Meet the Speakers
Kesha Ajose-Fisher
Empowering Marginalized Voices
Kesha Ajose-Fisher is the author of No God Like the Mother, an award-winning collection of fictional stories. Her writing has been published in several online and print collections, as well as Multicultural Familia, Alchemy, and Beyond Black & White. She received the Phoenix Literarary Magazine's Editor's Choice Award for Short Fiction in both 2011 and 2012.
Kesha is committed to fighting for social justice, and her dedication to this cause can be seen in everything she does. She previously worked in social services and is a vocal advocate for immigrants and refugees as she champions equality and education while opposing the poverty that plagues humanity.
Kesha was born in Chicago and raised in Lagos, Nigeria. She now lives in Oregon with her family and can be found writing, reading, cooking for friends and family, traveling, raising her teenagers, cuddling with her puppy, Oscar, and fighting for social justice for the most vulnerable members of our society. In her free time, she squeezes in a hike through the beautiful green of the Pacific Northwest.
Greta Boris
Your Author Mission
USA Today bestselling mystery/thriller author Greta Boris writes murders that hit home. Award-winning fantasy author Megan Haskell pens tales of myth, magic, and mayhem.
Together, they are the Author Wheel, publishers of books, courses, and a podcast designed to help writers find strategies to keep their stories rolling. They believe there is no single correct way to produce, publish, or promote your books, only what works for you. Their three-step process—clarify, simplify, and implement—will reveal your unique path to publishing success.
Jessica Cage
Caring for the Creator: Self-Care Practices for Authors
Jessica Cage is an international award-winning and USA Today bestselling author of speculative fiction and urban fantasy novels. Publishing since 2010, Jessica made a name for herself in indie publishing through consistent efforts and organic growth of her platform. The author of 35 fiction novels and 18 short stories published in different anthologies, she continues to produce stories that give representation to marginalized communities in fantasy landscapes.
Jessica added a branch to her career to focus more on helping other authors reach their goals in 2021 with the start of her Caged Writers Group where she offers guidance for new writers, and the launch of her first shared world book collection, Rise of the Elites, which gave five authors direct access to Jessica’s audience in a meaningful and lasting way.
Sue Campbell
The Story You Tell Yourself
Sue has helped hundreds of writers, from newbies to bestsellers, transform their inhibitive mindset around marketing and realize their full potential as authors. Her clients have exponentially increased their email lists and book sales, landed articles in prestigious publications such as The New York Times, done guest spots on popular podcasts and more.
Sage Cohen
Harness Fear to Fuel Your Writing
Sage Cohen is the author of The Productive Writer, Fierce on the Page, and Writing the Life Poetic, all from Writer’s Digest Books, and numerous other books and workbooks for writers. Her online community WE WRITE supports poets and writers to write more, write better, and come alive. As a coach, instructor, and developmental editor, Sage focuses on helping each writer cultivate their unique strengths to become the optimal instrument of their craft.
Laura Davis
Family Matters: The Ethics, Challenges, and Rewards of Writing About Family
Laura Davis is the author of six non-fiction books, including The Courage to Heal: For Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse, The Courage to Heal Workbook, Becoming the Parent You Want to Be and I Thought We'd Never Speak Again: The Road from Estrangement to Reconciliation. Her groundbreaking books have been translated into 11 languages and sold more than 1.8 million copies.
Laura’s latest book (and first memoir),The Burning Light of Two Stars: A Mother-Daughter Story, tells the story of her dramatic and tumultuous relationship with her mother from a much more dramatic, intimate, and personal point of view.
In the course of her long career as a communicator, Laura been a columnist, a talk show host, and a radio news reporter. Her other passion—aside from writing—is teaching and encouraging others to write.
K. J. Dell’Antonia
Giving Yourself Permission
KJ Dell’Antonia is a New York Times bestselling author whose novels The Chicken Sisters and In Her Boots explore the same themes she once explored as a journalist: the importance of finding joy in our families, the challenge of figuring out what makes us happy and the need to value the life we’re living more than the one in our phones and laptops, every single time. Her third novel, Playing the Witch Card, throws magic into the mix, but witchcraft, like reality TV and literary fraud, rarely really solves anyone’s problems. She is also the former editor of the New York Times’ Motherlode blog, the co-host of the #AmWriting podcast, and a passionate bookstagrammer. She lives in Lyme, New Hampshire, with her husband, children and assorted dogs, cats, chickens and horses.
