Author Interviews

Amy J. Schultz is an author and award-winning photographer who explores unique aspects of modern culture that hide in plain sight.

Kathryn Lund lives in the historic city of York in the north of England. She studied archaeology as an undergraduate and postgraduate before doing her masters in Creative Writing. It was from her masters’ submissions that she created her two books, a collection of short stories called The Things We Keep in the Cupboard and her critically well-received novel The Things We Left Sleeping. Released in 2022, The Things We Left Sleeping was named an Indie Top 100 by Shelf Unbound Magazine.

I was born in Mexico. My first language is Spanish. When I immigrated to the United States at age fifteen, I learned English, finished high school, then college, earned an M.A., and finally a Ph.D. I then taught at Harvard and other American colleges and universities. I was also a university administrator, the first director of La Casa Latina: The University of Pennsylvania Center for Hispanic Excellence, and the resident director of a study abroad program in Seville, Spain, for students of Cornell, Michigan, and the University of Pennsylvania. I am now a full-time poet, essayist, and independent researcher.

Daphne Birkmyer’s background as a teacher and biologist continues to exert its influence on her written work. Born overseas and currently living in California, she observes Americans through an immigrant’s eyes. She shares her home with a multitude of reptiles and mammals and the occasional child who comes home to roost. Book four of the Comfrey, Wyoming series is nearing completion.

Bryan McBee is the author of Vector Zero, also from Atmosphere press. After serving in the U.S. Army, he attended Boise State University, graduating in 2018 with a degree in writing and communication. He is an avid bookworm, movie nut, and gamer. He lives in Idaho with his wife and daughter.

Alana White is the author of the award-winning Guid’Antonio Vespucci historical mystery series set in Renaissance Florence, Italy.

Dr. Mel Baker grew up in Sydney, Australia. From a young age her artistic flare came out in her writing, acting, and painting. At age nine, Mel finished her first book, Is it a Dream or Reality?, on a typewriter. At seventeen, she designed, edited, and published a newsletter to encourage and inspire youth. Mel’s writing continued throughout life in various genres.

Just a woman who turned passion into purpose and experiences into chapters. With a little romantic flare, of course. Thanks for coming along on this wild ride.

Aiyanna has just finished high school with a book under her wing, excited to write more material soon! She enjoys reading (and writing) romance as well as exploring the outdoors, cooking, baking, and spending time with her family, friends, and boyfriend.

Cynthia J. Bogard has reinvented herself as a novelist after a successful career as a Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at Hofstra University in New York. Born and raised in rural Wisconsin, she’s lived in Kuwait, Greece, Mexico, New York, Texas, Vermont, and Wisconsin.

Maria A. Arana is a writer, poet, and editor from the Los Angeles area. She has published many poems and short stories in various publications. Formerly a teacher who encouraged a love of reading and writing, she now channels that passion to create magical stories for a wider audience. She lives with her family, four dogs, and one cat (who thinks she’s a queen herself).

Co-authors Pearl Wolfe and Evelyn Anderton each have over two decades of experience with issues related to violence against women. Both grew up in homes where domestic violence and child abuse were the norm, bringing an intimate perspective to their writing. In the 1990s, while working together in a Eugene shelter for those fleeing domestic violence, they witnessed daily the trauma and damage caused by violent relationships. They have co-authored a riveting new novel, Walk Out the Door, with Atmosphere Press that explores the process of leaving a relationship that confronts so many women facing such violence.

Author J.A. Adams, PhD, is currently retired in Northern Colorado after teaching English for sixteen years at Louisiana State University. She is the author of Pillars of Salt. Inspiration for her latest novel, Bomb Cyclone, came from Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and addresses the effect of the resulting unrest on a Ukrainian American émigré and the beautiful spy sent by the SVR to acquire the bomb coordinates in his possession.

Mona Semerau lives in Stoughton, Wisconsin. She has a few friends, too many books, and is insatiably curious about things she cannot claim to fully understand.

Tricia Johnson is a poet wishing to share her work with others, using the written word to embrace the essence of life. She is a retired teacher. She lives in the beautiful hills of Pennsylvania with her husband and two sons. Her published work includes the poem Living with Lupus which appeared in Still You Poems of Illness & Healing, Wolf Ridge Press, 2020, and her debut book of poems, Whirl Away Girl, published by Atmosphere Press in 2021.

A museum art school registrar, a technical writer and editor, and a professional calligrapher and lettering-arts instructor, I am now a writer and clinical psychologist in Phoenix, Arizona, my home for the past thirty-two years. I moved from New England to Arizona to pursue an MFA in Creative Writing at Arizona State University. I then went on to earn a PsyD in Clinical Psychology from the Arizona School of Professional Psychology. I also have an MA from Goddard College, where I explored calligraphy and literature, culminating in a calligraphic exploration of T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. Telling Stories, published in 2016, is my first novel-length book. Telling Shadows, my second novel, was published by Atmosphere Press in 2022. I am currently working on the third novel in the series, Telling Secrets, as well as a series of personal essays. When I am not writing or managing my private practice, I’m likely to be traveling to some distant land or enjoying the Phoenix Zoo and the Desert Botanical Gardens. Of course, my current BFF, Sam, a rescue cat, demands much attention.

Antoine F. Gnintedem is the assistant principal of Middle College High School and a professor of education at Christian Brothers University. As a linguistic consultant, he has worked for the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Homeland Security. In addition, he has served as an educational assessment expert for leading national and international testing companies, including College Board, Educational Testing Service, the International Baccalaureate, and Pearson Education.

I have always aspired to be a fiction writer, although my first career as an academic historian at the University of Maryland was a long detour. During those years, I published a number of books and articles on Twentieth Century American culture—a broad and engaging field focused on popular and elite culture, literature, films, ideas, social movements, and authors of every sort. As close as this came to fiction (a few critics have said of my work: too close), I always understood this discipline to be restricted by the limitations of documentation. Increasingly, I wanted to engage the emotional and psychological truths and the revealing potential of dialogue possible only through imaginative writing. And so for the last ten years or so, I have turned to creating novels and short stories. In this second career, I have published four novels (three in the Amanda Pennyworth Mystery Series), a book set in rural Illinois in the 1890s, and a collection of short stories. Another novel of mine about contemporary Chicago is forthcoming.

I write poetry and personal essays. I also create visual artwork—collages of paste paper with calligraphy of my poetry. I never planned on writing a novel until one day I wondered what life would be like if the world were a huge mall. I began to imagine a place somewhat similar to our reality but also radically different—a place where everyone is beautiful, and everyone is employed with enough income to consume and to experience pleasure, including drugs, gambling, theater, and holographic adventures. No poverty and little or no crime. A lot of sex. But what’s the catch…and what happens when a woman from our reality finds her way into this alien yet familiar world? Does she try to leave or does she stay? Who changes the most—the woman who befriends her or the outsider? Only by writing a novel did I discover the answers in enough detail to satisfy my curiosity. Mall is my first novel.

Ford spends most free time in the open air, usually barefooted and with readily available mango. An alumni of Taylor University and Central Florida University, Ford exists somewhere between a midwesterner and a beach bum, and currently resides alongside the mountains in Tennessee. With the steady company of a giant dog and something to write on, anywhere will do. Defined by faith, fueled by tribe, and driven by purpose, Ford writes for all—and, simultaneously, for just One. Learn more and join the tribe at authornford.com.