Tabitha Blankenbiller is a Pacific Northwest native, originally born in Seattle and raised on the Mt. Rainier plateau. She graduated from the Pacific University MFA program in June 2012. She is a staff writer at PDXX Collective and Spectrum Culture, and writes The Wordstalker column for Barrelhouse Magazine. Her personal essays have been published in journals including Owl Eye Review, Sliver of Stone and Brevity. Her memoir is entitled “Paper Bag” and will be out on submission in January 2014. Her website is http://tabithablankenbiller.blogspot.com/
S. Gregory Boyd is partner and chairman of the Interactive Entertainment Group at Frankfurt Kurnit Klein and Selz. He represents a wide variety of interactive entertainment and new media clients, counsels brands, media companies and advertising agencies on a variety of digital issues, and is co-author and editor of Business and Legal Primer for Game Development (Charles River Media). Gregory also serves as an Adjunct Professor at New York Law School, where he teaches a seminar in advanced intellectual property. The Legal 500 has praised him for his work with media and technology companies, and he is frequently quoted in articles in publications such as: Gamasutra, Edge-Online, CNN, Fortune, Forbes and the New York Law Journal.
AUDREY CHIN
Singaporean-based author, Audrey Chin has been writing since she mastered her alphabets. She is currently working with literary agent Jennifer Chen Tran on her debut fiction novel entitled Heart Bones, a searing and mysterious story about a Vietnamese man’s struggle to balance the many facets of belonging and loyalty in a Vietnamese family torn asunder by war and unresolved peace. 
Audrey’s first book, published by the RAND Corporation, was a study of jury verdicts in Chicago courts, a story of discrimination crafted with numbers and words. Subsequently, other studies on the American socio-legal system, a Ph.D. dissertation on financing the US social security system have been published by RAND.
In 1999, Landmark Books Singapore published Audrey’s first novel, Learning to Fly, subsequently shortlisted for the 2000 Singapore Literature Prize. In 2004, Landmark released, Singapore Women Re-Presented, a social history she conceptualized, co-edited and contributed to. Audrey has also contributed various fiction and non-fiction pieces to women’s magazines in Singapore and US literary journals. “The Pearl” was recently published in Cobalt Review’s December 2012 edition.
She holds a Ph.D in Public Policy Research from the RAND Graduate School of Public Policy, an M.SC. in Research Methods and Public Policy from Oxford University, and a LL.B. from Manchester University. When not writing, Audrey spends her time exercising financial stewardship as a board director. She’s married to Minh and has three children.
LARRY CLOW
© Jason Santo
Larry Clow is a writer and editor based in New Hampshire. He received his MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of New Hampshire in 2012. He is currently the editor of The Wire, a bi-weekly paper covering news, arts, and culture on NH and the southern Maine Seacoast.
Larry is writing his first book, entitled People You May Know, which is about his search for his biological parents and how the internet and social media have changed adoption in America.
LYN DIORIO
Lyn Di Iorio is the author of Outside the Bones, a novel that won the ForeWord Review’s 2011 Silver Book of the Year Award for literary fiction, was Best Debut Novel on the 2011 Latinidad List, and was a finalist for the John Gardner Fiction Prize. She was second on 2012’s Top Ten Authors to Watch and Read List. She has also written Killing Spanish: Literary Essays on Ambivalent U.S. Latino/a Identity (2004), co-edited Contemporary U.S. Latino Literary Criticism (2007), and Moments of Magical Realism in US Ethnic Literatures (2012). Lyn received her bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, a master’s degree from Stanford University’s Creative Writing Program, where she was a Patricia Harris fellow, and her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. She is currently a professor of English at the City College of New York and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Lyn is also writing a second novel entitled The Sound of Falling Darkness, an excerpt of which was a runner-up for the 2011 Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society Novel-in-Progress Award.
SARAH GILBERT
Sarah is an award-winning memoirist, original mommy blogger, mother of three boys, and former investment banker. Sarah is Editor-in-Chief of Stealing Time magazine. She has been published in Oregon Humanities, Creative Nonfiction, United’s Hemispheres magazine, and received the 2011 Water~Stone Review Judith Kitchen Creative Nonfiction Prize, a ‘Notable’ mention in Best American Essays 2012, and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize for her essay, ‘Veteran’s Day.’ She also received second prize in the 2013 Ooligan Press Write What You Know Nonfiction Contest. She was also featured as a honorable mention in the 2013 Best American Essays anthology, edited by Cheryl Strayed. She calls herself a domestic realist. Her home blog is cafemama.com.
