Andrea Askowitz is the author of My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy (Cleis Press, May 2008).  Her work has appeared in Jewcy.Com, Offsprung.Com, Literary Mama.Com, The Washington Blade, The New York Blade, The Manhattan Resident, Ibelle, The Feminist Alternative Press, Affinity, Twn, Hers, and Looking Queer (Haworth Press). As a storyteller, she has performed at venues throughout Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Miami, including Sit ‘n Spin at Comedy Central Stage, Porchlight at Café du Nord, In the Flesh at Happy Ending Lounge, and Lip Service at the Miami Book Fair International. Andrea is an adjunct professor at the Florida International University, where she teaches narrative nonfiction.  She is contributor and co-producer of Lip Service, a quarterly true-stories reading series at Books & Books, Coral Gables. Slate.com says, “Andrea is warm, funny and filthy.” Check out her blog @ http://www.andreaaskowitz.com.

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Kim Barnes is the author of two memoirs and three novels, including A Country Called Home, which received the 2009 PEN Center USA Literary Award in Fiction and was named a best book of 2008 by The Washington Post and The Kansas City Star.  Her most recent book, In The Kingdom Of Men, an exploration of Americans living in 1960s Saudi Arabia, is just out from Knopf today! She is the recipient of the PEN/Jerard Fund Award for an emerging woman writer of nonfiction, and her first memoir, In The Wilderness, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Her work has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including the New York Times, More, O Magazine, Good Housekeeping, Fourth Genre, The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. Barnes teaches writing at the University of Idaho and lives with her husband, the poet Robert Wrigley, on Moscow Mountain You can check out Kim’s website for more info:  http://www.kimbarnes.com/

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Jan Becker is working on her MFA at Florida International University, where she teaches composition and creative writing. She is the non-fiction editor for Gulf Stream Magazine. Jan received the Academy of American Poets College Prize, The Andrew Bergman Award for Creative Writing, The Alfred Bendixen Award, and was twice selected for the AWP Intro Journals contest at Binghamton University where she earned her bachelor’s degree. She is currently working on a memoir. This is her first non-fiction publication.

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Tabitha Blankenbiller is an MFA student at Pacific University, where she’s specializing in nonfiction. Her previous publications include work in The Promethean literary magazine and a reoccurring food column in the Canby Herald. She currently resides south of Portland, Oregon, with her husband and two cats.

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Christine Butterworth-McDermott is an associate professor of English at Stephen F. Austin State University, where she teaches creative writing, fairy tales, and acts as the poetry editor of REAL: Regarding Arts and Letters. Her poetry and fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, Bellowing Ark, Borderlands, California Quarterly, Fourth River, Hiram Poetry Review, The Medulla Review, North Atlantic Review, and RATTLE. Her chapbook, Tales on Tales: Sestinas, was published by Finishing Line Press (2010), and her first full-length collection, Woods & Water, Wolves & Women, has just been published by her university press.

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Rebecca N. Carmant is the author of Sunshine on Stormy Seas, a poetry collection that gives voice to the battles the Haitian-American writer faces as a woman of color, a person of faith, and the mother of an autistic child. Carmant holds a Master’s degree in Education and is pursuing a doctoral degree in Leadership. She advocates for many causes, including autism and social justice.

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Rebecca Cook was a Margaret Bridgman Scholar in Fiction at the 2009 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, has published poetry and prose in many literary journals, and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Recent work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Southeast Review, Grist, Pank, Plume, JMWW, Stone Highway Review, The Cortland Review, 2^nd and Church, Mayday Magazine, and Bitter Oleander. Poems in translation have appeared in the Romanian literary magazine Convorbiri Literare. Her chapbook of poems, The Terrible Baby, is available from Dancing Girl Press. She blogs at godlikepoet.com

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Born in Syracuse, NY, Aaron Curtis moved to Miami in 1997.  He had a monthly column called “Book Junky” in the now defunct Moxxi Magazine, he wrote poetry and short stories on tap for MANO Fine Art’s “Borrowed Words” exhibition in April 2014, and his essay “It Grows on You” appeared in the World Book Night 2014 ebook.  You can find him online at Sweet with Fall and Fish.

