Janine Harrison wrote the memoir/guidebook, Turning 50 on El Camino de Santiago: A Solo Woman's Travel Adventure (Rivette Press, 2021), poetry collection, Weight of Silence (Wordpool Press, 2019), and chapbook, If We Were Birds (Locofo Chaps, 2017). Her work has also appeared in Haiku for Hikers, Veils, Halos, and Shackles: International Poetry on the Oppression and Empowerment of Women, Not Like the Rest of Us: An Anthology of Contemporary Indiana Writers, A&U, Gyroscope Review, and other publications. She teaches creative writing at Calumet College of St. Joseph and serves as a Highland Arts Council member, a freelance writer, a teaching artist, and an activist. Formerly, Janine was a Highland Poet Laureate, an Indiana Writers’ Consortium leader, and a poetry reviewer for The Florida Review. She lives with her husband, fiction writer Michael Poore, and artist daughter, Jianna, in Northwest Indiana.

With more than twenty books and numerous articles and short stories published since the 1980s, Brent has learned a thing or three about writing. His book titles include Hope and Witness in Dangerous Times, Beauty, Truth, Life, and Love: Essentials for the Good Life, Life Lessons from a Bad Quaker, and Holy Silence: The Gift of Quaker Spirituality. He's a writing coach, editor, photographer, and popular writing retreat leader. Brent lives on Ploughshares Farm – fifty acres of Indiana farmland being returned to native hardwood forests and warm season prairie grasses. Visit his website at brentbill.com

              Andrew Black is a playwright and a teacher of playwrights.  He currently lives in Columbia, Missouri, where he is working on a PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies.  His area of research is best practices for teaching playwriting (and many of his research discoveries find their way into his classes for the IWC).  He teaches beginning playwriting and screenwriting for Mizzou. Andrew has an MFA from Ohio University's School of Theatre.  His first full-length play Porn Yesterday (co-written with Patricia Milton in 2001) has been produced across the country. Since that first play reached the stage, it has been a non-stop, full-on adventure!  Many productions of short plays and full-length plays have followed. Andrew has been on the faculty of the Indiana Writers Center since 2012.  He is the founder of the Indiana Playwrights Circle.  He is currently working on a one-person show called What Same-Sex Marriage Means to Me which tracks his adventures as a man who loves other men through the changing legal, cultural and political trends of the last 60 years. Check out his website at www.andrewblackplaywright.com

Maurice Broaddus is a community organizer and teacher. His work has appeared in magazines like Lightspeed Magazine, Weird Tales, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Asimov’s, Cemetery Dance, Uncanny Magazine, with some of his stories having been collected in The Voices of Martyrs. His books include the urban fantasy trilogy, The Knights of Breton Court, the steampunk novella, Buffalo Soldier, the steampunk novel, Pimp My Airship, and the middle grade detective novel, The Usual Suspects. As an editor, he’s worked on Dark Faith, Dark Faith: Invocations, Streets of Shadows, People of Colo(u)r Destroy Horror, and Apex Magazine. Learn more at MauriceBroaddus.com.

Kyle D. Craig is a licensed mental health counselor, a Butler MFA student in Poetry, and an instructor for the Indiana Writers Center. His book *Invisible Tea* (Red Moon Press, 2016), a collection of haiku, haibun, and tanka, won an honorable mention from the Haiku Society of America. His haiku have also been featured in the anthologies *galaxy of dust: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2015 *and *dust devils: The Red Moon Anthology of English-Language Haiku 2016. *His free verse poems have appeared in Sou'wester, Blue Earth Review, Tar River Poetry, North Dakota Quarterly, and Not Like the Rest of Us: An Anthology of Contemporary Indiana Writers.

Larry D. Sweazy is a multiple-award author of twelve Western and mystery novels and over sixty nonfiction articles and short stories.  He is also a freelance indexer and has written back-of-the-book indexes for over eight hundred and fifty books in nineteen years, which served as inspiration for the Marjorie Trumaine Mystery series.  Larry lives in Noblesville, Indiana with his wife, Rose, two dogs and a cat. More information can be found at www.larrydsweazy.com.

