Debut Author Podcasts

Suanne Schafer, born in West Texas at the height of the Cold War, finds it ironic that grade school drills for tornadoes and nuclear war were the same: hide beneath your desk and kiss your rear-end goodbye. Now a retired family-practice physician, her pioneer ancestors and world travels fuel her imagination. She planned to write romances, but either as a consequence of a series of failed relationships or a genetic distrust of happily-ever-after, her heroines are strong women who battle tough environments and intersect with men who might—or might not—love them. Suanne’s debut women’s fiction novel, A Different Kind of Fire (released November 1, 2018) explores the life of a nineteenth century artist who escapes, then returns to West Texas. Her next book, Hunting the Devil, due out September 15, 2019, explores the heartbreak and healing of an American physician caught up in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. You can follow her at: www.suanneschaferauthor.com/ or on Facebook at SuanneSchaferAuthor  

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January 12, 2019: Erin Bartels

ERIN BARTELS is a copywriter and freelance editor by day, a novelist by night, and a painter, poet, and photographer in between. Her debut novel, WeHope for Better Things, released in January 2019 from Revell Books, and will be followed in September 2019 with The Words between Us, the manuscript for which was a finalist for the 2015 Rising Star Award from the Women’s Fiction Writers Association. Her short story “This Elegant Ruin” was a finalist in The Saturday Evening Post 2014 Great American Fiction Contest. Her poems have been published by The Lyric and The East Lansing Poetry Attack. Erin lives in Michigan's capital city, nestled somewhere between angry protesters downtown and couch-burning frat boys at Michigan State University. And yet, she claims it is really quite peaceful. Erin is represented by Nephele Tempest of The Knight Agency. Find her on Facebook @ErinBartelsAuthor, on Twitter @ErinLBartels, or on Instagram @erinbartelswrites. Her weekly podcast, Your Face Is Crooked, drops on Monday mornings.

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December 29, 2018: Romalyn Tilghman

Straight out of graduate school, native Kansan Romalyn Tilghman was hired as Executive Director of the Association of Community Arts Councils of Kansas and was lucky enough to work with rural arts councils throughout the state. She saw first-hand how groups of (mostly) women encouraged culture on the Plains. From there, she went on to work for the National Endowment for the Arts as Regional Representative, eventually serving a territory that stretched over the Dateline, over the Equator, and over the Arctic Circle. For more than twenty years, she has worked as a freelance consultant in the arts. She has served on the boards of Americans for the Arts, Association of California Symphony Orchestras, and Western Arts Alliance. She lives in Long Beach, California. To the Stars through Difficulties is her first novel. You can learn more at https://www.romalyn.com/.

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December 18, 2018: Jennifer Klepper

A Midwest native, Jennifer made stops in Dallas, Charlottesville, and Boston before settling for good in Maryland. While she has an appreciation for the expansive beauty of the plains states, she hopes never to live landlocked again.

Jennifer attended Southern Methodist University and the University of Virginia School of Law, her law degree guiding her through the worlds of corporate law, tech startups, and court advocacy for foster children. She is an ardent consumer of podcasts and books that challenge her with compelling and unfamiliar topics. When she’s not writing or working her day job at Google, she’s crossing things off a never ending to-do list and hoping to catch that next sunset. Jennifer lives near Annapolis with her husband and two kids. You can connect with Jennifer on Facebook, Instagram, or her website.

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December 9, 2018: Leslie Schweitzer Miller

Much of what I’ve done in life hasn’t proceeded in the usual, expected way: I got married and had children before I attended The Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. My first residency was in pediatrics, then a second psychiatry, and ultimately psychoanalytic training. It has been and continues to be an enormously gratifying endeavor. Bearing witness to another human being’s life and watching them change is a rare privilege, and I love the relationships I have with the people in my care. It’s also been quite a detour, but even a detour eventually leads you back to your original destination.

Ultimately I came back to the pleasure of story-telling, and wrote Discovery. It is a novel about coming of age in middle age, a love story, an exploration of how the past colors the present and the capacity of people to change. The characters I created, and their lives, have become as real to me as any friend or neighbor. I know everything there is to know about them, much that remains unwritten, but helps, I hope, to make them people you can care about, who are psychologically sound and believable. It has been my intention to make fiction and factual research, perception and invention swirl together and blur on the pages. Learn more at http://www.lesliesmillerauthor.com/

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November 24, 2018: Sarahlyn Bruck

Sarahlyn Bruck writes contemporary women’s fiction and lives in Philadelphia with her husband and daughter. She is the author of DESIGNER YOU, published by Crooked Cat Books on August 31, 2018. Sarahlyn teaches writing and literature at a local community college and also coaches writers for Author Accelerator. DESIGNER YOU is Sarahlyn’s debut, and she is hard at work on her next book. Want the latest updates? Follow along for news, events, and announcements at sarahlynbruck.com. You can sign up for her monthly newsletter there, too.

