Author interviews

Lida Amiri is a former refugee from Afghanistan and a multilingual artist fluent in English, French, Persian and German. She writes multilingual poetry and translates Persian poetry into English. As Assistant Professor at Utrecht University, Lida teaches prose and poetry while contributing with her research to Persianate and Refugee Studies.

I am a ukelele-playing, Lego-building, mother-of-two writer from Australia, with many opinions about how science fiction should explore the grey areas of life. I thrive on doing lots of things: some of them well, all of them with gusto. When not writing science fiction, I build websites for creative people, write about photography, wield a camera with enthusiasm, and I have been known to teach teenagers physics and math, too.

Caterina Sauro is a multi-faceted artist, poet, and graphic designer. She's the self-published author of Hi, My Name is Monella, an anthology of work including 80 poems and 20 illustrations released in October 2022, reflecting the journey of her return to self post-divorce. As much as she loves to hold a mic and perform, Caterina also designs book covers, logos, and other custom artwork on commission. As the founder of Exprosé, a free writing workshop series based in Mississauga, Caterina enjoys creating space for poets and poetry enthusiasts to celebrate each other and write together.

Annie Tan is an educator, writer, activist, speaker, and storyteller from Chinatown, Manhattan. Annie is working on her first book, Learning to Speak: A Daughter's Journey Toward Languages, Activism, and Legacy, a memoir of not sharing a common fluent language with her parents while wanting to uphold the legacy of her cousin Vincent Chin, whose 1982 Detroit murder sparked an Asian American civil rights movement.

Christian Garduno’s work can be read in over 100 literary magazines. He is the recipient of the 2019 national Willie Morris Award for Southern Poetry, a Finalist in the 2020-2021 Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Writing Contest, and a Finalist in the 2021 Julia Darling Memorial Poetry Prize. He lives and writes along the South Texas coast with his wonderful wife Nahemie and young son Dylan.

Mariella Saavedra Carquin has practiced as a licensed mental health counselor in New York City in clinical, higher education, and middle school settings and now works as a clinician in integrated pediatric primary care. She is a graduate of Middlebury College, holds an EdM and an MA in psychological counseling from Columbia University, and recently earned an MA from Middlebury’s Bread Loaf School of English. She was the first-place winner of the Robert Haiduke Poetry Prize in 2020 and the third-place winner in 2022.

Debbie Bowles is a writer, reader and media assistant at her local elementary school. She has won numerous writing contests and loves a challenge. When she's not working, you can find her in her garden, at any bookstore or traveling for inspiration for her writing. Her current manuscript was written due to a lack of stories addressing children whose parents are incarcerated. Debbie resides in Silver Spring, Maryland, not only in the beautiful home she grew up in, but where she and her husband over the years raised two daughters and several corgis.

Kathie Giorgio is the author of a total of fifteen books: eight novels, two story collections, an essay collection, and four poetry collections. Her newest novel, Don't Let Me Keep You, will be released on October 3, 2024. She’s been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in fiction and poetry and awarded the Outstanding Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Library Association, the Silver Pen Award for Literary Excellence, the Pencraft Award for Literary Excellence, and the Eric Hoffer Award in Fiction.

Nancy Brashear lives in Southern California with her husband, Patrick, where her grown children and seven grandgirls support her writing. She began her teaching career as a credentialed k-12 teacher and reading specialist and ended as a university professor. She has published short stories, poems, academic articles, textbook chapters, and educational website content. Gunnysack Hell, her debut thriller, was inspired by a true-crime event. And, yes, she did live off-grid with her family in a homestead cabin in the Mojave Desert when she was a child.

Adam Horvath grew up in Bayside, Queens, and studied English at Columbia, where he was infected by Chaucerian irony and the “metaphysical ideas and scholastical quiddities” of John Donne & Co. He never recovered. After a two-year stint as Navigator of the cargo vessel USS Arcturus, he embarked on a career as a senior acquisitions editor at several university presses and a trade book editor for McGraw-Hill.