Maura McCarley Torkildson
The Inner Tree: Discovering the Roots of Your Intuition and Overcoming Barriers to Mastering It
Maura McCarley Torkildson is an author, speaker, artist, intuitive and soul creativity support mentor. She is the founder of Maura Torkildson Coaching and her work includes supporting creatives and spiritual women entrepreneurs to complete their creative soul projects. She is a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach and has an M.A. in Women’s Spirituality from New College of California. Her artwork has been exhibited in both the U.S. and Malta. Her book, The Inner Tree: Discovering the Roots of Your Intuition and Overcoming Barriers to Mastering It, is an International Book Awards Finalist and Foreword INDIES Finalist in the Body, Mind & Spirit category.
Marleen Pasch
Stars in Their Infancy: A Novel
Marleen Pasch is an award-winning novelist, essayist and short fiction writer. Her recent novel, Stars in Their Infancy, was a finalist in two categories (General Fiction and Second Novel) in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards.
Cones of Uncertainty, on which her novella, Calypso Calling is based, won honorable mention in the National League of American Pen Women, Florida Branch competition. Her short story, Rocks and River, originally published in Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, won first place in the short fiction category of the National League of American Pen Women.
When not writing, Marleen helps emerging and established authors find their power on the page. A graduate of Cornell University and previously an award-winning corporate communications consultant, she’s an engaging panelist, speaker and workshop facilitator at colleges, libraries and other literary forums.
After living many years in the Northeast, she now makes her home in South Florida. Connect with her at earthskyandspirit,com.
Marjorie Weiss
Praying on Empty
Marjorie Weiss has been a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America for 38 years, having been ordained when there were just 200 female pastors in her denomination. She graduated as valedictorian with a degree in sociology from Bloomsburg State College in Pennsylvania and earned a Master’s of Divinity from The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. Her sense of adventure led her not only into a man’s world as a young adult, but also to the risky choices of wife, mother, world travel, and sharing space with a number of cats over the years. While her life has been blessed with her enduring love of Star Trek, knitting, and singing, Marjorie's writing has been published in The Palm Beach Post, The Sun Sentinel, The Clergy Journal, and The Lutheran. Her Amazon #1 Bestseller and multi award-winning memoir is Praying on Empty: A Female Pastor's Story.
Mary Baird Mayer
Isabelle: Dakota Prairie Pioneer Wife and Mother
Mary Baird Mayer grew up with five sisters and two brothers on the farm that her grandfather bought in 1917, in the house where her mother was born. Lucky enough to attend country school for seven years before moving to a town, she enjoyed her childhood on the same Dakota prairie as her great-grandmother. After high school, she married her husband, Allen, and had four children. Upon earning an Associate Degree in her late twenties, nursing became her profession for thirty-five years. In retirement, she and Allen are blessed with twelve grandchildren. On any given day, you'll find her busy writing, doing craft projects, attending church-related activities, working on Ancestry.com and making music with her accordion group. Her first novel is Isabelle, an historical fiction account of her great-grandmother's pioneer life.
Ruth Baird Pollard
Loving Gordon: A Dementia Caregiver's Journey
Ruth Baird Pollard’s Loving Gordon: A Dementia Caregiver’s Journey is a New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards Winner. It was originally written as a journal during the five years she was a caregiver for her husband, Gordon, from diagnosis in 2007 until his death in 2012. She has an Associate’s Degree in Business Technology from San Antonio College in San Antonio, Texas. She also has taken many writing courses and is a member of SouthWest Writers. An active volunteer with the local Alzheimer’s Association, Pollard is a facilitator for two support groups where she helps other caregivers along their journeys. She has five sons, five daughters-in-law, nine grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with her faithful companion, Maggie the cat.
Canela Michelle Meyers
Right Here, Right Now Meditations: Satsang Invitations for Expanding Awareness
Canela Michelle Meyers supports people to relax open to, and experience directly, the awakened state of Being worldwide since 1999 via speaking engagements, Satsang gatherings and private sessions. Her book, Right Here, Right Now Meditations: Satsang Invitations for Expanding Awareness, supports people to make use of regular everyday happenings to enlighten and enrich their lives.
Sarah McLeod
Spirit Guidance
Sarah is the author of Spirit Guidance and founder of Vision Weaving. Vision Weaving, the healing art of transformation. Sarah empowers people to heal themselves, by creating sacred ceremony and tuning into spirit guidance. She is the spiritual advisor and healer to celebrities, entrepreneurs, high profile leaders and visionary trailblazers with an international clientele that spans five continents. Her healing music is streamed worldwide.
Lea Hope Becker
Think Yourself Young: Poetry to Make You Smile
Lea Hope Becker is a licensed attorney and tax preparer who has been writing and publishing books since 2008. She is the author of six books, three memoirs and two recent full-length books, which she describes as “novels laced with humor,” and a forthcoming poetry collection, Think Yourself Young: Poetry to Make You Smile, telling of the joys and frustrations of her various life experiences. She holds a law degree and bachelor’s degree from DePaul University in Chicago.
