Author Interviews

Cecilia Savala is a Shrek-obsessed Latinx poet, teacher, and mom who writes about gender, body image, generational trauma, and cultural detachment 1200 miles from home. She is a morning person, a cat person, and an instructor with ASU Writing Programs. Her work can be found in Red Ogre Review, the Boiler, and Poetry South, among others. Her first collection, How to Be a Girl, was a finalist for the 2024 Trio Award for First or Second Books. Follow Cecilia at @cecsav on Instagram.

Avitus Buckhaulter Carle’s work has appeared in The Commuter (Electric Lit), The Rumpus, Waxwing, JMWW, Best Small Fictions, and elsewhere. Avitus earned an MA from West Chester University and an MFA from the Naslund-Mann School of Creative Writing. She lives and writes outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Hannah Snutch is an up-and-coming writer from England. She has bachelors and masters degrees from the University of Leeds and is the author of Forgotten Reign. Hannah, who has featured in publications such as Teen Vogue, writes compelling fantasy novels that feature strong heroines, fiery romances and plot twists you’d never expect. Hannah is best known for her Booktok account, which has accumulated a large following. Join her booktok community, @hannahsnutch.

Rodney Leon enjoys island life, though he also ventures to countries further afield and without any specific destination once there. Under the old adage, travellers don’t know where they are going and tourists don’t know where they have been. Rodney hopes he falls under the former category. His love for St Gilbert’s grows with every passing year. It may be a speck of land lost in the vastness of the Indian Ocean, but to Rodney it will always be the place to which be belongs and to where he will always return, even if only in his imagination.

Who is Brock Meier? Did he spend fifty years as a research scientist? Was he a frequently awarded fine art photographer, or was he a painter of monumental astronomical subjects? Maybe he was he a spelunker, an inventor of practical luxuries, a relentless dreamer, or a maker of exotic wines? Of course, all these are true! While close friends still refer to him as “the most interesting man in the world” and “delightfully weird,” he is now a debut author of historical fiction.

Modou Lamin Sowe, pen name Modou Lamin Age-Almusaf Sowe, is a young Gambian scholar and creative writer. He has written five books: Don’t Judge the Book by the Cover (novel), The Throne of the Ghost (play), The Memories of Reflection (novella), AfriKa Not AfriCa (poetry collection), and TWAWEZA (an anthology of 24 Non-fiction African Stories published by the African Writers Development Trust).

Linda M. Romanowski returned to Rosemont College (Class of 1975) to obtain an MFA in Creative Writing, Non-Fiction in 2021. Her thesis Final Touchstones, earned with distinction, was published by Brown Posey Press, an imprint of Sunbury Press in January 2023. Additional non-fiction and poetry publications include The City Key, the Mario Lanza Institute Facebook page and website, Moonstone Arts, Ovunque Siamo, and Vine Leaves Press.

I’ve always loved writing. Complete transparency alert—I never set out to become an author. I know, that probably sounds unlikely considering, but it’s true. I sat down one day and decided I wanted to write a story because I needed to know how a dream I’d awoken from ended. It snowballed and turned into chapters and eventually into an entire book. When I finished that book, I needed to make sure my characters were OK and thriving so I wrote the second book.

Danielle Carpenter is a fiction and non-fiction writer living in Miami, FL. Her work often explores the relationship between technology and the natural world, futuristic societies, and the human condition.

I live in Oregon. I draw inspiration from the temperate rain forest and people who interact with its varied range and depth. We are on the threshold of changing the environment in ways we have not imagined. The negativity of not only the politics of the world but the implications of climate change have caused us to abandon our commitment to people in our lives in favor of defending our perception of a world that has been created to question facts and truth. When we consider our own lives and relationships, we realize that as Dylan’s lyrics state “I am meek, hard like an oak, seen pretty people disappear like smoke.” We are the result of small incremental incidents that for the most part we don’t recognize until we do.