John David Anderson is the author of several award-winning and critically-acclaimed books for middle grade audiences, including Ms. Bixby’s Last Day, Sidekicked, and Posted. A former writing instructor at the University of Illinois, he currently lives with his wife and two kids in Indianapolis, where he writes full time. Or at least three-quarters time. His breakfast of choice is cold leftover pizza and a Diet Coke.

Marcia Eppich-Harris is a founding member of the Indiana Playwrights Circle (IPC) and is the discussion leader for IPC's weekly Scene Nights. Marcia taught Shakespeare and Dramatic Literature at the college level for fifteen years and is now an independent scholar, playwright, and fiction writer. Her writing is influenced by the literature and history of the ancient Greeks and Romans, the Medieval period, and the Renaissance — especially Shakespeare.

Bryan Furuness is the author of The Lost Episodes of Revie Bryson, a novel. Along with Michael Martone, he is the co-editor of Winesburg, Indiana. His stories have appeared in New Stories from the Midwest and Best American Nonrequired Reading. He lives in Indy and teaches at Butler University. Photo Credit: Miriam Berkley  

Sarah Gerkensmeyer’s story collection, What You Are Now Enjoying, was selected by Stewart O’Nan as winner of the Autumn House Press Fiction Prize, longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, and chosen as winner of Late Night Library’s Debut-litzer Prize. A finalist for the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction and the Italo Calvino Prize for Fabulist Fiction, Sarah’s stories and poetry have appeared in American Short Fiction, Guernica, The New Guard, The Massachusetts Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, B O D Y, and Hobart, among others. Her story “Ramona” was featured in a Huffington Post piece on flash fiction and also selected by Lily Hoang for the 2014 Best of the Net Anthology. Sarah was a Pen Parentis Fellow and is the 2016 winner of the Indiana Authors Award in the emerging category.

   Silas Hansen’s essays have appeared in The Normal School, Colorado Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Slate, and elsewhere. He teaches creative writing and literary publishing at Ball State University and is the nonfiction editor for Waxwing.

Mark Harvey Levine has had over 1800 productions of his plays everywhere from Bangalore to Bucharest and from Lima to London. His work has won over 45 awards and been produced in ten languages. Full evenings of his plays, such as "Cabfare For The Common Man", "Didn't See That Coming" and "A Very Special Holiday Special" have been shown in New York, Amsterdam, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Sao Paulo, Sydney, Seoul, Mexico City, and across the US. A Spanish-language movie version of his play "The Kiss" ("El Beso") premiered at Cannes, showed at the Tribeca film festival, aired on HBO and DTV (Japan). His work has been published in over two dozen anthologies by Smith & Kraus, Applause, Routledge and Vintage.

 

Robert Kent is the author of the horror novels The Book of David and All Together Now: A Zombie Story, the middle grade novel Banneker Bones and the Giant Robot Bees, and the novellas Pizza Delivery and All Right Now: A Short Zombie Story. He runs the popular blog for writers, Middle Grade Ninja, which features interviews and guest posts from over 500 authors, literary agents, and other publishing professionals, and was the recipient of Middle Shelf Magazine’s Best Blog award. He is a proud member of SCBWI, The Horror Writers Association of America, and the Young Adult Cannibals. Robert Kent holds degrees in Literature and Creative Writing from Indiana University and owns over 900 Batman action figures. Photo credit/Jessica Holman Save

Sarah Layden is the author of Trip Through Your Wires, a novel, and The Story I Tell Myself About Myself, winner of the Sonder Press Chapbook Competition. Her short fiction appears in Boston Review, Blackbird, Moon City Review, Zone 3, Booth, Best Microfiction 2020, and elsewhere. A two-time Society of Professional Journalists award winner, her recent essays, interviews and articles have appeared in The Washington Post, Poets & Writers, Salon, River Teeth, The Millions, Ladies' Home Journal, The Indianapolis Star, and The Writer's Chronicle. She is an Assistant Professor of English in the creative writing program at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. http://www.sarahlayden.com

Dr. Leah Leach is the founder of Gal’s Guide to the Galaxy which is home to the first lending library dedicated to women’s history in the United States. Gal’s Guide was awarded 2022 Organization of the Year by Advancing Noblesville. Leah is an award-winning writer, filmmaker, and podcaster with an honorary doctorate in Metaphysics. She is a Buddhist practitioner for over 30 years. She is a member of the Magyu, the Mother Lineage that traces back to a female teacher in the 11th Century. Leah has adapted her storytelling training into the unique way Gal’s Guide teaches and writes about history

Tracy Line has written columns and feature articles on faith, family, travel and life for nearly two decades.  Her work has been published in over 75 magazines, newspapers, websites and books. A graduate of Hanover College, Line is the author of Chasing God, Finding Faith from the Outside In  (Hawthorne Publishing, 2015).  She is currently working on her second book, and blogs about life and faith at www.tracyline.com.  Outside of writing, Line also enjoys reading, traveling and spending time with her family.  

