AUTHOR

HEATHER HERRMAN is the author of the adult horror novel, Consumption, and the Junior Library Guild selected Young Adult Novel, The Corpse Queen. The Lady or the Tiger, a new YA novel by Heather about a female serial killer in the Wild West will be available from Nancy Paulsen Books June 10, 2025.

Heather’s fiction seeks to explore the relationship between body and landscape, utilizing genre as a medium. She believes that American Horror Fiction provides a lens through which we can undress and view the timeless dis/ease of our society.

Heather holds an MFA from New Mexico State University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in various publications including the Dark Screams Anthology: Volume 10, Cemetery Dance, The Alaska Quarterly, South Carolina Review, and Snake Nation Review. Her fiction has earned the Frank Waters Prize, an Individual Artist Grant from the Nebraska Arts Council, and a scholarship to the Prague Summer Program for Writers.

She is represented by Barbara Poelle from the Word One Literary Agency.

AUTHOR

SHEILA MASTERSON is the author of six books, including the gothic fairytale romance Song of the Dark Wood, the emotional epic romantasy, The Lost God Series, as well as its standalone spinoff, A Legacy of Stars. Her forthcoming dark fantasy romance, The Poison Daughter, publishes October 3, 2025, and features a vigilante who uses her poison kiss to murder abusive men in her community until she's unwittingly thrust into an arranged marriage with the only man immune to her magic.  When Sheila's not busy stabbing beloved side characters and dreaming up new ways to make her readers cry, you can find her practicing yoga, drinking fancy cocktails with friends, or curled up reading books or tarot. She lives outside Philadelphia with a small army of underwatered houseplants that survive out of spite.

AUTHOR

DR. GRACE NOSEK is a long-time community organizer, storyteller, and sociolegal scholar focusing on environmental justice and democracy. She centers justice, joyful community, storytelling, civic engagement, and systems change in her work and scholarship. As a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto, Grace researched novel strategies to inoculate youth against climate despair, and co-authored the City of Toronto’s Youth Climate Engagement Strategy. Grace’s research has been supported by Fulbright, Killam, and Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation scholarships, and she holds a BA from Rice University, a law degree from Harvard Law School, and a Master of Laws and PhD in law from the University of British Columbia. Her research, fiction, and non-fiction writing have been published and shared widely and she has been a frequent public speaker and media contributor.

AUTHOR

A full-time daydreamer, KALLA HARRIS has wanted to be an author since she was eight years old-although she's now traded her composition notebooks for a computer. When she's not writing high-stakes young adult books with lots of kissing, you can find her curled up with a good story, perfecting her mac and cheese recipe, or rewatching The Vampire Diaries (Hi, Damon!). Kalla resides in the Upstate of South Carolina with her husband.

AUTHOR

CARLA HOCH is the author of the Writer’s Digest book Fight Write: How to Write Believable Fight Scenes as well as Fight Write, Round Two: Crafting Chaos, Combat and Crime. Carla has been teaching the craft of writing fight scenes, action and violence since 2017 and is an instructor for both Writer’s Digest University and Writing Mastery Academy.  Her award-winning blog, FightWrite.net, has been named in Writer’s Digest 100 Best Sites for Writers five years in a row. 

Carla is a world champion jiujitsu player and has experience in almost a dozen fighting styles. She lives outside Houston, Texas with her family and judgmental cats.