Kristen Millares Young is a freelance reporter for The New York Times and was researcher for Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek, which won a Pulitzer Prize and a Peabody Award in 2013. Hailed by The Stranger as one of the fresh new faces in Seattle fiction, she is writing her first novel.

Jonathan Evison is the author of three award-winning novels: All About Lulu, The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving, and the New York Times best-selling, West of Here. He is currently at work on novels four and five: Harriet Chance and The Dreamlife of Huntington Sales.

Karen Maeda Allman has worked as a bookseller and author events co-coordinator at the Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle, Washington since 1999. Each month, Elliott Bay hosts and co-promotes over fifty author events both at the bookstore and at a variety of other Seattle locations.

Rachel Fershleiser heads publishing outreach at Tumblr. She has been Community Manager at Bookish and Events Director at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe. She’s co-creator of Six-Word Memoirs and co-editor of the New York Times best seller Not Quite What I Was Planning and three other books.

Jarret Middleton is the author of An Dantomine Eerly and other fiction. He is the editor-in-chief and co-founder of Dark Coast Press and the imprint Pharos Editions in Seattle, Washington.