Amy Locklin has edited two short fiction anthologies, Law and Disorder and Altered States, and her poetry chapbook The Secondary Burial was a finalist for the San Diego Book Awards. Her full-length poetry collection, A Woman Somehow Dead, is forthcoming in 2022. This collection is set around Bloomington, where she attended IUB’s MFA in Poetry Writing. Currently she’s writing a speculative novel, The Case of the Organic Gone, while finishing her low residency PhD program at Bath Spa University. A former theatre major, Amy had two plays produced in an earlier life, and has taken screenwriting workshops more recently.

Ashley Mack-Jackson is a poet, writer, teacher, and native Hoosier. She has an M.A. in English from Ball State University and an M.S. in nonprofit management from University of Maryland University College. Currently, she teaches composition and developmental reading and writing at Ivy Tech Community College, is the Co-CEO of Word As Bond, Inc. (www.wordasbond.org), and works with individual clients helping them develop resumes, CVs, cover letters, and professional portfolios. Her work has appeared in journals like Callaloo, Drumvoices Revue, and Reverie: Midwest African American Literature.

Saundra Mitchell is an award-winning author, screenwriter and editor, whose works include ALL THE THINGS WE DO IN THE DARK (Indiana Authors Award Winner,) the ALL OUT anthology series, and short films including Dear George, 24 Hour Service, and Kissing the Dog-Faced Boy. She lives in Johnson County, with her wife, daughter, and two naughty cats.

Lylanne Musselman is an award-winning poet, playwright, and visual artist. Her work has appeared in Pank, The New Verse News, Flying Island, Rose Quartz Magazine, Last Stanza Poetry Journal and The Ekphrastic Review, among others. Recently, one of her poems was selected as the featured poem in Tipton Poetry Journal, Issue # 48 Spring 2021. Musselman’s work has appeared in many anthologies, including The Indianapolis Anthology (Belt Publishing, 2021). She is the author of six chapbooks, including Paparazzi for the Birds (Red Mare 16, 2018) and is the co-author of Company of Women: New and Selected Poems (Chatter House Press, 2013), and is author of the full-length poetry collection, It’s Not Love, Unfortunately (Chatter House Press, 2018). Musselman is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and her poems are included in the Inverse Poetry Archive, a collection of Hoosier poets, housed at the Indiana State Library. Musselman is currently working on several chapbooks and a new manuscript.

 

Nancy Olson has an MA in clinical counseling and is a professional certified life coach.  For Nancy, writing has long been a tool and a process for self-discovery, for gaining understanding and compassion for others and in helping to make meaning in one’s life. Nancy uses writing in her work with individuals, in facilitating writing workshops, and for her own, on-going learning.  She has been facilitating workshops and retreats on writing, spirituality, leadership and life transitions for many years.

 

Bryan Buchanan Owens earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Houston before relocating to Indianapolis where he practices as a psychotherapist. He has taught poetry and therapeutic writing workshops in a variety of contexts, and his work has appeared in New Ohio Review, KAIROS, San Pedro River Review, The New Writers Series Anthology, Grist, Poetry Quarterly, Boston Poetry Magazine, NANO Fiction, and elsewhere.

Tony Perona is the author of a mystery series featuring stay-at-home dad/former investigative reporter Nick Bertetto, who has a knack for solving mysteries with a supernatural element. The latest, Saintly Remains, was called “a compelling read” by Library Journal. Tony also co-edited and contributed a short story to the anthologies Racing Can Be Murder and Hoosier Hoops & Hijinks. He and his daughter Liz Dombrosky write under the name “Elizabeth Perona,” and they have just signed a 3-book deal with Midnight Ink. The first book in that series, Murder on the Bucket List, will be out in July, 2015. He was recently elected as an At-Large Director to the national Board of the Mystery Writers of America, where he is serving as Treasurer.

