Kate Carroll de Gutes's book, Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear, won the 2016 Oregon Book Award and a 2016 Lambda Literary Award. Her latest book, The Authenticity Experiment: Lessons From the Best & Worst Year of My Life, was released in 2017 and won an IPPY for LGBT nonfiction.

tammy lynne stoner is the author of Sugar Land—a southern-fried novel. She's also the publisher of Gertrude and wrangler of the queer book club GERTIE. Her work has been published two dozen times in places like Folio and American Fiction 2015. 

Beth Marshea is the owner of Ladderbird Literary Agency based out of Boston, MA. She believes that diverse representation is the cornerstone of great literature. Beth strives to find manuscripts that tell the stories of all under represented groups. She focuses on beautiful story telling above all.

Tobi Harper is Deputy Director of Red Hen Press, Founder and Editor of Quill (a queer publishing series), Contributing Editor for The Los Angeles Review, Instructor for the UCLA Extension Publishing and Editing program, and a queer literary warrior.

Nick White is the author of the novel How to Survive a Summer. His fiction has appeared in the Kenyon Review, the Hopkins Review, Guernica, the Literary Review, and elsewhere. He teaches creative writing at the Ohio State University.