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Elizabeth M. Dalton‘s fiction and poetry have appeared in a number of journals, including Earth’s Daughters, River City, Ellipsis: Literature and Art, and Flying Island. She received an Indiana Arts Commission Individual Artist Project grant to develop drafts of some of the essays in Burying Molly.

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Lisbeth Davidow‘s work has appeared in Mandala, Prime Mincer, Pilgrimage and Alligator Juniper. Her essay, ”Separation Anxiety,” was nominated to be included in Best of Creative Nonfiction, Volume 2. She also co-wrote Ryan and Angela, an original screenplay, for Universal Pictures and edited and assisted in writing Women in Family Business: What Keeps You Up at Night? She lives with her husband in Malibu, California.

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Growing up in New York City, Christina Freedman was always searching for something…the perfect red lipstick, the best song on a mix tape or the peak of the party. At thirty-nine, she bought a one-way ticket to Miami and finally found what she was looking for through writing. Today, Christina lives in South Beach with her husband, Evan, and three Chihuahuas. She is currently working on her memoir.

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Inessa Freylekhman is a Feng Shui practitioner and psychologist. She is the Feng Shui Healer in Residence at Canyon Ranch Hotel and Spa in Miami Beach. When she’s not busy Feng Shui’ing the world, she takes memoir-writing classes at Lip Service Institute, which is some of the best therapy she’s ever had.

For more information about Inessa, please visit her at http://www.fengshuifromtheart.com

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Maureen Fura is the mother of two beautiful, wild boys. She is married to her Captain Nemo, who looks like the god of the sea, Neptune. She is completing her first documentary film, Dark Side of the Full Moon, which explores how America is failing mothers. She lives in Coconut Grove and is still a little scared that she bought a house.

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Nicholas Garnett received his MFA in creative writing from Florida International University (FIU). He is an adjunct professor at FIU and the Center for Literature and Theatre at Miami Dade College, and the nonfiction editor of Sliver of Stone.  He is a recipient of residencies from the Vermont Studio Center and the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild, and the Norman Mailer Art Colony. Nicholas is the editor of Zimbabwean writer Chenjerai Hove’s memoir, Homeless Sweet Home. His writing has appeared in Salon.com, Sliver of Stone, R-KV-RY Quarterly, The Florida Book Review, Best of the Net, Tigertail, A South Florida Poetry Annual, Best Sex Writing of 2013, and All That Glitters, for which he was a contributing editor.

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Cathi Hanauer is the New York Times bestselling author of three novels—Gone, Sweet Ruin, and My Sister’s Bones—and the editor of the essay anthology The Bitch in the House: 26 Women Tell the Truth about Sex, Solitude, Work, Motherhood and Marriage. She has written for the New York Times, Elle, O-The Oprah Magazine, Self, Real Simple, Whole Living, and many other magazines. She was the monthly books columnist for both Glamour and Mademoiselle and wrote the monthly advice column “Relating” in Seventeen magazine for seven years. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband, writer and editor Daniel Jones, and their two children.

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Lori Jakiela is the author of a memoir, Miss New York Has Everything (Hatchette 2006), and three poetry chapbooks. Her full-length poetry collection, Spot the Terrorist!, will be published in April 2012. Her essays and poems have been published in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Creative Nonfiction, River Teeth, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, 5 AM and elsewhere. She lives outside of Pittsburgh, directs the writing program at The University of Pittsburgh-Greensburg, and teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Chatham University.

