Jessica Soffer is the author of This Is a Love Story and Tomorrow There Will Be Apricots. She grew up in New York City, attended Connecticut College, and earned her MFA at Hunter College. Her work has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, Real Simple, Saveur, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue, and on NPR’s Selected Shorts. She teaches creative writing to small groups and in the corporate space and lives in Sag Harbor, New York, with her husband, young daughter, and dog.

Philip Kenney is an author and psychotherapist. His most recent work is a novel entitled, The Mercy Dialogues. That work examines the power of dialogue, in the service of love, to bridge seemingly impossible divisions between people. Prior to that, in 2022, his chapbook of haiku entitled, Only This Step, was published by Finishing Line Press. In 2018, his first non-fiction book, The Writer’s Crucible: Meditations on Emotion, Being and Creativity, was a finalist for The Red City Review Non-Fiction Book of the Year. That work was written to support writers with the emotional vulnerabilities they face living a creative life. On occasion, Philip gives workshops based on The Writer’s Crucible at The Attic Institute in Portland.Those workshops enable authors to understand and work with the emotions that complicate the creative process. In 2018, his essay, The Rebirth of Masculinity: What We Can Learn from Harvey Weinstein and Co. was published in issue #7 of The Timberline Review. 

Rachel Kaplan, MA, MFT, is a licensed psychotherapist with a thriving practice in the San Francisco Bay Area. Creator and host of the acclaimed podcast Healing Feeling Sh*t Show, she is active on a variety of social media channels and has published multiple features in Common Ground. Kaplan has studied yoga, meditation, and hands-on healing practices in India and Nepal, earned a master’s degree in counseling psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies, and trained in cutting-edge trauma modalities such as EMDR. Her first book is, Feel, Heal, and Let That Sh*t Go: Your Guide to Emotional Resilience and Lasting Self-Love.  She divides her time between Oakland and Joshua Tree, California. More information at TheFeelingsMovement.com.

Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew is the author of Swinging on the Garden Gate: A Memoir of Bisexuality & Spirit, now in its second edition; the novel Hannah, Delivered; a collection of personal essays, On the Threshold:  Home, Hardwood, and Holiness; the chapbook, A Map to Mercy, due out winter 2025; and three books on writing: Writing the Sacred Journey:  The Art and Practice of Spiritual Memoir; Living Revision: A Writer’s Craft as Spiritual Practice, winner of the silver Nautilus Award; and The Release: Finding Creativity and Freedom After the Writing is Done.  She is a founding member of The Eye of the Heart Center, where she teaches writing as a transformational practice and hosts an online writing community.  She is a recipient of two Minnesota State Arts Board artists’ fellowships, the Loft Career Initiative Grant, and is a Minnesota Book Awards finalist.  She lives in Minneapolis with her wife, daughter, and two rambunctious cats.  You can learn more about Elizabeth at www.elizabethjarrettandrew.com and www.spiritualmemoir.com.

Kate Winkler Dawson is a seasoned documentary producer, podcaster, and true-crime historian whose work has appeared in The New York Times, WCBS News and ABC News Radio, “PBS NewsHour,” and “Nightline.” She is the creator of three hit podcasts (BB has about 1.5 million downloads a month): “Tenfold More Wicked” and “Wicked Words,” and the cohost of the “Buried Bones” podcast on the Exactly Right network. She is the author of American Sherlock, Death in the Air, All That Is Wicked, The Sinners All Bow, and is a professor of journalism at The University of Texas at Austin.

Nancy Slonim Aronie has been a commentator for National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. She was a Visiting Writer at Trinity College in Hartford, CT, wrote a monthly column in McCall’s magazine and was the recipient of the Eye of The Beholder Artist in Residence award at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. Nancy won teacher of the year award for all three years she taught at Harvard University for Robert Coles.

Bill Kenower will be hosting an in-person Fearless Writing Retreat January 26-31 in Portland, OR.
Space is limited! Hope to see you there:
Bill's website: https://www.williamkenower.com/
Retreat website: https://www.portlandretreathouse.com/fearless-writing-with-bill-kenower

GARY GOLDSTEIN is an award-winning writer for film, TV, and the theatre, with  more than 30 produced screen and stage credits. His first novel, the romantic  comedy The Last Birthday Party, won an IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award for Excellence in Fiction. Gary's second novel, the family drama The Mother I Never Had, was named one of the "Must-Read Books of Fall 2022" by Town & Country  magazine. His latest book, the coming-of-age romantic dramedy, Please Come to  Boston, was published in September. A New York native, he resides in Los Angeles, where he is also a contributing film reviewer and arts feature writer for the L.A. Times.

Since coming through Clarion West in 2005, Cat Rambo’s 300+ fiction publications have included stories in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld Magazine, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and frequently appear in year’s best of collections. They work across genre, writing literary, thriller, science fiction, slipstream, fantasy, magic realism, historical, and humor with fluid ease, making them one of the leaders in American story writing. In 2013, Rambo’s short story, “Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain” was a Nebula nominee and 2020 Rambo won the Nebula Award for their fantasy novelette Carpe Glitter, published by Meerkat Press. They have edited several anthologies as well as Fantasy Magazine, and received a World Fantasy Award nomination for their work with the latter. They have also written the writing book Moving from Idea to Finished Draft and co-edited Ad Astra: The SFWA 50th Anniversary Cookbook.

A frequent reader for podcasts, Rambo is part of the team behind the If This Goes On (Don’t Panic) podcast, and has worked with it since its beginning in 2020. They are a former two-term President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) and continue to work with the organization as a mentor. Their most recent work is space opera Rumor Has It (Tor Macmillan, 2024); upcoming in 2025 is Wings of Tabat (Wordfire).

For more about Cat, as well as links to fiction and popular online school, The Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, see their website at catrambo.com 

Georgia Jeffries is a writer of Emmy Award winning drama and critically acclaimed noir fiction. Honored with multiple Writers Guild Awards, Golden Globes and the Humanitas Prize, her work in film has been praised by the Los Angeles Times as “standing ovation television.” The Los Angeles Review of Books described her short stories in the national anthologies, Odd Partners and The Last Resort, as “firecracker tales” and “domestic tragedy brilliantly segueing into comic farce.” She has also written biographical profiles for HuffPost and UC Press, including “The Last Gun of Tibercio Vasquez,” which can be viewed on the KCET-TV website, Artbound. Born in the Illinois heartland, she worked as a journalist for American Film before writing and producing ground-breaking female-driven dramas, Cagney & Lacey, China Beach and Sisters. Her screenwriting career has been distinguished by extensive field research, from patrolling the mean streets of Rampart with the LAPD to crashing a Vegas bounty hunters’ convention to reporting from a Walter Reed Army Hospital surgical bay, each investigation the basis for one of her many docudramas and series pilots for CBS, ABC, NBC, HBO and Showtime. A cum laude UCLA graduate, Jeffries is a professor at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts where she created the first undergraduate screenwriting thesis program at an American university.  The Younger Girl is her first novel.

Jan Gangsei is an award-winning author of books for young adults and tweens. Her debut YA thriller, Zero Day, was named to several state award lists and was one of Bank Street’s Best Books of the Year. She’s also penned several middle-grade books, including Project Me 2.0, The Wild Bunch, as well as series fiction under various pen names commissioned by book packagers and publishers. Her latest YA novel is Dead Below Deck