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Julie Buntin

Julie Buntin grew up in northern Michigan. Her debut novel, Marlena, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, translated into ten languages, and named a best book of the year by over a dozen outlets, including the Washington Post, NPR, and Kirkus Reviews. Her writing has appeared in the Atlantic, Vogue, the New York Times Book Review, Guernica, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships from Bread Loaf and the MacDowell Colony, and is an editor-at-large at Catapult. Her novel-in-progress won the 2019 Ellen Levine Fund for Writers Award.

Ann Garvin & Erin Celello

Ann Garvin, PhD USA Today Best Seller for I Like You Just Fine When You're Not Around and Erin Celello (Miracle Beach and Learning to Stay) are novelists, educators, and members of the Tall Poppy Writers, an international marketing collaboration of cross-genre women authors founded by Ann. They teach for Drexel University's MFA program and run The 5th Semester book development program, helping anyone take their project from inspiration to publication.

Katey Schultz

Katey Schultz is the author of Flashes of War, which the Daily Beast praised as an “ambitious and fearless” collection, and Still Come Home, a novel, both published by Loyola University Maryland. Honors for her work include the Linda Flowers Literary Award, Doris Betts Fiction Prize, Foreword INDIES Book of the Year for both titles, gold and silver medals from the Military Writers Society of America, five Pushcart nominations, a nomination to Best American Short Stories, National Indies Excellence Finalist recognition, and writing fellowships in eight states. She was also recently named a finalist in the Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year Awards for Still Come Home. She lives in Celo, North Carolina, and is the founder of Maximum Impact, a transformative mentoring service for creative writers that has been recognized by both CNBC and the What Works Network. Learn more at www.kateyschultz.com.

Melissa Lozada-Oliva

Melissa Lozada-Oliva’s book Peluda (Button Poetry 2017) explored the intersections of Latina identity, feminism, hair removal and what it means to belong. She preforms her poems at universities and venues across the country. She also does workshops incorporating humor into poetry and general creative writing classes. She is the co-host of the podcast Say More with Olivia Gatwood where they interview guests about things they are experts on. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in REMEZCLA, PAPER, The Guardian, BreakBeat Poets, Kenyon Review, Vulture, Bustle, Glamour Magazine, The Huffington Post, Muzzle Magazine, The Adroit Journal and BBC Mundo! She literally has a Wikipedia page and lives in New York City.

Finnian Burnett

Finnian Burnett is a professor, a writer, and a lifelong learner. She is a doctoral student at Murray State University and an MFA instructor with Southern New Hampshire University. She has run the Golden Crown Literary Society’s Writing Academy since 2015 and served as the Director of Education for several years. 

Under her former name, Beth Burnett, Finn published several books with Sapphire Books Publishing, including two Rainbow Award winners. Her self-published book, Coyote Ate the Stars, won first place in fantasy in the Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards. She has also published works in various anthologies and journals including the esteemed feminist journal, Sinister Wisdom, The Herstry Project, and the upcoming Resiliency Journal through the Calgary Arts Development. 

Finn is currently working on a queer Shakespeare retelling and a collection of essays and stories exploring the intersection of fatphobia and gender identity-based body dysphoria. She can be found at www.finnburnett.com

Eisa Nefertari Ulen

Eisa Nefertari Ulen (she/her) is the author of Crystelle Mourning (Atria), a novel described by The Washington Post as “a call for healing in the African American community from generations of hurt and neglect.” A Pulitzer Center grantee, she is the recipient of a Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center Fellowship for Young African American Fiction Writers, a Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship, and a National Association of Black Journalists Award. Her essays exploring African American culture have been widely anthologized, most recently in Who Do You Serve? Who Do You Protect? (Haymarket), which won the Social Justice/Advocacy Award for 2017 from the School Library Journal's In the Margins Book Committee. Eisa has also contributed to ReadersDigest.com, TheHollywoodReporter.com, Essence, Parents, The Washington Post, Ms., Health, Ebony, The Huffington Post, Pen.org, Los Angeles Review of Books, TheRoot.com, Truthout.org, TheDefendersOnline.com, TheGrio.com, and CreativeNonfiction.org. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College and earned a master’s degree from Columbia University. Awarded a Hunter College Presidential Award for Excellence for Teaching, Eisa teaches BIPOC literature for the Department of English and the Africana, Puerto Rican, and Latino Studies Department at Hunter. She has also taught fiction writing at Baruch College and literature at The Pratt Institute. A founding member of Ringshout: A Place for Black Literature, she lives with her husband and son in Brooklyn.