Simone Gamali is a francophile who was born in Jamaica and grew up in three countries. In another life, she was born in Paris and was best friends with Oscar Wilde. :-) Simone's work has been published in the Jamaica Gleaner (a national newspaper), The Muse Magazine, and a short story of hers was awarded the Heide Award by the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater’s Department of Languages and Literature. Sleeping Awake is her debut novel, and she is currently hard at work on her next work of fiction. Her work illustrates coming-of-age and multi-cultural themes. She is planning to pursue her Ph.D. in sociocultural anthropology and to study post-globalization identity in immigrant.

Sue has always wanted to be a writer, since she was eleven or so, when her chief joy was reading; she can remember loving even sad books like The Red Pony and The Yearling--maybe loving those most of all--and devouring just about every popular or classic story she could get her hands on. And still, now, her favorite hobby--along with going to the movies--is reading--most often contemporary fiction. Her two favorite classic works are Hamlet and Pride and Prejudice, and among her favorite contemporary writers are J.M. Coetzee, William Trevor, Susan Minot, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Evan S. Connell. She has written several novels and a good many short stories, three of which have been published in Epoch, North American Mentor, and Curious Rooms. Most recently she has published a memoir piece and novel chapter in Zingology, an on-line magazine. Her collection of stories, In the Land of the Dragons, was one of six finalists in the 1995 Iowa Short Fiction competition. She has read her fiction at numerous venues
in the Boston area and has been awarded two fellowships for residencies in fiction at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

Sue earned a B.A. in English from Harvard College, an M.A. in Contemporary Literature from Columbia, and an M.F.A. in Fiction from Warren Wilson College in North Carolina, and has taught fiction writing in an adult education program in Sudbury, MA, in a private workshop in her home, and mostly recently at The Explorers, a group of senior citizens in Salem, MA, along with some literature classes. Ellie In Love, her most recently completed novel, is the first that she has attempted to publish to a mainstream audience. It tells the story of a young, initially passionate love and
marriage run onto the shoals by infidelity. She lives on the North Shore of Boston with her husband and her miniature apricot poodle, Emma, named after Jane Austen's Emma.

Divya holds a Master’s degree from NYU in English and American Literature. She specialized in Creative Writing at Rutgers University where she studied under Miguel Algarin and attended Breadloaf in 2005 where she studied under Samantha Chang. In the past she has been published in Atenea (The Literary Journal of the University of Puerto Rico) 2007.  She has been awarded The New Jersey Chapter of Arts and Letters First Prize for Fiction (1995), The Edna Herzberg Prize for fiction (1995, 1996, 1998), and the Edith Hamilton Prize for Fiction (1998). Her first novel, The Princess of Jasmine is the story of an unapologetic Indian woman in her mid 20s caught between two careers and the affections of two very different women.  The work is a somewhat flippant, humorous look at the lives of strong women who love, grow and ultimately claim their places on their own terms.

Erica Rimlinger began her writing career as a journalist in Washington, DC, at ABC News, America’s Most Wanted and Congress Daily. Now, as a semi-retired homemaker/freelance journalist, she has most recently written for the magazine Grapevine, a regional wine and travel tabloid. Erica is also an AFAA-certified group fitness instructor who credits her Zumba and Bodypump classes for helping her conquer and vanquish breast cancer this past year. She also credits the writing process with helping her maintain sanity during her recent cancer treatment, and wrote her first novel to keep her mind off chemotherapy, which she likens to being attacked by drunk chimpanzees. While her well-meaning friends and family members sent her dour books about cancer and the importance of eating cruciferous vegetables, Erica escaped into her world of comedic farce, emerging only to attend appointments with her medical team (which she nicknamed the Sharp Pointy Object Brigade,) and teach Zumba in her hot pink wig. Erica lives in Baltimore, MD, with her husband, Kevin, and her seven-year-old son Max, who protested loudly when Erica recently picked him up from school without a wig, but then turned to his friends and said: “Told you I had a bald mom.”