Author Interviews

Danielle Carpenter is a fiction and non-fiction writer living in Miami, FL. Her work often explores the relationship between technology and the natural world, futuristic societies, and the human condition.

I live in Oregon. I draw inspiration from the temperate rain forest and people who interact with its varied range and depth. We are on the threshold of changing the environment in ways we have not imagined. The negativity of not only the politics of the world but the implications of climate change have caused us to abandon our commitment to people in our lives in favor of defending our perception of a world that has been created to question facts and truth. When we consider our own lives and relationships, we realize that as Dylan's lyrics state "I am meek, hard like an oak, seen pretty people disappear like smoke." We are the result of small incremental incidents that for the most part we don't recognize until we do.

Betty R. Wall was born and raised in British Columbia, Canada. A graduate of the University of Toronto’s Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures (M.A.), she has spent most of her professional career working in translation. In her free time, she continues to pursue her love of writing and travel, which has taken her to various parts of Europe, Africa, Asia, and South America. She is the author of No Way Out, a Canada Book Awards Winner, published in 2021. All That This House Has to Offer is her first short story collection.

Mark Jonathan Harris is a Los Angeles writer/filmmaker who has published essays, award-winning children's novels, and non-fiction books, as well as written, directed, and produced numerous documentary films, three of which won Oscars. Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport, a feature documentary he wrote and directed, won an Academy Award in 2000 and was selected by the U.S. Library of Congress for permanent preservation in the National Film Registry. For many years, he headed the documentary program at the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California, where he was a Distinguished Professor.

Lya Badgley writes suspenseful international fiction featuring characters overcoming life-changing odds. Global conflict zones and insurgencies offer a vivid backdrop to her stories. She draws deeply from personal experience living in Europe and Southeast Asia.

I was born on Mexican Independence Day in Mexico City, Mexico. From the age of three, I grew up in the lush, sun-dappled zombie headquarters of Alexandria Virginia, where I promptly forgot all of my Spanish during an intensive program of simultaneous civic and religious indoctrination from the brightest and most delightfully psychopathic in the military establishment and the Virginia Diocese of the Episcopal Church. As soon as I was able to cover myself in enough zombie slime to effect a forward escape, I embarked with heroic earnest on an epic journey with no clear final destination in mind.

Raised in Puerto Rico by her grandparents, Margarita Barresi grew up hearing stories about the “good old days”—the genesis for A Delicate Marriage, her first novel. She studied public relations at Boston University, and after a successful career in marketing communications, now devotes her time to writing. Her essays have been published in several literary magazines and compilations. Margarita lives in the Boston suburbs with her husband and two Puerto Rican cats, Luna and Rico.

Jaime Grunfeld, LMHC, was born and raised in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where his parents, who lived in Hungary, fled after its invasion by the Nazis. As a teenager, he came to study at Yeshiva in Westchester County, NY, where he graduated in Talmudic Law. Returning to Brazil, he married and joined the family’s textile industry, where over the years he became its CEO.

Elizabeth G. Slade is the author of Rest Stops, a coming-of-age novel that won the Next Generation Indie Book Award in 2012. In 2021, she published the nonfiction book, Montessori in Action: Building Resilient Schools with John Wiley & Sons. Elizabeth has also worked with others to create books such as Women Period and How to Raise a Peaceful Child in a Violent World. She is currently co-authoring Finding Ground with Allison Jones, a book about teaching at the elementary level, which is forthcoming from Parent Child Press.

After nearly twenty years of teaching secondary English, I made good on a challenge I'd issued myself years ago: to write the book I most wanted to read! I'm blessed to live along Mississippi's Gulf Coast and cannot write until I've walked my favorite stretch of beach and collected my daily quota of oyster shells.