KATHERYN KROTZER LABORDE (Stay)
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Katheryn Krotzer Laborde has worked as a writer in one form or another for more years than she cares to admit. A writer of prose, she is a past recipient of the Louisiana Division of the Arts Artist Fellowship in Literature and received a Louisiana Cultural Economy Grant for her writings on Katrina evacuation and recovery. An Assistant Professor at Xavier University of Louisiana, her writing has appeared in Poets & Writers, Callaloo, Xavier Review, and other journals and anthologies.

CATHY LADMAN (Forever)
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One of the country's top comedians, Cathy has not only appeared on The Tonight Show nine times, but was also the only female comic to appear on the last two Johnny Carson Tonight Show Anniversary shows. Cathy has had her own HBO One Night Stand comedy special and, in 1992, was awarded the American Comedy Award for Best Female Stand Up Comic.

Cathy's film credits include The Aristocrats, White Oleander, What Planet Are You From?, My Fellow Americans, and Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead. Her television appearances include a recurring role on Caroline in the City, regular appearances on ABC's Politically Incorrect and Comedy Central's Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist, and guest starring roles on Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Everybody Loves Raymond.

Cathy's writing career includes developing original television treatments, episodic scripts, and feature-length screenplays. Cathy spent seasons writing on The Caroline Rhea Show (2002), The Wayne Brady Show (2001), Caroline in the City (1997), and Roseanne(1996). She recently wrote on the pilot episode of Bravo's, Situation: Comedy.

In addition to stand-up, TV, and film, Cathy has been doing more live theatre. She was in the 25th Anniversary Production of Last Summer at Bluefish Cove in Los Angeles. She developed her show, Scaredypants, with HBO and took it to the Aspen Comedy Festival. She is currently working on a new solo show, Does This Show Make Me Look Fat?

Cathy will be appearing on the Funniest Mom in America 3, which premieres in April on Nick at Nite.

Beth enjoys being on the radio and has hosted a daily live talk show on Comedy World, is a commentator on NPR's All Things Considered, and is "the self help consultant" for ABC Radio's Satellite Sisters.

Beth also enjoys being on TV and in film and often plays offbeat authority figures. Club owners, gallery owners, A&R execs, movie producers. She recently appeared on Sex and the City as a performance artist. She actually did begin her career as an NEA-funded performance artist and her current artwork is available through Ghetto Gloss in Los Angeles. (ghettogloss.com).

Beth, and her partner Greg Miller have developed shows for Oxygen, Disney,
and MTV. They've created and produced Say the Word, a reading series for
comedy writers, which is now available on two CDs, and The Other Network,
which presents great unaired TV pilots introduced by their creators.

Beth has written for Utne Magazine, LA Weekly, Premier Magazine and run her mouth on CNN, NBC news, Politically Incorrect and E!. She is at work on two books, practicing yoga and remodeling a Meiselman home in Palm Springs. For more info go to: uncabaret.com.

MAXINE LAPIDUSS (A-One and A-Two-A Macadamia Nuts); (Scared Medicine)
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Maxine Lapiduss is an entertainer, TV comedy writer/producer, New Media entrepreneur, and "Reality Show Diva." She starred in the 8-hour reality series for Bravo called Situation: Comedy -- a documentary in the style of Project Green Light about writing and producing sitcoms. Sean Hayes (Will and Grace) created the series.

Maxine has written and produced some of the most popular half hour comedies of the past decade including the final season of Ellen (Three Emmy nominations), Roseanne, (Emmy nomination as Best Comedy Series and a Golden Globe award the years Maxine was there), Home Improvement (People's Choice Award for Best Comedy Series) and the last season of Dharma and Greg, to name a few. She continues to create series for TV.

Her first live theatrical venture, SITUATION TRAGEDY: Observations on 10 years in Hollywood...with Bongos, wowed critics and audiences alike. It ran to sold-out houses in Hollywood, won fourteen Dramalogue Awards, and was nominated for an Ovation Award (The LA "Obie") for best New Musical. Her new live show will be premiering in LA in the spring. For more info go to www.maxinelapiduss.com.

RUTH LeFAIVE (The Scope of Distance)
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It all started with the Brown IBM Electric Typewriter, back when brown wasn't a fashion "Do". Ruth abandoned efforts at writing her autobiography when she was just eight years old, only 13 pages into the story, and has successfully withdrawn from countless projects ever since.

