Alphabetized by first name
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Books: Postmarked Piper's ReachAdam Byatt is a high school English teacher, and drummer in a covers band, sifting through the ennui, minutiae and detritus of life and cataloguing them as potential story ideas. He describes his writing as ‘suburban realism’. He has had short stories and poems published in journals including Tincture Literary Journal and Vine Leaves Literary Journal, and short stories published in original anthologies with eMergent Publishing. He is a founding member of The JAR Writers Collective with Jodi Cleghorn and Rus VanWestervelt.
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Books: Not a Place on Any Map | Work Hard, Not SmartAlexis Paige is the author of two award-winning memoirs: Work Hard, Not Smart: How to Make a Messy Literary Life; and Not a Place on Any Map. Her work appears in many journals, including Longform, Hippocampus, Fourth Genre , The Rumpus, and on Brevity, where she was an Assistant Editor. Winner of the New Millennium Nonfiction Prize, Paige has also received two “Notable” mentions in Best American Essays and four Pushcart Prize nominations. Assistant Professor of English at Vermont State University, and CNF aquisitions editor at Vine Leaves, she holds an MA in poetry and an MFA in nonfiction. Paige lives in Vermont with her husband and a rotating cast of rescue animals.
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Books: HarvestAmanya Maloba is the author of the very first book Vine Leaves Press ever published. A fashion and cannabis writer, and co-founder of Women.Weed.WiFi, she holds a Bachelor of Arts in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago. Her writing and photography has appeared in numerous publications including the Huffington Post, Refinery29, and CollegeFashionista. Amanya has also participated in style campaigns with Finish Line and eBay. Amanya’s writing is influenced by her Kenyan heritage as well as her time living in London and miscellaneous travels.
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Books: You. I. Us. | Grace & Serenity | Small Forgotten MomentsAnnalisa Crawford lives in Cornwall UK, with a good supply of moorland and beaches to keep her inspired. She lives with her husband, two sons, and canine writing partner Artoo. Annalisa writes dark contemporary, character-driven stories. She has been winning competitions and publishing short stories in small press journals for many years and is the author of several short story collections. She won 3rd prize in the Costa Short Story Award, 2015.
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Books: On the Shore | Tazia and Gemma | The Great Stork DerbyAnn’s awards include a Pushcart Prize nomination for creative nonfiction, the Walter Sullivan prize in fiction, and an Editors’ Choice selection by Historical Novel Review. Her fiction credits include the novel A Brain. A Heart. The Nerve. and short stories in Sewanee Review, PRISM International, Ascent, The Long Story, and elsewhere. In addition, she has a doctorate in developmental psychology and has published many books for professional and lay audiences on child development and early childhood education. She also has a Master of Fine Arts in textiles. The social sciences and visual arts are reflected in the content and imagery of her writing.
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Books: Were You Close?Anne Pinkerton studied poetry at Hampshire College and received an MFA in creative nonfiction from Bay Path University. Her writing often focuses on making sense of challenging life experiences; significant themes include loss, illness, grief, and coping. She has been published in Modern Loss, Hippocampus Magazine, The Bark, the anthology The Pandemic Midlife Crisis: Gen X Women on the Brink, and elsewhere. Were You Close? was a semi-finalist for the 2019 River Teeth Book Prize. Pinkerton lives in western Massachusetts where she works as a marketing communications professional.
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Books: Have You Eaten Rice Today?A transient life has seen Anglo-Australian Apple Gidley live in countries as diverse as Trinidad and Thailand, Nigeria and the Netherlands, and another eight in between. St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands is home, for now. Her roles have been varied—editor, intercultural trainer for multi-national corporations, British Honorary Consul to Equatorial Guinea, amongst others. Gidley started writing in 2010 and is now working on a contemporary novel whilst researching for two more historical fiction books. She has short stories in anthologies, and also writes a regular blog, A Broad View.
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Books: We All Reach the Earth by Falling | Passion Demands a Vocabulary of Desire (Volumes 1-4)Bauke Kamstra has been a visual artist for over thirty years and now paints his life experiences and the beauty around him with a different medium: words. He resides in Nova Scotia where each morning he can be found writing poetry among the trees, listening to the silence.
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Books: Then AgainBen Berman’s first book, Strange Borderlands, won the 2014 Peace Corps Award for Best Book of Poetry and was a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Awards. His second collection, Figuring in the Figure, came out in 2017 from Able Muse Press. He has received awards from the New England Poetry Club and fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and Somerville Arts Council, and teaches in the Boston area where he lives his wife and daughters.
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Books: The Sea LanternsBen Nickol’s several books include The Sea Lanterns, and Sun River: Stories, which was named a Quivering Pen Best Book of 2019. His stories and essays have also appeared widely, in venues such as Alaska Quarterly Review, Crab Orchard Review, CutBank and elsewhere. Originally from Idaho, he returned to the Northwest in 2021 after teaching for several years in the M.F.A. program at Wichita State University.