Janet Forbes
Writing with Dyslexia: Surviving the "Superpower"
Janet Forbes is the founder and director of World Anvil, the worldbuilding platform, campaign manager, and novel writing software. She is a published fantasy author and tabletop RPG writer as well as a performing musician and classically trained soprano.
Joey Garcia
Putting Yourself Out There and Building Your Audience
Joey Garcia is a book editor and author platform coach. She helps writers get known while they’re writing a book, so when it’s published, there’s an audience waiting to read it. Joey’s clients have been interviewed by, or have bylines in, The Wall Street Journal, Smithsonian magazine, Ms. magazine, CNN, and The Tamron Hall Show, among others.
Joey is the author of When Your Heart Breaks, It’s Opening to Love and has been a featured relationship expert in HuffPost, USA Today, Deutsche Welle, KVIE public TV, Global Woman TV Sweden, Australia’s Ticker News and Slate’s Dear Prudence podcast. Her poetry, short stories, and essays have received awards and been published in Calyx, Mslexia, Hippocampus Creative Nonfiction magazine, Writer’s Digest, The Caribbean Writer, and Hypertext.
In 2017, Joey established the first-ever literary fellowship in Belize, her birthplace. A professional speaker, Joey has wowed audiences in the U.S., Sweden, and Albania.
Tiffany Grimes
How to Overcome Writer’s Block (for Good)
Tiffany Grimes is a writer, book coach, and author web designer whose mission is to amplify marginalized voices through unflinching and inclusive book coaching and design.
Tiffany is the founder of Burgeon Design and Editorial and hosts “The Art of Self-Editing,” a free writing community, “Revision Alchemy,” an online editing course for fiction and memoir writers, and “The Burgeon Mastermind,” a six-month writing collective.
She earned her MFA from Hamline University, and her writing has been published in Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, Microfiction Monday Magazine, The Fiction Pool, Ruminate Magazine, Feels Blind Literary, and Herstry. She currently lives in Salem, OR with her cats.
Megan Haskell
Your Author Mission
USA Today bestselling mystery/thriller author Greta Boris writes murders that hit home. Award-winning fantasy author Megan Haskell pens tales of myth, magic, and mayhem.
Together, they are the Author Wheel, publishers of books, courses, and a podcast designed to help writers find strategies to keep their stories rolling. They believe there is no single correct way to produce, publish, or promote your books, only what works for you. Their three-step process—clarify, simplify, and implement—will reveal your unique path to publishing success.
Anne Hawley
Edit Your Way Out of a Writing Slump
Anne Hawley is a third-generation native Oregonian, a graduate of Portland State University. When she's not editing stories, she's writing them, reading them, researching them, or analyzing them on The Editor Roundtable Podcast. She specializes in helping writers discover the heart of the story they’re trying to tell so that they can tell it more beautifully. She can often be seen riding her Dutch bike Eleanor around Portland. She's the author of Restraint, a love story set in 19th Century London.
Meg Hayertz
Unleash Your Writing: Using Tarot to Deepen the Creative Process
Meg Hayertz (she/her, they/them), author of Tarot for Beginners (Althea Press), believes creating is an act of listening. As the founder of Creative Momentum, she helps writers, artists, performers and academics unlock creative blocks, deepen their inspiration and finish their project. She holds an MFA in Writing and Consciousness from California Institute of Integral Studies. Her fiction has appeared in The Louisville Review and VoiceCatcher, among others. She is an alum of Lit Camp, and she has been interviewed in LitHub. Also, she believes in you.
Lindsey Trout Hughes
Untangling Workshop with the Lond Writers’ Salon
Lindsey Trout Hughes is a writer, editor, and theater maker. A former columnist for Catapult Magazine, her essays have also appeared in The Rumpus, Bright Wall/Dark Room, The Audacity, and elsewhere. She is Head of Programming at the London Writers’ Salon and Assistant Books Editor at Barrelhouse. Lindsey writes weekly essays about creativity and wonder at Fox in the Dark. She lives in New York City.
