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PATRICIA HENLEY taught in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Purdue University for 26 years.  She is the author of three novels, five collections of stories, two chapbooks of poetry, and a stage play. Her first novel, Hummingbird House, was a finalist for the National Book Award and The New Yorker Fiction Prize. Her short fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, and other journals. Her work has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and other anthologies. Her new collection of stories, Apple & Palm, was published by Cornerstone Press. She currently resides in Kingston, Washington. Learn more at patriciahenleyauthor.com

Sarvat Hasin is a novelist and dramaturg from Pakistan. She has a masters in creative writing from the University of Oxford. Her first novel, This Wide Night, was published by Penguin Random House India and longlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. Her second book, You Can’t Go Home Again, was published in 2018 and featured in Vogue India's and The Hindu's best of the year lists. Her third novel, The Giant Dark, was a runaway critical success, won the Mo Siewcharran Prize, and was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Encore Award. Strange Girls is her US debut. 

Mimi Nichter is an award-winning cultural anthropologist and a professor emerita of anthropology at the University of Arizona. She is the author of four anthropology-related books and the recipient of the Margaret Mead Award for a book that appeals to a wide public audience. Her latest book, Hostage: A Memoir of Terrorism, Trauma, and Resilience was a finalist for the 2026 Tucson Festival of Books Literary Award. Her essays have appeared in Newsweek, HuffPost, and Brevity.

Ellen Meeropol is the author of the forthcoming Sometimes an Island, a mosaic novel featuring a group of older women facing rebuilding after a climate disaster that changes everything. Her previous books include the climate fiction title Kinship of Clover, as well as the novels The Lost Women of Azalea Court, Her Sister’s Tattoo, On Hurricane Island, and House Arrest. She is guest editor for the anthology Dreams for a Broken World. Essay and story publications include Ms. Magazine, Lilith, The Writer Magazine, The Boston Globe, Solstice Magazine, Guernica, and LitHub. Her work has been a finalist for the Sarton Women’s Prize, longlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award, and selected by the Women’s National Book Association as a Great Group Reads. Ellen lives in western Massachusetts, where she is a founding mother of Straw Dog Writers Guild and a member of the WriteAnglesWriters Conference planning committee.

Jennifer Murphy holds an MFA in painting from the University of Denver and an MFA in creative writing from the University of Washington. She is the recipient of the 2013 Loren D. Milliman Scholarship for creative writing and was a contributor at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference from 2008 through 2012. In 2015, her acclaimed debut novel, I Love You More (Doubleday, 2014), won the prestigious Nancy Pearl Fiction Award. Her love of art led her to start Citi Arts, a public art and urban planning company that has created public art master plans for airports, transit facilities, streetscapes, and cities nationwide. Her most recent book is The Ghost Women.

Cameron West was born in Chicago, married Rikki while working as a touring musician in Boston, and became a father while working as a recording artist in Nashville. He was diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder in 1993. During the course of his treatment, 24 separate personalities emerged. Cam earned a PhD in psychology in the years following his diagnosis, and his condition is now largely under control. After years of living around the world, the Wests now reside on California’s Central Coast, where Cam is working on a new young adult novel. Learn more at cameronwestauthor.com.

Claire Heywood is a scholar of the ancient world, with a BA in Classical Civilization and an MA in Ancient Visual and Material Culture from the University of Warwick. Her first novel, Daughters of Sparta, was a national bestseller. The Wandering Queen is her second novel.

REYNA MARDER GENTIN grew up on Long Island and attended Yale College and Yale Law School. A former criminal defense attorney, she is the author of two prior legal romances, Unreasonable Doubts and Both Are True, as well as a middle grade novel, My Name Is Layla. Reyna’s personal essays and short stories have been published widely in print and online, and she is currently working on a collection of linked short stories entitled Open Twenty-Four Hours. Reyna lives with her family in Westchester County, New York. Learn more at Reynamardergentin.com

Rebecca Wolf is a former journalist whose fiction and essays have appeared in many publications, including Apricity and Tablet. She is a volunteer writing tutor for PEN America's Prison Writing Program, and she lived in Jerusalem as a foreign student before attending Barnard College. She lives in New Jersey with her family.

Amy Meyerson is the acclaimed author of the internationally bestselling The Bookshop of Yesterdays, The Imperfects, and The Love Scribe. Her books have been translated into eleven languages and are frequently chosen for best-of lists, including lists from Good Morning America, People Magazine, Publishers Weekly, The Christian Science Monitor, Library Journal, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Texas Library Association’s Lariat List, among others. Meyerson completed her graduate work in creative writing at the University of Southern California, where she now teaches in the writing department. Her new novel The Water Lies--her first work of psychological suspense--will be published on January 1, 2026 from Thomas & Mercer.