Laura (she/her) is an author, educator, and writing coach/developmental editor from Oxford, Ohio. Her memoir Mosaic (Unsolicited Press, March 2025) delves into loss, motherhood, and parenting a child with disabilities. Mosaic was named on LitHub’s Notable Small Press Books of…
Kim Greenfield Alfonso, MBA, is an entrepreneur, executive leader, and passionate advocate for accessibility and inclusion. She is the CEO of Results One LLC, a certified minority- and woman-owned business that partners with organizations to make their digital content, workplaces,…
Just like her character, Ana from Sweden lives in Stockholm and keeps her personal life behind the scenes. She might shop at the same grocery store as you or bring her kids to the same sports activities. Look around, there…
Kim Bainbridge, born as Kim van Rossum, I grew up in the small Dutch town of Megen in the Netherlands. After serving for ten years in the Royal Dutch Army, I have spent the next twelve years travelling through nearly…
D.J. Slater is a Milwaukee native with a love for sharing stories. He wrote his first in third grade followed by several more during his school years, mostly about dinosaurs and an ambitious detective. His passion for writing took him…
Amanda Linnemeyer was born and raised in Portland, Oregon but now considers herself a Texan after spending most of her adulthood in San Antonio. She attended Brigham Young University and graduated Cum Laude with an English degree and emphasis in…
I write under a pen name of Josie Christie, which was my paternal grandmother’s name. I thought Christie may bring me luck. I’ve been writing since I was fifteen, mostly for family and friends, but decided it was time I…
John Togher is a Wigan-based writer whose fiction blends folk horror, coastal mystery and psychological unease as explored in debut novella, Bound by the Salt, set in the strange village of Cairnshore. John’s writing explores obsession, memory, and the strange…
Have you ever gone on a hike that was really, really, really, long? Well, the conception of Out of Embers and Shadows was on said type of hike when Shelby Oval’s partner dragged her twenty miles into the mountains of…
Had a career mostly in law and finance. Now live in Florida where I write and battle hurricanes.
I am a writer whose work embodies the profound depth of my richly interwoven cultural heritage and historical legacy. As a descendant of an English Protestant who fled England during the perilous reign of Mary Tudor, my lineage is a…
I grew up in St. Petersburg, Russia, where I obtained a PhD in physics-acoustics and worked in this field. Since 1993, I’ve lived in the United States, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1998. Working at a consulting company in Arlington,…
E.J. Mankin is a Queer author from Missouri who writes as a form of resistance to the status quo. Though their works are fantasy, they can be read as allegories of the reality that we live in today.
I’m an educator, strategist, and theological thinker. My work focuses on how people learn, lead, and live with integrity across systems, cultures, and roles. Whether I’m designing leadership frameworks, coaching neurodivergent leaders, exploring fictional worlds, or writing about beauty in…
Twenty-two-year-old writer, musician, and indie filmmaker Justin Hughes was born in Warrington, England, on April 12, 2004. Growing up in Cheshire, Hughes would write short stories and television pilot screenplays for fun before eventually taking the step into long-form work.
To write characters smarter than you, let the character seem brilliant in the finished scene while you build that brilliance behind the scenes. Use placeholders, targeted research, reverse engineering, specific expertise, and carefully planted clues so their intelligence feels earned…
Genre and setting aren’t separate decisions. They’re the same decision, approached from two different angles. When they’re aligned, a story feels inevitable. When they’re in deliberate tension, it can feel surprising and alive in ways readers remember long after the…
Alana Dowley balanced a legal career with raising three amazing children. She told them stories as they were growing up and now writes for clever, curious kids.
Even though I graduated from Tufts University with a BS in zoology, I knew I wasn’t cut out for the jobs being offered in science labs or hospitals or any of the usual spaces you might expect to find science-minded…
Claire Ibarra’s second novel Alteration was recently published by Atmosphere Press. Her debut novel Fragile Saints was a finalist for the 2022 CAL Literary Book Award. Claire’s poetry chapbook Vortex of Our Affections was published by Finishing Line Press in…