Merrill Joan Gerber has written thirty-one books including The Kingdom of Brooklyn, winner of the Ribalow Award from Hadassah Magazine, and King of the World, winner of the Pushcart Editors’ Book Award. Her fiction has been published in The New Yorker, The Sewanee Review, The Atlantic, Mademoiselle, and Redbook, and her essays in The American Scholar, Salmagundi, and Commentary.  She has won an O. Henry Award, a Best American Essays award, and a Wallace Stegner fiction fellowship to Stanford University. She retired in 2020 after teaching writing at the California Institute of Technology for thirty-two years. Her literary archive is now at the Yale Beinecke Rare Book Library.

Paige writes about superheroes and sentient cities, were-spiders and gun-loving fairies, werewolves and fighter pilots. By day, Paige writes articles and technical books for O’Reilly Publishers about analytics software and data architecture. In her spare time, Paige loves to shoot arrows and throw axes and spears. She lives in the middle of Texas, and will show you far too many pictures of her garden if you let her. She once invented a way to grow food on Mars that NASA liked, and has a cute trophy to show for it. Her dogs and horses are unimpressed.

Patricia D’Arcy Laughlin was born in Trinidad of British and French ancestry. She was educated there, the UK, and the USA. She is a world traveler and an award-winning artist, famous for developing her “Unique Stainings On Wood.” Although she has composed poetry, Sacrifices For Kingdoms is her first novel, the start of a series (book two of the trilogy will be published in June 2024.) She lives in Florida with her husband, and she has three children, five grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

I wrote a two-act play, a book for a musical and a novel before finishing high school. They are memories now; thankfully, none of their pages exist.

When I started at McGill University in Montreal, I was thinking of journalism. My father's advice was precise, and cruel. "You should train for a job that will always exist, no matter what happens. Besides, maybe your writing isn't that good."

So I became a doctor and have had a satisfying career as a neonatologist.  I am also a husband and father, the happiest roles of all.

Eventually, I decided to ignore my father and learn the discipline and craft of writing. On these pages are links to some of the available essays and stories by which, as their quality indicate, I have practiced and learned.

Tyler C. Gore is the author of My Life of Crime: Essays and Other Entertainments, which the Washington Independent Review of Books called “immensely readable…full of the people and peculiarities of New York and told with an almost wide-eyed wonder of someone in love with the place — even the worst of it.”

Boston native Eugenio Volpe was awarded the PEN Discovery Award for Fiction and nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes. Volpe’s essay “Jesus Kicks His Oedipus Complex” was listed as notable in Best American Essays 2021. His stories have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Salamander, New York Tyrant, VICE, Post Road, The Nervous Breakdown, BULL, and other journals. Out now, I, Caravaggio (CLASH Books) his daring debut novel about the temperamental Baroque master, dramatizes an artistic superstar’s psychological unraveling under the sexual and political pressures of the Catholic Reformation. Volpe resides in Los Angeles with his wife and son, where he is a professor of rhetoric at Loyola Marymount University.

Brooke Bentley is a former television anchor and award-winning sports reporter. After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Davidson College, she received a master’s in journalism from the University of Southern California. Brooke then spent two years working for the Houston Texans as a media personality and over a decade working in sports journalism. Brooke now devotes her time to championing local nonprofits, including Homemade Hope, where she served as the development director. She and her husband live in Houston and are raising two young boys.

Kelley McNeil is the author of A Day Like This and Mayluna. Prior to writing fiction, she worked for over a decade in the entertainment industry. A native of Pittsburgh, she lives in South Florida most of the time but can often be found in London with a good pen, good music, and her two daughters nearby.

William J Bruce III is a Canadian author, actor and celebrity publicist.  As a publicist he has worked with Shawn Harper of the NFL and the "Million Dollar Man" Ted DiBiase of the WWE during his peak in Google Trends.

A native Houstonian and a graduate of Texas Tech University, Amy W. Daughters has been a freelance writer for more than a decade — mostly covering college football and sometimes talking about her feelings. Her debut novel, You Cannot Mess This Up: A True Story That Never Happened (She Writes Press), was selected as the Silver Winner for Humor in the 2019 Foreword INDIES and the Overall Winner for Humor/Comedy in the 2020 Next Generation Indie Awards. Her second book, Dear Dana: That time I went crazy and wrote all 580 of my Facebook friends a handwritten letter (She Writes Press, 2022), has won several awards, including the 2023 Reader’s Favorite Gold Medal for NonFiction Relationships, and caught the attention of Kelly Clarkson! She lives in Tomball, Texas, a suburb of Houston. She is married to a foxy computer person, Willie, and is the lucky mother of two amazing sons, Will and Matthew.

TOM JULIAN works days at a pharmaceutical company, helping to support research into new cancer drugs, and nights and weekends as an author. He enjoys traveling, long-distance cycling, and waking up early to brew the perfect cup of coffee. He’s an unabashed beer snob and native of Trenton, New Jersey.