Jeff Rasley is the author of eleven books; the most recent is You Have to Get Lost Before You Can Be Found, a Himalayan memoir. He has published numerous articles in academic and mainstream periodicals, including Newsweek, Chicago Magazine, ABA Journal, Family Law Review, The Journal of Communal Societies, and Friends Journal. He is an award-winning photographer and his pictures taken in the Himalayas and Caribbean and Pacific islands have been published in several journals. He has appeared as a featured guest on over eighty radio and podcast programs to discuss the culture of Nepal, religion and politics, and writing and publishing. Rasley is a retired lawyer and director of six nonprofit corporations, including the Indianapolis Peace & Justice Center, University of Chicago Alumni Club, Phi Beta Kappa of Indiana, Basa Village Foundation, and Scientech Foundation. He is U.S. liaison for the Himalayan expedition company Adventure GeoTreks Ltd. Rasley has taught courses on "culturally sensitive development" and philanthropy at Butler and Marian Universities and memoir writing at the Indiana Writing Center.

Nick Reading is the author of Love & Sundries (Split Lip Press) and The Party In Question, winner of the Burnside Review Chapbook Contest. His work has appeared in many journals including Barrow Street, Cincinnati Review, Gulf Coast, Painted Bride Quarterly and jubilat. He serves as poetry editor for Sport Literate and lives in Indianapolis where he is currently a Visiting Lecturer at Butler University. For more, visit nickreading.com

Kip Robisch is a retired English professor with seventeen teaching awards who now writes as a freelancer. He has published fiction, essays, and scholarship that includes the book Wolves and the Wolf Myth in American Literature. He lives with his wife Elizabeth, their son Owen, and their cat Roxie.

Formerly a theatre teacher and director at the K-12 and college levels, Becky Schlomann specializes in theatre curriculum development, teacher training, creative drama, and using theatre as a tool for social change. She holds a BA in Theatre from Knox College and an MFA in Drama and Theatre for Youth from The University of Texas at Austin.

Elisabeth Giffin Speckman is a playwright, actor, and director from Indianapolis. She received her BA in Theatre and English-Creative Writing from Denison University and her MFA from Butler University. She has served as both a visiting instructor and adjunct at Butler in first-year studies, intro to creative writing, academic writing, media studies, and screenwriting, as well as teaching Acting II at IUPUI. Her acting training includes the Yale Summer Conservatory for Actors, Second City Training Center Chicago, and the Michael Chekhov School. She has appeared in numerous productions in the Indianapolis area with Booth Tarkington Civic Theatre, IndyFringe, Bard Fest, Carmel Community Players, Spotlight Players, and Amalgamated Stage Productions, and won the 2015 Best Major Supporting Actress Award from the Encore Association. She has taught and directed for over ten years, working with The Artists Studio, Fishers UMC, CYT Indy, Roots' School of Theatre, and Southbank Theatre Company. As a playwright, her work has been produced throughout the United States and internationally. She has sold one short script to an LA filmmaker, and it recently premiered at the Marina Del Rey Film Festival. She was a finalist for the 2021 and 2022 Henley Rose Award for Women Playwrights; other honors include attending the Kennedy Center Summer Playwriting Intensive and serving as a reader on the national committee for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. Her proudest accomplishment, however, is being a mother to her two sons.

Tina Tocco is a Pushcart Prize nominee. As a writer for both children and adults, her work has appeared in kiddie magazines, such as Highlights, Cricket, Humpty Dumpty, AppleSeeds, and Odyssey, and in literary journals, including New Ohio Review, River Styx, Crab Creek Review, Passages North, Potomac Review, Portland Review, Sou’wester, and Italian Americana. Tina’s writing has also been featured in Wild Things: The Best of Italian Americana (Fordham University Press, 2008), The Best Small Fictions 2019 (Sonder Press, 2019), Best Nonfiction Food (Woodhall Press, 2020), and other anthologies. A runner-up for the SCBWI’s Work-in-Progress Grant, Tina was also an honorable mention in the River Styx Schlafly Beer Micro-Brew Micro-Fiction Contest and a finalist in CALYX’s Flash Fiction Contest. Her interview on flash and the craft of writing, “No Wasted Words,” appears in Roanoke Review. In 2021, she was a reader-in-residence for flash fiction journal SmokeLong Quarterly. Tina earned her MFA in creative writing from Manhattanville College, where she was editor-in-chief of Inkwell. She has taught adults and kids for Hugo House, GrubStreet, Hudson Valley Writers Center, Arts Escape, Kids Short Story Connection, the SCBWI, and other organizations.

