An enormous thank you to our speakers, agents, editors and presenters for a wonderful Writefest 2019!
Keynote Speakers
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Phong Nguyen 
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Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton 
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Phong Nguyen is the author of a novel, The Adventures of Joe Harper, and two short story collections: Pages from the Textbook of Alternate History and Memory Sickness. He is currently the Miller Family Endowed Chair in Literature and Writing at the University of Missouri.
Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton is a mother, wife, educator, and the current, and first Black, Poet Laureate of Houston, Texas. This seven-time National Poetry Slam Competitor, and Head Coach of the Houston VIP Poetry Slam Team, has been ranked the #2 Best Female Performance Poet in the World. Her work has appeared in Black Girl Magic (Haymarket Books) Houston Noir (Akashic Books), and I AM STRENGTH (Blind Faith Books) to name a few. Her work has also been highlighted on such platforms as BBC, Houston Public Media, ABC, Blavity, Tedx, and Upworthy. Her next collection, Newsworthy, is set for release Spring of 2019 by Bloomsday Literary.
Her collaborations with The Houston Ballet, The Houston Rockets, and the Houston Grand Opera have opened new doors for performance poetry. Her work has been highlighted and studied in the Netherlands, Canada, Germany, and Britain. She had the pleasure of performing and leading a workshop at the Leipzig in Autumn literary festival in 2018, where she bridged the gap between the slam and formal publishing communities.
As the Executive Director of VIP Arts Houston, she seeks to build more bridges that amplify the voices of artists in and around the nation. Her love for community transcends the classroom and the stage making her a mentor to many and a notable force to be felt.
Her collaborations with The Houston Ballet, The Houston Rockets, and the Houston Grand Opera have opened new doors for performance poetry. Her work has been highlighted and studied in the Netherlands, Canada, Germany, and Britain. She had the pleasure of performing and leading a workshop at the Leipzig in Autumn literary festival in 2018, where she bridged the gap between the slam and formal publishing communities.
As the Executive Director of VIP Arts Houston, she seeks to build more bridges that amplify the voices of artists in and around the nation. Her love for community transcends the classroom and the stage making her a mentor to many and a notable force to be felt.
Texas Monthly Keynote Speakers
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Skip Hollandsworth 
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Mimi Swartz 
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Skip Hollandsworth grew up in Wichita Falls, Texas, attended TCU in Fort Worth and after graduation worked as a reporter and columnist for the Dallas Morning News, the Dallas Times Herald and D magazine. Since 1989, he has been a staff writer at Texas Monthly magazine, specializing in long-form narratives. He has received several journalism awards, including a National Headliners Award, the national John Hancock Award for Excellence in Business and Financial Journalism, the City and Regional Magazine gold award for feature writing, and the Texas Institute of Letters O. Henry award for magazine writing. He has been a finalist four times for a National Magazine Award, the magazine industry’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize, and in 2010 he won the National Magazine Award in feature writing for “Still Life,” his story about a young man who, after suffering a crippling football injury in high school, spent the next 33 years in his bedroom, unable to move. The movie Bernie, which Hollandsworth co-wrote with Richard Linklater, was released in May 2012. It is based on a story he wrote in the January 1998 issue of Texas Monthly titled "Midnight in the Garden of East Texas." His book, The Midnight Assassin, a true-crime historical thriller, was published in April 2016 and became a New York Times bestseller. In its review, The New York Times described The Midnight Assassin as “true crime of high quality,” “smart and restrained” and “chilling.” The Wall Street Journal called the book a “thoroughly researched, excitingly written history” and an “absorbing work.”
Mimi Swartz, the author, with Sherron Watkins, of Power Failure, The Inside Story of the Collapse of Enron, is an executive editor of Texas Monthly. Previously, she was a staff writer at Talk, from April 1999 to April 2001, and a staff writer at the New Yorker from 1997 to 2001. Prior to joining the New Yorker, she worked at Texas Monthly for thirteen years. In 1996 Swartz was a finalist for two National Magazine Awards and won in the public interest category for “Not What the Doctor Ordered.” She was also a National Magazine Award finalist for her November 2005 issue story on tort reform, titled “Hurt? Injured? Need a Lawyer? Too Bad!” and won the 2006 John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Interest, Magazine Journalism, for the same story. In 2013 she won her second National Magazine Award (again in the category of public interest), for “Mothers, Sisters, Daughters, Wives,” a compelling look at the state of women's health care in Texas.
Over the years, Swartz’s work has appeared in Vanity Fair, Esquire, Slate, National Geographic, and the New York Times’ op-ed page and Sunday magazine. It has also been collected in Best American Political Writing 2006 and Best American Sportswriting 2007. She has been a member of the Texas Institute of Letters since 1994. Swartz grew up in San Antonio and graduated from Hampshire College, in Amherst, Massachusetts. She now lives in Houston with her husband, John Wilburn, and son, Sam.
