Jessica Jopp grew up in New York state. She holds an MFA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. An award-winning poet, Jopp has published her work in numerous journals, among them POETRY, Seneca Review, and Denver Quarterly. Her collection, The History of a Voice was awarded the Baxter Hathaway Prize in Poetry from EPOCH, and it was published in 2021 by Headmistress Press. She has been a finalist for the Yale Younger Poets Prize, the Juniper Prize, the Prairie Schooner Book Prize, and the Honickman Prize. Jopp teaches in the English Department at Slippery Rock University. She lives in Indiana, Pennsylvania, where she is on the board of a nonprofit working to protect a community woodland.

Kathryn Crawley was born of pioneer stock and raised in the small West Texas cotton town of Lamesa. She received undergraduate and graduate degrees in speech pathology from Baylor University. Unforeseen events and an adventurous spirit led her to Wyoming, Colorado, and to Greece, where she worked with Greek cerebral palsied children. She later established roots in Boston where she continued her career as a speech pathologist. Today, she enjoys life with her partner Tom, daughter Emilia, and two dogs. Walking on Fire is her debut novel. 

Mary Kathleen Mehuron is a career educator who made a splash with her first book, Fading Past, an autobiographical novel whose protagonist, like Mary Kathleen, grew up Irish-Catholic in New Jersey. The Opposite of Never is Mary Kathleen’s second book, and to finish it, she traveled alone to Havana in January 2015 in order to experience the city before it became Americanized. Mary Kathleen lives and teaches in a ski town in Vermont where they call her Kathy. This is where she and her husband raised three sons,  and she is an occasional columnist and writes curriculum daily for private math and science students. She takes extended time to work on her novels on Grand Turk Island and in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom.

Gretchen Cherington’s first view of powerful men was informed at the feet of her father, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Richard Eberhart, and his eclectic and fascinating writer friends, from Robert Frost to Allen Ginsberg to James Dickey. As an executive management consultant, she figured out what made powerful men tick by working alongside nearly three hundred of them in their corner suites during her 35 year career. Her first memoir, Poetic License, has won multiple awards; her writing has appeared in Crack the Spine, Bloodroot Literary Magazine, Women Writers/Women’s Books, MS. Girl, Yankee and more; and she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her essay “Maine Roustabout” in 2012. Gretchen and her husband split their time between Portland, ME, and a saltwater cottage on Penobscot Bay. 

After decades of working with incarcerated youth and raising three kids as a single parent, Mona is fulfilling her passion for writing fiction. She is a member of SCBWI, Macondo Writers, and a co-founder of #LatinxPitch, an annual Twitter pitch event. Mona’s novels feature diverse characters in historical and contemporary fiction. She writes to amplify the voices of underrepresented women.

Mary Pascual is a writer and artist who believes finding magic is only a matter of perspective. She loves stories about characters with heart and fantastical settings that are more than meets the eye. She grew up in California and enjoys reading, art, traveling, exploring outside, and building elaborate stage sets for Halloween. Writing has taken her on a number of unexpected adventures, including working in high tech, meeting psychics, interviewing rock bands, and even once attending a press conference for Bigfoot. She got hooked on reading adult science fiction and fantasy in the fifth grade—so in retrospect, much of her reading material was completely inappropriate (which probably explains a few things). She lives with her husband, son, and assorted demanding cats in San Jose, CA.

Marianne C. Bohr, published author and award-winning essayist, married her high school sweetheart and travel partner. She has two grown children and is the eldest of 11. She follows her own advice and hits the road at every opportunity. Marianne lives in Park City, Utah, where, after decades in publishing, and many years of teaching middle school French, she skis, hikes, and writes.

Vanessa Cuti’s fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories 2021, The Kenyon Review, AGNI, West Branch, Indiana Review, Cimarron Review, The Cincinnati Review, Shenandoah, The Rumpus and others. She received her MFA from Stony Brook University and lives in the suburbs of New York. The Tip Line is Vanessa’s debut novel.

Neely Tubati-Alexander is the author of women’s fiction with rom-com feels you can escape into with a smile. If she’s not tucked away at the little desk in her bedroom writing, you can find her at some kiddo activity (so many activities), drinking wine, or watching reality TV, usually both of the last two together.

Ann Putnam is an internationally known Hemingway scholar who has made more than six trips to Cuba as part of the Ernest Hemingway International Colloquium. Her forthcoming novel, Cuban Quartermoon (June 2022), came, in part, from those trips, as well as a residency at Hedgebrook Writer’s Colony. She has published the memoir Full Moon at Noontide: A Daughter’s Last Goodbye (University of Iowa Press) and short stories in Nine by Three: Stories (Collins Press), among others. She holds a PhD from the University of Washington and has taught creative writing, gender studies, and American literature for many years. She has bred Alaskan Malamutes, which appear prominently in I Will Leave You Never. She currently lives in Gig Harbor, Washington.