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Books: Pandora's Boxset 2Born in London, Carol Cooper was a few months old when her cosmopolitan family took her to live in Egypt. She returned to the UK at eighteen and went to Cambridge University where she studied medicine and her fellow students. On her path to a career as a family doctor, she worked at supermarket check‐outs, typed manuscripts in Russian, and served her time as a junior hospital doctor. Following a string of popular health books and an award-winning medical textbook, Carol turned to writing the kind of fiction she enjoys reading. One Night at the Jacaranda is the first of her three novels to date.
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Books: In the Fullness of Time | Q & A | Death and Other Survival StrategiesIn addition to her fiction, Carolyn R. Russell is also the author of The Films of Joel and Ethan Coen, published by McFarland & Company in 2001. Her essays and short stories have been widely published. She holds an M.A. in Film Studies from Chapman University, and has taught on the college, high school, and middle school levels. Carolyn lives north of Boston with her husband and two children.
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Books: The Shape of NormalCatherine (Cathy) Shields writes about parenting, and self-discovery. In her debut memoir, The Shape of Normal, Cathy explores the truths and lies parents tell themselves. Her stories and essays have appeared in NBC Today, Newsweek, Bacopa Literary Review, Grown and Flown, Brevity Blog, Write City Magazine, The Manifest-Station and elsewhere. Cathy lives in Miami, Florida. In her free time, Cathy likes to hike, kayak, and explore the Everglades National Park with her husband, to whom she’s been married to forever.
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Books: Raven's GraveCharlotte Stuart PhD writes about diverse topics such as hidden treasure, chimeras, commercial fishing, friendship and betrayal. Her books have received numerous awards including a Global eBook gold, two NYC Big Book Distinguished Favorites, and a Pinnacle Achievement Book Award. Before she started writing full-time, she left a tenured faculty position to go commercial fishing in Alaska, spent a year sailing in the Washington and Canadian San Juans, and was a partner in a management consulting group. She lives and writes on Vashon Island in the Pacific Northwest and is the past president of the Puget Sound Sisters in Crime.
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Books: Hillcrest-Oakden: The Diary of a Psychiatric NurseChristine Hillingdon was born in England and migrated with her family to Adelaide, South Australia in 1963. In 2011 Christine self published a book through Peacock Publications about her twenty seven years working as a Psychiatric Nurse at Hillcrest Hospital. In 2016 her first novel of women’s fiction ‘The Maddest Kind Of Love’ was published through Driven Press Publishers. Also published in 2016 through Gnome On Pig Publications was a children’s book titled, ‘The Girl From Far Away.’
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Books: CellographyCellist Christine Thomas Tsen attended Eastman School as an undergraduate studying under Paul Katz. She received her Masters with high honors from the New England Conservatory studying under Colin Carr.
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Books: Shape of EmptinessChumki Sharma is a poet from Calcutta, India. She was crowned Ms India 2018 and Ms United Nations Globe 2018. She is widely published in the small press across the world and is slowly and surely carving out a niche for her fresh new exciting voice in the poetry world. In a transient world, words are the only things that stay, and so she uses them to write poems of leaving.
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Books: Pandora's Boxset 1Clare Flynn is the author of thirteen historical novels. A former International Marketing Director and management consultant, she is now a full-time writer. Having lived and worked in London, Paris, Brussels, Milan and Sydney, home is now the coast, in Sussex, England, where she can watch the sea from her windows. An avid traveler, her books are often set in exotic locations. Clare is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a member of The Society of Authors, ALLi, and the Romantic Novelists Association. When not writing, she loves to read, quilt, paint and play the piano.
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Books: Solace: A Memoir in VerseColleen Mills is a teacher, writer, and editor living in the Hudson Valley Region of New York. She holds an MFA in writing from Goddard College and a BA in Secondary English Education from SUNY New Paltz.
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Books: Truth Like OilConnie is the author of Truth Like Oil and three loosely connected novels: Roses Take Practice, Bread and Salt, and Digging to Indochina. She teaches in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Lagonav, Haiti, sharing her love of reading and writing with homeschoolers and hundreds of students and teachers in public and private schools. She is the grateful recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council artist grant, a PEN New England Discovery Award and numerous residencies and fellowships.
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Books: They Believed They Were SafeCordelia Frances Biddle finds inspiration in the connections and correlations within history. Her prior career as a stage and television actress helps her inhabit other lives from earlier eras.
Cordelia teaches at Drexel University’s Pennoni Honors College. She received the 2021 Adjunct Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence. |
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Books: Love Like ThisCynthia Newberry Martin's first novel, Tidal Flats, won the Gold Medal in Literary Fiction at the 2020 Independent Publisher Book Awards and the 14th Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Fiction. Her website features the How We Spend Our Days series, over a decade of essays by writers on their lives. She grew up in Atlanta and now lives in Columbus, Georgia, with her husband, and in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in a little house by the water.
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Books: The Garage? Just Torch It.Dylan D. Debelis is a publisher, poet, performer, chaplain, and minister. A candidate for Unitarian Universalist Ministry, Dylan embodies his faith in praxis through his pastoral care and social justice activism. In sermons, writings, and worship, Dylan weaves grotesque worlds, loving embraces, and an off-kilter wit to lead the audience or congregation in a very unorthodox prayer. Dylan has performed his poetry and ministry globally, being featured in venues and churches throughout India, Tanzania, Mexico, New Zealand, and throughout the United States.