Over the years, Swartz’s work has appeared in Vanity Fair, Esquire, Slate, National Geographic, and the New York Times’ op-ed page and Sunday magazine. It has also been collected in Best American Political Writing 2006 and Best American Sportswriting 2007. She has been a member of the Texas Institute of Letters since 1994. Swartz grew up in San Antonio and graduated from Hampshire College, in Amherst, Massachusetts. She now lives in Houston with her husband, John Wilburn, and son, Sam.
Agents
Kurestin Armada, P.S. Literary Agency
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Kurestin Armada began her publishing career as an intern with Workman Publishing, and spent time as an assistant at The Lotts Agency before joining P.S. Literary. She holds a B.A. in English from Kenyon College, as well as a publishing certificate from Columbia University. Kurestin is based in New York City, and spends most of her time in the city’s thriving indie bookstores. She reads widely across genres, and has a particular affection for science fiction and fantasy, especially books that recognize and subvert typical tropes of genre fiction.
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Danielle Bukowski, Sterling Lord Literistic
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Danielle Bukowski is an agent and the foreign rights manager at Sterling Lord Literistic. She represents upmarket women’s fiction, smart commercial fiction, literary fiction, and select nonfiction. She is looking for narratives from underrepresented and marginalized voices in particular. Forthcoming titles include Bryan Washington’s Lot (Riverhead) and They Could Have Named Her Anything by Stephanie Jimenez (Little A).
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Nicole Payne, Golden Wheat Literary
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Nicole Payne joined the Golden Wheat Literary team in 2016. She has degrees in biology and forensic science, which she now uses to investigate new books. It must be in her DNA.
She is primarily interested in young adult and up, leaning more towards the following genres: literary fiction, speculative fiction, romance, romantic comedy, mysteries, contemporary, suspense, and thriller. However, if the writing and story are amazing, she’s quick to snatch up exceptions. All she desires is a book that will take her on an adventure in its pages, whether it be a physical, spiritual or emotional one. |
Rose Shimomura, Betsy Amster Literary Enterprises
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Rose Shimomura has worked with literary agent Betsy Amster since early 2017. She has an interest in literary fiction, voice-driven mysteries and thrillers, narrative nonfiction (especially by journalists), popular culture, women’s issues, parenting, and cooking & nutrition. In her spare time, she listens to as many audiobooks as she can and writes fiction. Her novel Misery Boy will be published in 2020 by 7.13 Books.
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Léonicka Valcius, Transatlantic Agency
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Léonicka Valcius is an Assistant Agent at Transatlantic Agency, representing commercial and genre fiction for adults and children. As the founder of #DiverseCanLit and the founding Chair of the Board of Directors of The Festival of Literary Diversity, working with writers of colour is a key part of Léonicka's mandate. Léonicka previously worked on the Online and Digital Sales team at Penguin Random House Canada and as the French book buyer for Scholastic Book Fairs Canada.
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Editors
Tony Burnett, Kallisto Gaia Press
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Educated at University of North Texas, Tony Burnett is Managing Editor at Kallisto Gaia Press, home of The Ocotillo Review and The Texas Poetry Calendar (beginning in 2018). An award winning poet, journalist, activist and songwriter, his poetry and short fiction have been published in national literary magazines and anthologies including Sixfold, Connotation Press, Short Story America, Frontier Tales, Texas Poetry Calendar, Poetry @ Round Top anthology, Tidal Basin Review, Di-verse-city, and Toucan Literary Magazine. He serves as Board President of the Writers' League of Texas.
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Chloe N. Clark, Cotton Xenomorph
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Chloe N. Clark's work appears in Apex, Booth, Glass, Little Fiction, Uncanny, and more. Her chapbook The Science of Unvanishing Objects is out from Finishing Line Press and her debut full length collection, Your Strange Fortune, will be out Summer 2019. She teaches at Iowa State University, writes for Nerds of a Feather, and is co-EIC of Cotton Xenomorph.
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Ruoxi Chen, Tor.com
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Ruoxi Chen edits science fiction and fantasy at Tor.com Publishing. She lives in New York City.
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Michael J. DeLuca, Reckoning
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Michael J. DeLuca is a fernlike, woody perennial native to the Eastern US, found on hilltops and in woodland clearings from Massachusetts to Michigan. Leaves astringent; strongly tannic; used in teas, to flavor ales and as an aromatic smudge. Flowers late summer in cylindrical catkins. He is also the publisher of Reckoning, a pro-paying, non-profit journal of creative writing on environmental justice, and co-operates Weightless Books, an indie ebook retailer, with Gavin Grant. In addition, he designs books and ebooks and writes short fiction.
