Dasha Kelly Hamilton

Dasha Kelly Hamilton is a writer, performance artist, and creative change agent who is the author of two novels, three poetry collections, four spoken word albums, and one collection of personal vignettes. An Arts Envoy for the U.S. Embassy, she has facilitated community building initiatives in Botswana, Toronto, Mauritius, and Beirut. Her touring production, Makin’ Cake, uniquely engages communities in a forward dialogue on race, class, and equity.

Benjamin Percy

Benjamin Percy is the award-winning author of six novels—most recently, The Unfamiliar Garden—three story collections—including Suicide Woods—and Thrill Me, a collection of essays that is widely taught in creative writing classrooms. He co-wrote the feature film Summering and writes Wolverine, X-Force, and Ghost Rider for Marvel Comics; and his work has appeared in Esquire, GQ, Time, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. He has also has lectured at Harvard and taught at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Chad Lewis

Chad Lewis is a researcher, author, and lecturer on topics of the strange and unusual. Lewis’s background is in the field of Psychology as he did both his Bachelor and Master degree work in the field- but for nearly 30 years he has traveled the globe in search of unique and bizarre stories and history.

Eric Dregni

Eric Dregni is the author of 20 books including Vikings in the Attic, Weird Minnesota, Never Trust a Thin Cook, Let’s Go Fishing!, For the Love of Cod, and Impossible Road Trip. He wrote about his 15-year experience running one of the Concordia Language Villages in You’re Sending Me Where? Dispatches from Summer Camp. As a Fulbright fellow to Norway, he survived a dinner of rakfisk (fermented fish) thanks to 80-proof aquavit, took the “meat bus” to Sweden for cheap salami with a busload of knitting pensioners, and compiled the stories in In Cod We Trust: Living the Norwegian Dream.

He is Professor of English, Journalism, & Italian at Concordia St. Paul and, in the summer, dean of the Italian Concordia Language Village, Lago del Bosco. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife and three kids.

John Armbruster

John Armbruster grew up in a small town outside Marshfield, Wisconsin.

After he graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a journalism degree, he began his career writing for a public radio program, and later, two Wisconsin newspapers: the La Crosse Tribune and the Marshfield News-Herald.

John returned to UW-Madison and earned a degree in secondary education-social studies, and later, a master’s in education from Viterbo University. Since 1993, John has taught high school and middle school social studies courses. He currently teaches at the Westby School District.

John has two sons: Matthew, a police officer in Madison, and Joe, a student at UW-Madison studying wildlife ecology.

Tailspin is John’s first book.

Matt Cashion

Matt Cashion’s story collection, Last Words of the Holy Ghost, won the 2015 Katherine Anne Porter Prize for short fiction, and his novel Our Thirteenth Divorce won the 2017 Edna Ferber Book Prize. A former journalist, bartender, piano mover, and third-shift convenience store clerk, he earned a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of Oregon, and since 2006 has enjoyed hiking, biking, skiing, snow-shoeing, kayaking, and running through the beautiful Driftless region of western Wisconsin, where he’s happy to have a job as Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. (mattcashion.com)

Bao Xiong

Bao Xiong is the founder of Moth House Press, an indie publishing house focused on dark genres, folklore, non-traditional, and female lead stories. Bao was born in Thailand in a refugee camp. Her family, like many Hmong families from Laos, were involved in the Secret War during the Vietnam War. They migrated to the U.S. in the late ’80s. She majored in Visual Communications and pursues a career in literature, media, and theatre.

Jane Schmidt

With over 45 years experience in the fitness industry, Jane owns and operates Fitness Choices from her home in rural Viola, Wisconsin. The focus of her work is to help women overcome obstacles to maintain healthy habits for life. Her award-winning column, “Jane’s World,” appears weekly in the Crawford County Independent & Kickapoo Scout newspaper. Jane’s books include two essay collections, Not a Perfect Fit and Thunderstorms & Tiny Turtles, as well
as a series of books for children written in collaboration with her rat terrier mix, Finnegan. When not working, she enjoys hiking, biking, backpacking, and spending time with her critters.