Donna Kaz | Brian Broome | Jamie Cat Callan | Mardi Jo Link | Mathangi Subramanian
DONNA KAZ is a multi-genre writer and the author of the award winning “UN/MASKED, Memoirs of a Guerrilla Girl On Tour,” and “PUSH/PUSHBACK, 9 Steps to Make a Difference with Activism and Art, because the world’s gone bananas. She has been published in Variety, Theatre Topics, Ms. Magazine, The Daily Mail, Bitch Media, Bust, Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, Little Patuxent Review, Alternet, Role Reboot, Stonecoast Review, Crab Orchard Review, The Dramatist, Ful Art magazine, Girl Drive Blog, Lilith, The Sun, Gagibi, Levitate, Gender Across Borders and Women in Hollywood. She is a 2023/24 research fellow at Winterthur.
BRIAN BROOME‘s debut memoir, Punch Me Up to the Gods, is an NYT Editor’s Pick and the winner of the 2021 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction. He is a contributing columnist at The Washington Post. His work has also appeared in Hippocampus, Poets and Writers, Medium, and more. Brian was a K. Leroy Irvis Fellow and an instructor in the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh. Brian Broome will be the opening guest author for the conference, via Zoom.
JAMIE CAT CALLAN lives on a small farm in Upstate New York. Her work has appeared in The Sun Magazine, The Missouri Review, Story, the New York Times, and elsewhere. She has received awards from the New York State Council on the Arts, the Massachusetts Council on the Arts, and The Connecticut Commission on the Arts, The Ragdale Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and more. She is the creator of The Writers Toolbox (Chronicle Books) and the author of Parisian Charm School (Penguin Random House) and is currently working on a novel set in Paris during the May 1968 uprisings, along with illustrations and painting to accompany the pages.
MARDI JO LINK is the award-winning author of two memoirs and three true crime books including Bootstrapper, a memoir of single-motherhood, rural life, and badassery published by Knopf. It was named a Michigan Notable Book, won the Housatonic Book Award for non-fiction, and the Great Lakes Independent Bookseller’s Association’s Bookseller’s Choice Award. Academy-Award winning actress Rachel Weisz has optioned the book for film. Mardi has also written three true crime books about unsolved murders. Her second memoir, The Drummond Girls, was published by Grand Central Publishing. She lives in Traverse City, Michigan and writes a monthly column for her local newspaper, the Traverse City Record-Eagle. She studied journalism at Michigan State University and has her MFA from Queens University of Charlotte.
MATHANGI SUBRAMANIAN is an award winning neurodiverse South Asian American writer and educator who believes stories have the power to change the world. Her books have been longlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Prize and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award, and won the South Asia Book Award. Her picture book A Butterfly Smile was inducted into the Nobel Museum by economics laureate Dr. Esther Duflo. Her shorter work has appeared in publications like The Washington Post, Harper’s Bazaar, Ms., The New York Times Kids, and The San Francisco Chronicle, among others. She is the founder of Moon Rabbit Writing Studio, a boutique online writing workshop that supports socially conscious writers with seriously busy lives through coaching, developmental editing, and classes that emphasize accessibility and inclusion. A former Fulbright-Nehru Senior Scholar, senior policy analyst at the New York City Council, Assistant Vice President at Sesame Workshop, and public school teacher, she holds a doctorate in education from Columbia Teachers College and has over two decades of experience teaching children and adults in formal and informal settings. She currently lives in Denver with her family, a pair of gerbils, and way too many picture books.