When not writing, reading, or working, Andrea Barbosa travels in search of history, museums, and adventures. Her flash fiction, short stories, and poems have appeared in several anthologies and journals, including the Southern Pacific Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, and Ariel Chart.

She served several years as VP and Press Director for the Houston Writers Guild and as Flash Fiction Editor for The Ocotillo Review Literary Journal (Kallisto Gaia Press) where she's currently a Board Member.

She's been invited to speak at several events including Houston Writers Guild writing conferences, Houston Baptist University Writers Conference, Lone Star College Bayou City Book Festival, Fort Bend County Libraries Book Festival, First Colony, Maud Marks, and Bear Creek libraries, Bay Area Writers League, NW Houston Romance Writers of America, Authorology workshops by Inklings Publishing, and is a regular guest author and panelist at Comicpalooza (Texas largest pop culture event).

Awards:

2015 Readers' Favorite Silver Medal Award - Poetry: Holes in Space - A Poetry Collection

2015 Honorable Mention Award - Spider Road Press Flash Fiction Contest

2015 Honorable Mention Award - Houston Writers Guild Press Mystery Short Story contest

2016 First Place Award - Spider Road Press Flash Fiction Contest

2016 Solo Medalist Winner in Contemporary Romance - New Apple Literary Book Awards

2018 "Official Selection" in Romance - New Apple Literary Summer e-Book Award

2019 Shortlisted - Strands International Flash Fiction Competition

Contact her on Facebook for any speaking engagements or book club appearances and signings.

Patricia Flaherty Pagan is a talkative introvert who enjoys writing and reading about tenacious women. She is the author of "Trail Ways Pilgrims: Stories" (The Crossroads Collection #1) and "Enduring Spirit" (The Crossroads Collection #2), as well as the writer of award-winning literary, fantasy and crime short stories. She has edited several collections of fiction and poetry by women writers. She teaches creative writing in Houston. In 2013, after earning her MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College, she founded Spider Road Press, which gives 5% of its proceeds to women's shelters and veterans' groups. She might be biased, but she is pretty sure she adopted the world's coolest kid.

Megan Steusloff is happily married and has two beautiful little ones that keep her very busy. Megan is an elementary school reading specialist and freelance writer from Michigan. She is a proud graduate of Oakland University, and a self-declared lifelong learner. She loves going on adventures of all sizes with her family, reading, writing, gardening, taking long walks, and traveling. She strives to play, listen, explore, imagine, dream, create, and laugh every day with her wonderful students and her own amazing kids. Megan has been published in numerous magazines, including Authenticity for Women, Stone Voices, War Cry, and Family, and is a contributing author in the It’s Really 10 Months: Special Delivery anthology.

Rita Banerjee is the editor of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing (C&R Press, May 2018) and the author of the poetry collection Echo in Four Beats (Finishing Line Press, March 2018), the novella “A Night with Kali” in Approaching Footsteps (Spider Road Press, 2016), and the poetry chapbook Cracklers at Night (Finishing Line Press, 2010). She received her doctorate in Comparative Literature from Harvard and her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington. She is the Executive Creative Director of the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop,and her writing appears in the Academy of American Poets, Poets & Writers, Nat. Brut., The Scofield, The Rumpus, Painted Bride Quarterly, Mass Poetry, Hyphen Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, Electric Literature, VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, The Fiction Project, Objet d’Art, KBOO Radio’s APA Compass, and elsewhere.

Holly Lyn Walrath’s poetry and short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Fireside Fiction, Daily Science Fiction, Luna Station Quarterly, Liminality, and elsewhere. She is the author of the Elgin Award-winning chapbook Glimmerglass Girl (Finishing Line Press, 2018), a chapbook in Italian, Numinose Lapidi (Kipple Press 2020), and The Smallest of Bones (Clash Books, 2021). She holds a B.A. in English from The University of Texas and a Master’s in Creative Writing from the University of Denver. She is a freelance editor and host of The Weird Circular, an e-newsletter for writers containing submission calls and writing prompts. Find her online at www.hlwalrath.com or on Twitter @HollyLynWalrath.

Kate Spitzmiller has written historical fiction from a woman's perspective since she was in the eighth grade. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and a flash fiction and short story award winner. Her work has appeared in the anthology Approaching Footsteps (available on Amazon) and online in On the Premises, Cleaver Magazine, Typishly, The Esthetic Apostle, The Write Launch, the Fredericksburg Arts & Literary Review, and Scribble Literary Magazine. She has work forthcoming in the The New Plains Review and Rain On Rooftops Review.

Kate lives in Massachusetts where she is the history, geography, and government tutor for a junior elite women's hockey team.

Jennifer Leeper is an award-winning fiction author whose previous or forthcoming publications credits include Independent Ink Magazine, The Stone Hobo, Poiesis, Every Day Fiction, Aphelion Webzine, Heater Magazine, Cowboy Jamboree, The New Engagement, Alaska Quarterly Review, Falling Star Magazine and The Liguorian. She has had works published by J. Burrage Publications, Hen House Press, Inwood Indiana Press, Alternating Current Press, Barking Rain Press, Whispering Prairie Press, and Spider Road Press.

Ms. Leeper’s novella, The Poison of War, published through Prensa Press, spotlights the landscape of the American Southwest and Native American culture through this murder mystery that brings to the fore timely issues of the U.S.-Mexico border, immigration, drug trafficking and the reservation culture of the Tohono O’odham tribe of southern Arizona. The region carries special meaning for Ms. Leeper as she lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico as a child and even though she currently lives in Kansas City, the spirit of the Southwest region continues to shape her writing.

Melissa Algood is a true crime-obsessed dyslexic who read Helter Skelter and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in one sitting.

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Although not at the same time.

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Her hometown, Annapolis, inspired the setting of Everything That Counts, a coming-of-age story of a geek who yearns to be cool. The Greater Good series follows a bloodthirsty assassin and her ex-Navy S.E.A.L. handler; the three-book series has a body count which matches the make-out count. Her award-winning short fiction can be found in Everyone Dies: Tales from a Morbid Author.  And she reimagined 2020 including superpowered twenty-somethings that are tired of being government experiments and are fighting back in the Enhanced Being Series which starts with The Girl in the Fog.

Melissa's moved over twenty times in her life, including California, Puerto Rico, and D.C., before making Houston her home. She's a hairstylist in the 'real' world and lives with her longtime love, Izzy, and Madame Bijou, their tuxedo cat.

Read her blog and get updates at melissaalgood.com