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Books: What Just Happened: 210 Haiku Against the Trump PresidencyDavid Starkey is Founding Director of the Creative Writing Program at Santa Barbara City College and Co-editor of Gunpowder Press and The California Review of Books. His poetry has appeared in American Scholar, Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Southern Review and many others. His textbook, Creative Writing: Four Genres in Brief (Bedford/St. Martin’s) is in its fourth edition, and his latest of eleven small press poetry collections are Dance, You Monster, to My Soft Song, and What Just Happened.
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Books: Universally Adored & Other One Dollar StoriesElizabeth Bruce’s debut novel, And Silent Left the Place, won Washington Writers’ Publishing House’s Fiction Award and distinctions from Foreword Magazine and Texas Institute of Letters. She’s published in USA, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Malawi, India, Yemen, and The Philippines. A co-founder of Sanctuary Theatre, her bilingual book, CentroNia’s Theatrical Journey Playbook: Introducing Science to Early Learners through Guided Pretend Play, garnered four indie awards. She’s received DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities and McCarthey Dressman Education Foundation Fellowships.
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Books: Italian Bones in the Snow | Heart & SaltElaina Battista-Parsons is a writer across genres. She also works as a reading coach for students with disabilities. Elaina loves ice cream, antiques, pop culture, and snow. Elaina’s poems and essays have been published by Backlash Press, Burnt Pine Magazine, Vine Leaves Press, and Read Furiously. She also has an upcoming YA novel with Inked in Gray Press.
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Books: The River is EverywhereEmilie-Noelle Provost lives in an old mill city in northeastern Massachusetts with her husband, daughter, and three crazy rescue cats. She has held editorial roles at several magazines and is the author of the middle-grade adventure novel, The Blue Bottle (North Country Press, 2018). When she's not clicking away on her keyboard, she can usually be found on hiking trail in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
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Books: Blood Up NorthFredrick Soukup is a St. Paul-based literary fiction author. His debut novel, BLISS (Regal House Publishing), was recognized in 2020 as a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award and received a bronze medal Independent Publisher Book Award. Soukup was a semifinalist for the 2017 American Short Fiction Prize and shortlisted by C&R Press for its 2019 Book Award. He has published works in Fluent Magazine and Sou’wester. A native of Minnesota, Soukup received a philosophy degree from St. John’s University (Minnesota) in 2010.
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Books: The Angle of Flickering LightGina Troisi’s work has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Fourth Genre, The Gettysburg Review, Fugue, Under the Sun, Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment, and elsewhere. Her essays and stories have been recognized as finalists in several contests, such as American Literary Review’s Creative Nonfiction Contest, 2018, and the 2009 Eric Hoffer Award for prose.
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Books: Edna & Luna | Million Dollar RedPrior to the publication of her acclaimed first novel Edna & Luna in 2016, Gleah Powers led a life by turns grounded and nomadic. Her Phoenix-based grandmother provided a first intermittent refuge against her mother's frequent marriages. By 18, Gleah was fully on her own, traveling with the production of Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point, teaching the great filmmaker—and great insomniac—the card game Gin Rummy while the rest of the crew slept. Thereafter she studied art in Mexico City and Los Angeles; modeled in New York, tended bar, explored the world—and world—of adventure she makes unforgettable in Million Dollar Red.
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Books: Chickens One Day, Feathers the NextGuinotte Wise writes and welds steel sculpture on a farm in Resume Speed, Kansas. His short story collection (Night Train, Cold Beer) won publication by a university press and enough money to fix the soffits. Six more books since. A 5- time Pushcart nominee, his fiction, essays and poetry have been published in numerous literary journals including Atticus, The MacGuffin, Southern Humanities Review, Rattle and The American Journal of Poetry. His wife has an honest job in the city and drives 100 miles a day to keep it.
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Books: Pandora's Boxset 1Helena writes Nordic fiction with a hint of both Romance and Noir. Her latest series, Love on the Island, is set on the quirky and serenely beautiful Åland Islands, which lie in the Baltic Sea between Finland and Sweden. Prize-winning author, former BBC journalist, bookseller, and magazine editor, Helena Halme holds an MSc in Marketing and an MA in Creative Writing. She has published twelve fiction titles and three nonfiction books. Addicted to Nordic Noir, Helena lives in London. Her guilty pleasure is dancing to Abba alone in her kitchen.
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Books: MFA Thesis NovelIan M. Rogers grew up in New Hampshire before studying literature at Bennington College in Vermont and creative writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where he learned to write short bios like this one. He has worked as a copy editor, a greenhouse assistant, a school secretary, a grocery clerk, an online test-grader, a housepainter, a gardener, and a teacher of English in Japan.
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Books: Lester Lies DownJames Ladd Thomas was born and raised in Alabama. He has published short stories in several literary journals, including Berkeley Fiction Review, Hawaii Review, RE:AL, Southern Exposure, littledeathlit, Finding the Birds, and The Wax Paper. He is a Pushcart and Best New Voices in America nominee. Before teaching composition and fiction workshops for 30 years, James was a landscaper, a dump-truck driver, a dog track ticket seller, a girls softball umpire (best and worst job of my life), a record store clerk, a configuration management analyst, and a house boy. He currently lives in Central Florida with his family where he enjoys jumping in the ocean.