Rosemary N. Gensler
Detours: A Novel
Rosemary Gensler fell in love with the power of the word when she was seven years old, writing her first essay. She has written many pieces since then, culminating in her memoir, I Refuse to Say Moo. She has also published stories through the Kravis Center in Florida, where she was an original member of the Writer’s Circle. Her works have been read on NPR in Florida, where she presently resides and writes. She and her late husband are the parents of three, and proud grandparents of nine. Rosemary looks forward to the continual learning of the written word and seeing more of her work in print. As one of "The Inkslingers," she is the co-author of the International Book Award Finalist Detours: A Novel, honored in Visionary Fiction.
Dayle Grande Herstik
A Country House with Soul
Dayle Herstik is a writer, poet and painter who has published three books, including A Country House with Soul: Where Nature’s Lessons Unfold, wherein life’s wisdom and tiny moments linger upon the landscape of her family’s upstate New York summer country home. The common threads of her books and writings are her experiences, relationships and philosophy. In “retirement,” her time is divided between Boca Raton, Florida, New Jersey, and the Adirondack mountains in New York State. She is a member of the National League of American Pen Women.
Marlene Klotz
I See the Rainbow
Marlene Klotz is an award-winning poet, playwright, freelance writer and the author of seven books. Her writing career began in 1976 with the publication of her first poem in The American Journal of Nursing. Her next poem, "A Mountain of Shoes," was accepted by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. to be included in their permanent archives. In later years, she branched out into the field of children's literature, finding a new enjoyment in writing for youngsters. Her children's books provide early readers with fun-filled poems that both entertain and hold their interest. Marlene's forthcoming Citrine title is the illustrated book of children's poems, I See the Rainbow, which is an inspired gift from her heart to the young generations and the ageless poet in all of us.
Beverley Golden
Confessions of a Middle-Aged Hippie
Beverley Golden is a writer, raconteur and self-professed guinea pig, who love testing unconventional ways to shift paradigms in the playing fields of healthcare, storytelling and of course in true hippie fashion, world peace. The stories in her memoir, Confessions of a Middle-Aged Hippie, really were written in eight days, another example of her passion for turning the "impossible" into possible. She currently lives in Toronto, Canada.
Penelope Love
Wake Up in Love: A Tantric Manifesto
The Founder and Publisher of Citrine Publishing, Penelope Love, MA, is also a writer, speaker, and poet residing in State College, Pennsylvania. Her book Wake Up in Love debuted as Amazon's #1 New Release in Sacred Sexuality and is the International Book Awards Winner in Self-Help/Relationships. It is also available in audiobook, narrated by the author.
Marcie Brubaker
The SImple Truth
Marcie Brubaker is the youngest of five children. She was born and raised in Clovis, New Mexico, as part of a rough-and-tumble, hardworking farm family. Marcie had two children, Neal Day and Kathleen Day. She has lived in many states, including Kansas, Missouri, Ohio, and Georgia. She is retired from secretarial work, and resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with her husband, Phil Brubaker, and their pittie bulldog, Barney. Writing short stories and poetry became part of Marcie’s healing journey after she lost her daughter at the age of twenty-five in a traffic accident. She attributes her literary conception to simple survival in a rather solitary childhood where she had no close friends or neighbors and was compelled to go deep and live through her own imagination.
Lawrence Fish, RPh
Addiction in the Family: Now What?
Lawrence Fish, RPh, is a retired pharmacist who re-thought his entire life when his daughter “Z” fell ill with addiction. She started as a casual user, so her descent was not perceivable initially—and a call from the police catapulted him, his wife, and Z onto a whole new trajectory no one was prepared for. Only after she completed her first treatment, did Fish realize that he—like most other family members of a sufferer—knew so little about this insidious disease. Parental guilt took its toll, initially. Even Fish’s professional training taught him virtually nothing about the world of addiction, how his daughter was suffering, and what she would encounter in her future. After Z’s first relapse, he continued to attend the treatment center’s Family Night meetings and developed a passion for in-depth learning about this disease. This real-life education led him to open the Fifty-Fifty House, a sober living facility in Pompano Beach, Florida, where weekly meetings connected to the greater Narcotics Anonymous community became a new source of knowledge. With insight gained from attending two to three meetings per week for the past fifteen-plus years, Fish continues to actively participate in meetings and is dedicated to helping other parents, family members, and caregivers who find themselves in a position of supporting an adult child or family member with addiction.
Marion Phillips
Detours: A Novel
Marion S. Phillips was raised in rural New Jersey’s nearby waterways and Appalachian foothills. Her high school essays won her the appointment as senior yearbook editor and finalist in NY Herald Tribune Student Forum. She gardened and fished with her father, whose neighboring immigrant parents’ and assorted relatives’ tales continue to inspire her writings. She was awarded two graduate degrees; became founding member of the Working Writers’ Forum and Cinema Society; had essays published in magazines and read on Florida public radio; presented a paper regarding childhood hearing loss following maternal rubella; and co-wrote funded grants enabling Appalachia-NY State Child Project and Maryland federally funded ESOL program. Marion resides with her husband, Leslie, to whom she is grateful for for opening new worlds, dancing the Tango, and chauffeuring her to airports for writing projects’ destinations. On Historical Society stage, she directed military war-wives and volunteer actresses, all portraying wives’ remembrances. She is also the author of a nonfiction book capturing the authentic voices of U.S. war-wives. As one of "The Inkslingers," she is the co-author of the International Book Award Finalist Detours: A Novel, honored in Visionary Fiction.