Anne Janzer
The Creative Dichotomy: Balancing Your Inner Muse and Scribe
Anne Janzer is a nonfiction book coach and the author of multiple award-winning books on writing, including The Writer’s Process and Writing to Be Understood, and her newest, The Writer’s Voice. She is fascinated by the science and mystery of writing, and is always searching for clues to better communication.
Bill Kenower
Fearless Writing
William Kenower is the author of Fearless Writing: How to Create Boldly and Write With Confidence, and Write Within Yourself: An Author’s Companion, the editor-in-chief of Author magazine, and a sought-after speaker and teacher. In addition to his books he’s been published in The New York Times and Edible Seattle, and has been a featured blogger for the Huffington Post. His video interviews with hundreds of writers from Nora Ephron, to Amy Tan, to William Gibson are widely considered the best of their kind on the Internet. He also hosts the online radio program Author2Author where every week he and a different guest discuss the books we write and the lives we lead.
L. L. Kirchner
Unblocked: How to Tell a Different Story
L.L. Kirchner is an award-winning screenwriter and author of two memoirs including the forthcoming Blissful Thinking: A Memoir of Overcoming the Wellness Revolution (Motina Books, 9/26/23). A book critic, essayist and reporter, Kirchner was once simultaneously the religion editor for an LGBTQIA+ paper, dating columnist for an alt newsweekly, and bridal editor for a society rag. Her writing has appeared in Shondaland, The Rumpus, and The Washington Post among numerous others. She’s currently a guest host, appearing live on the Home Shopping Network, and runs the monthly storytelling show, True Stories.
Jen Louden
Addressing Imposter Syndrome & More
Jen Louden wanted to be Harriet the Spy when she was eight, an enlightened master when she was twelve, and a brilliant comedy writer when she was twenty-two. She penned her first bestseller, The Woman’s Comfort Book in 1992. She’s the author of eight additional books including The Woman’s Retreat Book and Why Bother? She has coached writers since 2001 because she struggled so mightily to become a successful author. She’s currently writing a contemporary fantasy with a cli-fi angle.
Josh Mohr
Structuring Memoir to Elicit Emotion
Joshua Mohr is the author of the memoirs Model Citizen and Sirens, as well as five novels including Damascus, which The New York Times called "Beat-poet cool." He’s also written Fight Song and Some Things that Meant the World to Me, one of O Magazine’s Top 10 reads of 2009 and a San Francisco Chronicle best-seller, as well as Termite Parade, an Editors’ Choice in The New York Times. His novel All This Life won the Northern California Book Award. He has taught at the MFA program at the University of San Francisco and St. Mary’s College, and currently teaches at Stanford.
Laura Munson
Tortured Artist No More: Managing the Inherent Dangers and Essentials of Empathy
Laura Munson is the New York Times, USA Today, and international bestselling author of the novel Willa’s Grove and the memoir This Is Not The Story You Think It Is. She has been published in nine countries and has been featured in Vanity Fair, Elle, Redbook, Time, Newsweek, Washington Post, Publisher’s Weekly and published in the New York Times ‘Modern Love’ column, the New York Times Magazine ‘Lives’ column, O. Magazine, and many others.
Laura is the founder of the acclaimed Haven Writing Retreats, speaks at women’s conferences and literary events, and has appeared on Good Morning America, The Early Show, NPR, and media outlets across the globe. She lives in Montana.
Gabriela Pereira
Mental Health & Neurodivergence
Gabriela Pereira is an author, speaker, and self-proclaimed word nerd who wants to challenge the status quo of higher education. Her mission is to empower writers to apply an entrepreneurial mindset to their professional growth.
Gabriela earned her MFA from The New School, in New York. While undercover as a graduate student, she learned the inside scoop on MFA programs, invented a slew of writing tools all her own, and developed a new, more effective way for writers to learn their craft. Now she shares what she discovered and helps writers around the world get the “knowledge without the college.”
