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Nancy Townsley lives in a floating home along the Multnomah Channel near Portland, Oregon. Her debut novel, Sunshine Girl, was inspired by her long career as a newspaper journalist. She continues to have a keen interest in the cultural and political changes altering the media landscape, channeling that fascination into writing fiction and nonfiction. Her work has appeared in Newsweek, Hippocampus, The Big Smoke, Nailed magazine, the Timberline Review, Elephant Journal, Mountain Bluebird Magazine, and several anthologies. “Leaving Tulum,” an excerpt from her first book, can be found at unleashcreatives.com.

Ling Ling Huang is a writer and violinist. She plays with several ensembles, including the Oregon Symphony, Grand Teton Music Festival Orchestra, ProMusica Chamber Orchestra, and the Experiential Orchestra, with whom she won a Grammy Award in 2021. Her debut novel, Natural Beauty, was a Good Morning America Buzz Pick, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Fiction. Her latest novel is Immaculate Conception.

Clay Stafford is an American bestselling and award-winning author, poet, screenwriter, and playwright; film and television producer, director, showrunner, actor; book, film, and stage reviewer as well as public speaker. He has sold nearly four million copies of his books overall and has had his work distributed in sixteen languages. He is founder and CEO of the annual Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference and a contributor to Writer’s Digest magazine with his monthly online column, “Killer Writer”. In addition, Clay is the founder of theBalancedWriter.com, a creative learning platform for writers. For more information visit, www.claystafford.com.

Robert Bailey is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of the Jason Rich series, which includes Rich Justice, Rich Waters, and Rich Blood; the Bocephus Haynes series, which includes The Wrong Side and Legacy of Lies; and the award-winning McMurtrie and Drake legal thriller series, including The Final Reckoning, The Last Trial, Between Black and White, and The Professor. He also wrote the inspirational novel, The Golfer’s Carol. 

Alex Kenna is a mystery writer, prosecutor, and amateur painter. Before law school, Alex studied painting and art history at Penn. She has also worked as a freelance art critic and sold art in a gallery. Originally from Washington DC, Alex lives in Sierra Madre, California with her husband, two sons, and giant schnauzer, Zelda, who is frequently mistaken for a bear. For the past ten years, Alex has prosecuted a variety of violent and white-collar crimes. Her fiction is heavily informed by her law enforcement and fine art background.  When she’s not writing Alex can be found nerding out in art museums, exploring flea markets, wrangling toddlers, and playing string instruments badly.  Alex’s debut novel, What Meets the Eye, was nominated for a Shamus Award for best first PI novel. Her second novel, BURN THIS NIGHT, was released in November 2024. 

Nancy Kricorian, who was born and raised in the Armenian community of Watertown, Massachusetts, is the author of four novels about post- genocide Armenian diaspora experience, including Zabelle, which was translated into seven languages, was adapted as a play, and has been continuously in print since 1998. Her essays and poems have appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly, Guernica, Parnassus, Minnesota Review, The Mississippi Review, and other journals. She has taught at Barnard, Columbia, Yale, and New York University, as well as for Teacher & Writers Collaborative in the New York City Public Schools and for the Palestine Writing Workshop in Birzeit. She has been the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, a Gold Medal from the Writers Union of Armenia, and the Anahid Literary Award. She lives in New York City. 

William Luvaas has published four novels: The Seductions of Natalie Bach (Little, Brown) Going Under (Putnam), Beneath The Coyote Hills (Spuyten Duyvil), and Welcome To Saint Angel (Anaphora Lit. Press); and three story collections: A Working Man’s Apocrypha (Univ. Okla. Press) Ashes Rain Down: A Story Cycle (Spuyten Duyvil), The Huffington Post’s 2013 Book of the Year and a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Awards – and his most recent, The Three Devils.  His new collection The Three Devils And Other Stories is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press at the Univ. of Wisconsin.  His honors include an NEA fellowship, first place in Glimmer Train’s Fiction Open Contest, The Ledge Magazine’s 2010 Fiction Awards Competition, and Fiction Network’s Second National Fiction Competition.  Over one hundred of his stories, essays, and articles have appeared in many publications, including The Sun, North American Review, Epiphany, The Village Voice, The American Literary Review, Antioch Review, Cimarron Review, Short Story, and the American Fiction anthology.  He has taught creative writing at San Diego State University, U.C. Riverside, and The Writer’s Voice in New York and has also worked as a carpenter, craftsman, community organizer, and freelance journalist.  He lives in Los Angeles with his wife Lucinda, an artist and filmmaker.

Elizabeth Rose Quinn is a novelist and screenwriter. She graduated with a BA in English from UC Berkeley and a master’s degree in marriage and family therapy.  Born and raised in Berkeley, California, Elizabeth lived in Los Angeles for fifteen years while working in production and writing for television.  She is married with two children and currently lives in New Mexico. In addition to traveling and exploring nature with her family, Elizabeth loves rolling fresh pasta, swimming in the Pacific Ocean, and looking for rainbows in the desert sunsets.

Dennis James Sweeney is the author of How to Submit: Getting Your Writing Published with Literary Magazines and Small Presses (New World Library, February 2025, Paperback). He has an MFA from Oregon State University and a PhD from the University of Denver. Originally from Cincinnati, he lives in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he teaches Creative Writing at Amherst College.  

Stuart Nadler is the author of Wise Men, The Inseparables, and Rooms for Vanishing, and the short story collection The Book of Life. His work has been named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus and Amazon, a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writer selection, a finalist for the Mark Twain Prize for the American Voice, and has been translated across Europe. He is a recipient of the 5 Under 35 Award from the National Book Foundation. He teaches in the MFA program at Bennington College.