Margaret Hawkins

Web site
Margaret Hawkins is a writer, critic and educator. She is the author of three novels:
A Year of Cats and Dogs,
How to Survive a Natural Disaster (both published by Permanent Press), and
Lydia's Party (Viking Press, to be released by Penguin in paperback in 2015). She's also written a memoir:
How We Got Barb Back: the Story of My Sister's Reawakening after 30 Years of Schizophrenia (Conari).
Hawkins wrote a column about art for the Chicago-Sun-Times for twenty years and currently teaches in the New Arts Journalism program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She received an MFA in painting from the University of North Carolina.
Maggie Kast
Maggie Kast's debut novel,
A Free Unsullied Land, is forthcoming from Fomite Press on November 1, 2015. Her first book,
The Crack between the Worlds: A Dancer's Memoir of Loss, Faith and Family, was published by Wipf and Stock. Maggie received an M.F.A. in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and has published fiction in The Sun, Nimrod, Rosebud, Paper Street and others. Her essays have appeared in America, Image, Writer's Chronicle and elsewhere, and a chapter of her memoir won a Literary Award from the Illinois Arts Council and a Pushcart nomination. An essay on symbols in Numero Cinq is currently available online by
clicking here. Maggie understands that independent publishing has never been more important than it is today, and we are delighted she is a part of Upper Hand Press.
Christine Grimaldi

Web siteChristine Grimaldi is a writer in Washington, D.C. In 2014, she published a widely shared feature story in Slate on straight spouses--straight men and women who used to be married to gay partners. She has also written about the language of sexual assault for DAME Magazine; her tough-guy dad, "Brooklyn Tommy," for The Toast; schadenfreude for The Morning News; and on a range of topics for other publications. A complete list of her published work is available on her website. When Christine isn't writing, she edits nonfiction book proposals as well as nonfiction and fiction manuscripts. She has an MA in nonfiction writing from Johns Hopkins University.
Anna Sequoia

Web siteAnna Sequoia is the author of ten non-fiction books, including the animal rights classic 67 Ways to Save the Animals (HarperPerennial), and the best-selling humor book, The Official J.A.P. Handbook (N.A.L.). Anna was a fiction reader for Atheneum Publishers and Charterhouse Books, a non-fiction reviewer for Publishers Weekly, and later reviewed both fiction and non-fiction for New Times magazine. A former co-chair of the Publishing Triangle, Anna was a charter member of the National Book Critics Circle. She was most recently Senior Creative Director for Product Promotion at Publishers Clearing House.
Photo credit: Ray Ewing
Tina Tocco
Tina Tocco's work has appeared in Roanoke Review, Crab Creek Review, Harpur Palate, Passages North, Potomac Review, Portland Review, Fiction Fix, and other publications. She was a finalist in CALYX's 2013 Flash Fiction Contest and an honorable mention in the River Styx 2015 Schlafly Beer Micro-Brew Micro-Fiction Contest. Tina's poetry appears in the anthology Wild Dreams: The Best of Italian Americana (Fordham University Press, 2008). She earned her MFA from Manhattanville College, where she was editor-in-chief of Inkwell. Tina spends a lot of her time writing for children, watching sci-fi and British dramas, and fantasizing about living in rural New England.