Author: Author's Answer

May-lee Chai is the author of the American Book Award–winning story collection Useful Phrases for Immigrants and ten other books. Her prize-winning short prose has been published widely, including in the New England Review, Missouri Review, Seventeen, The Rumpus, ZYZZYVA, the Los Angeles Times, Dallas Morning News, and the San Francisco Chronicle. The recipient of an NEA fellowship in prose, Chai is an associate professor in the Creative Writing Department at San Francisco State University.

Brian Rush McDonald, a native of Mobile, Alabama resides in Alexandria, Virginia just outside of Washington, DC where he is psychotherapist in private practice. He treats individuals who are experiencing depression, anxiety, or life adjustment issues. He also provides couples counseling. He has served as an adjunct professor of counseling at area universities. He holds a Ph.D in counseling from the College of William and Mary. He enjoys playing trombone in several community groups and loves jigsaw puzzles and crosswords. He and his wife Kathy love sailing on the Chesapeake Bay. They have three adult children and three grandchildren.

Jonathan Woods is an award-winning author of absurdist pulp noir. He holds degrees from McGill University, New England School of Law and New York University School of Law and worked for many years for a multinational high-tech company. He studied writing at Bread Loaf, Sewanee, Zoetrope: All-Story and Sirenland writers conferences and at Southern Methodist University.

Roselle Lim is the critically acclaimed author of Natalie Tan’s Book of Luck and Fortune, Vanessa Yu’s Magical Paris Tea Shop and the upcoming Sophie Go’s Lonely Hearts Club. She lives on the north shore of Lake Erie and always has an artistic project on the go.

Arlene Mark grew up in western Pa. steel country before making her way to NYC to begin her career. After working in fashion, marrying, and committing to her family, she lived in London, Caracas, and Toronto with husband and three children before settling in CT. She has an MA in special education, a certification in school psychology and interned at NY State Psychiatric Institute. Her work has appeared in Highlights for Children, Spider, Skipping Stones, Adolescence, Their World, and Greenwich Magazine. She is the author of To the Tower, A Greenwich Adventure, coauthor of Paraverbal Communication with Children: Not Through Words Alone and has served as a Greenwich Time contributing editor writing articles about children’s emotional lives. Her eight grandchildren are enthusiastic fans. When not writing, Arlene can be found lobstering with her husband, Reuben, visiting schools in Asia and Latin America, reading (mostly books for kids), and screening new films.

Renee Linnell is a serial entrepreneur who has founded or cofounded five companies and has an MBA from New York University; before that she was a model and professional dancer. Her mission is to remind people Who They Truly Are and to reignite their passion for being alive. What began as writing for catharsis in 2013—as she struggled to regain her sanity after being brainwashed in a Buddhist cult—turned into her first memoir, The Burn Zone: A Memoir (She Writes Press, 2018). Still on Fire is the sequel.

Mike Trigg was born in Kentucky and raised in Wisconsin. He earned a BA from Northwestern University and an MBA from University of California, Berkeley. Over his twenty-five-year career in Silicon Valley, he has been a founder, executive, and investor in dozens of venture-funded technology start-ups, as well as a contributor to TechCrunch, Entrepreneur, and Fast Company. He lives in Menlo Park, California, with his wife and two sons. Bit Flip is his first novel.

L.B. Wells is the pseudonym of a very successful Board-Certified Surgeon, an ambitious physician who overcame the resistance of the male-dominated world of surgery to become successful. The pseudonym gives her the freedom to explore the raw truths of her life, including the male prejudices that made her life so difficult. Wells has written a novel entitled, “The White Coat Effect,” that unleashes the ambition necessary for a woman to push through the long road to becoming an esteemed surgeon while discovering sexuality and forbidden love for the first time.

Sarah Adlakha is a native of Chicago who now lives along the Mississippi Gulf Coast with her husband, three daughters, two horses, and one dog. She started writing fiction shortly after retiring from her psychiatry practice. Her debut novel, She Wouldn’t Change a Thing, was a CNN most anticipated book of 2021. Midnight on the Marne is her second novel.

As a kid, Joanne Tubbs Kelly moved around a lot, but she always felt at home when she had her nose stuck in a book. As an adult, she provided marketing communications services to high-tech companies. Now that she’s retired, she lives in Boulder in the home she and her husband, now deceased, remodeled from top to bottom. She delights in puttering in her garden and walking and hiking where she can wallow in the beauty of Boulder’s Flatirons and Colorado’s high peaks. Whenever she’s not in her garden or out walking, you can usually find her up to her old tricks: hiding out somewhere with her nose stuck in a book.