Annette Sandoval
Annette Sandoval’s writing is tightly bound to her experience as a Mexican-American. The youngest of five children, she began life in the barrio neighborhoods of Santa Ana, California. Wanting one of her children to have an “American” name, Annette's mother named her after a Mouseketeer. Annette worked at Disneyland while in her teens. She was forced to wear a paper hat and a name tag. When people asked if Annette Funichello was her mother, she would say, “Yes.”
Guy Kuttner
The late Guy Kuttner (1946-2011, Harvard '67) was the recipient/victim of a dreary public school education. Guy shared his humanity, insight, irreverence and wit in his story "Always" in HSE's Above Ground and through his writings on school reform, social justice, politics and the people he knew. He wrote books, columns and powerful letters to the editor. A lifelong peacemaker and war resister, he turned in his draft card with a poem to J. Edgar Hoover and worked whole-heartedly with the War Resisters League, War Tax Resistance Movement, Humboldt Draft Coordinating Committee, Humboldt Sanctuary Movement and Humboldt Committee for Conscientious Objectors, establishing the GI Rights Hotline.
Abda Khan
In 2017, the Iranian and Kurdish Women’s Rights Organisation named Abda Khan a 'True Honour Award' Honouree for her work, including Stained (HSE 2016), her debut novel. She has also been shortlisted for the Asian Women of Acheivement Award 2017. Born to Pakistani immigrant parents, Abda Khan was the first child in her family to go on to higher education. She is a lawyer with her own practice.
Kyla Bennett
After receiving a PhD in Ecology from the University of Connecticut, Kyla Bennett attended Lewis and Clark’s Northwestern School of Law, where she obtained a J.D. with a certificate in Natural Resources and Environmental Law. Kyla returned to the east coast in 1989, when she began work at the Boston office of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency doing wetlands permitting and enforcement. She soon became EPA’s Wetlands Enforcement Coordinator for New England, and stayed in that position until she left EPA in 1999. Kyla then worked as the Deputy Director of Habitat for the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW), headquartered on Cape Cod. After two years of protecting wildlife and their habitats around the world, Kyla joined Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). Today, Kyla is the Director of New England PEER, working to protect local, state and federal employees who protect the environment.
Sean Elder
Sean Elder is a freelance writer and editor based in Brooklyn, New York; Salisbury, CT; and Palo Alto, CA. His short story 'The Vale of Cashmere' was first published in Harvard Square Edition's anthology Voice from the Planet. His writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Details, Vogue, Elle, New York, Men's Journal, National Geographic, Premiere, Gourmet, Food & Wine, Redbook, Glamour and numerous other publications. He was also an editor at a few of those places and still works on print magazines and digital publications. A piece he wrote for O: The Oprah Magazine about being a stay-at-home dad was included in a best-of O collection entitled Live Your Best Life that was published in 2005.
Fidelis O. Mkparu
Fidelis O. Mkparu is an award-winning author born in Onitsha, Nigeria. He was a recipient of Reader’s Digest Scholarship and is the author of Love's Affliction, winner of a Nautilus Award and a Reviewer's Choice Award, and IndieFab Book of the Year Finalist, and of Tears Before Exaltation. A Harvard-trained cardiologist, he has published peer-reviewed scientific papers and review articles in major journals, and written articles for lay people on medical issues. He was inducted into Paul Dudley White Honor Society by Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, where he was a Spaulding fellow. He lives in Canton, Ohio. Web site: http://fidelismkparu.com
Stu Krieger
Among his more than 25 produced credits, Stu Krieger wrote the animated classic The Land Before Time for producers Steven Spielberg & George Lucas. The 2017 Riverside International Film Festival is presenting Stu Krieger with its Lifetime Achievement Award in Screenwriting at their opening night gala on April 21, 2017. Stu Krieger’s first novel, That One Cigarette, a story of ordinary people making extraordinary ripples in the ocean of life, will be published by Harvard Square Editions in the fall of 2017.
S. Li
S. Li's debut novel, Transoceanic Lights (HSE 2015), is a 2016 National Book Foundation ‘5 Under 35 Award’ Winner, Leapfrog Fiction Contest Semifinalist, Asheville Award Finalist, Willow Books Literature Award Finalist. He was born in Guangzhou, China in 1984 and moved to the US in 1989. He graduated with an A.B. in Biochemical Sciences from Harvard in 2006 and an M.D. from the University of Massachusetts in 2010. He is a neurologist living in the Boston area.
Kunyang He
Kunyang He is a Chinese author writing in English. He has written two independent films and one documentary featuring the new generation of Chinese immigrants and international students in the States. He is also a translator and an English teacher, who takes teaching very seriously. The College of Corn is his first novel.
Erika Raskin
Erika Raskin's debut novel, Close (Harvard Square Editions) is a gripping story about a modern family that a TV therapist tries to help. Her second novel, Best Intentions, is being published by St. Martin's Press (August 15, 2017). The daughter of a novelist and human rights activist, she grew up in Washington, D.C. Her family lived in an old brick row house that was a hub of the anti-war and women’s movement. There was an endless soundtrack of Motown, classical music and politics. She's been writing off and on since elementary school. (She still remembers a short story she wrote in fourth grade that began: “Drip, drip, drip the faucet was leaking again. Or was it the rain?”)
Harriet Levin Millan
Harriet Levin Millan is a prize winning poet and writer. Her poetry collection, The Christmas Show, (Beacon Press) was selected for the Barnard New Women Poets Prize and The Poetry Society of America’s Alice Fay di Castagnola Award. She received a MFA from the University of Iowa’s Writers Workshop and has written for The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Harvard Review, The Iowa Review, PEN America, The Smart Set, among other publications. She and her family founded the Reunion Project and along with the participation of Philadelphia-area high school and college students, raised money to reunite several Lost Boys and Girls of Sudan with their mothers living abroad. She teaches creative writing in the English Department at Drexel University and directs the Certificate Program in Writing and Publishing. She lives with her husband outside Philadelphia.
Kelvin Christopher James
Kelvin Christopher James is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature. He is the critically-acclaimed author of five novels: Secrets, a Novel (Villard & Vintage & KDP Indie), Fling with a Demon Lover (HarperCollins & KDP Indie), The Sorcerer's Drum, Web of Freedom, Mooch, the Meek (KDP Indies), and short story collections Jumping Ship and Other Stories (Villard & KDP Indie), "City Lives", "Crazy Loves", "Backcountry Tales", "A Fantastic Dozen"(KDP Indies). Kelvin is a US citizen living in New York.