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Books: Pandora's Boxset 2Jane Davis is the author of nine thought-provoking novels. After her debut, Half-truths and White Lies, won the Daily Mail First Novel Award, the Bookseller called her 'One to Watch.' She has published eight further novels. In 2016, Writing Magazine named An Unknown Woman their Self-Published Book of the Year. Her 2018 novel Smash all the Windows won the inaugural Selfies (Best Independently Published Work of Fiction) Award at London Book Fair 2019. Her latest release At the Stroke of Nine O'Clock is an Historical Novel Society Editor’s Choice. Jane’s favourite description of fiction is ‘made-up truth’.
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Books: Dirty Laundry | Samantha StoneJanet Buck is a seven-time Pushcart Nominee and the author of four full-length collections of poetry. More than 4,000 poems & pieces of prose are in print and on the internet. Janet’s recent work has appeared in The Birmingham Arts Journal, Antiphon, Offcourse, PoetryBay, Vine Leaves, Poetrysuperhighway, Misfit Magazine, Lavender Wolves, and River Babble.
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Books: GUTSJanet Buttenwieser’s work has appeared in The Rumpus, Under the Sun, Potomac Review, The Pinch, Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir, GUTS, was a finalist for the University of New Orleans Publishing Lab Prize. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, was a finalist for Oregon Quarterly’s Northwest Perspectives Essay Contest, and won honorable mention in The Atlantic Student Writing contest, the New Millennium Writings Award and the Artsmith Literary Award. She holds an MFA from the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts.
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Books: Time is the Longest DistanceOriginally from New York, Janet Clare lives in Los Angeles with her husband and a small dog named for the town of Lucca, Italy. She studied at UC Berkeley and UCLA. Time Is The Greatest Distance is her first novel.
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Books: Tender CutsJayne Martin is a Pushcart, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfictions nominee, and the 2016 winner of Vestal Review’s VERA award. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including Literary Orphans, Spelk, Crack the Spine, Midwestern Gothic, Barren, MoonPark Review, Blink-Ink, Blue Fifth Review, Bending Genres, Hippocampus and Connotation Press. Her television writing credits include the movies, “Big Spender” for Animal Planet, and “A Child Too Many” for Lifetime. She lives in California where she drinks copious amounts of fine wine and rides horses, though not at the same time.
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Books: Pandora's Boxset 2Jean Gill is an award-winning Welsh writer and photographer living in the south of France with two scruffy dogs, a beehive named 'Endeavour', a Nikon D750 and a man. Her twenty-three books include a variety of genres, from historical fiction and fantasy to poetry and a cookbook. For many years, she taught English and was the first woman to be a secondary headteacher in Wales. She is mother or stepmother to five children so life was hectic.
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Books: Chicken Dinner NewsRaised on a small dairy and poultry farm in Missouri’s Ozark Mountains, Jeff Billington spent his childhood listening to family stories and hearing about the changes the twentieth century brought to that celebrated rural region. He has since spent two decades working in the nonprofit and political realms, most of it in Washington, DC and currently resides in Rockville, Maryland. His first novel, Summers’ Second, was published in the fall of 2022.
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Books: Writing Beyond the SelfJenean McBrearty is a graduate of San Diego State University, who taught Political Science and Sociology. Her fiction, poetry, and photographs have been published in over two-hundred print and on-line journals. She won the Eastern Kentucky English Department Award for Graduate Creative Non-fiction in 2011, and a Silver Pen Award in 2015 for her noir short story: Red’s Not Your Color. She lives in Kentucky and writes full time⸺when she’s not watching classic movies and eating chocolate.
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Books: Places We Left BehindBorn in the San Francisco Bay Area, Jennifer Lang lives in Tel Aviv, where she runs Israel Writers Studio. Her essays have appeared in Baltimore Review, Crab Orchard Review, Under the Sun, Ascent, and elsewhere. A Pushcart Prize, Best of Net, and Best American Essays nominee, she holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and serves as Assistant Editor for Brevity. Often findable on her yoga mat with her legs up her living room wall: practicing since 1995, teaching since 2003. Places We Left Behind was a finalist in Chestnut Review’s chapbook prose competition.
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Books: JazzedJill Dearman’s previous books include: Feminism: The March Towards Equal Rights for Women (Nomad Press 2019), a complete history of Feminism from Sappho to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; The Great Bravura (She Writes Press 2015) a novel, featured on NPR, and in The Brooklyn Rail; Bang the Keys (Penguin 2009) a book on writing. In the UK, she was recently named one of the top six genre writers alongside literary icon William Gibson. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the New School and serves as a part-time Professor of Writing in the Global Studies Department at New York University.