Her most recent escape, from a twelve-year pigeonhole of comfort in TV and Film post-production, has left her pondering a more meaningful existence pondering the meaning of existence. Once published in the collection Around & About L.A.: Creative Nonfiction by Emerging Los Angeles Writers, Ruth finds herself in perpetual emergence.

She writes at home, forty-two paces from the West Los Angeles 7-11 where they affectionately call her, "No Nacho?" each time she buys low fat frozen yogurt. Although often slipping in honest and unnecessary confessions about her recovery from junk food addiction, she usually does not refer to herself in the third person.

TODD LEVIN (Soteriophobia: The Annual Birthday Revue); (A Man of Great Principles); (My Racist Aunt)
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Todd Levin is a comedian and writer living in Brooklyn. He performs in clubs and alternative venues all over New York, including Stand-Up NY, The Laugh Lounge, Rififi, PSNBC, and The Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, and will be making his television debut on Comedy Central's Premium Blend later this year.

His writing has appeared in Salon, Glamour, The Modern Humorist, McSweeney's, The Onion and, too frequently, his own web site www.tremble.com. Todd also co-produces and co-hosts the popular monthly comedy reading series, HOW TO KICK PEOPLE, which The Onion calls "a winning hybrid of comedic storytelling, performance, and other random bits."

JOHN LEVENSTEIN (It Feels Worse); (Dixie Canyon)
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John Levenstein is a TV writer/producer, currently working on the Fox show Arrested Development. Previous credits include The John Larroquette Show, Secret Lives of Men, and What About Joan. He's written and/or produced pilots for Fox, CBS, NBC, and ABC, along with writing and directing the self-produced pilot Sonoma. John also reads his essays at the Los Angeles series Sit 'n Spin. For more, go to www.saltinwound.com.

TUCKER LIEBERMAN (The Weight of the Wannigan)
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Tucker Lieberman has a masters degree in journalism and has written for five anthologies on gender studies (two forthcoming). His poetry has recently been published online at Snakeskin (www.snakeskin.org.uk) and Ariga (www.ariga.com). He enjoys train rides, bread baking, and Shabbat services at synagogue in Providence, R.I.

CLAUDIA LONOW (West Side Story)
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Claudia Lonow was born in a trunk... of a tree. She is a woodland nymph. However, that hasn't stopped her meteoric rise in Hollywood. She created the television show, Rude Awakening, which ran on Showtime for three groundbreaking seasons; and Good girls Don't,which ran on the Oxygen network for eight critically acclaimed episodes. In between these bursts of brilliance, she's served as co-executive producer on other television shows such as: Less than Perfect, and The War at Home. She can also be seen performing in the literary and performance showcase Sit 'n Spin. Oh, and she played the part of Diana Fairgate (the chubby loud-mouthed daughter of Michele Lee), on the nighttime soap opera, Knots Landing.

Following a quick ten-year stint working comedy clubs all over the country, she turned to a career in television sitcom writing. She has been a writer/producer on numerous sitcoms, including Living Single; Sister, Sister and The Tracy Morgan Show. Bernadette has written many short stories and poems. She is married to the best massage therapist in Los Angeles.

MEREDITH SCOTT LYNN (My Life with Her Dog)
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Meredith founded Big Hair Productions and produced, along with director Julie Davis, the indie film I Love You, Don't Touch Me! which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in '97 and was released to critical acclaim by MGM. Immediately following she was offered the role opposite Sean Hayes in, and then signed on to produce, the independent film success and Sundance festival favorite, Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss. Meredith soon co-directed the original screenplay Standing On Fishes in which she co-stars with Kelsey Grammer, Jason Priestley, Pamela Reed and writer Bradford Tatum. She co-produced and co-stars in How to Go Out On A Date in Queens with Jason Alexander, Rob Estes, Ron Pearlman and Kimberly Williams. She developed and directed the short film, Demo Reel…a tragedy in 10 minutes which opened the shorts program at HBO's prestigious US Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen and wrote, and is attached to direct, the film Pay The Ladies for executive producer Amy Heckerling and producers Matthew Rhodes and Judd Payne. She recently founded 1Train Films, a new company on a mission to make movies people want to see…

Along with her film endeavors, Meredith has multiple television projects that are either sold or in development hell with everyone else's. She is also very active in the production of fundraising events and PSA's for issues and causes that move her.