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Joshua Dewain Foster, Gulf Coast
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Joshua Dewain Foster is an award-winning prose writer from rural Idaho. His work has been selected for the Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize in Nonfiction, a Wallace Stegner Fiction Fellowship from Stanford University, a grant from the Idaho Commission of the Arts, and a Notable Work mention in The Best American Essays 2015. His stories and essays have appeared in the magazines Tin House, Fugue, South Loop Review, among others. He serves as the Online Fiction Editor for Gulf Coast, and has edited for the journals DIAGRAM and Terrain.org. Josh is a PhD candidate at the University of Houston’s Literature & Creative Writing Program, where he is finishing an autobiographical novel about addiction, family, snowboarding, driving, and the contemporary American West.
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J. Bruce Fuller, Texas Review Press
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J. Bruce Fuller is a Louisiana native. His chapbooks include The Dissenter's Ground, Lancelot, and Flood, and his poems have appeared at The Southern Review, Crab Orchard Review, McNeese Review, Birmingham Poetry Review, and Louisiana Literature, among others. He has received scholarships from Bread Loaf, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and Stanford University, where he was a 2016-2018 Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry. He received his MFA from McNeese and his PhD from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He currently teaches at Sam Houston State University where he is Acquisitions Editor at Texas Review Press.
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Heather Lefebvre, Scorpion Baby Press
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Heather Lefebvre is a writer and editor from New England. Her writing has been featured in Story|Houston, Sycamore Review, Indiana Review, SunMoon Missive, the anthology I Scream Social, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is the founding editor of Broad! Magazine and Scorpion Baby Press, as well as a former editor at Front Porch Journal and Arcadia. In her spare time, you can find her at a karaoke bar or taking photos of cats.
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Phuc Luu, Bloomsday Literary
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Phuc Luu is the Chief Creative Officer at Bloomsday Literary.
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Kathryn Kulpa, Cleaver
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Kathryn Kulpa is the author of Girls on Film, a flash fiction collection, and Pleasant Drugs, a short story collection. She serves as flash fiction editor at Cleaver magazine and has been a visiting writer at Wheaton College. Her work appears in Smokelong Quarterly, 100 Word Story, Pidgeonholes, and many other journals and anthologies.
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Andrew Sullivan, C&R Press and Mastodon Group
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Andrew H. Sullivan is Director of C&R Press and Mastodon Group which publishes Zymbol, Carbon Culture and other magazines. He edits Fjords Review (1200 bookstores across 5 countries), and he’s published in The Hollins Critic, Quiet Lunch, At Large, Terminus, Bridge 8, and Fields. He has an MFA from Hollins University and teaches writing workshops at Sawtooth Arts Center in NC.
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Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, Art & Words Show
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Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam's fiction and poetry has appeared in over 50 publications such as Lightspeed, Fairy Tale Review, and Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror as well as in six languages. She was the featured author at LeVar Burton's Dallas LeVar Reads event. She has been a finalist for the Nebula Award, placed second for Selected Shorts’ Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize, and won the Grand Prize in the SyFy Channel's Battle the Beast contest; SyFy made and released an animated short of her short story "Party Tricks." She also curates the annual Art & Words Show in Fort Worth, which has been featured in Poets & Writers.
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Chelsea Voulgares, Lost Balloon
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Chelsea Voulgares grew up in a Rust Belt town in Ohio, trapping lightning bugs, watching bad horror movies, and singing in the show choir. Now she lives in the Chicago suburbs, where she’s working on a collection of flash fiction and a novel. Her fiction has been published in journals such as Passages North, JMWW, Cheap Pop, Midwestern Gothic, and Jellyfish Review, and has been recognized by a number of organizations and magazines including The Hambidge Center, Glimmer Train, the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Illinois Arts Council. She’s the editor of the literary journal Lost Balloon.
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Kate Martin Williams, Bloomsday Literary
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Kate Martin Williams is a writer/owner at Bloomsday. She attended the University of Tennessee and earned a Master of Arts in English with a Creative Writing emphasis from the University of Tennessee. She holds a Master of Arts in Teaching from Rice University, and in a former life, she chilled her writerly bones on an ice rink as a competitive (but decidedly non-combative) figure skater and coach. Her writing life has led her to bear witness to the stories of activists, survivors, visionaries, and the everyday people who make a difference by living engaged lives. She lives in Houston with three ridiculously lovely children, ridiculously supportive husband, and their dog, Abigail, who’s just plain ridiculous.
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Presenters
Jennie Bennett
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Jennie Bennett is a hopeless romantic who doesn't take herself too seriously. She's a hybrid author of eight published works and counting. She currently resides in League City with her husband, four kids, and a cute doggie named Charlie.
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Johnnie Bernhard
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A former English teacher and journalist, Johnnie Bernhard is passionate about reading and writing. Her work(s) have appeared in the following publications: University of Michigan Graduate Studies Publications, Heart of Ann Arbor Magazine, Houston Style Magazine, World Oil Magazine, The Suburban Reporter of Houston, The Mississippi Press, University of South Florida Area Health Education Magazine, the international Word Among Us, Southern Writers Magazine, The Texas Review, Southern Literary Review, and the Cowbird-NPR production on small town America. Her entry, “The Last Mayberry,” received over 7,500 views, nationally and internationally.