Cora Hoberman
One Hundred and Five Years Young: A Daughter's Memoir
Cora Hoberman is a retired Licensed Clinical Social Worker. A proud mother of her son, Brian, and daughter, Alison. She lives in Manhattan in Hells Kitchen, a very lively neighborhood of New York City.
Kristine Lucco
One Magical Night and Cracklin' in the Woods
Kristine Lucco's passion for art began at a young age and drove her to further hone her skill by studying at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale fresh out of high school. Her talent, however, was quickly recognized as extraordinary by local designers and she was commissioned to paint murals for premier real estate as well as several national restaurant chains. Today, over 20 years later, Kristine's art and designs adorn walls and myriad other surfaces all over south Florida. Her work takes the form of murals, trompe l'oeil, children's rooms, hand painted furniture and faux finishing, in both commercial and residential settings. Her work has been highlighted in Florida Design and Palm Beach Illustrator, and featured on the cover of Christies Estates Magazine. Kristine's clients include many award winning interior designers and national sports celebrities. She is the illustrator of the International Book Award-Winning Children's Book, One Magical Night and forthcoming Mom's Choice Award Gold Winner, Cracklin' in the Woods.
Diana Kingsley
Mother in Name Only
Diana Kingsley is the author of Mother in Name Only, the transparent, sometimes painful, and always poignant portrait of Myrna Kaye. It depicts Myrna's healing from complicated grief, overwhelming depression, and unspeakable loss through self-forgiveness. In the words of Dr. Howard C. Rubin, MD, "Kingsley takes us on a truly American journey of a woman who searches for compassion and meaning as she liberates herself from a loveless marriage and establishes an independent life for herself. Her struggles with the burdens of personal and family history are our struggles, and we root for her as she learns to spread her wings and fly."
Maria Choron
One Magical Night
Maria Choron is an artist and award-winning children's book author whose work is heavily influenced by her love of structured patterns and her northeastern roots. She grew up in Brooklyn and Queens, New York, and was a student at both city colleges before earning a B.A. in Communications from Florida Atlantic University. She later attended art classes at the Boca Raton Museum of Art School. She is past President of the Boca Raton Friends of the Library and a recipient of the Volunteer of the Year Award from the City of Boca Raton, where she volunteered for nine years in local venues, including the Boca Raton Museum in Mizner Park. Her first children's book, One Magical Night, a winner of the International Book Awards, is illuminated by an autobiographical poem capturing the wonders of childhood summer nights in New York.
Mari Wilman
The Drowning Year: A Novel
Mari Wilman is a licensed pharmacist with experience compounding holistic medications and has a B.A. in Romance Languages. She is currently devoting her time to her writing and playing bass guitar in two local bands, one of which recently released an album of original songs. Her interests include nutrition, music, animal rescue, and metaphysics. She lives with her husband and three children in south Florida.
Márta Kilczer Blades
Leaves from an Unexpected Life: A Refugee's Journey
Márta Kilczer Blades (1930 - 2021) was born and raised in Hungary. After World War II, as a refugee, she was fortunate to receive a scholarship to Marian College in Indianapolis, in the USA, to study art. After marriage, she raised three children and worked as Director of Editions Limited Gallery in Indianapolis for thirty-five years. Márta retired to Winston-Salem, North Carolina, in 2007, and after three bouts of cancer, still paints. Her concentration is strong, happy color/abstraction. She paints, and now writes, with the hope that her work "shouts joy." In her own words, "When all I wanted to do was sing, I was accorded the honor of living." Her touching memoir, Leaves from an Unexpected Life: A Refugee's Journey, gifts readers with a broader knowledge of history and a wide-open heart.
Phyllis W. Hoffman
Detours: A Novel
Phyllis Hoffman knew she wanted to write before she could read. She remembers trips with her cousin and their grandmother to The Public Library in New York. At the time, she wished she could read all the books. She owes whatever talent she has to all the teachers who encouraged her to write—and to her father who thought she could write “the great American novel.” Phyllis has a Master’s degree in Special Education. She was chosen as one of President Bush’s Points of Lights for her volunteer service. Phyllis was honored by The Executive Women of the Palm Beaches Foundation, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, and Jewish Family and Children’s Service. Her book, "Butterfly Girl," is the story of her journey with her second daughter—an amazing woman with special needs. Phyllis is married, has three children, five grandchildren, and various grand-dogs and cats. As one of "The Inkslingers," she is the co-author of the International Book Award Finalist Detours: A Novel, honored in Visionary Fiction.