Kate Goka

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.

John Copenhaver chairs the English department at Flint Hill School, an independent high school outside of Washington, DC. His novel Dodging and Burning placed as a quarterfinalist in the 2010 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. He attended Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in 2012 and 2013, and Tin House in 2013. In 2011 he was a fellow in genre fiction at the Lambda Writers Retreat. He graduated with his MFA from George Mason, where he edited the literary magazine Phoebe. He has published in regional journals, including Timber Creek Review and The Roanoke Review, and was first runner-up in the F. Scott Fitzgerald Short Story Contest and Narrative Magazine Winter Story Contest, 2014. His blog is called Talking the Walk.

Garrett Foster is an Emmy Award-winning writer for his work on the CBS daytime drama Guiding Light. A graduate of Vassar College with a B.A. in English, Garrett has also worked as an editor/writer at The Palm Beach Post and Sun Sentinel and served as editor-in-chief of Soap Opera Magazine. A Connecticut native, Garrett traded in his snow shoes for flip flops, moved to South Florida in 1991 and hasn’t looked back since. He is currently working on his fifth novel and finally working up the nerve to actually start sending them out! When he isn’t writing, he can be found doing a mean Warrior pose, trying to perfect the ultimate smoothie, and spending time with the sweetest rescue cat in the world, Katie.

Regina Jamison is a writer, educator, mother, and dreamer who lives in Brooklyn, New York. Her poetry has appeared in Promethean eZine and Off the Rocks: An Anthology of GLBT Writing Vols. 14 & 15. Her erotic short stories have appeared in Girls Who Bite: Vampire Lesbian Anthology and Purple Panties: Anthology of Black Lesbian Erotica. She is infatuated with southern settings, dialects, and characters. She is currently working on a YA novel set in. Louisiana.

Anne Laughlin is the author of five novels – three that have been published by Bold Strokes Books and two more that will come out in late 2014. She has written numerous short stories published by Cleis Press, Alyson Books and others. Her story “It Only Occurred to Me Later” was a finalist in the Saints and Sinners 2013 Short Fiction Contest. She is a three time Goldie Award winner and has twice been short listed for a Lammy Award. Anne was named a Writers Retreat Fellow by the Lambda Literary Foundation in 2008. She’s been accepted into residencies at Ragdale and Vermont Studio Center. Anne lives in Chicago with her wife, Linda.

CLAUDIA MOSS is the author of two novels, Dolly: The Memoirs of a High School Graduate (her Holloway House debut, adolescent novel) and If You Love Me, Come (her sophomore, self-published novel). She has authored a short fiction collection, a series of books debuting the feisty Ms. Wanda B. Wonders, a contemporary of Langston Hughes’ Jessie B. Simple. In addition, Claudia is the author of Soft Tsunami: a poetry collection showcasing lesbian desire. Her short fiction has appeared in a host of anthologies including Longing, Lust, and Love: Black Lesbian Stories (Nghosi Books), Gietic: Erotic Poems/Kinky Short Stories (Gia Bella & The Siren), The Lust Chronicles (e-book), The Hoot & Holler of the Owls (Hurston/Wright Publications), Purple Panties (Strebor Books), SWING!: Adventures in Swinging By Today’s Top Erotica Writers (Logical-Lust Publications),Life, Love & Lust and Her Voice (Lesbian Memoirs). Her poetry has appeared inVenus Magazine and a Pearl Cleage magazine with the theme “What Women Want.”

Corey Saucier is an African American Queer artist living in Los Angeles. He is a Lambda Literary Fellow in Fiction and Non-Fiction and is currently penning his first novel. His musings and wanderings on Love, Life, and Non-sense can be found at www.justwords.tumblr.com

Hope Thompson is a Toronto-based playwright, filmmaker and writer and is a graduate of Norman Jewison’s CanadianFilm Centre. Hope is interested in mystery, film noir and camp and has written and directed several award-winning short films and many one-act plays in these genres.Hope’s monologue, Cardigan Confidential was published in the collection, City Voices: A Book of Monologues by Toronto Artists and she will be performing it at World Pride in Toronto this June. Hope is currently working on her first mystery novel.

Jan Zivic, a Lambda Literary Fellow, received her Master of Fine Arts from the University of San Francisco in 2012. In 2011 she published a memoir piece in the Porter Gulch Review, and more recently, a short story in Temporary Shelter, Eleven Stories, edited by Karl Soehnlein. In 2007, Jan co-founded vibrantBrains, a cognitive gym and start-up listed in Entrepreneur Magazine’s “100 Brilliant Companies.” She has received the Cable Car Woman of the Year Award, the Maya Angelou Award for Community Leadership from the Center for Excellence at the University of California Medical School, and a Distinguished Alumna Award from the University of California, PA, all for her community philanthropic and volunteer leadership. She currently serves on the Board of Lambda Literary, and is still working on emerging as a published writer…published being the key word here.