Tess Sharpe

Born in a backwoods cabin to a pair of punk rockers, Tess Sharpe grew up in rural Northern California. Following an internship with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, she studied theatre and Shakespeare at SOU before abandoning the stage for the professional kitchen. She lives, writes and bakes near the Oregon border. Far From You, her first YA novel, is an LGBT mystery, to be published by Hyperion in Spring of 2014.

dave ring is a speculative fiction writer, poet, trainer and counselor. He was born near Boston, educated in Dublin and currently based in Washington, DC. He is currently working on a coauthored novel and as many short stories as he can wrangle.

Rose Yndigoyen is a freelance writer and archivist from New York City. Her short fiction will be featured in the upcoming Southern Gothic anthology from New Lit Salon Press. She has been a non-fiction contributor to the websites AfterEllen and Biographile and covers queer and feminist issues in pop culture on her blog, Queer for Theory. Rose is also co-host of the podcast Pretty Little Recaps. Basically, Rose cannot stop with the words. She is currently at work on her first YA novel, a queer, girly love story. Rose lives with her wife in northern Manhattan. They are proud foster parents.

M-E Girard is a Registered Nurse by night and writer of fiction featuring gender-bending queer girls by day…and often night, too. She is currently working on a slew of novels-in-progress, but primarily on Boifriend, a finalist of the 2010 Young Adult Novel Discovery Contest. M-E is a board member of the Writers’ Community of Durham Region and blogs on its resource site Reading as Writers. M-E writes, reads, and regularly forgoes all that to binge on video games. She lives not too far outside of Toronto, Canada, with her partner and their two Chihuahua babies.

Jessie Nash is a British writer, punk-poet, and photographer. He studied BA Creative Writing in London and MA English in the USA, where he also taught undergraduate writing classes. Jessie’s poetry has appeared in publications such as Poetry Express, Luna Negra, Skin to Skin: The Art of the Lesbian, and the Off the Rocks Anthology. His fiction has been published in Glitterwolf, Lunch Ticket, (T)our and Minetta, and his short story ‘Danny’ won the Thompson Prize in the Altogether Now 2012 competition. Jessie has also written reviews and features, worked as a copyeditor, and is a trans man.

J S Kuiken My mother claims gypsies left me, which is as true as any other story which could be told. Some will say I graduated with an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. Others remain skeptical such riff-raff would be accepted into the UEA’s distinguished program. Rumor has it that I’ve published in The Copperfield Review and Cactus Heart, was a founding editor for Rearrange, and I am completing a fantasy novel (or two), between teaching English, hiking, and having Jaime Lannister feels. You can find me on Twitter, and you should absolutely believe everything I say there.

Rebecca Leach is an information designer and copyeditor from Austin, Texas. By day, she turns charts and data into visually compelling presentations, and by night, she hunts down the grammatical errors and typos that often lurk in manuscripts. In 2011, she received her master’s in writing from the New School University in New York City. She writes whenever she can—in the morning when she wakes up, in the car on the way to work, during lunch, and between turns at flying trapeze classes. Currently, she’s working on three speculative YA novels, which are in varying stages of completion.

Miguel M. Morales grew up in Texas working as a migrant farmworker. As a journalist, he earned the Society of Professional Journalists’ First Amendment Award. Miguel lives in Kansas and serves on the Latino Writers Collective board. His work appears in the anthologies: Primera Página: Poetry from the Latino Heartland, Cuentos del Centro: Stories from the Latino Heartland, To the Stars Through Difficulties: A Kansas Renga in 150 Voices, From Macho to Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction, and in the forthcoming Joto: An Anthology of Queer Xicano & Chicano Poetry. Miguel is thrilled to be a returning Lambda Literary Fellow.