A Good Girl was short listed in the 2015 William Faulkner-William Wisdom International Creative Writing Competition, as well as featured novel for panel discussion at the 2017 Mississippi and Louisiana Book Festivals. It was represented by Texas Review Press at the 2017 Texas Book Festival. A Good Girl is a finalist in the 2017 national Kindle Book Award for literary fiction, a nominee for the 2018 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, a 2018 nominee for the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Fiction of the Year Award, and shortlisted for the 2017 Lone Star Literary Review, Bloggers’ Choice Award in best Literary Fiction. Johnnie’s second novel, How We Came to Be was a finalist in the 2017 International Faulkner-Wisdom Competition. Named a “Must Read” by Southern Writers Magazine, it is a featured novel for panel discussion for the 2018 Louisiana Book Festival and Mississippi Book Festivals. It was represented by Texas Review Press at the 2018 Texas Book Festival. Deep South Magazine named How We Came to Be as part of its 2018 Summer Reading List. It has been selected by the international Pulpwood Queens Book Club as a 2019 reading selection. Johnnie supports young writers as a judge for the annual Center for the Book of Texas, Letters about Literature Competition. |
Andreana Binder
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Andreana Binder has written both creative, and technical documentation for large and private businesses for years. She is always interested to share what she has learned with other writers who are interested in writing for businesses.
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Joyce Boatright
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Joyce Boatright, EdD, is a writer, teacher, and storyteller. She is author of Telling Your Story: A Basic Guide to Memoir Writing (available at the Jung Center Bookstore, Houston). She has been teaching and writing memoir since 1991. She is an active member of Writers League of Texas and serves on the national board of Story Circle Network.
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B. Alan Bourgeois
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B. Alan Bourgeois has been writing for 30 years in a wide variety of genres and styles. He has won numerous awards for short stories, books and speaking during his career. All of this has led him to become one of the leading author advocates for Indie Authors in the past 7 years. This includes nonprofits and other organizations that have spot lighted Texas Authors and moved them into the category and recognition of traditionally published authors from New York, Chicago and the West Coast.
Through the years he continues to create programs and events that have gained recognition across the country and in many cases are now being copied in local areas. Yet, as he will tell you, his greatest work is still to come with the publication of two books: Authors Revolution and I’m Crazy Great, scheduled for release in 2019. Through both of these books, he will show authors how to regain their control and financial wealth as writers, while also inspiring people from around the world to stay true to their dreams when it means helping others, even at your own cost. |
D. F. Brown
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D. F. Brown was born and raised in Missouri Ozarks. He served as a medic with Bravo, 1/14th Infantry in Vietnam, 1969-70. Educated at the University of Missouri and San Francisco State University, he is the author of Returning Fire, The Other Half of Everything, and Assuming Blue. His work has been anthologized in American War Poetry, Carrying the Darkness, and Unaccustomed Mercy. Brown lives in Houston.
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Scott Hill Bumgardner
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Scott Hill Bumgardner has been writing and telling stories for over twenty years. He specializes in fun far fetched tales and considers himself a reformed cowboy poet. He has won two Louisiana State Champion Liars’ Contest. His folklore articles have been published in several Texas Folklore Society books. Other articles have been published in the “Bowlegged H” Magazine. He has served as President of the 110 year old Texas Folklore Society and is currently on the Board as a Councilor.
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Jess Capelle
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Jess Capelle writes stories that are generally of the YA or MG variety, always of the action, adventure, or thriller variety, and often of the fantasy, sci-fi, or horror variety. She’s also a ghostwriter for writers who don’t write about ghosts (sadly). Jess holds a BA in French and a Juris Doctor. She practices law part-time and spends the rest of her time freelance writing and editing both fiction and non-fiction. She served as co-founder and coordinator of the Houston YA/MG Writers Group and is a member of SCBWI, Sisters in Crime, and Codex Writers. Jess lives in the Houston area with feline overlords who like to “help” with her work, so you’ll often find her typing away in local coffee shops. Her muse, Lucinda, is generally absent.
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Margo Catts
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Margo Catts was born and raised in Los Angeles, and has since lived in Utah, Colorado, and Indiana. After raising three children in the U.S., she and her husband moved to Saudi Arabia where her Foreign Girl blog was well known in the expat community. Originally a freelance editor for textbooks and technical manuals, she now writes and edits fiction. Her first novel, Among the Lesser Gods, was published in May 2017, and her work has been included in two anthologies of expat stories, Life on the Move and Once Upon an Expat. She loves travel, cycling, cooking, and unhealthy amounts of reality TV.