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Books: This is How We LeaveJoanne Nelson’s writing appears numerous anthologies and literary journals such as Brevity and The Citron Review. In addition, she has been a contributor to Lake Effect on 89.7 WUWM. Her creative non-fiction and poetry have won a variety of awards including The Peninsula Pulse’s Hal Prize. She also leads workshops on writing, mindfulness, and spirituality. Nelson lives in Hartland, Wisconsin, where she develops and leads community programs, maintains a psychotherapy practice, and adjuncts. She holds an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and a Master of Science in Social Work degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
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Books: Postmarked Piper's ReachJodi Cleghorn is an author, poet and tarot reader with a penchant for the dark vein of humanity. In love with big ideas and unique concepts, she chases narratives across the landscape of multiple genres and forms. Twice nominated for Australia’s premier speculative fiction awards, Jodi is the author of No Need to Reply, Elyora, The Starling Requiem, and several poetry series including Beauty by Oracle, The Red Thread of Fate and The Daily Breath. In 2018 she formed The JAR Writers Collective with Adam Byatt and Rus VanWestervelt.
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Books: Two-Syllable Men | What's Wrong with This Picture?John A. McCaffrey grew up in Rochester, New York, attended Villanova University in Philadelphia, and received his MA in Creative Writing from the City College of New York. His stories, essays and book reviews have appeared regularly in literary journals, newspapers and anthologies. His debut novel, The Book of Ash, was released in 2013. He lives in Wainscott, New York.
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Books: The Amir Duran Series (3 books)John Ward is a government affairs and communications professional specializing in criminal justice reform, economic development and social service innovation. In a prior, weirder life, he was a hip-hop artist and producer. Seriously. The Citadel is John’s debut novel and the first story in a three-part series featuring Inspector Amir Omar Duran. He lives in Boston with his wife, two sons and an old, smelly dog.
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Books: All That Wasted HeatJonathan Hadwen is a Brisbane writer. His work has appeared in the Australian Poetry Journal, Westerly, Writing to the Edge, and Mascara, as well as other publications in Australia and overseas. In 2013 he was named runner-up in the Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize for an unpublished manuscript, and was commended again in 2014 and 2015. He has been a volunteer at the Queensland Poetry Frestival from 2010-2015, and was the co-editor of the online poetry journal foam:e from 2013-2015.
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Books: The Taste of CigarettesJon Vreeland was from the sandy beaches of Huntington Beach, California, but had spent his last years as an English major at Santa Barbara City College, where he'd earned five scholarships and tutored English. Vreeland laced his wounds through poetry and prose, taking the malady of his decade-long heroin addiction, and transformed it into something beautiful with his memoir The Taste of Cigarettes.
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Books: I'm Never Fine: Scenes and Spasms on LossJoseph Lezza is a writer in New York, NY. He is a graduate of Rutgers University and received his MFA from The University of Texas at El Paso. Between degrees, he spent several years as a character in one of the longest running stories ever told, skippering the rivers of the Jungle Cruise or off-roading truckloads of tourists across the most realistic African savannahs $170-a-day could buy. His work in television has been seen on such networks as VH1, Lifetime and NBC. When he’s not writing, he spends his time worrying about why he’s not writing. Find him on the socials @lezzdoothis.
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Books: Hope for the WorstKate Brandt’s work has appeared in Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Literary Mama, The Westchester Review, Ginosko and Redivider, among other journals. She teaches adult literacy students in New York City and lives in Westchester County, New York.
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Books: Cheers, SomebodyKatie Lewis is an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in The Tennessean, and BookPage, as well as on the side of a transit bus for National Poetry Month. In 2004, she was the sole female representing Tennessee at the Al Neuharth Free Spirit and Journalism Conference. She slept at The Watergate Hotel, met Carl Bernstein, sang her alma mater's fight song with John Seigenthaler and ate dinner with Dorothy Height. Her online journalism earned an Associated Press Broadcasters Award, and her poetry made her a two-time winner of the Albert Montesi Award.
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Books: The Girl Who Taught Herself to FlyOriginally from Penang, Malaysia, Kwan Kew Lai received a full scholarship from Wellesley College. She is a Harvard Medical Faculty Physician. In 2005, she left academia to dedicate time to humanitarian work; in HIV/AIDS in Africa, and she provides disaster relief all over the world, such as during the Ebola outbreak, the Syrian Rohingya refugee crises, and the COVID-19 pandemic in New York and the Navajo Nation. Her debut, Lest We Forget: A Doctor’s Experience with Life and Death During the Ebola Outbreak, chronicles her time in Liberia and Sierra Leone caring for Ebola patients. Into Africa, Out of Academia: A Doctor's Memoir came out in 2020.
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Books: Pandora's Boxset 1Linda Gillard lives in North Lanarkshire, Scotland. She’s the author of nine novels, including STAR GAZING (Piatkus), shortlisted in 2009 for Romantic Novel of the Year and The Robin Jenkins Literary Award for writing that promotes the Scottish landscape. Linda's fourth novel, HOUSE OF SILENCE became a Kindle bestseller. It was selected by Amazon as one of their Top Ten Best of 2011 in the Indie Author category. In 2019 Amazon’s Lake Union imprint re-published THE TRYSTING TREE as THE MEMORY TREE and it became a #1 Kindle bestseller in Historical Fiction.
