Tiah Marie Beautement is the author of the novel Moons Don’t Go to Venus. Shorter works have appeared in Lit-Net, Botsotso, Wordsetc, New Contrast, Flashquake, and Motherverse. She is a born and raised Oregonian, living in South Africa after obtaining dual citizenship in Britain. No matter where she goes, people claim she talks funny.
Email: tiah.beautement@googlemail.com
Danielle Christopher
Danielle Christopher is a work-at-home mom of two young daughters. Her writing has appeared in Women’s Post and Hybrid Mom, as well as The Momoir Project and The Yummy Mummy Club and many other parenting websites. Danielle lives with her husband and daughters in Langley, BC, Canada. She publishes a blog where she writes about her days being a motherless mother.
Website: www.justdworld.wordpress.com
Marilyn J. Curry
Marilyn J. Curry lives in San Francisco where she works as a licensed clinical social worker with foster care children. She has been writing since she was a teenager, but “rewriting” for the past fifteen years. Her essay “On Not Being Photographed by Diane Arbus” was published in New York Stories magazine and was selected as a notable essay in the 2006 Best American Essays collection.
Email:mjcurry50@gmail.com
Sara Etgen-Baker
Sara Etgen-Baker’s writing career began with an unexpected whisper when a teacher said, “You’ve got writing talent.” She ignored the whisper and instead chose a career in business and teaching. She occasionally resurrected her inner writer when preparing curriculum, employee manuals, and so on. Meanwhile, she realized her aptitude as both a proofreader and an editor and edited professional publications, proofread textbooks, and authored instructional ancillaries. After retirement Sara began her freelance writing career. With her husband’s encouragement, she writes magazine articles, personal narratives, and short stories—as an ongoing contributor to Tiny Lights and with two memoirs recently published in Yesteryears Magazette.
Email:sab_1529@yahoo.com
Website:www.lightsinthewindow.wordpress.com
Laura McHale Holland
Laura McHale Holland’s award-winning memoir, Reversible Skirt, was published in early 2011 by Wordforest. Her short fiction, features, and essays have appeared in Every Day Fiction, the Vintage Voices 2009 and 2010 anthologies, NorthBay biz magazine, the Noe Valley Voice, and the original San Francisco Examiner. Laura also heads the editorial department of a trade publication covering the electronic payments industry.
Website: www.lauramchaleholland.com
Diane Hurles
Diane Hurles lives in Chicago and works in public relations and financial development for the national headquarters of the YMCA (YMCA of the USA). A former Lifestyle reporter and editor for several small daily newspapers in Indiana, where she lived for thirty years before moving to Chicago, Diane began studying creative nonfiction almost four years ago. She has written a series of stand-alone pieces about her childhood —including this one—that she would love to weave together into a memoir some day. Diane is married and has one grown son.
Email: dianehurles@yahoo.com
Patricia Jackson-Colando
Patricia Jackson-Colando, a licensed speech-language pathologist and public speaker, has written articles for newspapers, magazines, and periodicals and grants for nonprofit organizations. Her short stories have been included in several anthologies. She has received numerous awards for community service and enjoys writing while her husband watches sports on television.
Email: talklady@sbcglobal.net.
Deborah Jones-Norberto
Deborah Jones-Norberto has been an actress, a clown, magician’s assistant, secretary, waitress, singer, pianist, organist, conductor, and most recently, a writer. Adopted as an infant by an IBM executive and his wife, she inherited the rich background of the Jones/Abercrombie family. Finding out years later she was the birth daughter of a sailor and his then upper class wife has provided a wealth of material for memoir. Debbie has been published in Tiny Lights: A Journal of Personal Narrative, in various music-related publications, and in newsletters. Debbie lives forty miles north of New York City with her husband and three children.
Website: www.debjones-norberto.com
Jeanne Jusaitis
Jeanne Jusaitis, MA, lives in Petaluma, California, where she writes for all ages. Her novel, Journey to Anderswelt, is written for middle-grade children. Jeanne draws from her memories of growing up in northern California, her many years of teaching and consulting, and traveling through Europe. She is a member of California Writers Club and the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. She published “The Legend of Tilly” in Vintage Voices (2010)and “Mystery Man” in Tiny Lights Online Journal. Her play, Apples by Day, was chosen to be produced by the Pegasus Children’s Theater in summer 2011.