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Cynthia Childress
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Dr. Cynthia Childress has a Ph. D. in English with a creative dissertation from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. She produces creative writing pedagogy and writing theory as an independent scholar, most recently at the Louisville Conference on Languages and Literature in 2019. She was selected to participate in the Houston Poetry Fest’s juried reading in 2017 and her poetry collection, Unwinding the Double Helix, was a semi-finalist for the Washington Prize in 2018. Her creative work can be found in such places as The Canadian Women’s Studies Journal, Alligator Juniper, Third Wednesday, and The Dead Mule Review. She's also an editor and instructor with Writespace Houston.
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Mark Dostert
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Mark Dostert is the author of Up in Here: Jailing Kids on Chicago's Other Side, which was featured at the Chicago Tribune Printers Row Lit Fest and excerpted in Salon. His essays have appeared in Cimarron Review, The Dallas Morning News, Dash Literary Journal, and Punctuate, and been cited as Notable in The Best American Essays 2011 and 2013.
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Marianne Dyson
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Marianne Dyson was one of NASA's first female flight controllers, the subject of her Space Shuttle memoir, A Passion for Space. She's a speaker on space topics for adults and children, a technical editor, and science fiction writer. She is best known for her award-winning children's books about space, including the NSTA 2016 Outstanding Trade Book Welcome to Mars, which she coauthored with Apollo 11's Buzz Aldrin for National Geographic. Her next book with Aldrin, To the Moon and Back, will be published by NatGeo in the Fall of 2018
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Stephanie Jaye Evans
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Stephanie Jaye Evans is a fifth-generation Texan. She received her BA from Abilene Christian University and an MLS from Rice University. Her first book in the Sugar Land Mystery Series, Faithful Unto Death, was awarded the William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grant for Unpublished Writers and was a Library JournalDebut of the Month and was an Agatha nominee. The second in the series, Safe From Harm, released on March 5, 2013. Kirkus Reviews writes of Safe From Harm, "As charming and wry as Evans' bright debut filled with reasons to own dogs, love your children and your wife, and have faith." She is currently at work on the third novel in her Sugar Land Mystery series and lives in Houston, TX. Sarah Cortez’ encouragement gave Stephanie the courage to start her first novel. Currently, Stephanie mentors new writers, both young and those who enter the field mid-life.
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Julie Herman
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Julie Herman is the author of the Three Dirty Women landscaping mysteries for adults (early 2000s) and Burned, a middle grade mystery (2017).
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Isobella Jade
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Isobella Jade is known as one of the first people to do something notable inside an Apple store, using the store as her writing hub for over a year. She has been featured in The New York Times, The New York Post, The New York Daily News, The Los Angeles Times, Glamour, Seventeen, the BBC, Publishers Weekly and others. For many years she worked as a body part model for national brands, magazines and retailers.
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Sharon Jenkins
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Sharon C. Jenkins is the Inspirational Principal for The Master Communicator’s Writing Services. She provides writing and coaching services to small businesses, nonprofits and authors. Known as The Master Communicator, she has mastered multiple communications platforms. Sharon recently added radio host to her list of accomplishments. Her show Luminance is featured on Galaxy Gospel Radio (www.galaxygospelradio.com) every Thursday at 6:00 pm (CST). She has blogged for Huffington Post, The Good Men Project, Afrovibes Radio, Self-Published Author, and Book Marketing Tools. In 2018, she was a featured author at The 109th Annual NAACP Convention and the 48th Annual Legislative Conference–Congressional Black Caucus. She also served as a panelist discussing the topic: #METOO Now What: Amplifying the Women of Color’s Voice at the Congressional Black Caucus and a panelist during Houston’s Writefest 18. Sharon is a sought-out keynote speaker for expos, conventions, and conferences. Her most notable accomplishment is that she is the adoring grandmother of six wonderful grandchildren.
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Donna M. Johnson
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Donna M. Johnson is the author of Holy Ghost Girl, a critically acclaimed memoir deemed “enthralling” by the New York Times and “compulsively readable” by Texas Monthly. Oprah named the book to her Memoirs We Love list. Holy Ghost Girl won the Mayborn Creative Nonfiction Prize and took top honors at the Books for a Better Life Awards in Manhattan. Donna has written for Huffington Post, The Rumpus, Shambhala Sun, Psychology Today, and other publications. Donna is a Ragdale Fellow and recently received a fellowship at the Lucas Artists’ Residency. She is currently at work on a personal narrative that combines investigative journalism with memoir.
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Joy Kennedy-O'Neill
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Joy Kennedy-O'Neill is the 2018 winner of the Gris-Gris Flash Fiction Award, judged by Pulitzer Prize winning author Robert Olen Butler. She was a finalist for the 2018 Lascaux Prize for Flash Fiction.
