Mike Cox
​A former award-winning newspaper reporter, Cox served as chief of media relations for the Texas Department of Public Safety and later communications manager for the Texas Department of Transportation before retiring in 2007. He left the 8-to-5 world for good in February 2015 to write full time.
 
Elected to the Texas Institute of Letters in 1993, along with James Michener and Bill Moyers, Mike Cox is the best-selling author of more than 30 nonfiction books and hundreds of magazine articles, newspaper columns and essays. Cox’ most-acclaimed works are his two-volume Texas Ranger history, Wearing the Cinco Peso, and Time of the Rangers and a true crime book on professed serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, The Confessions of Henry Lee Lucas.  His book with Dean Smith, Cowboy Stuntman: From Olympic Gold to the Silver Screen, won three national awards, including the Will Rogers Medallion in 2014.
 
When not writing or traveling, Cox spends as much time as he can fishing, hunting, prowling antique malls and bookstores and looking for new stories to tell. Now living in the Texas hill country town of Wimberley, Cox's goal is to keep writing at least one book a year until he runs out of ideas or time. 
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Samantha M. Clark
​Samantha M Clark is the award-winning author of The Boy, The Boat, And The Beast, Arrow, and American Horse Tales: Hollywood, as well as the Gemstone Dragons chapter book series, just published in August, 2022.
 
She has always loved stories about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. After all, if four ordinary brothers and sisters can find a magical world at the back of a wardrobe, why can’t she? While she looks for her real-life Narnia, she writes (often in the middle of the night) about other ordinary children and teens who’ve stumbled into a wardrobe of their own.
 
In a past life, Samantha was a photojournalist and managing editor for newspapers and magazines. She lives with her husband and two funny dogs in Austin, Texas. Samantha is the Regional Advisor for the Austin chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators, and explores wardrobes every chance she gets.
Deirdre Williams
Dr. Deirdre Williams is an educator and author who loves reading and writing. She gained her love for reading from her mother who always took her to the local library for story hour and summer reading club. In 2005, she participated in the DC Area Writing Project, an affiliate of the National Writing Project. It was during this time she began to pull her writings from her childhood and build on them. Inspired by her niece and nephew, Dr. Williams has written a series of books as a tribute to them. Donovan Says, published in 2018, is her third published children’s book. Dr. Williams published her first book Quit, Khaliah! in 2016 and her second book ¡Khaliah, para! in 2017. She is a Project WISE author and member of the Writers League of Texas.
Stephen Yanoff
​Stephen G. Yanoff is a former New York insurance company executive who was an acknowledged expert in the field of high-risk insurance. He now writes nonfiction history books and mystery novels, and has won numerous gold and silver medals.
Author Of The Graceland Gang, The Pirate Path, Devil's Cove, Ransom On The Rhone, A Run For The Money, and Capone Island (all part of the Adam Gold Mystery Series). Yanoff is the recipient of over 20 prestigious literary awards, and the author of the highly acclaimed non-fiction history books: The Second Mourning (The Untold Story of America's Most Bizarre Political Murder), Turbulent Times (The Remarkable Life of William H. Seward) and Gone Before Glory (The Life and Tragic Death of William McKinley).
 
When asked, “Why write?”  Yanoff answers: “My mystery novels are based upon my own experiences in the field of high-risk insurance, and each book involves an actual insurance claim. I decided to write the series in order to share the dark but fascinating side of insurance fraud. My nonfiction books are simply a labor of love—a love of American history.”
Stacey Swann
Stacey Swann holds an M.F.A. from Texas State University and was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. She is a contributing editor of American Short Fiction and has spent many years teaching writing and working as a freelance editor, jobs that she says were invaluable in improving her own writing.
Stacey's debut novel Olympus, Texas was a Good Morning America Book Club selection for May. It tells the story of a wild and big-hearted family saga set in the Lone Star State with a wink towards classical mythology. She says of her home state, “Texas does have this larger-than-life mythology itself that native Texans buy into.”  The book has been optioned for a possible movie. NPR’s Scott Simon says of the novel: “Think of it as a classic Greek tale, but pungent and falling off the bone like Texas barbecue.” 
Stacey was raised on a cattle ranch, is a native Texan, and lives in Austin, Texas.
S. Kirk Walsh
S. Kirk Walsh is a novelist, an editor, and a teacher based in Austin, Texas. Her debut novel,The Elephant of Belfast, was inspired by true events that took place in Belfast, Northern Ireland, during World War II and is a remarkable novel about the unexpected relationship between a woman and an elephant.
Over the years, her fiction, essays, and book reviews have been widely published. Each September, Walsh leads a nine-month workshop for fiction writers working on novels and story collections. She is the founder of Austin Bat Cave, a writing & tutoring center for kids which “help young writers to find the power of their voices.”  American Short Fiction awarded her an honor of extraordinary service in the literary community in 2018. She has learned to “Walk through the doors that open, but don’t be deterred by the doors that close.”
Walsh is now working on a second novel inspired by events that took place in Detroit during the 1930s and 1940s.