Meghan Allen grew up in rural northwestern Pennsylvania where you’re more likely to find wild elk than a bookstore. She studied social work at Elizabethtown College before returning to her hometown to work as a family social worker for a non-profit organization. Meghan is at work on her first novel.
Isabel Galupo is a second-generation queer writer living in Brooklyn, NY. She works as an Executive Assistant for the Nick Jr. show Dora and Friends: Into the City and is studying to get her MFA in Writing for Children at The New School. When she’s not writing, you can find Isabel missing her stop on the train because she’s too engrossed in a novel, Facetiming with her four younger sisters, and eating her way through Manhattan with her two lovely roommates.
M-E Girard is a writer of YA fiction about teen girls who kick ass in a variety of ways. Some facts about M-E: She’s Canadian, speaks French, was a fellow of the YA workshop of the 2013 Lambda retreat, spends hours playing video games, has 2 chihuahuas, should stop eating so many carbs and cheese, buys too many books, and still plays with dolls. Her debut novel GIRL will be released in the fall of 2016 by Katherine Tegen Books, HarperCollins.
Kate Goka is a writer and VONA fellow currently working on The Infinity of You, a math-infused, Cyrano de Bergerac-inspired graphic novel love story between two high school girls. Kate is also a married, Queer Asian mom living in the suburbs of San Francisco and can parallel park her old-skool minivan like nobody’s business. If there’s anything she hates with a passion, it’s all those newfangled minivans with their slow-ass automatic doors.
Leah “Parker” CT Goodreau is an artist and writer from Rhode Island. Like the state, they are small and have an unnecessarily long name. A long-time fan of fantasy and children’s literature, they have written several young adult manuscripts, now in various stages of not-quite-right-yet. In the spare time they force themselves to make every week, they write and draw a webcomic about superpowers and lying. They co-own four oddly named cats.
Catherine Healy’s work has appeared in Geez Magazine and the Lambda Literary Award-nominated anthology Here Come the Brides!: Reflections on Lesbian Love and Marriage. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in linguistics from Swarthmore College and is now completing a Master of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School, in preparation for ordination as an Episcopal priest. Catherine’s interests include alternatives to capitalism, the transformative power of fiction, the boundless grace of God, and making the world a safer place for kids.
A graduate of University of California, Santa Cruz, Caitlin Hernandez’s essays, poetry, and prose have been published in several anthologies and on the web sites WordGathering and The Mighty. She has written a short musical and two plays, which were produced by CRE Outreach’s Theatre By the Blind, the only theatre troupe in the country comprised solely of blind actors. When not working toward her masters degree in special education, reading and writing young adult fiction, or singing with her a cappella group, Caitlin enjoys eating coffee ice cream with Oreos and trying not to trip people with her rainbow cane.
Sarah C. Jiménez is originally from Chula Vista, San Diego’s border-town to Tijuana, and has lived in San Francisco for the past twelve years. She is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing/Fiction Prose at Mills College, and is currently finishing her manuscript – a young adult novel about Latinas in the ’burbs. Jiménez has facilitated several writers workshops with middle school students, and advocates for the educational development of Latino youth in her community. She lives with her partner of ten years (her biggest fan), and their two cats.
Jasmine Molina Reading or writing biographies are dreadful, so please hold on. My life is simple like any other college student’s life I go to school, work, and study. I am majoring in biology to be a soon wildlife veterinarian. My family is the most important part of my life. Writing has recently become part of my daily life even when I am not writing. Life has been challenging now since all I can ever think about is continuing a story or creating new ones while trying to study for another future.
Watts decided to leave behind more than a decade of teaching last Spring to write. So now she splits her time freelancing for educational publishers and slinging cheese & charcuterie around at a small cut-to-order cheese shop in Santa Fe, NM. In her free time she writes graphic novels, teen fantasy, memoir, and the occasional blog post about childhood adversity or the art of open, honest discussion. She holds her MFA in Writing for children & young adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts, an MA in old, dead white guys from St. John’s College, and a BA in Physics from Wellesley.
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