Her works have been published in Nature, Flash-Fiction Online, the Cimarron Review, Daily Science Fiction, New Orlean's Review, Strange Horizons, Galaxy's Edge, and Phantom Drift, among others. Joy teaches English for Brazosport College and holds a PhD in English lit. |
William Ledbetter
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William Ledbetter is a Nebula Award winning author with more than seventy speculative fiction stories and non-fiction articles published in four languages, in venues such as Asimov's, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Analog, Baen.com, and the SFWA blog.
His new novel Level Five is available from Audible Originals. |
Roger Leslie
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Award-winning author, publisher, editor, and writing coach Dr. Roger Leslie is a scholar in the fields of education, as well as film history. His bestselling works include inspirational self-help, teaching and librarianship, fiction, biography, and movie reference.
A master of goal setting and achievement, Leslie travels the world sharing his research on success and his techniques for using personal passion to create a life of purpose. His mission, as an author and as the owner of Paradise Publishing, is to empower writers and readers to live the life they dream and explore their own spiritual journey to success and enlightenment |
Felicia "Mack" Little
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Mack Little was born in Conyers, Georgia. She studied International Politics in Seville, Spain. She lived several years in Germany. Her studies and service in the Army have taken her all over the U.S. She travels to Europe regularly for research. Mack is currently on the Board of Directors of the Houston Writer’s Guild. Progenie is her first novel.
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Lorenzo Martinez
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Cuban native Lorenzo Martinez's recently published memoir Cuba, Adios recounts his participation in an airlift that brought more than 14,000 children to this country to escape Castro’s regime. Described as “a tour de force” and “reads like a symphony,” the memoir is a poignant story of a boy who leaves his family and his musical studies behind in search of political and personal freedom.
Along with succeeding in his writing career, Lorenzo Martinez has enjoyed success in a longtime career of overseeing the development, marketing, and communications departments for a number of non-profit organizations, among them, Episcopal Relief and Development (ERD), for which he served as Vice President of External Affairs. He has represented these organizations at national and international conferences and has been a lecturer at several New York institutions such as New York University, the New School, York College of the City University of New York and the 92nd Street Y. Lorenzo Martinez holds a master’s in piano performance from Manhattan School of Music and a doctorate in music education from Teachers College, Columbia University. He has appeared as a pianist on radio and television. |
Thomas McNeely
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A native of Houston, Texas, Thomas McNeely has received fellowships for his writing from the MacDowell Colony, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Wallace Stegner Program at Stanford University, and the Dobie Paisano Program at the University of Texas at Austin. He has taught fiction writing at Stanford University, Emerson College, The University of New Hampshire, Inprint Houston, and Writespace. His short stories have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares, Epoch, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and many other magazines and anthologies, including The Best American Mystery Stories and New Stories from the South; his stories have been short-listed for the O. Henry, Best American Short Stories, and Pushcart Prize. Ghost Horse, his first novel, received the Gival Press Novel Award, was a finalist for the Lascaux Prize in Fiction and was shortlisted for the 2016 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. He currently teaches at Emerson College, Boston, and the Stanford Online Writing Workshop, and is at work on a collection of linked stories set in Houston.
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Jody T. Morse
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Jody T. Morse is a multi-genre, award-winning writer that lives in the heart of the magical Sam Houston National Forest. She pens magazine articles, blog posts, personal essay, creative nonfiction and memoir pieces. Under her pen name, J.T. Haven, she also writes speculative fiction, flash, women’s fiction, and poetry. In addition, Morse runs Bountiful Balcony Books—a boutique publishing house that brings the words of new and emerging writers into the world. You can find her work in ArtHouston, Texas Living, and Houstonia magazines; Haiku Journal, Verbatim Poetry, The Machinery, and Organized Chaos journals; and in anthologies by Houston Writers House, Writespace, The Woodlands Writing Guild, and Blind Faith Books. Stand alone books include Living in The Spaces Between, Flooded By: A Persona Poetry Collection, and the Splintered Musings writing prompt series.
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Michelle Muenzler
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Michelle Muenzler, known at local conventions as “The Cookie Lady”, writes things both dark and strange to counterbalance the sweetness of her baking. Her poetry and short fiction have been published in numerous magazines, and she takes immense joy in crinkling words like little foil puppets.
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Rebecca Nolan
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Rebecca Nolen writes children’s books as Rebecca Nolen and adult books as R.L. Nolen. Her children’s book The Dry is a combination of historical fiction and science fiction. Her adult book Deadly Thyme is psychological suspense. Deadly Thyme has won several awards including First Place YA for Texas Association of Authors, and The CLUE AWARD – First Place Psychological Suspense with Chanticleer, and First Place in “INtrigue” with Reader’s Favorites. Rebecca writes, illustrates, and cares for loved ones in Houston, TX. Rebecca is the former director of Houston Writers House. She taught children, cared for an assortment of pets, and killed poisonous snakes in the wilds of Sugar Land for twenty-two years before moving into the big city.