November 4, 2018: Heather Frimmer

Heather is a book addict who is not even considering recovery. Funding her book habit as a radiologist by day, she reads over 100 books per year, especially enjoying women’s fiction, psychological suspense, historical fiction and family stories. A reviewer for Books, INK, she also posts the occasional review of her own right on her website.

For her day job, she is a physician—a radiologist specializing in breast imaging. When she's not  interpreting mammograms and x-rays in a dark room, or reading/reviewing  books, you’ll find her writing. Bedside Manners (SparkPress, October 2018), her debut novel, is a tale of unbreakable maternal love and triumphant survival, offering a fictional window into the world of medicine.

Aside from books, reading, writing, books, and more books, she's an enthusiastic foodie. Travel is another top hobby since it opens up doors to new food and restaurants. A lifetime member of Hadassah, she's also a supporter of Pink Aid, an organization helping underserved breast cancer patients.

October 28, 2018: Reyna Marder Gentin

After graduating from Yale College and Yale Law School, Reyna Marder Gentin practiced as a juvenile rights attorney with the Legal Aid Society and then as a criminal appellate attorney with a nonprofit public defender’s office for nearly eighteen years. That job, and a number of the clients she represented, inspired the story of UNREASONABLE DOUBTS. The novel is more than a legal thriller. It’s the story of Liana Cohen, a young woman grappling to salvage her idealism in an often harsh world, and learning how to find friendship, faith, and love in the right places.

Reyna keeps a hand in the law as a volunteer, representing women and men seeking restraining orders against their intimate partners. She has written and continues to write personal essays for a number of websites including Kveller, Mamalode, Grown & Flown and others. Reyna's short story, “A Reckoning,” was published in the 2017 issue of the Westchester Review, and her psychological thriller, "Complicity," appears online at The Write Launch. You can find links to all her pieces at www.reynamardergentin.com. Reyna lives with her family in Westchester, New York. 

October 28, 2018: Megan A. Clancy

Megan A. Clancy is an award-winning writer of literary fiction. She has a BA in English from Colorado College, a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Melbourne, and worked as a high school English teacher before becoming a full-time writer. The Burden of a Daughter is her first novel and its early manuscript won the Somerset Award at the Chanticleer International Book Awards in 2016. She loves travel and has lived and worked in Australia, Nepal, and the United States. She currently lives with her husband in California. You can learn more about Megan at www.meganaclancy.com.

 

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October 15, 2018: Ann Griffin

Ann comes from a family of adventurous women. An immigrant twice herself (to Canada and to the USA,) she understands from personal experience the challenges of being uprooted, either by choice or not, and remaking a life in a new place.

She writes historical fiction, flash fiction, and short non-fiction. She has published three fictional articles in the news magazine of the British Home Child Advocacy and Research Association, and is a guest blogger for the award winning writers' blog,  Writers in the Storm .

A dual Canadian-US citizen, she resides in Mesa, Arizona with her husband, Art, and their Old English Sheepdog. She spends summers in Toronto, Canada, with family. When not writing, she can be found at the golf course, or making music with her church choir.

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October 7, 2018: Julie Maloney

Julie Maloney is a poet and writer and the author of “A Matter of Chance,” her debut novel, published in April, 2018 (She Writes Press). US WEEKLY Magazine selected it as a spring/summer trending book. She is the founder/director of WOMEN READING ALOUD, a non-profit international organization devoted to promoting women writers.  She is a trained workshop leader in the Amherst Writers and Artists Method and holds an MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.  She is a former dancer, choreographer, and artistic director of the Julie Maloney Dance Company in New York City. You can learn more about Julie at https://www.juliemaloney.net/.

September 16, 2018: Johanne Levesque

Johanne has worked in sales and management most of her career.  In 2017 she did a complete flip and now works in a group home for adults with developmental delays as a personal service worker. She graduated from York University with a bachelor degree in psychology. Once a year, she and her husband visit orphans in Tanga, Tanzania to make sure they can afford to go to school, as they believe education is the key for their future. She has two grown children and is grandmother.  She lives in Tottenham, Ontario Canada. When she’s not researching or writing, she likes to swim, train her Doberman puppy to become a therapy dog, and most weekends you’ll find her at street fairs, meeting her readers in person, and selling her books. 