An actress, she most recently co-starred with Leslie Ann Warren and Jack Klugman in Sal Litvak's When Do We Eat? She played Detective Jackson opposite Harrison Ford, Josh Hartnett and Bruce Greenwood in the poorly marketed comedy, Hollywood Homicide. She was lesbian activist Enid Wexler in MGM's Legally Blonde, co-starred as the aggressive bridesmaid "Debbie" in Dreamworks' Forces Of Nature with Ben Affleck and Sandra Bullock and as the "Credit Vixen" in Paramount's A Night At The Roxbury.

ANNAH MACKENZIE (Salvation Lake)
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According to her business card, Annah is both a "creative consultant" and an "academic expressionist." In reality, though, she is a bartender in Brooklyn, slinging wine and stinky cheese to those who have been paying their rent on time for years. She's been moving around steadily for the past ten years, from Madagascar to Krakow, and her next stop will be Ann Arbor, Michigan, for a PhD in American Culture. While this new four-year plan gives the illusion of focus, she kind of digs not knowing what the hell she's doing and she remains hopeful that one day she'll have a less nebulous title for her business cards. This is her first published piece.

JEN MAHER (Far From Home)
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Dr. Maher teaches in the Department of Gender Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. Her fields include Popular Culture, American Women's Literature, Third Wave Feminism, and Gender and the Body. She has published in academic and popular venues, including fictional autobiographical works in Secrets and Confidences: The Complicated Truth about Women's Friendships and Young Wives Tales: New Adventures in Love and Partnership. She is a frequent contributor to Bitch: A Feminist Response to Popular Culture and is very proud to be part of the new Farrar Strauss and Giroux anthology Bitchfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism From the Pages of Bitch Magazine. She is currently at work on a longer memoir tentatively titled My Orthodontist Was a Porn Star: Memoirs of a Southern California Girlhood, and an academic project focused on representations of teachers in popular culture whose title isn't nearly as good. She still dreams of one day starting an all-girl Bruce Springsteen cover band.

JERRY MAHONEY (The Year I was Special)
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Jerry Mahoney likes to write just about everything in the world -- from personal essays to screenplays to fiction to infrequent, uninteresting tweets -- everything except bios, because he sometimes has trouble figuring out what is relevant and what isn't.

He is a graduate of USC film school, a reality TV writer/produce (Jerry created the uncreatively-named MTV reality show The Reality Show), an avid pretzel eater, and he once bowled a 244 game.

Through a bizarre coincidence, Jerry Mahoney shares his name with a famous ventriloquist's dummy, who has delighted children around the world. Jerry Mahoney the person has made it his ultimate life goal to someday be the #1 search result on Google for his own name. He has a lot more children to delight before he can hope to accomplish this.

Jerry is currently working on a memoir about the twisted and improbable road he took to becoming a gay superdad.

HEATHER MAIDAT (Shalloween)
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Heather Maidat has written for television shows like Girls Behaving Badly, Shipmates and History IQ as well as MTV specials and a show called Yoga-on-Demand. She's written promos for ABC Family and BET and has been published on Blacktable.com, GirlComic.net and in the Indierock Guide to Dating.

On other jobs Heather has helped Dr. Ruth find her purse, and once at Comedy Central's Friars Club Roast, Abe Vigoda, TV's "Fish," mistook her for a waitress and asked her for the fish.

ALEXIS A. MAISLEN (March of the Matchstick Men)
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Alexis A. Maislen is a freelance writer with an MA in Writing from DePaul University in Chicago. Her work has been published in The Hartford Courant, The Hartford Advocate, The Hartford Business Journal, Conscious Choice magazine, and other publications in the Chicago area and New England. She is currently working on her first nonfiction book and studying to be a librarian. When not writing, she spends her time working out at the gym, reading young adult lit, designing web sites with good strong coffee, watching re-runs of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, blogging, reading zines, journaling, meditating, and practicing yoga.

INGRID MALTRUD (Places With You and Places Without You)
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Ingrid Maltrud is a corporate communications alchemist who turns dry financial gobbledygook into fascinating prose. When she's not writing about hedge funds, she's writing fiction and non-fiction on topics ranging from death to love to bullies. Ingrid escaped LA for Santa Fe and is blessed to live with two muses and numerous spiders who watch over her as she spins tales. When she's not at the computer, she's involved in hospice, bodywork, salsa dancing and traveling. She is currently working on several pieces relating to abortion, corporate intelligence, a screenplay adaptation of Wagner's Parsifal and a pitch to the Oprah Show on the salvation of best friends.

DINAH MANOFF (Fremo)
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Dinah Manoff is an award winning actor and director. She has written for both stage and television and had several short stories presented at the prestigious writer's forum Spoken Interludes and recorded for NPR's KCRW.