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Patricia Flaherty Pagan
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Patricia Flaherty Pagan is the author of Trail Ways Pilgrims: Stories (The Crossroads Collection #1) and Enduring Spirit: Stories (The Crossroads Collection #2). In addition to writing 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. After earning her MFACW in Creative Writing from Goddard College, she founded Spider Road Press and The Spider’s Web Flash Fiction Prize.
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Georgia Pearle
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Born and raised in the Gulf South, Georgia Pearle is an alumna of Smith College and holds an MFA in Poetry from Lesley University. She has been a coordinator of the VIDA Count, the digital editor for Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, and the recipient of the Inprint Marion Barthelme Prize in Creative Writing. Her poems have appeared in Kenyon Review Online, Crab Creek Review, and WSQ, among others. She is a Doctoral Fellow in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Houston, where she holds a CLASS Dissertation Completion Fellowship. She is at work on a collection of poems as well as a memoir.
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Saba Syed Razvi
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Saba Syed Razvi, Ph.D. is a writer and professor who works on contemporary poetry, literature and science, science and speculative literature, transgressive and spiritual literature, and topics on gender and sexuality. Her poetry books include the Elgin Award-nominated collection In the Crocodile Gardens and the Stoker Award Ballot Contending collection. Her poetry chapbooks include Limerence & Lux (Chax Press), Beside the Muezzin's Call Beyond the Harem's Veil (Finishing Line Press), and Of the Divining and the Dead (Finishing Line Press). Her work has appeared in anthologies and literary magazines. She is currently an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at The University of Houston-Victoria.
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Icess Fernandez Rojas
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Icess Fernandez Rojas is an educator, writer, and a former journalist. She is a graduate of Goddard College's MFA program.
Her work has been internationally published in Queen Mobs Lit Journal, Poetry 24, Rabble Lit, Minerva Rising Literary Journal, and the Feminine Collective's anthology Notes from Humanity. Her most recent short story will appear in the mystery collection, Houston Noir. Her nonfiction/memoir work has appeared in Dear Hope, NBCNews.com, HuffPost and the Guardian. She is a recipient of the Owl of Minerva Award, a VONA/Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation alum, a Dos Brujas Workshop alum, and a Kimbilio Fellow. She's currently working on her first novel and memoir. |
Amir Safi
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Amir Safi is from College Station and is based out of Houston, Texas. He is a graduate of Texas A&M University. He is the co-founder of Mic Check 501(c)3 and the Texas Grand Slam Poetry Festival and the founder of Write About Now. He is a 2017 Houston Poet Laureate Finalist, a 2013 and 2015 Southern Fried Poetry Slam Champion, a 2013 National Slam Poetry semi-finalist. His work has been featured by A plus, Upworthy, The Huffington Post, Whataburger, Total Frat Move and more. Most recently, his work has been published by Pittsburgh Poetry Review and Tincture Journal, and he has received recognition as a semi-finalist for the Crab Creek Review 2017 Poetry Prize as well as a finalist for the North American Review’s 2018 James Hearst Poetry Prize.
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Denise Ditto Satterfield
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Denise Ditto Satterfield, a native Houstonian, is a freelance writer who loves writing for children. She is the author of the children’s book titled The Tooth Collector Fairies: Batina’s Best First Day which is a book about friendship and teamwork. It also encourages children to brush their teeth … but don’t tell them. She is currently working on the sequel, Decay Valley which should debut in early 2018. Denise also enjoys writing about a variety of other topics, often focusing on recollections from her childhood and growing up in Houston. Her short story "The Art of Ironing" was published in OMG, That Woman!, a woman’s fiction anthology released in April 2013.
Denise is the former Co-Executive Director of the Houston Writers House. She is an active member in the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) since 2012. Denise graduated magna cum laude from the University of Houston—Downtown with a degree in professional writing. She published two short stories in the university’s literary magazine, The Bayou Review, and won first place in the creative-writing contest for her short story "Summer Breeze." |
Marlo Saucedo
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After four childhood years at MFAH’s Glassell Jr. School scholarship class, Marlo Saucedo received a BA from Davidson, an MBA from U.T. Austin, and held non-art-related professional positions in Washington D.C., Houston, and New York. A music journalist for Houston Press and Cover in NYC in the '90's, she continues to write for Houston’s CultureMap. Since returning to art in 1999, her work has been actively commissioned: Labor-intensive drawings, paintings and mixed media pieces done entirely of text, or in pointillism (tiny bright squares of paper) - or both elements - form photo-realistic images when seen from a distance. Pieces have been shown in Houston at 34 venues including Diverse Works Art Space, Lawndale Art Center, and in Art League Houston's Open Show. She was awarded a grant from the Houston Arts Alliance in 2005: The interview-based piece was installed in 2009. Work recently done for St. Vincent de Paul Catholic School is an ornate cross containing the names of every student and faculty member at the school. Marlo, her husband and their two boys find balance living in the piney woods north of Houston since returning to Texas from life in the wild, beautiful Ozarks.