YVETTE ANGELIQUE
Yvette Angelique Hyater-Adams is a highly sought after business coach and writing facilitator for leaders and artists ready for transformative change. She is a dedicated writer and leads others to write creative non-fiction, poetry, and fiction. Yvette graduated from Goddard College with a MA in Transformative Language Arts (Writing for Personal and Social Change) and from the University of Denver with a Graduate Certificate in Creative Writing. As a long time practitioner in applied behavioral science, her skills are honed in understanding human behavior, action, and impact in organizations. Today, Yvette runs Narratives 4 Change with a diversified use of writing and coaching including: 1) her own writing, 2) facilitating writing workshops, 3) coaching women who lead businesses and coaching writers. In continuing her advocacy for social change, she writes grants for non-profits. Yvette is the developer of the renowned transformative narratives methodology. She is currently writing her first book on leadership for women.
Author John Jung grew up in Macon, Georgia and is the author of four books, including Southern Fried Rice and Sweet and Sour: Life in Chinese Family Restaurants. His family were the only Chinese in the city and they lived above a family-operated laundry. After moving to California, Jung majored in psychology at U. C. Berkeley and went on to earn a Ph.D. at Northwestern University. He is the author of several academic textbooks, including Psychology of Alcohol and Other Drugs, and Professor of Psychology Emeritus at California State University, Long Beach where he taught for 40 years.MORE
Rebecca Kelley is a Portland-area author and has taught writing at Oregon College of Art & Craft for nine years. Her work is infused with the sensibilities of the young creative class that uses the Pacific Northwest as its way station for earnest, well-meaning adventuring to the world at large. At home, her fiction turns to the quiet dramas of urban domestic life: growing tomatoes, making pancakes, examining the nature and validity of love and marriage in the context of our modern world.
She started the Green Baby Guide in 2007 along with Joy Hatch. Their book, The Eco-nomical Baby Guide, was published in 2010. Rebecca’s work has appeared in Scholastic Parent and Child, Metro Parent, Stealing Time magazine, and xoJane. She lives in northeast Portland with her husband and daughter. Her writer’s website is: http://rebeccakelleywrites.wordpress.com/
PAMELA LASKIN
Credit: Joe Zarba
Pamela L. Laskin is the author a memoir, My Life in Shoes (2011), and also wrote several poetry chapbooks including, Grand Central Station, which won the Millennium Poetry Prize, Remembering Fireflies, Secrets of Sheets, Ghosts, Goblins and Geodes, Van Gogh’s Ear, Daring Daughters/Defiant Dreams, The Plagiarist, and The Bonsai Curator. She has also published several children’s books, such as, A Wish Upon a Star, Historical Heroic Horses, Music From the Heart, and The Buried Treasure, short stories, including two young adult stories. Her young adult story, “Visitation Rites”, originally published in magazine format, was expanded on and published in 2012 by Diversion Press. She has also co-edited two anthologies: The Heroic Young Woman, a book of original feminist fairy tales, and Life on the Moon: My Best Friend’s Secrets, a collection of young adult fiction. She has received a SEED grant for Poetry Outreach, Research Foundation CUNY grants for completion of creative work, and is a Colin Powell Fellow. Pamela is currently a lecturer in the English Department at the City College of New York, where she directs the Poetry Outreach Center.
Raised by martial artists, Katie Li grew up with fascinating stories and an eclectic cast of characters. She continues this tradition in her work, writing fiction and narrative non-fiction about personal transformation and unlikely possibilities. Her interests include social responsibility and the relationship between intimacy and isolation in contemporary American culture. Her work has appeared in Write From Wrong, The Nexus, and performed by the Boston based theatre company, The Next Stage. She is a regular contributor to Xenith’s advice column, “Writers on Writing.” She has written her first book, Running in Circles: Troubled Girls, First Love Lost, and Finding Myself.
BRIAN PYNE
Brian Pyne is the Director of Legal Affairs and Enforcement for the Entertainment Software Rating Board, where he investigates enforcement matters, negotiates agreements, maintains a trademark portfolio, and assists in policy development. Prior to joining the ESRB, Brian was Associate Counsel to Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc., the parent company of Rockstar Games and 2K Games, where he negotiated agreements, reviewed game assets and advised on a variety of issues pertaining to game development and publishing.
JAMEY STEGMAIER
Jamey Stegmaier is the co-founder and president of Stonemaier Games, a strategy board game startup in St. Louis. Following a lifelong passion for game design and a more recent interest in the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, Jamey successfully funded his first publicly released game, Viticulture, in the fall of 2012 to the tune of $65,000. Jamey applied his research and experiential knowledge of Kickstarter to a blog series on http://www.stonemaiergames.com called “Kickstarter Lessons,” which quickly grew in number and popularity.
Jamey also applied his expertise to a new Kickstarter campaign in May of 2013 for a game called Euphoria, raising just over $309,000 in 28 days. He continues to write Kickstarter Lessons to benefit other project creators, and now he is applying that content to a book to expand his current readership.