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Books: Pandora's Boxset 1Liza grew up in Australia where she worked as a general nurse and a midwife. When she met her French husband on a bus in Bangkok, she moved to France, where she has been living with her family for twenty-seven years, working as a medical translator and a novelist. Several of her short stories have won awards and been published in anthologies and small press magazines. Her articles on French culture are published in international magazines such as France Magazine, France Today and The Good Life France.
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Books: Pandora's Boxset 1Lorna Fergusson is an award-winning short story writer and novelist. Founder of Fictionfire Literary Consultancy, she is an experienced editor, speaker and writing coach, and has taught on various Oxford University writing programmes. She has won an Ian St James Award, been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and longlisted for the Fish Short Story Prize, Pan Macmillan’s Write Now Prize and the Mogford Prize. Her Historical Novel Society award-winning story ‘Salt’ appears in An Oxford Vengeance. The Unputdownable Writer’s Mindset will be published in 2021. Married with two sons, she lives in Oxford, England.
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Books: The Walmart Book of the DeadLucy Biederman is a lecturer in English at Case Western Reserve University. She holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Louisiana-Lafayette and an MFA in creative writing from George Mason University. She has written four chapbooks of poetry, and her short stories, essays, and poems have appeared recently in Bat City Review, The Collagist, AGNI, Ploughshares, Web Conjunctions, and Pleiades. Her scholarship, which has been published in The Henry James Review, Women’s Studies, and elsewhere, focuses on how contemporary American women writers interpret their literary forebears. She shops at Walmart.
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Books: Prepare for DepartureMark Chesnut is a New York City-based journalist, editor and public speaker. The 2019 winner of the NLGJA Excellence in Travel Writing Award, he has written for Fodor’s, Forbes Travel Guide, HuffPost, the Miami Herald, Orbitz, Travel + Leisure Mexico, the New York Times bestseller 1,000 Places To See Before You Die and the inflight magazines of Aeromexico, American Airlines and Avianca. He writes a monthly column for Global Traveler Magazine, covers Latin America in his travel blog LatinFlyer.com and regularly contributes to travel trade publications Travel Weekly and TravelAge West.
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Books: Image BreakerMark E. Leib's short works have appeared in Boston Review, Jewish Fiction.net, Adelaide Literary Magazine, American Theatre and elsewhere. His theatre plays have been produced in New York, Chicago, Cambridge, Tampa/St. Petersburg, Edinburgh and Singapore. His theatre criticism in the Tampa Bay area has earned seven awards for excellence from the Society of Professional Journalists, including three first-place Sunshine State awards. He is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama, where he won the CBS Foundation Prize in Playwriting, and of Harvard College. He teaches fiction, playwriting, and screenwriting at the University of South Florida.
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Books: Shade of the ParaisoNew York born, California raised, husband, father, wanderer and seeker, Mark Salvatore has earned his way as a land surveyor, a drafter, a hydrographer, a Peace Corps Paraguay volunteer, a high school teacher, a technical writer, a driver and general laborer. Salvatore has published several non-fiction stories and a work of experimental fiction, Labeled. He lives in Deep South Texas and enjoys family time, road trips, camping, swimming, hiking, bicycling, listening to music, reading, writing, viewing soccer matches and doing whatever comes next.
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Books: Winter LightA Chicago native, Martha Engber is the author of The Wind Thief, a novel, and Growing Great Characters From the Ground Up: A Thorough Primer for the Writers of Fiction and Nonfiction. A journalist by profession, she’s written hundreds of articles for the Chicago Tribune and other national publications. She’s had a play produced in Hollywood and fiction and poetry published in the Aurorean, Watchword, the Berkeley Fiction Review and other journals. She raised two great kids and lives in Northern California with her husband, bike and surfboard.
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Books: The Crimes of Clara Turlington | Without: Body, Name, CountryMeg Johnson is also the author of Inappropriate Sleepover (The National Poetry Review Press, 2014). Her poetry has appeared in Hobart, Nashville Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, The Puritan, Sugar House Review, Verse Daily, and others. Her nonfiction has appeared in Bust, The Good Men Project, Ms. Magazine, and others. She received her MFA from the NEOMFA Program and has taught writing at various colleges. She is the editor of Dressing Room Poetry Journal and has served as an external reviewer for University of Akron Press.
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Books: A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family, grief, and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it allMelanie Brooks is also the author of Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art from Trauma (Beacon Press, 2017). She teaches professional writing at Northeastern University, narrative medicine in the MFA program at Bay Path University in Massachusetts, and creative writing at Nashua Community College in New Hampshire. She earned an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast writing program. Her work has been published in Psychology Today, the HuffPost, the Washington Post and other notable publications.
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Books: Flash Writing (3-Book Writing Reference Series) | Creating an Online Creative-Writing Class for Fun and ProfitMelanie Faith’s writing has been nominated for three Pushcart Prizes. She likes to wear many professional hats, including as a professor, poet, editor, prose writer, tutor, and photographer. She holds an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. She has a typewriter that she definitely should use more often.
