Mona de Vestel
Of mixed Belgian and African descent, Mona grew up in Brussels and later moved to the United States where she taught writing at the State University of New York (Oswego & Utica). Her memoir King Leopold’s Daughter is a finalist for Restless Books’ Immigrant Writing Prize. Her work explores the role of the ‘other’ in the marginalized voices of our world. She is currently at work on Trail of Light, a memoir about her quest for joy, healing, and the magic in her life. Mona now lives in Southern California with her family. For more info about the author, please visit: www.authormona.com
Alan Howard
Alan Howard has written for The New York Times Magazine, the Nation, Dissent, public television and labor union publications about workers and politics in the US and many other countries around the world. He was a Fulbright Scholar at San Carlos University in Guatemala, an International Fellow at Columbia University, the Latin American correspondent for Liberation News Service, and a national volunteer leader in the 2008 and 2012 campaigns of Barack Obama. His novella Hollywood Furs was short-listed for the 2011 Paris Literary Prize. In the Land of Eternal Spring is his first novel.
Michael Raleigh
Michael Raleigh's new novel The Conjurer's Boy was praised for its "beautifully modulated undercurrent of subtle fantasy" by The Midwest Review. He has received the Eugene Izzi award for crime fiction and four Illinois Arts Council awards for fiction. Michael is the author of seven previous novels, including In the Castle of the Flynns. He teaches writing at DePaul University and lives in Chicago with his wife Katherine and his three children.
Margot Singer
Margot Singer teaches creative writing at Denison University and has won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, the Glasgow Prize for Emerging Writers, and the Reform Judaism Prize for Jewish Fiction for her first novel. Her short stories and essays have appeared in HSE's Above Ground, The Gettysburg Review, Shenandoah, The Western Humanities Review, Agni, Prairie Schooner, The Sun, and many others. She has also received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Carter Prize for the Essay, and an honorable mention from the judges of the PEN/Hemingway award.
Tony Rogers
Tony Rogers' collection of short stories, Bewildered, Harold Faced the Day, won the Writer's Voice Capricorn Prize. He was a semi-finalist in the Quarterly West novella contest. An excerpt from his award-winning first novel was first published in HSE's Above Ground anthology. His fiction has also been published in Pleiades, Worcester Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Painted Hills Review, Thema, Outerbridge, and many others.
Andrew Binks
Andrew Binks has won honorable mention in the Writer’s Union of Canada’s short prose contest, Glimmertrain’s Family Matters contest, and he was a finalist in the Queen’s University Alumni Review poetry contest, and This Magazine’s “Great Canadian Literary Hunt.” An excerpt of his novel, The Catalytic Seduction of Brian White, was first published in HSE's Voice from the Planet. His fiction and non-fiction has been published in Joyland, Galleon, Fugue, Prism International, Harrington Gay Men’s Literary Quarterly (U.S.), Bent Magazine, The Globe and Mail, and Xtra, among others.
Wickham Boyle
Wickham Boyle
Ben Mattlin
Ben Mattlin is an NPR commentator, a contributing editor at Institutional Investor magazine, and a frequent contributor to other financial and general-interest publications. His short story, "Learning to Crawl" was first published in HSE's Voice from the Planet. His credits also include Newsweek and Self magazines, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and USA Today. Mattlin has written for the Mark Taper Forum, Blonde and Brunette Productions, and the children’s television program Biker Mice From Mars. He has appeared on ABC’s Prime Time Live, CNN, and E! Entertainment Network; been interviewed on radio stations KKFI and KPFK, Los Angeles, and KSLC, Salt Lake City; and been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, Penthouse, and USA Today.
Maria Pavlova
Maria Pavlova was born in the second largest city in Bulgaria, Plovdiv. Her short story, "The Fire Dancer," was first published in HSE's Voice from the Planet. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been published in Cezanne’s Carrot, Forge, Yellow Medicine Review, and Etchings. She has a degree in Slavic studies and has worked as a journalist for various Bulgarian newspapers. Maria writes essays, poetry, short stories, and novelettes, some of which have been published in the press. When she started working on her first novel, The Rival, Maria took a leave of absence so she could concentrate on the process of writing. The novel tells the story of a blind girl who simultaneously discovers love, life and the feeling for colors.
Paula Brancato
Paula Brancato is an award-winning fiction writer, poet and filmmaker, and is on faculty at the University of Southern California. Paula was a May Swenson and Holland Prize finalist and has won the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Prize for Poetry, the Brushfire Poet Award, first prize Chester H. Jones Foundation, the Karlovy Vary film festival award, National Screenwriters Award, Pacific Northwest Writers Association and the Organization of Black Screenwriters, SCIFF Family Focus and WINFEMME awards. She has been a Sundance finalist twice. Paula has been published in HSE's Voice from the Planet, Mudfish, Georgetown Review, Litchfield Review, Southern California Anthology, Rattle, and Natchez Anthology, among others.
Tom Dolembo
Tom Dolembo, Harvard '67 English cum laude, MBA '71, David McCord writing scholar. An excerpt of his novel The Grapes and the Fox appears in HSE's Above Ground anthology. Tom lives on a farm and bird sanctuary in the village of Kewadin in Northwest Michigan. A native Hoosier born in Michigan City, Indiana, he is the author of numerous tracts, novels, poems, and articles. He can be found near lakes, rivers, streams, and low marshy places often looking for wildlife who are effortlessly avoiding him. His recent writing projects have included an enormous Civil War Trilogy, a shorter book of children's poems, and filler articles for rural newspapers on raising chickens and astronomy.
Stan Duncan
Stan G. Duncan (HDS, ‘90) has published a book on human rights in El Salvador, four books on economic development in the Third World, and a collection of devotional writings, plus numerous articles, essays, and National Public Radio commentaries. An excerpt of his first work of fiction—a novella written for his collection of short fiction, The Fire on Poteau Mountain—appears in HSE's Above Ground. Stan is a Huffington Post blogger and has worked as a protestant pastor, campus minister, college instructor, jazz pianist, and development economist. He has lived in five states and six countries and speaks broken English in three languages. He has three children and four grandchildren.