September 8, 2018: Sally Crosiar

Sally Crosiar lives in the Finger Lakes of New York State where she reads incessantly, enjoys time in and on the water, savors dark chocolate with red wine at every opportunity, and teaches about health and play for Empire State College. She is the author of Find the Love of Your Life, based on her own true story, My Uncle Dave, a children’s book with an adult message, and co-author with Dr. Sidney B. Simon of Love Builders: Tools to Build Every Relationship. Come Back is her debut novel.

September 4, 2018: Rachel Dacus

Rachel Dacus is a poet, essayist, and novelist who writes about love’s timeless truth. It’s the theme of her debut novel, THE RENAISSANCE CLUB, the romance between a young art historian and her historical hero, fiery 17th century Italian artist Bernini. Rachel enjoys reading and writing, preferably set in exotic places. She has traveled to Italy and India and plans to expand her journeys beyond countries that start with the letter “I”.

Elena Mikalsen was born in Ukraine and came to New York City as a refugee with her family at age 17. She is somewhat obsessive about travel, but, when at home in San Antonio, can be found browsing through bookstores or antique shops with her family and two adopted pups. When not writing stories, primarily about women who have a chance to change their lives, she is a Pediatric Psychologist, working at a Children's Hospital, helping children cope with chronic medical illness. She actively blogs on issues of mental health for teens and adults and also provides consultation to authors writing about those issues. Wrapped in the Stars is her first work of fiction. 

You can connect with Elena on her website, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.

August 20, 2018: Denitta Ward

Denitta Ward writes historical and contemporary fiction from the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. After decades of writing legal briefs and contracts, Denitta picked up her pen and decided she'd write the stories she really wanted to tell - about young women discovering their own resilience in times of transition. ​ Denitta is a member of the Women's Fiction Writers Association, the Historical Novel Society, and Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. Somewhere Still, written as a Mother's Day gift, captures a society in transition - the world of jazz, baseball's Negro League and a burgeoning Prohibition bootleg trade -- all a backdrop for this story of the price of love, the hurts that are slowest to heal and a certain kind of infinite redemption found when women band together across race and class. You can connect with Denitta at www.denitta.com.

August 13, 2018: Eldonna Edwards

Eldonna Edwards grew up in a large family nestled between cornfields and churches in the provincial Midwest. She eventually escaped the harsh winters, moving to California where she expanded her career from massage therapist to journaling facilitator to author to beloved writer’s conference instructor and public speaker. Her bestselling debut novel, This I Know, won over the hearts and minds of readers everywhere and was a Delilah Book Club selection. In her second novel, Clover Blue, Eldonna once again explores themes of otherness and belonging, and the true definition of home. She is also the subject of the award-winning documentary Perfect Strangers that follows one kidney patient and one potential kidney donor in their search for a possible match. Her 2014 memoir Lost in Transplantation chronicles this life-changing decision. Eldonna currently lives and writes in a tiny pink house with her best friend, Brer. Please visit her at http://www.eldonnaedwards.com. 

August 6, 2018: Carrie Mumford

Carrie Mumford has lived on both the East and West coasts of Canada, and many places in between. She completed a degree in English literature at Saint Mary’s University, and went on to complete a master’s in information studies at the University of Toronto. Carrie now lives in Calgary, Alberta, with her husband, three naughty cats, and one rambunctious dog.

Her short fiction has appeared in Full of Crow Fiction, the Bella Online Literary Review, Vine Leaves Literary Journal, the WCDR’s Whispered Words anthology and other fine journals. Her vignette, “The Blemish Collector”, was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2012. In 2013, her short story “Ashes to Ashes” was short-listed for the Room Magazine contest. Her first novel, All But What’s Left, was released in June 2018. You can find Carrie here: Website (www.carriemumford.com), Twitter (@CarrieMumford), Instagram (instagram.com/carrie.mumford), and Facebook (CarrieMumfordAuthor), GoodReads (www.goodreads.com/carriemumford).

August 3, 2018: Irene Frances Olson

Irene Frances Olson writes from passion and experience. She was her father’s caregiver during his struggle with Alzheimer’s disease, and would do it all over again in a heartbeat. Having previously worked in the assisted living and memory care industry, she was not new to the disease—nor was her family immune.

After her father’s 2007 death from Alzheimer’s disease, Ms. Olson worked as an Alzheimer’s Association support meeting facilitator and concurrently, she worked for the State of Washington as a Long-Term Care Ombudsman (LTC) – an advocate for adults living in LTC settings. The author maintains a blog www.babyboomersandmore.com, focusing primarily on elder issues, and her writing journey can be found on her author website: www.irenefrancesolson.com. Irene hopes to make a difference in the lives of others by writing novels that encourage those who just might need another cheerleader in their corner. It is her hope that her debut novel, Requiem for the status quo, provides such support.