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Books: Dream KidsMichael Wayne Hampton is the author of several books. His fiction, poetry, and prose have been featured in publications such as The Southeast Review, McSweeney’s, and Rust+Moth among many others. He has previously been named a finalist for literary honors such as The Iowa Short Fiction Award and Best American Short Stories, and has been awarded The Deerbird Novella Prize and an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council among others.
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Books: Hate Mail: Thank You For ReadingMichelle Robertson is a features reporter at SFGATE, where she writes about the people and places of San Francisco. Her work has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Orion and Hi Fructose, among other publications. Her essay "Recovery Season" was listed as a notable work in "The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2016." Hate Mail is her first book of poems.
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Books: The Appointment | Letters From InsideMike Maggio's work has appeared in such places as Phoebe, Apalachee Quarterly, Potomac Review, Pleaides, Black Bear Review, and many others. He is the author of Your Secret Is Safe With Me, an audio collection of poems (Black Bear Publications), Oranges From Palestine (and other poems) (Mardi Gras Press, two collections of short fiction, Sifting Through the Madness (Xlibris) and The Keepers (March Street Press) and a full-length collection of poetry, deMockracy (Plain View Press), a hard-hitting, poetic critique of the Bush administration and its cavalier and unjustified attack on Iraq and on the democratic institutions here at home in America.
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Books: Fountain of YouthAs well as being the other of various other titles, her article “Every Child Deserves a Home: Zeina Al-Sultan Unveils the Truths Behind Adoption in Kuwait” won en.v’s Voice of Success Program in 2012. She is the recipient of a 2016 MENA Salam fellowship from World Peace Initiative Foundation where she meditated with Buddhist monks in Turkey. In April 2018, she was selected by the US Embassy in Kuwait to participate in the International Visitor Leadership Program: Empowering Youth Through the Performance Arts. In the same year seh received an Arab Woman Award from Harper Bazaar Arabia for her impact on Kuwait's creative sector.
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Books: Where Labyrinths EndAuthor and composer Nick Padron was born in Cuba and grew up in New York City. He is the creator of Diablero, a rock opera based on Carlos Castaneda’s books. His short stories have appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies in the U.S., Spain, Canada, and Japan. His novella, It Tolls For Thee, was rated number one at Zoetrope All-Story series. His published books include Sylvia’s Island, a novelette; Souls in Exile, a collection of short fiction; and three full-length novels, Gabriel Hemingway’s The Cuban Scar, The Exhumation, and Where Labyrinths End, an ABN Award finalist.
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Books: EqualityPaul Alan Fahey wrote for JMS Books. He was the author of the Lovers & Liars gay wartime series, and the editor of the 2013 Rainbow Award winning anthology, The Other Man: 21 Writers Speak Candidly About Sex, Love, Infidelity, & Moving On. His first WWII novella, The View From 16 Podwale Street, published by JMS Books, won a 2012 Rainbow Award. His writing has appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. He lived on the California Central Coast with his husband, Robert Franks, and three wild and wooly shelties. Here Paul and his ex-show dog Maddie read a book by one of his favorite Central Coast authors, Catherine Ryan Hyde.
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Books: Postcards From HerePenny Guisinger lives and writes on the easternmost tip of the United States. Her essay “Coming Out” was named a notable in 2015 Best American Essays. Other work has appeared in Fourth Genre, River Teeth, The Rumpus, Guernica, Solstice Literary Magazine, Under the Gum Tree, multiple anthologies, and other places. She is an Assistant Editor at Brevity, the founding organizer of Iota: Short Prose Conference, and a graduate of the Stonecoast MFA Program. She lives with her wife and kids, two dogs, two leopard geckos, and a constantly changing number of tropical fish.
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Books: A Plan in Case of MorningIn addition to A Plan in Case of Morning, Phill Provance’s books include two works of nonfiction, A Brief History of Woodbridge, New Jersey (The History Press 2019) and Postcards of McHenry County, Illinois (The History Press 2021), the poetry chapbook The Day the Sun Rolled Out of the Sky (Cy Gist 2010), and the comic strip The Adventures of Ace Hoyle (MediaTier 2008-2010). Before completing his MFA in Poetry and Fiction at WV Wesleyan College, he studied English and Irish literature at Bethany College and Oxford University. Born and raised in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, he now lives near Chicago.
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Books: She Receives the NightWith more than 100 stories in print and online literary journals, Robert Earle is one of the more widely published contemporary writers of short fiction. He also is the author of novels (Suffer the Children, In the Blood of Herod and Rome,The Way Home) and books of nonfiction (Nights in the Pink Motel, Identities in North America.) He was a diplomat for two decades (Latin America, Europe, Middle East) and has degrees in literature and writing from Princeton and Johns Hopkins, respectively. He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
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Books: Lifeform Three | My Memories of a Future Life | Not Quite Lost | +Roz Morris's first job was publishing careers guides for college graduates, telling them how to become accountants and management consultants. She ran away, as fast as possible, to become a novelist. Her stories and essays have earned comparisons with Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, Audrey Niffenegger and Ray Bradbury, and her futuristic novel Lifeform Three was longlisted for the World Fantasy Award. She’s been a story mentor for award-winning authors and filmmakers, ghostwritten thrillers for Big 5 publishers, nurtured talent for Cornerstones Literary Consultancy and taught Guardian masterclasses in creative writing.