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Daniel Jones is the editor of the world-famous column “Modern Love” in the New York Times.  He’s the author of Love Illuminated: Exploring Life’s Most Mystifying Subject (with the Help of 50,000 Strangers), and the novel After Lucy.  He is the editor of Modern Love: 50 True and Extraordinary Tales of Desire, Deceit and Devotion and The Bastard on the Couch: 27 Men Try Really Hard to Explain Their Feelings About Love, Loss, Fatherhood and Freedom. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Elle, Parade, Harper’s Bazaar, Good Housekeeping, Real Simple, and elsewhere. He is also the father of two children and the husband of writer Cathi Hanauer.

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Sarah Klein is from small-time Michigan where she was a big-time gymnast. She attended Columbia University and lived in Paris for a year where she milked an obsession with red wine and men with accents. She has a BA, JD, and MBA, and is still trying to figure out what to do with her life. She recently attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she won first place in an entrepreneurship competition. She wants to work for herself so she can kiss her Shih Tzu, Sadie, all day long. She only took to writing stories and airing her family drama on stage a few years ago when she met Andrea Askowitz and Esther Keniff, who encouraged her to say “F*** it” and speak her truth.

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The titles of Paul Lisicky’s books reveal a writer concerned with the process of building and demolition—of the self.  Whether he’s writing fiction, memoir, poetry, or, more recently, blurring the lines between those genres, Lisicky explores the process and power of identity.  He and his characters struggle to create the narratives which help them define and understand their world, only to see the wrecking ball of chaos lay them bare.  Robert Olen Butler said of Lisicky, “(he is) one of the select writers who continues to teach me about the complexities of the human heart.”  Lisicky is the author of the novels Lawnboy (1999) and The Burning House (2011); the memoir, Famous Builder (2002); and the forthcoming collection of prose pieces, Unbuilt Projects; and the memoir, The Narrow Door. His work has appeared in Tin House, Fence, Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, Story Quarterly, and in many other anthologies and magazines. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he’s the recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the James Michener/Copernicus Society, the Henfield Foundation, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where he was twice a fellow. Lisicky has taught in the writing programs at Cornell University, New York University, Rutgers-Newark, and Sarah Lawrence College. He is currently the New Voices Professor in the MFA Program at Rutgers-Camden.

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Esther Martinez is the co-producer, editor, and director of Lip Service. She has a BA in literature writing from Columbia University and is completing her MFA in non-fiction from Florida International University, where she taught Writing & Rhetoric. Her work has appeared in the Columbia Observer, Newsday, The Daily Beast, Sliver of Stone and others. She lives in Miami with her husband, Sean, and their daughter, Lilou.

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Manuel (Manny) Martinez grew up in Miami, and attended the University of Florida where he received his MFA in fiction. His stories have appeared in a number of publications including The Quarterly, Bridge, The Sun, and Hotel Amerika.  He lives in Brooklyn, where his apartment is too small for him to store more than one cooler.  He is therefore not prepared for any situation requiring large amounts of beverages.

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Laura McDermott is the founder and executive director of Orange Island Arts Foundation, a literary arts organization. McDermott studied creative writing at Florida State University, received her M.F.A. in poetry from Florida International University, and is a tenured assistant professor of English at Broward College. She was the recipient of the 2014 Wells Fargo Endowed Teaching Chair. As a member of the Miami Poetry Collective, McDermott’s poems are regularly featured in its Cent Journal Series: A Modern Anthology of Miami Poets. Her poems have also appeared in Screw Iowa! the Virginia Key website, The Selected Collective: Volume VII of Tigertail, and Poets & Artists. She is the 2014-2015 Writer-in-Residence of Girls’ Club, Ft. Lauderdale.

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Brenda Mezick is a prosecutor and a novelist. She lives in Miami where she collects voodoo dolls. 