She has had numerous roles on stage and film, among them, Grease, Ordinary People, and Child's Play. Dinah has starred in the television series, Soap, Empty Nest and most recently State of Grace.

She received a Tony award for her role in Neil Simon's play, I Ought to be in Pictures (which she reprised in the feature film), and won the prestigious L.A. Theater award for her stage adaptation and direction of her father's novel, A Telegram for Heaven.

Dinah is the daughter of actress/director Lee Grant and the late writer Arnold Manoff. She and her husband and their three boys reside in Bainbridge Island, Washington where she has recently completed her first novel.

HAYWARD HAWKS MARCUS (The Man Who Could be Hung)
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When not jawing with toothy coyotes in the hills above Monterey Bay, Ms. Hawks can be found squirreled away in her lair, rabidly hitting the keys, or fishing through her dog-eared dictionary for obscure words like "fubsy" just to drive her editor batty. Currently, she is putting the final touches on Stardust Drive-In, her epic novel about love, betrayal, and the importance of supernaturally protective footwear.

Already racking up prizes in local publications for its verve and rare Steinbeckian qualities, excerpts from Stardust Drive-In have received both First Place and Honorable Mention awards in The Monterey County Weekly.

She is also writing the companion novel to her screenplay, Coyote Highway, and is the head writer for a children's comedy sketch TV show, now in preproduction. She is also, by the way, a champion dirty limerick writer.

Anyone wishing to know more, or the meaning of fubsy, might try this blog: http://humorevolution.typepad.com/

LAUREN MARKS (Why Not(e))
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Lauren Marks is currently working on a memoir entitled A Stitch of Time: Diary of an Aphasiac. A Tisch School of the Arts (NYU) graduate, she has worked in professional theater as a performer, dramaturg, director, reviewer, and freelance in the literary departments of the Tectonic Theater Project, Summer Play Festival (SPF) in NYC, Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts, and Eugene O’Neill Play Festival in Connecticut. She is a PhD student in Theatre Studies at The Graduate Center at the City University of New York, though currently on leave. Her writings have been featured in Thinking Ahead, a quarterly publication for The Brain Aneurysm Foundation, and The Mad As Hell Club. She is a recent recipient of the Frances Heiner Award from Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA), the Carole Weinstein Award from VCCA France, and a fellowship at Yaddo.

DAN MARTIN (Sergeant Masterson, M.D.)
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Dan Martin has been an assistant on several television shows, recently on the new Comedy Central Production Happy Game Fun Bomb. He is currently the Producer's assistant on the NBC pilot Lies and the Wives we Tell them to.

Dan has written numerous screenplays and pilots and is finishing his book Operation: Cure Boredom, a collection of humorous essays about his experiences in the military.

Dan was kicked out of high school and college, but passed Chemical Warfare Training with flying colors.

TIMBER MASTERSON (Off the Charts in Tears)
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Timber Masterson is a writer/actor/TV host-type-fellow who resides in Toronto, Canada, (Why?) and yes, it's a long story. His mammoth personal saga, A Long Way From Kind And Pretty, is now complete and on the lookout for an agent/publisher. While finishing his book, Tim's been cleansing his mind, updating his website and contributing his imaginative tales to So New Media, Word Riot, Unlikely 2.0, Yankee Pot Roast, 3 AM Magazine, Milk Magazine, Noo Journal, Wandering Army, Now Magazine, The National Post, and other publications that accept his heartfelt jazzy epistles.

He co-produced and hosted an interactive literary gathering called Word Substance Spatula at Toronto's updated Drake Hotel. Mr. Masterson occasionally shows up at writerly festival things like the 215 in Philadelphia and reads from his book or one of his heartbreaking, yet whimsical, tales of courage and hurrah. He read his scary Halloween story on NPR too. Look out for his next project, a compilation of published essays, A Bizarre But Entertaining Life I Seem To have Survived: True Imaginaings From The Dementia Cul De Sac. For more info check out www.timbermedia.com.

KATHLENE McGOVERN (A Less than Blessed Event)
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Kathlene has worked as a dancer from Atlantic City to Tokyo. After wearing feather headresses for two shows a day in such exotic locales as Guam (the island that is the world's biggest consumer of SPAM and boasts the world's largest K-Mart), she moved to New York.

In an effort to never have to high kick behind Matthew Broderick, Eric McCormack, or anyone else singing "76 Trombones," she began writing and acting. She has written and performed stand-up and sketch comedy at Carolines, Stand-Up New York and PSNBC and is a founding member of A Frayed Knot Theater Works.

