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.
Charles Rice-González, born in Puerto Rico and reared in the Bronx, is a writer, long-time community and LGBT activist, co-founder of BAAD! The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance and a Distinguished Lecturer at Hostos Community College – CUNY. He received a B.A. in Communications from Adelphi University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Goddard College. His debut novel, Chulito (Magnus 2011), has received awards and recognitions from American Library Association (ALA) and the National Book Critics Circle. He co-edited From Macho to Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction (Tincture 2011) with Charlie Vázquez. He is also an award-winning playwright and his play I Just Love Andy Gibb will be published in Blacktino Queer Performance: A Critical Anthology co-edited by E. Patrick Johnson and Ramón H. Rivera-Servera in 2015. He received an Audre Lorde scholarship from the ZAMI Foundation, a P.R.I.D.E. (Puerto Rican Initiative to Develop Empowerment) Award and the Lambda Literary Foundation’s Dr. Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award in 2014. Charles serves as the chair of the board for The Bronx Council on the Arts and NALAC – The National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, and is an active organizer for the Queer Latina/o Writers Collective.
Jaime Shearn Coan is a PhD student in English at The Graduate Center, CUNY and a poet whose work has appeared in publications includingThe Brooklyn Rail, Drunken Boat, The Portland Review, and Troubling the Line: An Anthology of Trans and Genderqueer Poetry. Jaime has received fellowships from Poets House, The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Tin House Writers Workshop, and the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. He was awarded a 2014 Jerome Travel & Study Grant and has a chapbook forthcoming from Argos Books in Spring 2015. (Photo credit: Arnold Adler Photography)
Meg Leitold is a ball of queer femme fire based in Toronto and a returning Lambda Fellow from the 2013 Non-Fiction workshop. A graduate of Concordia University’s Simone de Beauvoir Institute and the University of Toronto, her writing has been published in several zines, art installations, and journals, including No More Potlucks, Historiae, and Subversions. In her spare time, she delights in dancing, reading fiction, and out-jargoning the mansplainer.
Molly McCloy is an NYC Moth Storytelling Slam winner with work published in Nerve and Slate. She has performed recently for Tucson’s Odyssey and FST series as well as the award-winning Lit Lounge series at The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. Her work has been described as all-muscle, hilarious, inspiring and heartbreaking. She has been called a happy misanthrope and an angel.
Megan McHugh is a garden teacher at a grade school in New Orleans, LA. She recently received her MFA in poetry from the University of New Orleans, while starting an urban flower farm: www.pistilandstamenflowers.com. She is originally from Chicago.
Ricardo Hernandez is an aspiring poet. A recent CUNY Baruch graduate with a BA in English Literature, he looks forward to having some time to read and write poetry, and hopes to attend graduate school in the near future. He lives in Queens, NY with his parents, his sisters, and two larger-than-life Chihuahuas.
Roberto F. Santiago is a poet, translator, and lead singer in a solo act who produces his own music, and dances rips into his pants. Roberto received an MFA from Rutgers University, BA from Sarah Lawrence College, and is the recipient of the 2011 Alfred C. Carey Prize for Poetry. His poetry has been published in such anthologies/journals as Assaracus – Sibling Rivalry (2014), CURA: A Literary Magazine of Art & Action(2014), Hypothetical: A Review of Everything Imaginable(2014), and The Waiting Room Reader: Stories to Keep you Company – CavanKerry (2013). His first full-length collection of poems, Angel Park, will be released April 2015 by Lethe Press.
Noah Stetzer, born & raised in Pittsburgh PA, worked as a bookseller for twenty years and is an alumnus of the Young Writers Workshop at the University of Virginia. Noah is a 2014 degree candidate at The MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College and currently lives with his partner in the Washington DC area.
