Tess Allard is a writer, filmmaker and photographer living in Pittsburgh, PA. She holds a BA in Film Studies from the University of Pittsburgh and also attended the College of Santa Fe in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her fiction has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review and is forthcoming in Pleiades and Black Warrior Review. Her short story, “The World Holds What It Remembers Most,” was selected as the fiction winner in Black Warrior Review‘s 2017 contest. Her films have screened throughout the city and elsewhere in Pennsylvania, and were included in the Three Rivers Film Festival in 2008, 2009, and 2010.

Chloe T. Barlow is a contemporary romance novelist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with her husband and their sweet dog. She has sold over 15,000 copies of her The Gateway to Love series which is set in Pittsburgh. She is a native Washingtonian that graduated Duke University with a degree in English and Chinese language. She met her husband at Duke and he brought her to Pittsburgh over a decade ago, which she has loved ever since and made her adopted hometown. She also attended the University of Pittsburgh Law School where she continued to be a book-loving nerd. Chloe has always loved writing and cherishes the opportunity to craft her novels and share them with the world. When Chloe isn’t writing, she spends her time exploring Pittsburgh with her husband and friends.

Clare Beams is the author of the story collection We Show What We Have Learned, coming from Lookout Books in October 2016. Her stories appear in One Story, Ecotone, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and elsewhere, and are forthcoming in The Common and online at the Kenyon Review. Stories have received special mention in The Best American Short Stories 2013 and The Pushcart Prize XXXV. Clare is the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and currently blogs for Ploughshares. In 2013, after teaching high school English for six years in Falmouth, Massachusetts, she moved with her husband and daughter to Pittsburgh, where she teaches creative writing at Saint Vincent College and the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts.

Raised in western Pennsylvania, Tom Bennitt earned his MFA from the University of Mississippi and his PhD from Nebraska. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in several literary journals, including Texas Review, Word Riot, and Prairie Schooner. His debut novel, Burning Under, was shortlisted for the George Garrett Fiction Prize. The 2017 Emerging Writer-in-Residence at Penn State-Altoona, he now resides in the Pittsburgh area with his family. For more information: http://www.tombennitt.wordpress.com.

Rachel Blaufeld is a bestselling author of Romantic Suspense, New Adult, Coming-of-Age Romance, and Sports Romance. A recent poll of her readers described her as insightful, generous, articulate, and spunky. Originally a social worker, Rachel creates broken yet redeeming characters. She’s been known to turn up the angst like cranking up the heat in the dead of winter.

A devout coffee drinker and doughnut eater, Rachel spends way too many hours in local coffee shops, downing the aforementioned goodies while she plots her ideas. Her tales may all come with a side of angst and naughtiness, but end as lusciously as her treats.

When she isn’t writing, she can be found courtside, tweeting about hoops as her son plays, or walking around the house wearing earplugs while her other son, the drummer, bangs away.

To connect with Rachel, she’s most active in her private reading group, The Electric Readers, where she shares insider information and intimate conversation with her readers.

Em Lyons Bouch is a novelist and high school English teacher. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a bachelor’s degree in English and Anthropology. The first draft of her novel Moving the Chains was written as her senior honors English thesis. She went on to earn a master’s degree in education through Notre Dame’s Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE), teaching for two years in Montgomery, Alabama. Em is currently a group leader for Recovery International, the real mental health organization that is featured in Moving the Chains, and she has been a group member since 2006. She lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with her husband Damian.

Eric Boyd is working on his first short story collection, “Brownfields”.

His writing has been published by The Offing Magazine, Sixpenny, Guernica, The Missouri Review, PEN America Journal, Bridge Eight, Cheap Pop, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Midwestern Gothic, Luna Luna, and Fourth River, among others. He appeared in the anthologies Prison Noir (Akashic Books), edited by Joyce Carol Oates, as well as Words Without Walls (Trinity University Press).

Boyd is a winner of the PEN Prison Writing award, was nominated for the Pushcart Prize, has been shortlisted by The Masters Review, and was a semifinalist for the H.E. Francis award. He has served on conference panels for North American Review and Barrelhouse magazine. In 2014 he was selected to attend the Tin House summer workshop and this year he received a full scholarship to attend Slice magazine’s literary conference.

Boyd is also the editor of The Pittsburgh Anthology (Belt Publishing) as well as a former editor for Pork & Mead magazine and tNY press; he was also a guest-editor for The James Franco Review and a reader for Winter Tangerine‘s special “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” issue.

Eric Boyd’s personal tumblr page is a ‘spotlighted’ blog on that website, highlighting his daily six word stories/poems, as well as longer works.

Further Reading:

Interview/article for The City Paper

Interview with The Huffington Post

The Girl from the North (“A truly exceptional entertainment” — Midwest Book Review) is Cat Bruno’s first full-length venture into fantasy writing, although she has been an avid and loyal reader of sci-fi/fantasy books for many years, especially traditional epic fantasy. Having long dreamed of creating a series fit for both reading and viewing, Ms. Bruno’s early start as a poet gives her a unique style that centers on vivid descriptions and settings. Her focus has always been on imagining strong, if imperfect, female characters and bringing diversity to the fantasy genre. The Pathway of the Chosen as a series will most likely be a long one, just as long as the journeys of many of its characters.

Midwest Book Review praised Cat Bruno’s debut novel, The Girl from the North, as, “Exceptional entertainment with deftly created characters and unexpected plot twists.” Now, a year later, Ms. Bruno continues the story of her strong female protagonist with the second book in the series, Daughter of the Wolf.

Released in January, 2016, Daughter of the Wolf seamlessly crosses genres, with paranormal elements and romance, which readers of fantasy and young adult literature will find pleasing. For those looking for diversity in fiction and atypical fantasy characters, Ms. Bruno offers an engaging read with uncommon voices. When Cat Bruno is not wandering through the world of Cordisia, she is writing the third book in the Pathway of the Chosen series. Expect its release in early 2017.

Babs Carryer is an entrepreneur, teacher, mentor, writer and sailor.
As a serial technology entrepreneur, she has spent the bulk of her
life creating and advising startups. Currently, Babs is director of
education & outreach for the University of Pittsburgh’s Innovation
Institute where she develops and implements programs to encourage and
support innovation and entrepreneurship across campus to all students,
faculty, researchers and clinicians. For 15 years, Babs helped develop
the entrepreneurial ecosystem at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU)
where she taught entrepreneurship, was embedded entrepreneur, and
innovation advisor. For years, Babs has written about startups and
entrepreneurship on her NewVenturist blog. Now she has turned to
writing fiction with the publication of her first startup mystery
novel, HD66: search for a cure or a killer?. Babs co-founded the
Pittsburgh chapter of Women in Bio. Her focus on encouraging and
supporting women in entrepreneurship has led to her novel’s female
sleuth, Brie Prince, who she hopes to take into a series. Babs has a
Masters in Public Management from Heinz College at CMU and a BA from
Mills College in CA. Babs is President of the Pittsburgh chapter of
Sisters in Crime.

Israel Centeno has published 14 books including novels, short stories, and poetry. He is regarded as one of the most important Venezuelan literary figures of the last 50 years. He has won numerous awards including Spain’s Federico Garcia Lorca Award and Venezuela’s National Council of Culture Award (1991). Through his narratives he conveys a sense of the many shortcomings of a society that feeds on grandiose historical myths that lead to poverty and violence. Centeno lives in Pittsburgh, with his wife and two daughters, where he has been Exiled Writer-in-Residence at City of Asylum.