Our Authors

Annie Levin writes middle grade and adult fiction and holds an MFA from Hunter College. While at Hunter she acted as research assistant to Francine Prose, providing key research to the book Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife.She is anative New Yorker and has taught writing and literature at New York University and Fordham University. She is the co-founder of Sing in Solidarity: a resistance choir that performs struggle songs at political inaugurations, benefit concerts, and street actions. Her work has been published in The Maine Review, The Tottenville Review, Eclectica Magazine, Canon Magazine, and Bookslut. Find Annie: Twitter

Elie Lichtschein is a writer based in downtown New York. He's the co-creator of The Creeping Hour podcast with GBH Boston, and his short fiction has been published by Knopf. Find Elie: Elie's Website

Katya Lidsky writes novels and TV shows. She is working on Nonfiction, Young Adult Fiction, and Women's Fiction books. She also loves writing essays and can't stop making lists. Her work has been featured in Parents.com, Texas Monthly, VegNews, The Fix, The Dogington Post, The Bark, The Mighty, and more. Katya is a Life Coach for Dog People, co-host of The Animal That Changed You podcast, and an avid animal shelter volunteer and foster. Some of her other favorite things include Tina Turner's voice, e.e. Cummings poetry, and being a Russian-Cuban-Jew from Laredo, Texas. She's a graduate of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and received her masters from Harvard University's Graduate School of Education. 

Find Katya: Katya's Website

Susan L. Lin is a Taiwanese American storyteller who hails from southeast Texas and holds an MFA in Writing from California College of the Arts. Her novella Goodbye to the Ocean won the 2022 Etchings Press novella prize, and her short prose and poetry have appeared in nearly fifty different publications. She currently lives, sleeps, eats, writes, dances, sews, draws, reads, and obsesses over fictional TV characters in southern California. Find Susan: Susan's Website

SON M. is an Algerian-Amazigh, Muslim writer who enjoys creating narratives in both prose and visual mediums. They specialize in horror, science fiction, action, thriller, and mystery. They are very passionate about comics, games, and animation, and they create stories in all three mediums. Son's debut graphic novel, THIEF OF THE HEIGHTS, is forthcoming from HarperAlley in fall 2023, and they have written for Z2 Comics, DC Comics, Vault Comics, and more. They draw their power from the Sun. 

Find Son: Son's Website / Twitter

Sara Maurer lives in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula with her husband and two children. Place deeply informs her writing, particularly how it influences identity and choice. She earned a BA in English at Albion College, an MA in written communications at Eastern Michigan University, and a certificate in novel writing through Stanford Continuing Studies. Find Sara: Sara’s Website

Erica McKeen is a Canadian fiction writer. Her debut novel Tear is forthcoming with Invisible Publishing in fall, 2022. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, longlisted for the 2020 Guernica Prize, and shortlisted for The Malahat Review 2021 Open Season Awards. Her stories have been published or are forthcoming in numerous literary journals, including PRISM international, filling Station, and The Dalhousie Review, among others. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. Her hybrid novel, In the Cicada Summer, is forthcoming (W. W. Norton & Co., 2024). 

Find Erica: Erica's Website / Twitter / Instagram

Marissa Miller’s work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vogue, GQ, CNN Style, BBC Travel, Cosmopolitan, VICE, Teen Vogue, Allure, Women’s Health, SELF, The Huffington Post, Chatelaine, Reader’s Digest, The Frisky, The Montreal Gazette, The National Post and more. Cosmopolitan and BuzzFeed listed one of her tweets among the 100 most “hilarious” of 2016. Twice, The Huffington Post listed it among the funniest written by women in 2016 alongside Hillary Clinton and Aidy Bryant. Miller's debut book, Pretty Weird, is for sale now. Find Marissa: Marissa's Website

The daughter of a flight attendant and a hippy-turned-real estate developer who toured Europe in a Volkswagen bus, Molly Mogren Katt arrived on earth with an undeniable sense of adventure. From hiking the Antarctic Peninsula, to outrunning a hyena in South Africa and even driving a street-legal monster truck through Des Moines, Iowa—she never turns down an opportunity to do something crazy. When she’s not googling “epigenetics” or “borderline personality disorder” for her most recent book project, Mom Genes, she’s a food and travel writer with bylines in Delta Sky, Minneapolis-St. Paul Magazine, and Experience Life.  

