Sara Shaver resides in the Northeast Georgia mountains with her husband and five dogs. She developed a love for dogs the second she saw light. Her love for creating recipes was born in the warm environment of home, cooking with her mom. That culinary passion morphed into cocktail creations while spending most of her life working in restaurants and bartending. When she reached her thirties, Sara began to target her enthusiasm for animals into a profession. It was decided her soft heart better served in the training realm versus medical. Now those two loves are a part of every day life for Sara and have bloomed into her creation of Unleashed Libations Canines & Cocktails.

Kay Long Roberts grew up on a farm in Union County, KY and is a registered nurse and nurse educator. At the age of thirteen she announced that when she was a grownup she would write and publish a book. She went on to publish a doctoral dissertation with fifty peer reviewed health research articles and has written many grant applications for health research. She received her MFA from Spalding University and has written several profiles of older women from an underserved neighborhood in Louisville, Kentucky. However, she still did not feel as if she was a writer. One day she listened to her soul, picked up a pen and wrote Stream. Stream is an ode to the rhythm of nature and speaks to the core of the human soul. Kay helps us discover, or remember, our spiritual connection to nature and nourish the core of who we are as humans living on this good earth. It is her hope that Stream will inspire us to join her in seeking sustenance from nature and doing our part to protect nature for those who will come after us.

Mike Wilson’s work has appeared in magazines including Cagibi Literary Journal, Stoneboat, The Aurorean, The Ocotillo Review, London Reader, and in anthologies including  for a better world 2020 and Anthology of Appalachian Writers Vol. X. He received Kentucky State Poetry Society’s Chaffin/Kash Prize in 2019. He resides in Lexington, Kentucky, but summers in Ecstasy and winters in Despair.

Born and raised in Lexington, Kentucky, Pamela Dae received degrees in English Literature and Journalism from Indiana University. She graduated with a J.D. from the University of Kentucky College of Law and has worked as a federal criminal defense practitioner for nearly two decades. Pamela has been published in AvantAppalachia and Nowhere Magazine. After the Race is her first novel. 

With more than twenty years of full-time newspaper and substantial online media experience, Nancy Royden earned her bachelor’s degree in communication arts from Georgetown College in Kentucky. Her writing has been published by The Associated Press, Texas Highway Patrol Magazine, JET magazine, South Florida (Fort Lauderdale) Times, Nu Magazine of Austin and the San Francisco Chronicle. Her photo credits include The Baltimore Sun, The Huffington Post, NBC4 (Washington, D.C.) and Kentucky Living. Her volunteer photography encompasses Latinitas Austin, The American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life and the Ward Hall Foundation. A native of Ashland, Kentucky, Nancy has traveled extensively, living in Germany for five years and residing in Texas, Alabama, Maryland, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Nancy lives and works in Frankfort, Kentucky with her husband and cats, regularly posting nature and architectural photos on social media. She is the proud mother of Ian Riddle, a college student in Maryland.

Kevin Lane Dearinger enjoyed a professional acting career that took him to Broadway, on national and international tours, and to many regional stages. He retired from performance and from his second career as an educator, returning to live and write in Kentucky. He is the author of The Bard in the Bluegrass, Marie Prescott, a “Star of Some Distinction,” Clyde Fitch and the American Theatre, and several plays, including Regarding Mrs. Carter and Naked on Request. He is currently working on a new play, two theatrical biographies, and a volume of poetry.

Rob Greene earned his Bachelor of Science in Microbiology with a minor in Genetics and his Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from NC State University, where he taught poetry writing as a graduate student. Greene is the editor of Raleigh Review and he is a postgraduate researcher with University of Birmingham (England) as well as an assistant professor at Saint Augustine’s University in Raleigh, North Carolina. He has a recent poem in the Berlin based annual Herzattacke, and others in Poem of the Week, Sport Literate, Open Minds Quarterly, Great River Review, and WLA War, Literature & the Arts. Greene relocated 46 times prior to moving to Raleigh close to two decades ago. His first chapbook, Biloxi Back Bay, became available through Rabbit House Press in 2017.

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Erin Chandler holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Spalding University and both BA and Masters in Theatre from University of Kentucky. Her celebrated memoir, June Bug Versus Hurricane was published in 2018. The original play of the same name was produced at the Lost Studio in Los Angeles in 2009. Cinderella Sweeping Up, a collection of essays by Chandler was released in June 2019. Erin lives in Versailles, Kentucky and teaches playwriting and screenwriting at the Carnegie Center and Creative Writing privately. She is on the Speakers Bureau for the Kentucky Humanities, has a weekly column in the Woodford Sun and a second novel, Nervous Blood in the works.