GEORGE McGRATH (Whatcha Gonna Do When They Come for You?); (Take It From Me, a Four-Time Emmy Nominee)
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Creator and star of the sketch comedy series On The Television. A Groundling from 1984-94, he recently made one of his poorly publicized comebacks in their Ultimate Idol show. He was in Punchline (he and what army?); Was Globey, the Cowntess, the Fish and Zyzzyballubah on Pee-wee's Playhouse, and had a recurring role as "enthusiastic gay" on Tracey Takes On.

George is a four time Emmy nominee (2 for writing Pee-wee's Playhouse and 2 for writing/producing Tracey Takes On), a GLAAD Award winner (for Tracey Takes On Religion) and he won a TV Theme Song of the Year award for the theme for Pee-wee's Playhouse. He currently makes a living writing with the enchanting Tracey Ullman and annually writing a pilot "too funny to film." He hopes to pattern the rest of his career after that of Miss Rue McLanahan, at least as it was portrayed on her Intimate Portrait.

TOBLY McSMITH (Isn't it Romantic?)
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After graduating college Tobly moved from Texas to New York City with two suitcases and a completely innocent outlook on life. Along the way she picked up a few tattoos, landed a job at a publishing company, co-created two off-Broadway plays BAYSIDE! and BAYSIDE 2! Electric Screechio, both based on TV's Saved by the Bell, and formed a "healthy" obsession with Hannah Montana.

When Tobly isn't writing for Poise Magazine, reviewing adult toys for Sex Herald, giving sex advice at Cherry TV, co-writing and directing her sitcom, playing in her band The Cotton Ponys, or writing her self-help book, she is thinking about her cats. Their names are Herpes McLovebug and THEGOATEATER.

JASON MICALLEF (Timmy, Hand Momma her Gun)
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Jason Micallef won the 2008 Nicholl fellowship in Screenwriting from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for his screenplay Butter, which begins filming in April and stars Jennifer Garner. He also adapted the documentary The King of Kong for New Line Cinema. He is writing an animated feature for Jack Black and Universal, a comedy to star Charlize Theron, and TV show for DreamWorks and Showtime. He was raised in rural Virginia and now lives in Los Angeles, CA..

THOMAS BRYAN MICHURSKI (When We Were Yogurts)
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Bryan has been an advertising art director for 15 years, which has of course, made him unemployable in any profession that doesn't involve sitting in a room with Nerf toys, "making shit up". His award-winning work can be found in Luerzer's International Archive, The One Show, Communication Arts, and landfills all over the world. Go to www.michurski.com to see some of the ads he's created in his search for the big idea.

ELISE MILLER (Some Great Reward)
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Elise Miller hosts and curates the acclaimed New York spoken word series, East Side Oral, "the reading series your mother warned you about." (www.eastsideoral.com). Her first novel, Star Craving Mad (Warner Books) part romantic comedy, part celebrity satire, is in stores now. For more information, please visit www.elisemiller.com.

MARK MILLER (Sometimes You Just Gotta Let Your Hair Down)
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Mark started his comedy career in the San Francisco stand-up comedy scene, where he wrote and performed his own stand-up act, sharing the comedy club stages and often doing improvisational comedy with Dana Carvey and Robin Williams. Encouraged by Jay Leno to move to Los Angeles, Mark became a stand-up fixture at the Comedy Store and Improvisation nightclubs. TV soon beckoned, and Mark became the first 4.0 perfect-score-from-all-three-judges winner on Star Search. Several TV talk show appearances followed. At the same time, Mark created special stand-up comedy material for Roseanne, Rodney Dangerfield, Joan Rivers, Jimmie Walker, Gallagher, Jay Leno, Garry Shandling, Jim Carrey, Dana Carvey and many others.

Mark has had a series of sit-com staff positions, ranging from staff writer to story editor to executive script consultant, to producer, on such shows as The New Odd Couple, Diff'rent Strokes, She's The Sheriff, The Munsters Today, The Carol Burnett Show, (her more recent come-back attempt), Living Dolls, Together We Stand, What A Dummy, The New Hollywood Squares, and Dana Carvey's HBO Special.