She’s written three books with James Beard Award and Emmy-winning chef and travel personality Andrew Zimmern (Travel Channel/MSNBC)—two for Random House and one for MacMillan. Zimmern and Mogren Katt co-hosted the award-winning podcast, Go Fork Yourself, for three years. She’s also written for Emmy-winning travel show host Samantha Brown. 

Mogren Katt currently hosts Matriarch Digital Media’s A Mess in the Kitchen podcast.

Colleen Morrissey is an award-winning author, educator, and humanities scholar born in Omaha, Nebraska. A writer of prose, poetry, and criticism, her work can be found in The Southern Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Chicago Reader, BitchMedia, The Rumpus, Studies in the Novel, and other venues of note. She was awarded an O. Henry Prize in 2014 and has been a Best American Short Stories Notable. She is currently at work on her debut novel. Find Colleen: Colleen's Website

Tom Mulroy is an award-winning educator living in the greater Minneapolis area. He’s been a teacher at the same elementary school for more than twenty years, and has been writing since he was in elementary school himself. He’s earned degrees from St. Cloud State University and St. Mary’s University, both in Minnesota. Tom is a contributor to the blog “Middle Grade Minded” and maintains his own blog, “What I Did on My Summer Vacation.”

Erin Piasecki is a writer and teacher currently living in Utah. She received her MFA in Fiction from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where she also served as Design Editor for Witness Magazine and Art Assistant for The Believer. Her work has appeared in The Adroit Journal and Conium Review. Her story “We Meet Witnessing a Woman Get Stung by a Jellyfish” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Find Erin: Erin's Website

Maria Pinto is a mushroom enthusiast, writer, and teaching fellow at the literary nonprofit GrubStreet. She has been awarded fellowships and residencies by Vermont Studio Center, the Mass Cultural Council, The Writers' Room of Boston, The Mastheads, and The Garrett on the Green. Her fiction has appeared in Frigg, Necessary Fiction, Word Riot, The Butter, and Dostoevsky Wannabe Cities: Boston, among others. She edits fiction for Peripheries Journal and is a contributor at Roundglass: Living. She's lectured about fungi for the Boston Center for the Arts, the Wisconsin Mycological Society, and the Central Texas Mycological Society. 

Sarah Prager is the author of three books about LGBTQ+ history for young readers:  Queer, There, and Everywhere (YA, 2017, HarperCollins), Rainbow Revolutionaries (MG, 2020, HarperCollins), and Kind Like Marsha (PB, 2022, Running Press). Sarah’s writing has also appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, National Geographic, NBC News, Business Insider, HuffPost, The Advocate, JSTOR Daily, and elsewhere.  Sarah has spoken on LGBTQ+ history to over 150 groups across six countries and lives with her wife and their two children in Massachusetts. Find Sarah: Sarah's Website

Meg Ripley was born in Ontario and raised in Newfoundland, Canada, surrounded by whales and icebergs. After an MFA in illustration from SVA, NYC, she worked as an illustrator for a decade before realizing her love of writing fiction could no longer be ignored. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, two kids, and two dogs.

Find Meg: Meg's Website / Twitter

K. H. Saxton is an English teacher and boarding school administrator. She lives in Connecticut with her husband and their golden retriever named Goose. After graduating from Yale University, she worked for a year at a school in the United Kingdom before returning to teach in New England. At various stages of her life so far, she has been a violinist, a violist, a pit orchestra musician, an amateur actor, a dabbling dancer, and an assistant theater director; at all stages, she has been an aficionado of the arts. She also loves riddles, crossword puzzles, slow-paced travel, board games, libraries, museums, and good cheese. Many of these things appear in her books. Her debut novel, The A&A Detective Agency and the Fairfleet Affair, is forthcoming from Union Square Kids.

Kate Seldman is a mother, writer, teacher, and metalhead. She has been writing about music for almost two decades, and her writing has appeared in Scary Mommy, Your Teen magazine, Albumism, and elsewhere. She also teaches music appreciation to 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders, using rock music to help kids learn about concepts like time signature, song structure, and vocal range. She created her first children’s book, FOR THOSE ABOUT TO ROCK, because her oldest son wanted to learn more about the bands she played to him all the time. She ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund the book’s creation, illustration, and publication. Born and raised in London, England, she now lives in Los Angeles with her husband, two sons, a small, cream-colored dog, and three cats of varying sizes.