Betty R. Wall was born and raised in British Columbia, Canada. A graduate of the University of Toronto’s Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures (M.A.), she has spent most of her professional career working in translation. In her free time, she continues to pursue her love of writing and travel, which has taken her to various parts of Europe, Africa, Asia, and South America. She is the author of No Way Out, a Canada Book Awards Winner, published in 2021. All That This House Has to Offer is her first short story collection.

Mark Jonathan Harris is a Los Angeles writer/filmmaker who has published essays, award-winning children’s novels, and non-fiction books, as well as written, directed, and produced numerous documentary films, three of which won Oscars. Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport, a feature documentary he wrote and directed, won an Academy Award in 2000 and was selected by the U.S. Library of Congress for permanent preservation in the National Film Registry. For many years, he headed the documentary program at the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California, where he was a Distinguished Professor.

Lya Badgley writes suspenseful international fiction featuring characters overcoming life-changing odds. Global conflict zones and insurgencies offer a vivid backdrop to her stories. She draws deeply from personal experience living in Europe and Southeast Asia.

I was born on Mexican Independence Day in Mexico City, Mexico. From the age of three, I grew up in the lush, sun-dappled zombie headquarters of Alexandria Virginia, where I promptly forgot all of my Spanish during an intensive program of simultaneous civic and religious indoctrination from the brightest and most delightfully psychopathic in the military establishment and the Virginia Diocese of the Episcopal Church. As soon as I was able to cover myself in enough zombie slime to effect a forward escape, I embarked with heroic earnest on an epic journey with no clear final destination in mind.

Raised in Puerto Rico by her grandparents, Margarita Barresi grew up hearing stories about the “good old days”—the genesis for A Delicate Marriage, her first novel. She studied public relations at Boston University, and after a successful career in marketing communications, now devotes her time to writing. Her essays have been published in several literary magazines and compilations. Margarita lives in the Boston suburbs with her husband and two Puerto Rican cats, Luna and Rico.

Jaime Grunfeld, LMHC, was born and raised in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where his parents, who lived in Hungary, fled after its invasion by the Nazis. As a teenager, he came to study at Yeshiva in Westchester County, NY, where he graduated in Talmudic Law. Returning to Brazil, he married and joined the family’s textile industry, where over the years he became its CEO.

Elizabeth G. Slade is the author of Rest Stops, a coming-of-age novel that won the Next Generation Indie Book Award in 2012. In 2021, she published the nonfiction book, Montessori in Action: Building Resilient Schools with John Wiley & Sons. Elizabeth has also worked with others to create books such as Women Period and How to Raise a Peaceful Child in a Violent World. She is currently co-authoring Finding Ground with Allison Jones, a book about teaching at the elementary level, which is forthcoming from Parent Child Press.

After nearly twenty years of teaching secondary English, I made good on a challenge I’d issued myself years ago: to write the book I most wanted to read! I’m blessed to live along Mississippi’s Gulf Coast and cannot write until I’ve walked my favorite stretch of beach and collected my daily quota of oyster shells.

I’m a twin: a restless, angry, merciless one. However, I can be the more patient, understanding, and loving kind. I don’t blame people normally. I find my own way in life. I don’t deal with loud sounds well. I try to find uplifting people and activities to make my life better. I’m a big believer in Heaven, God, and His commandments. My achievements are only because I’m blessed by God. He’s trained me out of many situations and engaged me in activities that helped me be supported.

Dr. Ken Hogarty, who lives in San Francisco’s East Bay with his wife Sally, retired after a forty-six-year career as a high school teacher and principal. He has had stories, essays, memoirs, and comedy pieces published in Underwood, Sport Literate, Sequoia Speaks, Cobalt, Woman’s Way, Purpled Nails, the S.F. Chronicle, MacQueen’s, Bridge Eight, Under Review, Points in Case, Robot Butt, Glossy News, Kelp Journal, The Satirist, and Good Old Days. His novel, Recruiting Blue Chip Prospects, launched to good reviews.