certified sound healer, a practice that uses sound to relax the mind and body. It is with an appreciation for silliness, sex and the sacred that Victoria draws upon her studies, and her mentorship with cultural anthropologist Angeles Arrien as inspiration for her first novel, The T Room. She lives in Northern California along with her husband and their senior citizen dachshund, Luigi.

Kristin Marguerite Doidge is the author of NORA EPHRON: A BIOGRAPHY (Chicago Review Press). She is an award-winning journalist and professor based in Los Angeles. Her writing has been featured in The Atlantic, Marie Claire, FORTUNE, Bustle, GOOD Magazine, and other publications. She holds a master's degree in specialized journalism from the University of Southern California's Annenberg School of Journalism and teaches at Loyola Marymount University.

Abigail Cutter started out as an artist/printmaker with a MFA from George Washington University, but during a long stint at the National Endowment for the Humanities she developed a deep love of American history. She married a man who came with a farm and an 18th-century farmhouse in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. The farmhouse came with a very active ghost. She currently lives at both the farm and in the small town of Waterford, VA, with her husband, a black Labrador named Emma, and a cat named Barnibi.

Rachel Howzell Hall is the critically acclaimed author and Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist for And Now She’s Gone. A New York Times bestselling author of The Good Sister with James Patterson, Rachel is an Anthony, International Thriller Writers and Left Award nominee and the author of They All Fall Down, Land of Shadows, Skies of Ash, Trail of Echoes and City of Saviors in the Detective Elouise Norton series. She is a past member of the board of directors for Mystery Writers of America and has been a featured writer on NPR’s acclaimed Crime in the City series and the National Endowment for the Arts weekly podcast; she has also served as a mentor in Pitch Wars and the Association of Writers Programs. Rachel lives in Los Angeles with her husband and daughter.

Natalka Burian is the cofounder of the Freya Project, a nonprofit reading series that supports community-based activism and the work of women and nonbinary writers. She is the author of Welcome to the Slipstream, a young adult book, and the cocktail cookbook A Woman’s Drink, and is the co-owner of two bars, Elsa and Ramona.

David L. Bluder holds a degree in Business from Northern Iowa University and received his MBA at St. Ambrose University. Before becoming an author, David was a banker, politician, business owner and investor, as well as taught Business at the University of Iowa.

Monika Strand is a Realtor in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition, she is a lifelong entrepreneur, and now, a children’s book author.

Vivianne Knebel was born in Berlin during WWII. Vivianne grew up in the post-war years. Those challenging times left their mark on her but also toughened her against all the adversities of this world. These experiences are ultimately what led her to become an author and the hopes of inspiring others everywhere.