Tom’s first novel, TIMBERWOLF, is a military science fiction story (with strong espionage elements) originally envisioned as a film. The author worked hard to transfer its cinematic qualities to the page and hopes that Twolf is the best science-fiction movie you'll ever read! Tom is the father of Astur and Liam (two STEM all-stars!) and husband to the lovely Brenda-Lea. He writes while warming his feet under a Cavadoodle named Vancouver.

Born in the San Francisco Bay Area, Jennifer Lang lives in Tel Aviv, where she runs IsraelWriterStudio. Her prize-winning essays appear in Baltimore Review, Under the Sun, Midway Journal, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is an Assistant Editor at Brevity. She runs Israel Writers Studio and practices/teaches yoga. Her award-winning Places We Left Behind: a memoir-in-miniature will be followed by Landed: A yogi's memoir in pieces & poses (10/15/2024) both with Vine Leaves Press.  

Katherine Cobb writes books exploring love, relationships and our shared, often messy, humanity. She believes dreams come true, love conquers all, and reading and chocolate are the perfect pairing. She writes fiction, nonfiction and picture books because…why choose?

Beth Romero was born and raised in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. After a thirty-year sojourn on the West Coast, she recently moved back to Philadelphia. In addition to having made her a pizza aficionado, her Italian American, East Coast background inspires the straightforward, humorous, and self-deprecating narrative style that characterizes her writing. (As every good cook knows, the secret is the salt.)

With a background and degree in psychology, Beth channeled her creativity into a successful sales and branding career. From Veep to Boss to Happiness Junkie, persuasive storytelling is her superpower. She showcases those skills to their fullest in this practical and entertaining how-to guide for happiness.

Jody Gelb has a forty-year career acting on stage and screen. She has portrayed roles in the Tony Award-winning Broadway plays The Who’s Tommy, Titanic, Big River, and Wicked, among others. Gelb also played Joan of Arc’s mother in the David Byrne rock opera Joan of Arc: Into the Fire at The Public Theater in New York and was a featured player in the world premiere of Shel Silverstein’s Wild Life with Julie Hagerty, Henderson Forsythe, William H. Macy, and Raynor Scheine. On television, she has appeared in guest roles in Gunplay, Law & Order, and Dr. Death. Gelb is now following the career of her daughter, Dora Jar, as she tours the USA and the world as a singer-songwriter.

CJ Cook is an author, historian, and biographer of artists working in Polynesia, primarily Hawaii and Tahiti. His first biography about Ralph Burke Tyree, Tyree: Artist of the South Pacific (2017), won two Gold Awards for Best Cover and Best Biography from the Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA). His second book about Edgar Leeteg, Leeteg: Babes, Bars, Beaches, and Black Velvet Art, was awarded a Gold Medal for Best Biography from the IBPA. Cook is a lifelong manuscript collector who has a particular interest in art and the South Pacific. He is a Manuscript Society board member dedicated to preserving historical documents. 

Teresa H. Janssen’s essays and short fiction have appeared in Zyzzyva, Catamaran, Parabola, Chautauqua, Eastern Iowa Review, Los Angeles Review and elsewhere; and in the anthology, Art in the Time of Unbearable Crisis. Her writing has twice been designated notable in Best American Essays. Her debut novel, The Ways of Water, inspired by her grandmother’s early life, is forthcoming November 2023 from She Writes Press. She lives with her husband in Port Townsend, WA.

Céline Keating is an award-winning writer from Rhode Island. She is the author of the forthcoming The Stark Beauty of Last Things (2023), Layla (2011) and Play for Me (2015). She is also the co-editor of the anthology On Montauk, A Literary Celebration (2016).

Susan Godwin is a fervent educator, writer, and freelance artist whose world has always been steeped in books, from Harold and the Purple Crayon; she couldn’t resist drawing on her bedroom wall, no matter how many reprimands; to her first job as a library book mender in her Shaker Heights High School basement to teaching English at the prestigious University School of Nashville. A former Oxford scholar, Godwin has received writing awards from the University of Michigan, Middle Tennessee State University, and Bread Loaf School of English. Though writing is her true passion, she is also a visual artist working primarily in oils and pastels. Her home is outside of Nashville, in Dickson, TN, on the banks of a winding Tennessee river, in a hayloft renovated by her sweet, sexy husband, Tony; with help from their rotty, Roady!

Carmen Peone is an award-winning author of Young Adult and Inspirational Western Romantic Suspense. She worked with a Tribal Elder, Marguerite Ensminger, for three years learning the Arrow Lakes Language and various cultural traditions, which led to her writing career.

With the love of history and the Western woman's lifestyle, she weaves healing, hope, and horses into her stories. With a thread of romance.

She lives with her husband in northeast Washington and on the Colville Confederated Indian Reservation.