Find Kate: Kate's Website

Jennifer Shulman writes contemporary YA. When she’s not writing, she works as a consultant for children’s television and toy companies, including Nickelodeon, Sprout, and LEGO. Read more about Jennifer and her books on her website and follow her on twitter and instagram. 

Erika Stallings is an attorney based in New York City. She received her B.A. in Political Science at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, where she attended as a Morehead-Cain Scholar. She is also a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center (2010) and currently practices in the trademark/copyright group at Kelley Drye & Warren LLP. She is also an active volunteer with the New York Junior League. Find Erika: Erika's Website

Lindsey Steffes has an MFA in Fiction from University of California, Riverside and a background in publicity and film. She enjoys small towns, quiet moments, and stories that vibrate with tension. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, and is currently at work on her debut novel. Her stories and poems have been featured in Midwestern Gothic, Black Heart Review, and Atticus Review. Find Lindsey: Lindsey's Website

Rachel Strauss is the woman behind @woodburncorner. You can find her artwork on the packaging of the newest professional wood burner to hit the market: the Walnut Hollow Creative Woodburner. She is a featured teacher on Skillshare for her Introduction to Wood-Burning class. Her work has been featured on the official Instagram feeds of Etsy (1.5M followers), Joann, Pinners, Craftsposure, Walnut Hollow, Creatorslane, Handmade Revolution, and many more. Her artwork is in @doityourselfmagazine. She is the proud creator of the Burnt Month Challenges (most recent: #BurntOctober). 

Find Rachel: Rachel's Instagram

Michael Strecker is the author of The Young Comic’s Guide to Telling Jokes Books 1 and 2 (Sterling 2017) and Jokes for Crescent City Kids, (Pelican 2019). His fourth joke book for kids will be published by Scholastic in the fall of 2021. He also writes fiction for adults. His short story The Woman at the Well was selected as a finalist by the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival and his story A Lake Catherine Lesson appeared in The Critic, a literary journal that has published some of the country’s most highly regarded writers, including Walker Percy, Flannery O’Connor and Graham Greene.  In addition to his writing, Strecker is a stand-up comedian, who regularly performs at some of the top comedy clubs in the country. He lives in the New Orleans area with his wife Jillian and their sons Stephen and Joseph. 

Kate Tooley is a queer writer currently living in Brooklyn, but originally from the Atlanta area. She writes about the sticky corners of gender and sexuality, complicated families, and magical animals. She holds an MFA in Fiction from The New School, and is an Assistant Editor at Uncharted Magazine focusing on Mystery and Sci-Fi/Fantasy. Their writing can be found in journals including Barren Magazine, Gargoyle Magazine, Witness Magazine, and Longleaf Review, and has been nominated for best Microfiction and Best American Essays.  When not writing, she can be found watching too many documentaries, falling off walls at the climbing gym, or walking her unconscionably outgoing Chiweenie, Etta, in Prospect Park.

Jason Tougaw is the author of The One You Get: Portrait of a Family Organism (winner of the 2017 Dzanc Nonfiction Prize), The Elusive Brain: Literary Experiments in the Age of Neuroscience (Yale University Press), and Strange Cases: The Medical Case History and the British Novel (Routledge). He is editor, with Nancy K. Miller, of Extremities: Trauma, Testimony, and Community (University of Illinois Press). He has published essays in Electric Literature, Literary Hub, Electra Street, Modern Fiction Studies, and OUT magazine. He teaches literature and writing at Queens College and the CUNY Graduate Center. You can hear his weekly radio show, “The Mixtape,” on 90.5 WJFF Radio Catskill. Find Jason: Jason's Website

Taylor got to writing late. After spending his early years performing in L.A. rock clubs, he founded a digital agency and a software company for the advertising and entertainment industries. He's created designs that have traveled to space, written songs for film, played bit roles in bad movies, and occasionally does dumb things like rocketing down the Olympic bobsled track. He lives in a 1750 farmhouse outside Boston with his wife, two daughters, and a very busy miniature Australian Shepherd. Taylor's debut middle grade novel, Clara Poole and the Long Way Round, will be published in spring 2023 by Pixel+Ink with a second book to follow in spring 2024.

Find Taylor: Taylor's Website