Erin Bledsoe

Erin Bledsoe is a historical fiction author whose book, THE FORTY ELEPHANTS, is best described as a gender-bent Peaky Blinders meets Ocean’s 8 tale of London's first female gang—a group of high-stakes shoplifters who robbed the city's classiest department stores in the 1920s—and the woman who comes to rule it: the notorious Alice Diamond.

Erin Bledsoe was told in sixth grade that her essay on Marie Antoinette showed promise, fueling her dream to write about historical women that break boundaries. When she’s not writing, she’s exploring nature, collecting journals, or rolling dice at a table with friends playing Dungeons and Dragons. She lives with her husband and children in Michigan.

Susan Meissner

Susan Meissner is the critically-acclaimed author of 27 novels for adults and two children’s books. Her engaging novels feature memorable characters facing unique and complex circumstances, often against a backdrop of historical significance. A multi-award-winning author, her books have earned starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, Library Journal and Booklist. Prior to her writing career, she was a managing editor of a weekly newspaper in southwestern Minnesota. She enjoys teaching workshops on writing, spending time with her family, reading great books and traveling. Susan now makes her home in the Pacific Northwest with her husband Bob (a retired chaplain in the Air Force Reserves) and their yellow lab, Winston.

Valerie Nieman

Valerie Nieman's debut historical novel, Upon the Corner of the Moon, is the story of the young Macbeths, destined to unite Scotland in the tumultuous 11th century. A second book, The Last Highland King, will appear in 2027. She is the author of a short fiction collection, three poetry books, and six other novels, including In the Lonely Backwater, winner of the 2022 Sir Walter Raleigh Award, which was called “not only a page-turning thriller but also a complex psychological portrait of a young woman dealing with guilt, betrayal, and secrecy.” Her novel Blood Clay won the Eric Hoffer Prize in General Fiction. To the Bones, a horror/Appalachian/ecojustice novel, was a finalist for the 2020 Manly Wade Wellman Award, and now has a sequel, Dead Hand. A graduate of West Virginia University and Queens University of Charlotte, she has held state and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and was a founding editor of two literary magazines. Now professor emerita of creative writing at NC Agricultural and Technical State University, she teaches at writers’ workshops.

Elizabeth Bass Parman

Elizabeth is a native Nashvillian, who had the extraordinarily good fortune of having as an English teacher in middle school author Lee Smith. Lee told Elizabeth to always keep writing, which she has joyfully done.

She received her Bachelor’s degree in English literature from Hamilton College in upstate New York after spending a glorious Junior year in Canterbury, England, attending the University of Kent. She visited a dozen countries during her time there, much to the detriment of her GPA. As an Anglophile, one of the highlights of her travels was finding herself in a tiny museum in Wales, alone with Princess Diana’s wedding dress.

After a year working in Manhattan, she returned to Nashville and married her high school sweetheart. They have now-grown identical twin daughters.

She holds a Master’s degree in education from Belmont University in Nashville, and recently retired from a non-profit, working with children and adults with reading-based learning disabilities such as dyslexia.

Elizabeth is a member of the Women's Fiction Writers Association and the Nashville Writers Alliance.

Sharon Short

Sharon Short is the author of fifteen published books. Her newest, Trouble Island, is historical suspense published by Minotaur Books in 2024. As Jess Montgomery, she writes the historical Kinship Mysteries set in the 1920s and inspired by Ohio’s true first female sheriff. Sharon is a contributing editor to Writer’s Digest, for which she writes the column, “Level Up Your Writing (Life)” and teaches for Writer’s Digest University. She is also a three-time recipient of the Individual Excellence Award in Literary Arts from Ohio Arts Council and has been a John E. Nance Writer in Residence at Thurber House (Columbus, Ohio). When not writing, Sharon enjoys spending time with family and friends, reading, swimming, and occasionally hiking. Learn more about her work at www.sharonshort.com or www.jessmontgomeryauthor.com