Manon Voice, is a native of Indianapolis, Indiana and is a poet, spoken word artist, hip-hop emcee, educator, practicing contemplative and social justice advocate. She has performed on many diverse stages across the country in the power of word and song and has taught and facilitated art, poetry and spoken word workshops. In 2018, Manon Voice was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in Poetry. Manon Voice seeks to use her art and activism to create a communal space where dialogue, transformation, discovery and inspiration can occur.

Shari Wagner is Indiana Poet Laureate for 2016 and 2017.  She has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Indiana University and has taught writing in universities, grade schools and retirement homes. She is the author of two books of poems: The Harmonist at Nightfall: Poems of Indiana

Liz Whiteacre has taught in higher ed for over twenty years and is currently an award-winning associate professor of English at the University of Indianapolis where she teaches writing and publishing, as well as advises Etchings Press. She is the author of Hit the Ground and the forthcoming chapbook, It could account for the panic. Her poetry has appeared in Disability Studies Quarterly, Wordgathering, Kaleidoscope, and other publications. She developed this workshop series as a research fellow with UIndy’s Center for Aging and Community and Indiana’s CICOA, delivering it to health care workers, care givers, and criminal justice workers in the state of Indiana.

Allison Whittenberg is a Philadelphia native who has a global perspective. If she wasn’t an author she’d be a private detective or a jazz singer. She loves reading about history and true crime. Her novels include Sweet Thang, Hollywood and Maine, Life is Fine, Tutored, and The Sane Asylum. Her short story collection The Carnival of Reality will be released March 2022.

Sheri Wilner’s plays include Kingdom City, Relative Strangers, Bake Off, Father Joy, A Tall Order, The End, Joan of Arkansas, and Hunger and have been presented at the La Jolla Playhouse, The Old Globe, Guthrie Theater, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Signature Theatre (DC), Williamstown Theatre Festival, the O’Neill Playwrights’ Conference, Bucks County Playhouse, The Old Vic/New Voices, and many others. Her plays have been published in more than a dozen anthologies, which has led to over four hundred productions of her plays worldwide. Playwriting awards include a Bush Foundation Artist Fellowship, two Playwrights’ Center Jerome Fellowships, and two Heideman Awards, granted by the Actors Theatre of Louisville. Also an established playwriting teacher, she has taught for the Playwrights’ Center, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, Boston College, Vanderbilt University, Florida State University, PlayPenn, and the Dramatists Guild Institute, where she is also the DGI Certificate Program Advisor.

Lyn is an activist/teacher/writer/researcher. Passionate about border crossing classrooms into the community and counter narrative, Lyn is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of English and with the African American Studies Minor program at Ball State University and served for 16 years as the Education Director for the Indiana Writers Center with their public Memoir Program.

Lyn is the author of Painless Reading Comprehension, co-author of Memory Workshop with Barb Shoup, and served as an editor for two independent presses: INwords Publications (16 years) and the 409 Press (8 years).

Lyn has edited 17 public memoir anthologies.  Lyn researches, publishes, peer reviews, and edits academically in community engagement scholarship, counter narrative, and disability studies.  Her academic work has been featured in the Journal of Organizational Ethnography, Journal of Teaching Writing, Peer Meridian Review, Journal of Post-Secondary Education and Disability,  Journal of Transformative Education, and Learning for Justice.

Lyn writes and publishes creative narrative nonfiction about mothering a child with a disability and about #blacklivesmatter.   Her published essays include "Casper" Facing Autism Project, "Sitting at the Feet of my Flanner House Elders: A Lesson After Dying" in IndyWrites Books, “In Indy, #blackyouthmatter!”, The Indianapolis Anthology, "Dear Guilt" in Speak your Story, and "Gather or Scatter: Girlfriending a Special Needs Mom" in Monday Coffee.