Mark has been a nationally syndicated humor columnist for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate and is currently a regular humor essay blogger for The Huffington Post. (Check out one of his columns here.) His humor essays have also appeared in Playboy and Penthouse magazines, among others. He contributes radio comedy sketches and original material to Premiere Radio Syndicate and to the Jack FM series of CBS Radio stations nationwide. Finally, Mark has contributed comedy material to Showtime, the Playboy Channel, America Online, Weekly World News, and to nationally syndicated cartoonists including Bizarro's Dan Piraro. He is currently developing an edgy new children's feature film called Brokeback Daycare Center, and sincerely hopes for world peace, and for both Paris Hilton and Angelina Jolie to respect his restraining orders.

WENDY MILLER (My Latest Miscarriage); (Worst Day Ever)
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Wendy Miller is an Emmy award-winning producer, writer and cartoonist. Originally from Chicago, Wendy spent the bulk of her childhood starring in commercials with Morris the Cat, Milton the Toaster and Ronald McDonald. After recovering from child stardom, Wendy's first professional writing job was for WGN's Bozo Show. Having nowhere to go but up, Wendy eventually moved to Los Angeles where she somehow landed jobs writing and producing for NBC, Fox, ABC, TV Land, VH1, UPN, Paramount, Buena Vista, Warner Brothers and Carsey-Werner to name a few.

Wendy's cartoons, Sad But True Comix, have been featured in Screen, Factsheet 5, The Chicago Reader, Babble and are currently published in Produced By magazine. The winner of the Lite Beer national comedy search, Wendy has been on the edge of superstardom for years and years. The star of The Wendy Miller Show -- the longest-running imaginary sitcom on television -- Wendy lives in Los Angeles with her husband and a retired circus poodle.

Breaking News! Wendy and her husband are expecting their first child, a girl, due in January 2006. They have not picked out a name and would really not like to hear your suggestions.

DANI KLEIN MODISETT (Hysterical Infertility)
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Dani Klein appeared at the Aspen Comedy Festival in 2002 with her solo show, The Move. As an actress, Dani has made several appearances on Law & Order, and the Broadway stage. She can be seen as Detective Carlson on the upcoming series Windfall for NBC.

Dani also produces and directs, After Birth, an ongoing reading series of original stories about being a parent at M Bar in Hollywood. Dani has also taught comedy at UCLA for six years.

CHERYL MONTELLE (Carousel)
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Cheryl Montelle started as a dancer who sings in New York City, and ended up a mom who writes in Los Angeles. She has performed in musicals on National Tours and off Broadway. Her first professional job as an actress was at La Mamma Etc. and since then she has performed at various other theaters in New York and Los Angeles. She has also worked as a commercial and voice over artist, and was seen in Her Last Chance, a Movie Of The Week for NBC.

Cheryl is a member of the Los Angeles Poets and Writers Collective and her self-published collection of short stories and poems, My Life And Paul McCartney, was presented through the Collective at the Los Angeles Festival Of Books at UCLA. She was also a featured writer at the St. Louis Jewish Book Fair. Cheryl’s poems and personal essays have been published in Seven Seas Online Magazine, On The Bus, Rattle, and Spillway, She has performed her stories around Los Angeles at various venues, including Village Books, Borders, Jennifer's Cafe, Tasty Words, Girls Night Out, and Melt In Your Mouth. Cheryl will also be seen in the upcoming short film entitled Bunny.

ALEX MOODY (Shiny Happy Pirate)
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Alex Moody is a writer living in Nashville, Tennessee. He toiled in a cubicle for eleven years, escaped, and doesn't want to go back. He is currently working on a collection of short stories, as well as a series of essays based on a childhood spent traveling the world and quietly judging people.

Alex writes for the fine folks at Jake Leg Films when the screenwriting bug hits. He is pursuing an MFA in fiction at Vanderbilt University, and posts his random musings on a blog called MoodyTunes.

CYNTHIA MOORE (Morgasma)
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Cynthia Moore is in the process of unwinding a big, fat string ball of a creative past. She co-founded the Los Angeles-based reading series, Word-a-Rama. Cynthia has drawers full of published journalism, un-finished fiction, dashed-off poetry, and movie treatments enough to wallpaper her 1,500-square-foot loft. Her pilot, Neverly Hills, is making its own little waves in the vast sea of TV pilots. And her latest feature script, Squeal, is squirming out of its skin to be finished so it can finally hit the desk of those drop-dead gorgeous, talented, astoundingly brilliant people who buy scripts.