Email: mizitis@comcast.net
Barbara Kitscher
Barbara Kitscher is wife to Bill and mother to Andre, Aaron, and Allen. She lives on four wooded acres that once belonged to her parents, south of the town of Petoskey, Michigan. Like her mother before her, she is blessed with an extended family that includes four grandchildren. After many years in the field of education, she now has more time to pursue other dreams, which include reading, writing, hiking, biking and growing and preserving her own food.
Email: bkitscher@gmail.com
Maria Klassen
Maria H. Klassen has had stories swirling around in her head all her life. She has used them throughout her teaching career, and in her retirement she is putting them down on paper. Her love of travel and sense for adventure has taken her to the village of Neuendorf in the Ukraine where her mother grew up, making her Sunday afternoons with her mother even more memorable. She lives in the small Ontario (Canada) town of Dunnville, when she isn’t traveling to far away places and visiting her two children, Kristin and Jason, wherever they have ventured in the world.
Email: mhk2@sympatico.ca
Nancy LaTurner
Nancy LaTurner‘s contribution, “Motherless Child,” is adapted from her unpublished memoir, Passing through Customs: A New Mexico Family’s Adventures Abroad, a lively depiction of family life in the Foreign Service. She and her husband raised their son and daughter in Iran, Cameroon, New Zealand, Somalia, Dominican Republic, Austria, and Bolivia. Nancy’s essays have been published in the Albuquerque Almanac and the SouthWest Sage. Her short stories and essays have won awards in both the SouthWest Writers and the Writer’s Digest annual contests. She writes from her home on Albuquerque’s west side where coyotes and roadrunners roam.
Email: nlaturner@yahoo.com
Ana Manwaring
Ana Manwaring writes, edits, and teaches creative writing. She’s branded cattle in Hollister, outrun gun totin’ maniacs on lonely highways, lived on houseboats, consulted brujos, visited every California mission, worked for a private investigator, swum with dolphins, and writes about it all. Read her lifestyle column at www.petalumapost.com and follow her Mexico years at http://saintsandskeletons.blogspot.com. Ana is available for developmental editing and writing coaching. Coming soon, Zihuatanejo, a novel of intrigue in the Mexican resorts of Ixtapa and Zihuatanejo.
Email: ana@anamanwaring.com
Website: www.anamanwaring.com
Rebecca Milford
Rebecca Milford grew up among the sandstone buildings of Bath, UK, and now spends most of her time writing a novel in the little coffee shops that nestle in London’s Clapham High Street. She also loves creating short stories and travel pieces and recently won the British Guild of Travel Writers award for new travel writing about an encounter she had in Japan. Ten years ago she had a kidney transplant, which is going well. She loves to read anything from the 1920′s and hopes to one day make a living out of writing, now that she has completed a Masters in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University.
Email: rebecca.milford86@gmail.com
Shelley Chase Muniz
Shelley Chase Muniz was born in Modesto, California, and attended college at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, California. She moved to Sonora in 1974, married, and had two children. She was a primary school teacher’s aide and librarian at a local elementary school for fifteen years. She currently works at Columbia College as a library specialist. Shelley’s short story, “Silent Screams,” was a finalist in the 75th Annual Writer’s Digest Short Story Contest. Last year another short story, “Holes,” was published in the anthology Wild Edges by Manzanita Press. She has written a narrative nonfiction piece and a novel and is looking for publishers for both.
Email: shelley.muniz@att.net
Katrina Norfleet
Katrina Norfleet makes her living as a marketing communications writer but feeds her soul writing fiction and creative nonfiction from her home in Maryland. Her work appears in the Cup of Comfort for Christian Women and Victorious Living for Women anthologies, Our Voices at www.BoomerWomenSpeak, various magazines, and her blog, Joy-Filled Life. She is a daughter and a mother of two, on the verge of becoming an empty nester.
