Click each author’s image below to view their bio.
Al DuPree spent his early career in broadcasting and transitioned to technology, from consulting at Arthur Anderson and General Electric, to Chief Information Officer at the CBO. He grew up in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, the setting of his first novel. He currently lives in Columbia, Maryland with his wife of more than 30 years.
Al’s debut novel Life After Death is the epic tale of a black family coming of age, of inherited secrets, crimes, and the responsibilities and obligations between generations.
Evan Balkan coordinates the English Department at the Community College of Baltimore County, where he runs the creative writing program, and is an adjunct faculty member in the Johns Hopkins University’s graduate Teaching Writing program. He has served as a guest lecturer at Yale, Johns Hopkins, Bryn Mawr and many other institutions. He is the author of six books of non-fiction, including Wrath of God: Lope de Aguirre; Revolutionary of the Americas as well as numerous essays and short fiction in an array of publications. His novel, Spitfire (Amphorae, 2018) was adapted into a screenplay that won both the Baltimore Screenwriters Competition and a Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund Fellowship.
Geoffrey Gatza is an award winning editor, publisher and poet. He was named by theHuffington Post as one of the The Top 200 Advocates for American Poetry (2013). He is the author many books of poetry, including Apollo (BlazeVOX 2014), Secrets of my Prison House (BlazeVOX 2010) Kenmore: Poem Unlimited (Casa Menendez 2009) and HouseCat Kung Fu: Strange Poems for Wild Children (Meritage Press 2008), He is also the author of the yearly Thanksgiving Menu-Poem Series, a book length poetic tribute for prominent poets, now in it’s tenth year. His visual art poems have been displayed in gallery showing. OCCUPY THE WALLS: A Poster Show, AC Gallery (NYC) 2011 occupy wall street N15 For Ernst Jandl – Minimal Poems with photography from the fall of Liberty Square. And in, LANGUAGE TO COVER A WALL: Visual Poetry through its changing media, UB ART GALLERY (Buffalo, NY) 2011/12 Language for the Birds. Geoffrey Gatza is the editor and Publisher of the small press BlazeVOX. The fundamental mission of BlazeVOX is to disseminate poetry, through print and digital media, both within academic spheres and to society at large. Read about his most recent book, The Albatross Around Albert Ross’s Neck HERE.
Herta Feely is the author of Strange Shape of Love (Castle Bridge Media, 2025) and Saving Phoebe Murrow (Bonnier/Twenty7 Books, 2016), as well as numerous short stories and memoir published in literary journals and anthologies. She received two fellowships for a novel in progress – the James Jones First Novel Fellowship and an Artist in Literature from the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities and an American Independent Writing Prize in Personal Essay. She is an editor, writing coach and ghostwriter in Washington, DC.
Jack Gilden’s editorials, columns and articles have appeared in Orioles Magazine, the Baltimore Sun, the Evening Sun, Chesapeake Life, Style magazine and the Baltimore Jewish Times. He has written about the anti-Semitism of H.L. Mencken, the literary life of Bernard Malamud, the lost legend of “Swish” Nicholson, Joe Louis as civil rights hero, and the profane genius of Earl Weaver. He wrote the Orioles 40th Anniversary Video, narrated by the legendary Jim McKay. In addition to his journalism work, Gilden is a business consultant and teaches writing at the Community College of Baltimore County. Read more about his highly acclaimed books Collision of Wills (2018) and The Fast Ride (reviewed in the Wall Street Journal April 2022.)
Jennifer Lauren is a semi-retired litigation attorney and award-winning journalist who provides pro-bono work for nonprofit organizations. She was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest but moved to Austin, Texas in 2020 in search of sunshine and tacos. She lives with her husband, two kids, two cats, and an 11-pound Toy Australian Shepherd named Izzadogo. Her work has been featured in Manifest-Station (a winner of the Q2 2022 Creative Non-fiction Essay Contest), Women on Writing and a winner of the Gutsy Great Novelists Page One Prize 2022.
Her debut novel, Everything We Did Not Do, is a work of contemporary women’s fiction that explores the human fallibility behind wrongful conviction.
Jerry Mikorenda is the recipient of a 2015 Highlights Foundation scholarship and a PEN Syndicated Fiction Award. His short stories have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Turbula, Amarillo Bay and Gravel Magazine. His nonfiction credits include The New York Times, Newsday and The Boston Herald. His history profiles appear in the 2010 Encyclopedia of New York City and on the Gotham Center’s History Blog. He has appeared on the AHC program, “What History Forgot,” is a member SCBWI, BIO, and the Historical Novel Society. Read more here about his book America’s First Freedom Rider: Elizabeth Jennings and the Early Fight for Civil Rights (Globe Pequot/Lyons Press, winter, 2020).
Joyce Hinnefeld is the author of the novels The Dime Museum (Unbridled Books, 2025), The Beauty of Their Youth (part of the Wolfson Press American Storytellers series), In Hovering Flight and Stranger Here Below, and the short story collection Tell Me Everything and Other Stories (winner of the 1997 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Bakeless Prize in Fiction). She is an Emerita Professor of English at Moravian University in Bethlehem, PA and a program facilitator with Shining Light, an organization that provides programming for incarcerated people.