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Dinty W. Moore is the Director of Creative Writing at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, a town he describes as “the funkadelicious, hillbilly-hippie Appalachian epicenter of the locally-grown, locally-consumed, goats-are-for-cheese, paw-paws-are-for-eatin’, artisanal-salsa, our-farmers-market-rocks-the-hills sub-culture.” Before he became a writer, Moore worked as a police reporter, a documentary filmmaker, a modern dancer, a zookeeper, and a Greenwich Village waiter. He is the author of The Mindful Writer: Noble Truths of the Writing Life; Crafting the Personal Essay: A Guide for Writing and Publishing Creative Nonfiction; The Accidental Buddhist: Mindfulness, Enlightenment, and Sitting Still, American Style;  The Truth of the Matter: Art and Craft in Creative Nonfiction; The Emperor’s Virtual Clothes: The Naked Truth About Internet Culture; the short story collection Toothpick Men; and the memoir Between Panic & Desire, winner of the Grub Street Nonfiction Book Prize. Moore’s writing has appeared in The Southern Review, The Georgia Review, Harpers, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer Magazine, Gettysburg Review, Utne Reader, and Crazyhorse, among numerous other venues. He is also the editor of Brevity, the journal of concise creative nonfiction.  When he’s not writing, teaching, or editing, Moore grows his own heirloom tomatoes and edible dandelions.

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R. David New was born and raised in Philadelphia, PA. He studied art at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, the Tyler School of Art, Temple University, the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, the Fashion Institute of Technology, The Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, and Florida Atlantic University. An artist at heart, David worked in his family’s furniture business while creating his own interior design firm, R. David New Interior Design. After losing his sight in 2001, David became an advocate for people with disabilities. He is currently chairman of the Miami Beach Disability Access Committee and chief promoter of Ability Explosion®. He is president of Power Access Inc., Access Now Inc., and the Miami Beach Council of the Blind (an affiliate of the Florida Council and the American Council of the Blind). David is also the owner and operator of American Chair Exchange, an Internet specialty furniture company catering to homes and businesses, and Ballooniverse, specialty balloons for parties and events. David lives in Miami Beach, Florida.

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Russell Reece lives in Delaware along the Nanticoke River. He has had stories and essays published in Memoir(and), Raving Dove, The Delmarva Quarterly, Delaware Beach Life and Beginnings magazines. He is a University of Delaware graduate and a board member of The Delaware Literary Connection. When he isn’t fishing or bragging about his granddaughter, Russ is working through the second revision of a novella, Lenny’s Farm, set in rural Delaware in the 1950’s.

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Karen Sabine is a Midwesterner transplanted to San Francisco.  She has two of the best and weirdest teenage sons on the planet and a cat named Abby, whom she loves with all her heart.

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Doug Shear is the author of two books: Rhubarb Culture, a futuristic novel set in a Miami, and American Karma—Twilight of the Marijuana Gods, a memoir about hitchhiking across America in the 1970s. His stage play, Saint Peter at the Gate, was produced in Toronto, Canada and Boca Raton, Florida. He writes and performs at various local events, including Life Out Loud in Ybor City. On rare occasions, Doug performs stand-up comedy at seedy local clubs that he would never visit as a patron.

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Mary Rae Smith has a BFA from Ohio Wesleyan, an MA and MSW from SUNY Stony Brook, and is an artist, pilot, business consultant and writer from New York City.  For more than thirty-five years Mary has crafted words ranging from sophomoric college poetry to grant writing for social causes, with occasional forays into short story fact and fiction. She is a longtime Miami resident and is enchanted by the wonders of life on the ground, in the air and in-between.

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Dan Wakefield is a novelist, journalist and screenwriter whose best-selling novels Going All The Way and Starting Over were produced as feature films; he created the NBC prime time TV series “James at 15.” A documentary film has been produced of his memoir New York in the Fifties. His non-fiction books on spirituality include Returning: A Spiritual Journey, Creating from the Spirit, The Story of Your Life: Writing a Spiritual Autobiography, Expect a Miracle, and How Do We Know When It’s God?: A Spiritual Memoir.