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Books: Ella's WarRusty studied creative writing at the University of Virginia and has been a full-time freelance writer for most of his career. He owns The Writers Studio, a marketing/copywriting practice located just outside of Philadelphia. He led the Advanced Novel Writing Group at the Writers Room/Writers Corner, a writers co-op in Doylestown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and is a member of the Rebel Writers, a highly select novelist critique group that was highlighted in Writer's Digest in the article "Plotting a Novel Group."
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Books: Dirty SuburbiaSara Hosey is the author of two novels, Iphigenia Murphy (an official selection of the Children’s Book Council Children’s Book Week in 2021), and Imagining Elsewhere, as well as the novella Great Expectations. She is a college professor, a parent, sometimes a foster parent, and a tree enthusiast.
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Books: Things That Crash, Things That Fly | Idiot MenScott Gould’s collection of stories, Strangers to Temptation, was published by Hub City Press in 2017. His work has appeared in Kenyon Review, Crazyhorse, and Carolina Quarterly, among other publications. He is a two-time winner of the Individual Artist Fellowship in Prose from the South Carolina Arts Commission and a past winner of the Fiction Fellowship from the South Carolina Academy of Authors.
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Books: For You I Would Make an ExceptionSteven Belletto is author of two books of literary criticism, No Accident, Comrade, and The Beats: A Literary History. His short fiction and travel writing have appeared in such venues as Cimarron Review, Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly Journal, and Wisconsin Review. He lives in Westport with his dog.
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Books: Careless LoveSteve is the author of the international thrillers The Second Man, Double Identity and Ronin. He is also the coauthor, along with his wife, Cordelia Frances Biddle, of the Nero Blanc Mystery Series, of which there are twelve titles to date. He has worked extensively as a character actor in New York and Los Angeles, appearing On Broadway, Off Broadway, throughout the U.S. in regional theaters, and he created a memorable role in the Pulitzer Prize winner, A Soldiers Play. He has worked on countless television shows including The Wire, Cold Case and Law and Order; Criminal Intent. His feature film work includes, Defenseless, Bird, Crooked and Narrow, Fright Fest, Future Weather, and Agoraphobia, to mention a few.
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Books: Burned: The Spy South Africa Never CaughtSue Dobson was born in South Africa and witnessed Apartheid first hand. Wanting to contribute to a democratic South Africa for all, she joined the African National Congress (ANC) and was trained as an intelligence officer/spy in the Soviet Union. She was deployed in South Africa and infiltrated the government propaganda department, interviewed Apartheid ministers and had a honey trap affair with a police chief involved with the Namibian independence process. She was 'burned' when she failed an enhanced security check for the State President's office, prompting her escape across southern Africa with the security police at her heels.
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Books: Time & CircumstanceTheresa Milstein’s poetry and short stories can be found in Halcyon Magazine, Twisted Endings Magazine, From Stage Door Shadows, 100 RPM, Fangtales, and 100 Stories for Queensland. While Theresa’s published works are for adults, she primarily writes for children and has been active in the New England chapter of SCBWI (Society for Book Writers and Illustrators). She also attends workshops and Highlights Foundation retreats to further improve her craft. Theresa’s day job as a special education teacher gives her ample opportunity to observe tweens and teens in their natural habitat. She lives in the Boston area of Massachusetts in the United States.
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Books: The Zipper ClubWinner of the Carol Houck Smith Award in Nonfiction for the 2016 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Thomas was also a Bread Loaf contributor and a Pushcart Prize nominee in 2015. The Zipper Club was selected as the 2016 American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year in the category of creative works. His nonfiction, poetry, and prose have appeared in SLAB, Blood and Thunder: Musings on the Art of Medicine, and more. He has worked as: a tennis instructor, a landscaper, a paint-mixing, pipe-and-glass-cutting hardware store cashier, a wine-tent bartender, a factory assembly lineman (twice), a tutor, an intern at Penguin Publishing, a door-to-door coupon salesman (for one day), a childcare provider, and a teacher.
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Books: The Strange Book of Jacob BoyceTom Gillespie is a Glasgow-born, English lecturer and writer. A number of his stories have appeared in anthologies, journals, and e-zines, including: Alephi, East of the Web, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, The Ogilvie Review, and Untitled. Glass Work Humans, a collection of his short stories was published by Valley Press, Autumn 2019, and two of his stories have been selected for the Federation of Writers (Scotland) 2019 Anthology. Tom’s first novel, Painting by Numbers was Finalist in The People’s Book Prize for Literature, 2013.
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Books: Pirate Girl Falls Through Beaver DamIn 1967, determined to escape Fayettenam, 18 year old Wren Chase ran away to sea. After a year of working aboard boats in the Bahamas, to mend her pirate ways, she lived in a Colorado wilderness cave where she taught herself to use snow shoes and cross-country skis. Later, she moved to South Carolina and guided sea kayak journeys up and down the east coast. Along the way she raised three children on a rustic mountain farm called Hogwild, started sea kayak and ski touring centers, and operated her own successful Bed & Breakfast inns for intrepid outdoor adventurers like herself.
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