She has taught several writing courses in New York City at organizations like: 826NYC, Everybody Wins, EHTP, and even at a local writing workshop she built from the ground up. While Gabriela now teaches exclusively via DIY MFA, she continues to lead workshops at national and international writing conferences. She also gives keynotes on college campuses, and offers training programs on creativity in the workplace.
Gabriela lives in NYC with Lawyer-Hubby, Little Man, Lady Bug, and Office Cat.
Jamie Rose
Tools for Overcoming Procrastination
Jamie Rose enjoyed a five-decade career as an actor before becoming a full-time coach and writer. A protégé of Dr. Phil Stutz — the brilliant psychiatrist and subject of the NetFlix documentary Stutz, directed by Jonah Hill — she collaborates with Dr. Stutz on workshops and webinars as well as maintaining a thriving private coaching practice based on his work.
Her essays and articles have been published in magazines such as Coast, Actors Ink, and HuffPost, and she is the author of Shut Up and Dance! The Joy of Letting Go of the Lead, a “dance of life” memoir/self-help book exploring the relationship of masculine and feminine archetypes as embodied in the Argentine tango.
She’s currently working on a new book, Facing Madame X: How to Vanquish Negativity, Activate your Feminine Power, and Become Unstoppable, that will be released by Arcade Publishing in Fall 2024.
Rachelle Ramirez
Writing With ADHD: The Tools, Not Rules, Approach
Rachelle is a developmental editor, master's level counselor, certified ADHD coach, one of the world’s foremost experts on Story Types, and co-host of The Happily Ever Author Club and the Write Anyway Summit. She co-wrote The Pages and Platforms Guide to Story and numerous online masterclasses for writers with fellow developmental editor, Anne Hawley. Rachelle's forthcoming book is The ADHD Writer: From Frustrated to Focused to Finished. Learn more about Rachelle and her developmental editing services at rachelleramirez.com.
Venchele Saint Dic
Identifying Core Values & Branding in Our Writing
Venchele Saint Dic is the author of “Journey to Redemption and Faith” in the Amazon bestselling book Passport to Self-Discovery Volume 2. Venchele is an experienced writer, editor and native French speaker with a cognate education in public health. Her focus is to improve accessibility to health services while supporting education, economic empowerment and counseling as critical building blocks which empower families to survive and thrive through life changing events.
Nancy Stohlman
From Burnout to Breakthrough: Get Your Creativity Back on Track
Nancy Stohlman is the author of six books including After the Rapture, Madam Velvet’s Cabaret of Oddities, The Vixen Scream and Other Bible Stories, The Monster Opera, Searching for Suzi: a flash novel, and Going Short: An Invitation to Flash Fiction, winner of the 2021 Reader Views Gold Award and re-released as an audiobook. Her work has been anthologized widely, appearing in the Norton anthology New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction and The Best Small Fictions 2019, as well as adapted for both stage and screen. She is a creative coach and a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and holds workshops and writing retreats around the world.
Brooke Warner
An Exploration of Your Publishing Options Because Publishing Your Book Can Feel Scary Too!
Brooke Warner is publisher of She Writes Press and SparkPress, president of Warner Coaching Inc., and author of Write On, Sisters!, Green-light Your Book, What's Your Book?, and three books on memoir. Brooke is a TEDx speaker, weekly podcaster (of “Write-minded” with co-host Grant Faulkner of NaNoWriMo), and the former executive editor of Seal Press. She writes a regular column for Publishers Weekly.
Allison K Williams
This Is the Year You’ll Finish Your Book
The author of Seven Drafts: Self-Edit Like a Pro from Blank Page to Book, Allison has edited and coached writers to deals with Big Five and independent presses, including NYT and USAToday bestsellers. She’s guided essayists to publication in the New Yorker, Time, the Guardian, the New York Times , McSweeney’s and TED Talks. As social media editor for Brevity, she inspires thousands of writers with blogs on craft and the writing life.
Allison has written for NPR, CBC-Canada, the New York Times and McSweeney’s among others. A former circus performer, she has eaten fire in 29 countries.