Her newest novel, Ghost Cranes, is an exploration of America’s cultural divide and, more importantly, a deeper exploration of love, the natural world, and the complicated bonds of family.
Over the years, some 750 poems by Len Krisak have been published in over a hundred different journals; he is the author of 11 books of poetry and translations, including Virgil’s Eclogues, Ovid, and Rilke; he is the recipient of the Richard Wilbur Prize, the Robert Frost Prize, the Robert Penn Warren Prize, The Der-Hovanessian Translation Award from the New England Poetry Club, and many others. He has taught at Brandeis University, Northeastern University, and Stonehill College. Len is also the former winner of the GoldPocket.com National Trivia Competition and was a four-time Champion on Jeopardy! His brilliant translation of Virgil’s The Aeneid, was released in 2021 by Hackett Publishing. Len’s most recent work is the translation of Dante’s Inferno, an epic feat in terza rima, forthcoming 2026.
Margaret A. Brucia has taught Latin in New York and Rome for many years. She is a Fulbright scholar, the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome. She holds a Ph.D. in Classics from Fordham University. She has recently turned her attention to early twentieth-century New York social history.
Margaret is the author of The Key to Everything: May Swenson, A Writer’s Life, Princeton University Press, which brings to light, for the first time, the existence of poet May Swenson’s personal diaries that have never been made available to the public.
Her most recent work, with author Peter A. Amram is the biography Letters in Transit: A Gilded Age Saga, about the life of New York socialite Julia Gardiner Gayley and her illustrious cohorts in the early 20th century. Her articles about prominent early twentieth-century New Yorkers, including May Swenson can be found on the Gotham Blog:
Her other publications include, To Be a Roman: Topics in Roman Culture (Bolchazy-Carducci, 2007, 2009, 2016), and The Civilized Shopper’s Guide to Rome (The Little Bookroom, 2004). She revised and updated Veni, Vidi, Vici: Conquer Your Enemies and Impress Your Friends with Everyday Latin (HarperCollins, 2010).
Mashayla is a debut author with a Bachelor’s in English from George Mason University. Her passion for writing was sparked by a professor who saw magic in her work. Inspired by this discovery, Mashayla wrote her first novel titled Tranquil that connected her to Emily. Several years later she developed her craft by working on her debut novel April Wise.
In the realm of social media, April Wise has it all: friends, connections, and a stellar career. If only life was so picturesque. In reality, she’s stuck in a minimum wage job with zero prospects, so April creates a plan to deceive her mother by pretending she’s landed her dream job. The plan is destined to royally backfire. Grappling with the fallout, April strives to mirror her media persona, but soon realizes there’s another plot emerging in her life–one that’s far more sinister. And she’s at the center of it.
Michael Griffith’s most recent novel, Trophy (Triquarterly), was named one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best 25 Books of Fiction for 2011. His previous books are Bibliophilia (2003) and Spikes (2001), both from Arcade. Griffith’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Washington Post,Chicago Quarterly ReviewVirginia Quarterly Review, Ninth Letter, Salmagundi, Oxford American, New England Review, Shenandoah, Ninth Letter, Southwest Review, Five Points, Blackbird, , and other periodicals. His work has been honored by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Humanities Center, the Taft Foundation, the Louisiana Division of the Arts, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Michael Griffith was educated at Princeton and Louisiana State University. Formerly Associate Editor of the Southern Review, he is Professor of English at the University of Cincinnati and Fiction Editor of the Cincinnati Review. He is also the Editor of Yellow Shoe Fiction, an original-fiction series from LSU Press.
Richard Simon has directed the website strategy for Georgetown Law in Washington, DC, since 2010, and is a former reporter and webmaster for The Daily Record newspaper in Maryland.
Recognizing that he had an unhealthy relationship with his smartphone, Simon turned it off for an entire year in 2020. He still owns an iPhone, but keeps it off for days, sometimes weeks at a time. His book, Unplug: How to Break Up With Your Phone and Reclaim Your Life tells the story of what that year was like and includes advice on how to do it yourself, what to do with all your newfound time, and how it can lead to a happier, healthier life. Summer 2025 from Workman/Hachette.
He lives in Baltimore with his wife and three children.
Virginia Hartman is the author of The Marsh Queen, which debuted September 2022 from Gallery/Simon & Schuster with great praise. Her work has been published in the Hudson Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Potomac Review, Delmarva Review, Redux, Washingtonian, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Common Ground Review, and other magazines and anthologies, including Gravity Dancers: Even More Fiction by Washington Area Women (Paycock Press). Her stories have been shortlisted for the New Letters Prize and the Dana Awards. Her writing has been supported by both the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. She holds an MFA in creative writing from American University and is on the Creative Writing faculty at George Washington University. She also teaches fiction writing at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Along with Barbara Esstman, she co-edited an anthology, A More Perfect Union: Poems and Stories about the Modern Wedding (St. Martin’s Press).
