Kate Gray's passion stems from teaching, coaching writers, and volunteering as a writing facilitator with women inmates and women veterans. She is the author of three poetry collections, and her first novel, Carry the Sky, stares at bullying without blinking.

Geof Morgan was raised in New England and spent nine years in Nashville, Tennessee as a commercial songwriter, writing for Barbara Mandrell and Ronnie Milsap before moving to Bellingham in 1982. He recorded four albums of folk-country style songs for the pro-feminist men's movement between 1981 and 1988 and has continued to play music and write songs while spending the last 28 years working as a community organizer. "We write what we need to hear in our own voice."

Why write? Why write a memoir? Because we have to! Some story pushing to be expressed just won't leave us alone. Memoir writing is both the rush of the memory longing to be captured, and also the time spent crafting this memory into a story to share with others. My current writing takes many forms - stories to gather in the memories of earlier years, songs to capture images or emotions, laments for our sweet planet, and proposals to inspire us to create a palliative community of excellence. I taught writing in all these forms at Fairhaven College for many years, and now am Director of the Palliative Care Initiative, and I love helping others find the tools and strategies to find their own passions and the voice to express them.

Jenifer Lawrence is the author of Grayling (Perugia Press, 2015), and One Hundred Steps from Shore (Blue Begonia Press, 2006). Awards include the Perugia Press Prize, the Orlando Poetry Prize, the James Hearst Poetry Prize, the Potomac Review poetry award, and a GAP grant from Artist Trust. She has been resident at Hedgebrook, Soapstone, Willapa Bay, and the Port Townsend Writers' Conference. Her work appears in Bracken, The Coachella Review, Los Angeles Review, Narrative, North American Review, and elsewhere. Jenifer lives on Puget Sound, and edits the Seattle-based journal, Crab Creek Review.