Alison Bechdel is an American cartoonist. Originally known for the long-running comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, she came to critical and commercial success in 2006 with her graphic memoir Fun Home, which was subsequently adapted as a musical that won a Tony Award for Best Musical in 2015. In 2012, she released her second graphic memoir Are You My Mother? She was a 2014 recipient of the MacArthur "Genius" Award. She is also known for originating the Bechdel test.
Susanne Antonetta is the pen name of Suzanne Paola, an American poet and author who is most widely known for her book Body Toxic: An Environmental Memoir. In 2001, Body Toxic was named by the New York Times as a "Notable Book". An excerpt of "Body Toxic" was published as a stand-alone essay which was recognized as a "Notable Essay" in the 1998 Best American Essays 1998 anthology. She has published several prize-winning collections of poems, including Bardo, a Brittingham Prize in Poetry winner, and the poetry books Petitioner, Glass, and most recently The Lives of The Saints. She currently resides in Washington with her husband and adopted son. She is widely published both in newspapers such as The New York Times and The Washington Post, as well as in literary journals including Orion, Brevity, JuxtaProse Literary Magazine, Seneca Review, and Image. She is the current Editor-in-Chief of Bellingham Review.
Susan Cheever is an American author and a prize-winning best-selling writer well known for her memoir, her writing about alcoholism, and her intimate understanding of American history. She is a recipient of the PEN New England Award. She currently teaches in the MFA program at The New School in New York City.
Lillian Faderman is an American historian whose books on lesbian history and LGBT history have earned critical praise and awards. The New York Times named three of her books on its "Notable Books of the Year" list. In addition, The Guardian named her book, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers, one of the Top 10 Books of Radical History. She was a professor of English at California State University, Fresno, which bestowed her emeritus status, and a visiting professor at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She retired from academe in 2007. Faderman has been referred to as "the mother of lesbian history" for her groundbreaking research and writings on lesbian culture, literature, and history.
Meghan O'Rourke is an American nonfiction writer, poet and critic.
Sarah Manguso is an American writer and poet. In 2007, she was awarded the Joseph Brodsky Rome Prize Fellowship in literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her memoir The Two Kinds of Decay (2008), was named an "Editors’ Choice" title by the New York Times Sunday Book Review and a 2008 "Best Nonfiction Book of the Year" by the San Francisco Chronicle. Her book Ongoingness: The End of a Diary (2015) was also named a New York Times "Editors’ Choice." Her debut novel, Very Cold People, was published by Penguin in 2022.
Dara Horn is an American novelist, essayist, and professor of literature. She has written five novels and in 2021, released a nonfiction essay collection titled People Love Dead Jews, which was a finalist for the 2021 Kirkus Prize in nonfiction. She won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award in 2002, the National Jewish Book Award in 2003, 2006, and 2021, and the Harold U. Ribalow Prize in 2007.
Melissa Febos is an American writer and professor. She is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Whip Smart (2010) and the essay collections Abandon Me (2017) and Girlhood (2021).
Leslie Sierra Jamison is an American novelist and essayist. She is the author of the 2010 novel The Gin Closet and the 2014 essay collection The Empathy Exams. Jamison also directs the nonfiction concentration in writing at Columbia University School of the Arts.
Julia Wertz is an American cartoonist, writer and urban explorer.
Sy Montgomery is an American naturalist, author, and scriptwriter who writes for children as well as adults.
A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Jonestown (2011) is a history of the Jonestown settlement and massacre in 1978. Written by journalist Julia Scheeres, the book chronicles the lives of five people who resided in Jonestown before the mass murder-suicides that claimed 918 lives.
Robin Romm is an American writer of fiction and nonfiction books.
Debra Marquart is an American poet and musician from the small town of Napoleon, North Dakota. Since 1992 she has been performing as singer-songwriter with the band The Bone People. After graduating with master's degrees from Moorhead State University and Iowa State University (ISU), she became an English professor at ISU, directing an MFA program in "creative writing and environment". In 2014, she taught writers' workshops in Bakken oil field communities most affected by hydraulic fracking, where "many people ... are despairing – feeling that they have been declared an energy sacrifice zone." She is the Poet Laureate of Iowa since 2019. In 2021 she received an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship.
Julia Woodlands Baird is an Australian journalist, broadcaster and author. She contributes to The New York Times and The Sydney Morning Herald and has been a regular host of The Drum, a television news review program on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). Her non-fiction work includes a bestselling memoir, a biography on Queen Victoria and a meditation on the experience of grace during a time of dark politics.
Tara Westover is an American memoirist, essayist and historian. Her memoir Educated (2018) debuted at No. 1 on The New York Times bestseller list and was a finalist for a number of national awards, including the LA Times Book Prize, PEN America's Jean Stein Book Award, and two awards from the National Book Critics Circle Award. The New York Times ranked Educated as one of the 10 Best Books of 2018. Westover was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of 2019.
The San Francisco Writers Grotto is a writers' coworking space in San Francisco’s SOMA district. Founded in 1993 by writers Po Bronson, Ethan Canin and Ethan Watters, the Writers Grotto is a community of working writers which provides support, feedback, and community to its members. Members have won Pulitzer prizes and Guggenheim Fellowships and penned New York Times bestsellers, national TV series and movies. Notable alumni include ZZ Packer, Roberto Lovato, Mary Roach, and Julia Scheeres. All Writers Grotto members are vetted before acceptance and must have a published book or a significant amount of journalistic or related media work published.
Elizabeth Weil is an American journalist and nonfiction writer. Weil wrote for the New York Times for nearly 20 years, during which she also wrote freelance for a number of other magazines. She has also written two nonfiction books and co-authored two nonfiction books. Her journalism has received many accolades, including a New York Press Club Award and a GLAAD Award. Her biography The Girl Who Smiled Beads has received such accolades as the Andrew Carnegie Medal of Excellence in Nonfiction. From March 2020 until December 2021, Weil wrote for ProPublica. She is now a features writer for New York Magazine. Weil teaches part-time at UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism.
Jenn Shapland is an American writer and archivist. Her essay "Finders, Keepers" won a Pushcart Prize in 2017, and her memoir, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers, won the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir in 2021.
Maria Katsaris was a member of the Peoples Temple cult led by Jim Jones. She is known for being one of the most high-ranking figures in Temple leadership and one of Jim Jones' lovers.
