Born into the mountains of Southwest Virginia and spending early childhood with a family of artists, Sandra Baldwin’s Appalachian childhood and travels have given her a unique American perspective. Though she resided in Virginia, New York, North Carolina, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Kentucky, and finally Delaware, her notoriously ‘itchy feet’ have taken her through forty-seven states.

Skye Gent is a UK children’s author whose writing is rooted in one simple belief – that no child should feel alone while they’re growing up. Before becoming an author, she trained and worked as a nurse, where she saw first-hand how deeply emotional experiences shape the way we understand ourselves. That perspective stayed with her, but it was her own lived experiences – of confusion, change, and not always having the right words or support at the right time – that ultimately led her to writing.

I hold an MA in global studies, with a focus on peace and security in Africa, from the Institute for Peace and Security Studies and Leipzig University, as well as a bachelor’s degree in political science and international relations from the University of Roma Tre. For almost ten years, I have worked as a project manager and country representative for non-governmental organizations. Right now, I live in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

I’m a much-published scholar of translation, literature, rhetoric, and semiotics (forty books, one hundred and twenty articles) who has always wanted to be a published novelist – and now my fourth published novel is out!

Born in the back room of a Wisconsin tenant farm, went to a one-room grade school, and rode a bus fifty-two miles to high school. A peacetime army veteran who discovered theatre and my wife-to-be the same week my college football career ended. Began writing fiction only after my college teaching career ended with five awards, a Fulbright lectureship in Poland, and acting in seven foreign countries.

Whitney Healy specializes in poetry, creative nonfiction, memoir, and fantasy. In 2025, Whitney’s small poetry series, Blackberry Winter: Songs of the Appalachian Trails, received first place in Appalachian Literature with West Virginia Writers, Inc. A lover of hot tea, watching her son at first base, and Stranger Things, Evermyst: The Awakening will be Whitney’s debut novel.

D.K. Dillenback is an American author and military strategist who explores the intersection between the human condition and our perceived reality. His writing attempts to capture reason, order, and peace from an infinite web of complex adaptive systems.

Originally from the east, I lived in a hundred-year-old log cabin in the Colorado foothills while I attended CU Boulder, earning a degree in Natural Resource Conservation. Upon graduation, I turned down a state job to work in game management and agriculture in East Africa, after which I went to horseshoeing school in Texas to become a farrier.

Ralph S. Souders is an American author of suspense and literary fiction. His first novel, Hans Becker’s Family, was published in 2010. It takes place in Munich and other locations in Southern Germany. It contains a very unusual plot, a plot that quite possibly has never been previously featured in a published story.

I am Jade Shade. A poetess. A storyteller. A gardener. A daughter.