JILL MORLEY (My Lesbian Love Letter from Prison [Or So I Thought])
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Jill Morley's critically acclaimed documentary film, STRIPPED, currently runs on the Sundance Channel and won "Best Documentary" at the Women's International Film Festival in Sydney. Theatrically, STRIPPED played at the Tribeca Screening Room in New York City (held over for two weeks) and the Sunset Laemmle in LA. It will be screening at the Anthology Film Archives in December. Currently, Jill has been directing, shooting and editing music videos for Afroman, including one at the Bunny Ranch.

Morley wrote and performed the play True Confessions of a Go-Go Girl, which ran in Manhattan for five years, at San Francisco's "Solo Mio Festival," (along with Eric Bogosion and John Waters), the "Texas Fringe Festival", LA's HBO Workspace, and opened Women's History Month at NYU. True Confessions is published in The Best Women's Plays of 1998. Other works are published in More Women's Monologues For Women, By Women, Millenium Monologues, Young Women's Monologues From Contemporary Plays, and Jill's short story Teaching Rose was recently published in the book, Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex Was Wrong.

A contributing writer to The Village Voice, The New York Press, Penthouse, Inside Kung Fu, Shout Magazine and Gear Magazine, Jill co-produced two radio documentaries for "The World" and "This American Life," which aired on NPR. She also worked with Michael Moore as a producer and correspondent for The Awful Truth, Brazilian director Bruno Baretto -- revising the English version of his newest film, and is working on a screenplay Dustin Hoffman encouraged her to write after seeing STRIPPED. Jill currently directs, shoots and edits for hire. She is a tennis pro and has a black belt in Taekwondo, so watch out.

DESPARD MURGATROYD (The Very Idea)
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A published author and award-winning playwright, Despard Murgatroyd has been writing for many unprofitable years. He graduated from Muhlenberg College with an undergraduate degree in Theatre, which is why he writes. Despard's commentaries have appeared in the Philadelphia Daily News, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Bulletin and the Cincinnati Enquirer, and have garnered him a fair amount of praise, criticism and the odd death threat. And by "odd..." well, they're odd. If you're at all familiar with some of the lesser-known operetti in the Gilbert & Sullivan canon, you'll know that "Despard Murgatroyd" is a pseudonym. Also, if you're at all familiar with some of the lesser-known operetti in the G&S canon, you're a freak.

BRIGID MURRAY (Mrs. Midas)
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Brigid Murray has numerous writing credits which won't be delved into since she chose to write this essay under an alias! She is also a self-taught artist living in New York City. Her most recent show was "Women of Influence" at Lasell College in Newton, MA. She was one of only two non-MFA's participating. After a lifetime of meaningless education, this means a lot. Her lifetime goal is to show at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, arguably the best museum on the face of the earth.

CAROLE MURRAY (McMystic: Reflections of an Unlikely Oracle)
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Carole Murray has been working for over twenty-five years as a metaphysical counselor. An over-achiever, Carole has designed countless Tarot decks and is the most represented artist in the Encyclopedia of Tarot, Vol III. She currently enjoys making autobiographical Tarot decks for those whose innate psychic ability can be jogged by using their own symbology.

In 2002, she and her husband, artist Aris Dervis, created the website ServingSpirits.com as an attempt to recapture lost spiritual icons and return them to contemporary consciousness. Carole is awaiting the words "Bidding War!" for her novel, Still Life With Vegetables. She and Chuck Wahrhaftig began Hear After Productions, a service designed to help people organize their musical memoirs.

BETSY NAGLER (I Want my RNC)
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Betsy Nagler is a writer and filmmaker living in Brooklyn. As a location sound person, her credits include The Daytrippers, The Sopranos, documentaries on holistic veterinarians and women's professional football, and Verizon commercials with that guy who says, "Can you hear me now?"

She is currently at work on a screenplay and in post-production on her first documentary, entitled 'do. The film, which explores the relationship between appearance and identity by looking at how people feel about their hair, received a grant from the New York State Council on the Arts 2004 Community Arts Regrant Program. And she actually does have a BA from Stanford in political science as well as an MFA from the Graduate Film Program at NYU. You can find out more about 'do at www.dofilms.com.

GLORIA NAGY (What I Want to be When I Grow Up: and/or How I Spent My Summer Vacation)
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Gloria Nagy is a novelist and screenwriter. She is the author of eight novels including the best selling, A House In The Hamptons, and the children's book The Wizard Who Wanted To Be Santa. Her critically acclaimed novel, Looking for Leo, has been adapted as a mini-series for CBS. Her latest novel, The Beauty, is being adapted as a motion picture by Jason Blum, and Grade A Entertainment. She is currently working on a musical review for women entitled, Where Do I Go Now? and a new novel, The Magic, Swirling Ship.