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Ches Smith
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Ches Smith is a former seminary student turned atheist with a degree in Bible and a minor in philosophy. Upon realizing there isn’t much an atheist can do with that degree and there isn’t much anyone can do with that minor, he took up writing so he could say things from a safe distance that would otherwise get him burned at the stake. His first novel, Under the Suns, was self-published in 2014 and his second novel, The Author Is Dead, was released on October 1st, 2018 by Literary Wanderlust, a Denver-based independent publishing house.
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Patrick Stockwell
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Patrick Stockwell is a native of Houston, Texas and holds an MFA in Creative Writing-Fiction from New Mexico State University where he served as an assistant editor for Puerto del Sol and a coordinator with La Sociedad para Las Artes and the Distinguished Visiting Writers Series. He is the co-founder of the Lone Star Salon reading series, The Short Fiction Soundtrack literary performance series, and worked to organize other events throughout Southeast Texas arts communities.
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Tex Thompson
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Arianne "Tex" Thompson was once described as "an explosion of 52 enthusiastic kittens latching onto everything at once." In addition to writing the Children of the Drought epic fantasy Western series, Tex is the founder and 'chief instigator' for WORD - Writers Organizations 'Round Dallas. When she's not leading the charge at home in Dallas, Tex brings her particular brand of 'red-penthusiasm' to conferences, conventions, and workshops all over the country - as an egregiously enthusiastic, endlessly energetic one-woman stampede.
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Catherine Vance
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Catherine Vance teaches Social Justice Writing and Using Your Dreams in Fiction and Poetry for Writespace. She also teaches English for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice through a community college. She holds an MFA from Washington University in St. Louis and was a recipient of the Dobie-Paisano Award from the Texas Institute of Letters. She is the author of the short story collection The Orchard Camp.
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Holly Walrath
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Holly Lyn Walrath’s poetry and short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Fireside Fiction, Luna Station Quarterly, Liminality, and elsewhere. She is the author of Glimmerglass Girl (Finishing Line Press, 2018). She holds a B.A. in English from The University of Texas and a Master’s in Creative Writing from the University of Denver.
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Kirk Wilson
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Kirk Wilson is a 2018 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow whose work in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction has been widely published in literary journals and anthologies. Recently shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize, he is the recipient of the New Millennium Award for Nonfiction, a Pushcart nominee, and a finalist for the Crazyhorse Nonfiction Prize, the Machigonne Fiction Award, the Wordstock Short Fiction Competition (selected by Aimee Bender), and the Fabulist Fiction Prize from Omnidawn Publishing (selected by Lily Hoang). A chapbook of his poems, The Early Word, was published by Burning Deck press. His true crime classic Unsolved has been published in six editions in the US and UK.
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Sage Webb
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Sage Webb spent over a decade in federal criminal defense before turning to fiction. Red City Review named her debut novel, The Unremarkable Circumstances of Inmate 17656-090 (Martin Brown 2018), Best Debut Novel in its 2018 Book Awards. For short stories, she received second place in the 2017 Hackney Literary Awards, semi-finalist status in Ruminate Magazine's 2018 William Van Dyke Short Story Prize, and a place on the short list for the 2018 Chester B. Himes Memorial Short Fiction Prize. Her work has appeared in the Birmingham Arts Journal, a Texas anthology of short fiction, the Ocotillo Review, Life Is Good, and Notre Dame's Grotto Network. In nonfiction, she received honorable mention in Flyway’s 2017 Notes from the Field Contest, and her legal scholarship has appeared in law reviews and bar journals. After practicing law, she founded a commercial-and-legal research and writing firm and now serves a non-profit organization as Vice President of Content Strategy and Publications. She is an active-level member of International Thriller Writers and a professional member of PEN America. Sage and her husband live on a fifty-year-old wooden trawler in Galveston Bay with a ship's cat named Ines and Jackson, the boat dog.
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Charlotte Wyatt
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Charlotte Wyatt just earned her MFA in fiction from the University of Houston. She is the recipient of a 2018 Inprint Donald Barthelme Prize for fiction, and was the 2017-18 Inprint/Creative Writing Program Fellow. She has served as a Fiction Editor for Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts and has taught fiction in Houston with Inprint, the Boldface Conference, and WITS. She serves as the Fiction Director for the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, where she also directs admissions. Her work can be found or is upcoming in Gulf Coast and Joyland.
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D.L. Young
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D.L. Young is a Pushcart Prize nominee and winner of the 2017 Independent Press Award. He’s also an English football fan and a cigar lover. His Dark Republic novels are futuristic thrillers set in the aftermath of a failed Texas secession. Juarez Square and Other Stories, his short fiction collection, includes the best of his previously published work.
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