JL Morin
JL Morin grew up in inner-city Detroit. She proffered moral support while her parents sacrificed all to a failed system. Wondering what the Japanese were doing right, she decamped to Tokyo. Her debut Japan novel, Sazzae, won an eLit Gold Medal, and a Living Now Book Award. Her second novel, Travelling Light, was a USA Best Book Awards finalist, and her third, Trading Dreams, became ‘Occupy’s first bestselling novel’. Her climate fiction novel, Nature's Confession, won first place in the Dante Rossetti Book Awards; a Readers’ Favorite Book Award; a LitPick 5-Star Review Award; and an excerpt received an Honorable Mention in the Eco-Fiction Story Contest, published in the Winds of Change anthology of eco-fiction. Her second cli-fi novel, Loveoid, is a Cygnus Sci-fi 1st place winner, among others.
Charles Degelman
Charles Degelman, is an award-winning author, performer, and producer living in Los Angeles. His recent novel, A Bowl Full of Nails, set in the counterculture of the 1970s, collected a Bronze Medal from the 2015 Independent Publishers Book Awards and was a finalist in the Bellwether Competition, sponsored by Barbara Kingsolver. His novel Gates of Eden, set during the anti-war movement of the 1960s, won an Independent Publishers book award, and his first screenplay, “FIFTY-SECOND STREET”, garnered an award from the Diane Thomas Competition, sponsored by UCLA and Dreamworks. His first novel, A Bowl Full of Nails, was a finalist in the Bellwether Competition, sponsored by Barbara Kingsolver. He is on the Faculty of California State University where he teaches writing in the Television, Film, and Media Studies/Communications Studies program.
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.
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?”)
Yang Huang
Yang Huang grew up in Jiangsu, China and came to the US to study computer science. While working as an engineer, she studied literature and pursued writing, her passion since childhood. Her debut novel Living Treasures (Harvard Square Editions) is a Nautilus Award winner, a Living Now Book Award medalist, a Pen/Bellwether Prize finalist and a Top Ten Historical Novel of 2014 at Foreword Reviews. Yang’s second novel is a Juniper Prize Winner and was published by University of Massachusetts Press.
Michael Ferro
Born and bred in Detroit, Michael A. Ferro holds a degree in creative writing from Michigan State University. He has received an Honorable Mention from Glimmer Train for their New Writers Award and won the Jim Cash Creative Writing Award for Fiction in 2008. TITLE 13 (Harvard Square Editions) is his debut novel. Michael’s fiction and essays have been featured in numerous online and print publications. Michael has lived, worked, and written throughout the Midwest, currently as a Sportswriter and a Features Writer for CBS Detroit. In 2014, Michael became a national music and sports columnist for AXS. He currently resides in rural Ann Arbor, Michigan.
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.
Rajani Kanth
Rajani Kanth, author, has held affiliations with some of the most prestigious universities in the world. He has also served as an advisor to the United Nations. He is the author/editor of several academic works in political economy and culture-critique, is a novelist and poet, and has also scribed several screenplays. He is, presently a visiting fellow at Harvard University, and permanent trustee of the World Peace Congress.
Ruben Varda
Ruben Varda's humorous story 'Consultation' about a celestial chemistry class was first published in the HSE anthology Voice from the Planet, later reprinted in Cambridge Book Review, and was lauded by British reviewer The Truth about Books, which named Planet 'Book of the Month'.
Diane Haithman
Diane Haithman has been an Arts Staff Writer for the Los Angeles Times and is a major contributor to Nikki Finke’s infamous Deadline Hollywood Daily industry website. She was the LA Times’ Writer-in-Residence at the Annenberg School of Journalism, University of Southern California, and is currently on the Membership Committee of PEN USA. An excerpt of her forthcoming novel was first published in HSE's Voice from the Planet.
Matthew Schultz
Matthew Schultz was born in Cleveland, Ohio. He is the Director of the Writing Center at Vassar College, where he also teaches courses in literary modernism, composition and rhetoric, and writing pedagogy. He is the author of Haunted Historiographies: The Rhetoric of Ideology in Postcolonial Irish Fiction and holds a B.A. and M.A. in English literature from John Carroll University and a Ph.D. in modern Irish literature from Saint Louis University.