Website: www.joy-filledlife.blogspot.com
Suni Paz
Suni Paz, Argentine singer, songwriter, poet, educator, author, presenter, and recipient of numerous awards, has devoted her life to children and their families. She has thrilled worldwide audiences of all ages on stage, television, and radio with her stories and songs accompanied on guitar, charango, and percussive instruments. In 2007 Suni published her memoirs in Spanish, Destellos y Sombras, and in English, Sparkles and Shadows.
Website:www.sunipaz.com
Links: www.delsolbooks.com; Smithsonian-Folkways: www.folkways.si.edu; Rhapsody: www.rhapsody.com/suni-paz/bandera-mia-songs-of-argentina
Nekane Polo
Nekane Polo was born in Bilbao, Spain, in 1962. The oldest of four and the only girl, she first went to England for a month when she was eighteen and returned when she was twenty as an au pair. She then went to Paris in the same way where she met her Irish husband. She married in London in 1990 and did a few jobs as a freelance translator while having four children. The family moved to Ireland in 1998 and now she is trying to fulfill her dream as a writer.
Email: nekanepd@yahoo.ie
Linda Sievers
Linda Sievers retired from Humboldt State University in northern California after twenty-six years of teaching dance. In 2006 she began writing memoir based on growing up in Illinois. She is married to watercolor artist and oil painter, Douglas Sievers. They have three daughters and three grandchildren. Linda recently moved to Cedar City, Utah, where she continues to write.
Email: sieverslinda051@gmail.com
Clarice Stasz
Clarice Stasz is Emerita Professor of History, Sonoma State University, whose scholarly books address issues of racism, sexism, and power in America. Her multigenerational biographies include The Vanderbilt Women, The Rockefeller Women, and Jack London’s Women. In retirement she has returned to her youthful career aspiration, that of a musician and music teacher.
Email: cstasz@comcast.net
Website: www.claricestasz.com
Mariana Swann
Mariana Swann was born in Bolivia and lived there for twenty years. She studied languages at the University of Geneva. She now lives in England and works as a foreign languages teacher while writing her Bolivian memoirs. As an adolescent, she witnessed social and political upheavals—she remembers the arrival of Che Guevara and the profound effect his ideals had on several members of her family. Mariana has just obtained a master’s degree in Creative Writing from Goldsmiths College, University of London.
Email: marianaswann@hotmail.com
Barbara Toboni
Barbara Toboni writes short stories, poetry, memoir, and picture books. Her work has been published in literary journals, anthologies, and newspapers, including, Cup of Comfort for Parents of Children with Autism,Tiny Lights Online Journal, Alura Poetry Quarterly,and The Napa Valley Register. The author’s most recent publication is a collection of poems, Undertow. She is a member of the California Writer’s Cluband theSociety of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Born in Pennsylvania, the author lived in Guam for many years. She now writes in Napa, California, and dreams of moving day when she and her husband will retire in Plumas County.
Website:www.barbarasmirror.com
Angela Tung
Angela Tung is a writer in San Francisco. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Bellingham Review, CNN Living, The Frisky, New York Press, and elsewhere. She is a regular contributor to The Nervous Breakdown, an online magazine featuring the work of published and emerging authors from around the world, and is a writer/editor at Wordnik.com, an online word source.
Website: www.angelatung.com
Elle Tyler
Elle Tyler (aka Ellen Whyte) has been involved in the arts her entire life. After many years of working in theatre, film, and TV, she married and became a full-time mom to an amazing son. During this time she trained and worked as a drama therapist using theater techniques that were developed to nurture the mentally ill. She facilitated workshops throughout the New York City area. After her mother’s death, she began exploring photography and writing in an attempt to heal from her sadness. She now has a line of greeting cards and wall art that has been designed with the intention of promoting peace and tranquility. Email: premasun@aol.com
Elizabeth VanPatten
Elizabeth VanPatten lives in Napa, California. She enjoyed tennis, golf, hiking, birding and watercolor painting in her post-child-raising years until she discovered writing. In between sessions of scribbling, she pursued dryer lint art and had a show at the Winona Gallery in Mendocino featuring such characters as “Pork Tenderlint” and “Looselint the Shar-Pei” and other linty subjects—“Morning Tongue,” “Dryer Degas,” “Pestilints.” She is currently in the process of self-publishing a children’s book called Nook and Granny and the Gazelle in the Gazebo.
Email: lizmuse@att.net