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Sharon Doubiago:  After completing her critically acclaimed first book, the epic poem Hard Country, Sharon embarked on a bus journey with her 15 year old daughter to Macchu Picchu. South America Mi Hija was named the Best Book of the Year by the LA Weekly. She has lived much of her life since in three vans—Roses, Psyche, and Valentine—writing full-time rather than working full-time in order to write part-time. Some of this life is chronicled in her prose stories. The Book of Seeing with One’s Eyes (Graywolf Press) received Gloria Steinem's Woman Writer Award, and the title story won a Pushcart Prize for fiction. Her poetry collection Body and Soul garnered her a third Pushcart Prize. Published chapters from her unfinished memoir Son received the Tom Robbin's Journalist of the Year Award (“for the most outrageous, risk-taking, life- affirming article published in the Northwest”). Latest works include Love on the Streets, Selected and New Poems (University of Pittsburgh, 2009) and My Father's Love, Portrait of the Poet as a Girl/Woman, 2 volumes (Wild Ocean Press). She's currently a board member of PEN Oakland and has just completed a new poetry manuscript, Writing.​

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Samantha Dunn is the author of several books including the novel Failing Paris, a finalist for the PEN Center Fiction Award. Her essays have been widely anthologized, including the collection she co-edited, Women on the Edge: Writing from Los Angeles. She teaches in the UCLA Writers Program and is the adviser for PEN Center's The Mark, a program to help new writers complete finished books.

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Amy Ferris is co-editor of Dancing at The Shame Prom. She is an author, editor, screenwriter and playwright. Her memoir, Marrying George Clooney, Confessions From a Midlife Crisis (Seal Press) is off-broadway bound, CAP21 Theater Company, March 2012. She has contributed to numerous anthologies, and has written everything from Young Adult novels to movies and films. She co-wrote Funny Valentines (Julie Dash, Director), and Mr. Wonderful (Anthony Minghella, Director). Funny Valentines was nominated for a Best Screenplay award, and numerous BET awards. She co-created and co-edited the first ever "all women's issue" of Living Buddhism magazine. She serves on the Executive Board of Directors at The Pages & Places Literary Festival, Peters Valley Arts, Education and Craft Center, and is on the Advisory Board of The Women's Media Center. She is on faculty at The San Miguel de Allende Writers Conference. She is a visiting teacher at the UCLA Writers Workshop (extension). She contributes regularly to iPinion Syndicate. Her number one goal, desire, dream: Is that all women awaken to their greatness. You can find her blogging in the middle of the night at: www.marryinggeorgeclooney.com. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, Ken.

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Amy Friedman writes the internationally syndicated column Tell Me a Story, has published two memoirs and thousands of stories and essays. She teaches memoir and personal essay at UCLA Extension, Skirball Cultural Arts Center, Idyllwild School of the Arts, and in public high schools through PEN USA's Pen in the Classroom. Her recently completed memoir, Desperado's Wife, tells the story of her life as a prisoner's wife and her work on behalf of prisoners' families.  Visit Amy's website: www.amyfriedman.net