Rachel Lacey is an award-winning contemporary romance author and semi-reformed travel junkie. She's been climbed by a monkey on a mountain in Japan, gone scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef, and camped out overnight in New York City for a chance to be an extra in a movie. These days, the majority of her adventures take place on the pages of the books she writes. She lives in the mountains of Vermont with her family and a variety of rescue pets, and she’s a passionate fangirl: she has attended hundreds of concerts, sitting anywhere from the last row to the front, and even backstage. 

Susan Wands is a writer, tarot reader, and actor. A co-chair with the NYC Chapter of the Historical Novel Society, she helps produce monthly online book launches and author panels. In London, she has lectured at Watkins Books for their Recorded Authors series, and at Atlantis Books, also traveling to present at the Occulture Berlin Festival. Ms. Wands’ writings have appeared in Art in Fiction, Kindred Spirits magazine, and The Irving Society journal, FIRST KNIGHT. Some of her podcast interviews include: ‘Biddy Tarot’, ‘Imaginary Worlds’, ‘Bad Ass Bitches Tarot’, and the ‘Spirited Tarot’ YouTube channel. Her first book in a series, Magician and Fool, Book One, Arcana Oracle Series will be out in 2021, is based on Pamela Colman Smith, creator of the best-selling tarot, the Waite Smith deck. High Priestess and Empress, and Emperor and Hierophant, the next two books in the series, are in final edits.

Antonia Deignan is a mother of five children by choice, a dancer by calling, and a writer by necessity. She was born on the East Coast but spent most of her life in the Midwest, where she danced with multiple dance companies and raised her children. She opened her own dance studio and directed a pre-professional dance company before a bike accident wish-boned her path, and her identity. Her work has been published in print magazines and online. Now retired, she resides in a beloved island home in Martha’s Vineyard, where she continues to be inspired and write. This is her first book.

Corie Adjmi grew up in New Orleans and started writing in her thirties. Her award-winning fiction and personal essays have appeared in dozens of publications including North American Review, Indiana Review, Huff Post, Medium, Motherwell and Kveller. Her first book-length publication was a collection of short stories titled Life and Other Shortcomings. The collection won a number of prizes including an International Book Award, an American fiction award and an IBPA: Benjamin Franklin Award. When she is not writing, Corie does volunteer work, cooks, bikes and hikes. She and her husband have five children and a number of grandchildren, with more on the way. She lives and works in New York City.

Marian O’Shea Wernicke is the author of Out of Ireland, her second novel,  which will be published by She Writes Press on April 25, 2023. Her debut novel, Toward That Which Is Beautiful, was published by the same press in 2020, and was a finalist in Literary Fiction and Romance Fiction in the 2021 International Book Awards, as well as a finalist in Multicultural Fiction in the 2021 American Fiction Awards. She is also the author of a memoir about her father, Tom O’Shea:  A Twentieth Century Man. After living and working in Lima, Peru, and Madrid, Spain, Wernicke was a professor of English at Pensacola State College for 25 years. She and her husband are the parents of three wonderful children: Kristin, married to Max Benitez, Tim, married to Sarah Jasinski, and John Wernicke. Marian lives in Austin, Texas, where she is a member of the Writer’s League of Texas. 

Meryl Ain is a writer, author, podcaster, and career educator. The Takeaway Men, her award-winning post-Holocaust debut novel, was published in 2020. Her articles and essays have appeared in numerous publications and she is the author of two nonfiction books. A member of The International Advisory Board for Holocaust Survivor Day, she is the host of the podcast People of the Book, and the founder of the Facebook group “Jews Love To Read!” She holds a BA from Queens College, an MA from Columbia University, and a doctorate in education from Hofstra University. She and her husband, Stewart, a journalist, live in New York. They have three married sons and six grandchildren.

Joan F. Smith is the author of The Other Side of Infinity andThe Half-Orphan's Handbook, a dance instructor, and a former associate dean of creative writing. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. Joan lives and writes in Massachusetts, where she was the 2021 Writer-in-Residence at the Milton Public Library. When she's not writing, she's either wrangling her kids, embarking on a new hobby she will quickly abandon, or listening to podcasts on a run.

Maan Gabriel is a mom, wife, dreamer, writer, and advocate for women’s stories in literature. She earned her BA in communications from St. Scholastica’s College in Manila and MPS in public relations and corporate communications from Georgetown University. She has lived in Manila, Brussels, Dakar, and Mexico City. During the day, she works in strategic communications. She is the author of After Perfect; Twelve Hours in Manhattan is her second book. Gabriel, along with her husband and son, currently calls suburban Washington, DC, home.

Martha Hall Kelly is the New York Times bestselling author of Lilac Girls, Lost Roses, and Sunflower Sisters. She lives in Connecticut, where she spends her days filling legal pads with stories and reading World War II books.

Irena Smith was born in the former Soviet Union and grew up in Moscow in the waning days of the Brezhnev regime; in 1977, her family emigrated from the USSR and sought asylum in the United States as political refugees. She has been published in HIAS@130: 1+30: The Best of myStory, Mama, PhD: Women Write about Motherhood and Academic Life, Literary Mama and Art in the Time of Unbearable Crisis. She has a PhD in comparative literature from UCLA and lives in Palo Alto, California.