Gloria Nagy is a member in good standing of the Authors Guild, Author League and the Screenwriters Guild of America. She has been interviewed on social issues by Nightline and appeared frequently on television. She has done over fifty radio interviews on subjects relating to her work and how her themes intersect the zeitgeist. Critics have called her "the social chronicler of her time" and "The female Tom Wolfe" for her ability to "stick pins in all the hot air balloons." Her opinions and observations have been expressed in reviews and articles for national magazines such as Lears, Traveler, Self and Cosmopolitan, as well as in speeches and writing seminars.

Her novels have been published around the world and translated into numerous languages including German, Japanese, Hebrew, Russian and Dutch.

Ms. Nagy lives in Newport, Rhode Island with her husband Richard Saul Wurman. They have four children, five grandchildren and 2 dogs Max and Abraham. For more information go to www.glorianagy.com.

Other film credits include starring roles in Hocus Pocus and RatRace, and featured roles in Hope Floats, The Fisher King, Soapdish and The Wedding Planner. Other TV credits include: episodes of Ellen, Clueless, HBO's: If These Walls Could Talk 2, and HBO's Kathy & Mo: The Dark Side, which won Kathy Cable Ace Awards for her roles as actor, writer and Executive Producer of the special. The original Kathy & Mo Show: Parallel Lives, garnered her two Cable Ace Awards for the special and an Obie Award for the Off-Broadway stage show. Kathy and Mo are currently reuniting for Afterbirth: Kathy and Mo's Greatest Hits, opening in NYC this summer.

Najimy was one of the founding performers in V-DAY on Broadway, in L.A. and at Madison Square Garden. Recently Kathy also starred on Broadway in Dirty Blonde and reprised the role at The Old Globe Theatre (winner 2003 Best Actress Critic's Circle award). Kathy is also an activist and spokesperson for many worthy causes including Planned Parenthood and Project Angel Food. For more info go to www.kathynajimy.com.

SCOTT NANKIVEL (Is the Boss Hog Really the Boss?)
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Scott Nankivel was born and raised in Fargo, North Dakota. After moving to Los Angeles he spent the next two years working as a comedian and freelance writer for the Tonight Show. Tired of the road, he entered graduate school and received an MFA from Columbia University in NYC. Since graduating Scott has been actively writing and passively selling. Some of his work includes: a collection of short stories from his hometown called Fargo: Behind the Glitz and the Glamour, which he performed at the Hudson theater in Los Angeles; Fine, a two-man play co-authored with Anson Mount; and a couple of profoundly funny pilots and screenplays.

Recently Scott optioned a movie to Tim Allen's Boxing Cat Productions. At present, Scott is trying to find a home for his novel, Beautiful Freak, as well as everything else on his desktop.

TAYLOR NEGRON (My Mother); (Jesus in the Mailbox); (The Pink Gorilla/Tuesdays with Lucy); (California Gothic); (How to be Funny)
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Taylor has starred in his own HBO special, and appeared on the Friends, The Practice, E.R. and The Tonight Show. He has appeared in such films as Stuart Little, The Last Boy Scout, Angels in the Outfield, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, the much ballyhooed hit The Aristocrats, and in the classic Punchline -- still almost every day someone yells out to him, "Area Rug!"

Taylor co-stars in the film Entry Level with Missy Pyle and D.B Sweeny, which will premiere in spring 2007 at The Monaco Film Festival. He also will be seen in the upcoming film Retirement, opposite Rip Torn, George Segal and Peter Falk. Taylor regularly reads his work at Los Angeles spoken word shows including Sit 'n Spin at the Comedy Central stage, Word-Theater and Say the Word.

He wrote the afterward to UNDER THE RAINBOW: An Intimate Memoir of Judy Garland, By John Carlyle, edited by Chris Freeman. (Carroll & Graf), which was called, "an elegant memoir,” by the New York Times Book Review.

You can see him this season on Reno 911 and Curb Your Enthusiasm. This August, Taylor will be performing at the prestigious Green Room at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival in Scotland. His feature screenplay, Skip, is currently being developed.

KRISTIN NEWMAN (Humping U)
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Before her current occupation strolling in fifty yard circles with people who can't believe how much exercise they're getting, Kristin Newman worked as a writer/producer on How I Met Your Mother, seven seasons of That 70's Show, and, most recently, on the Farrelly Brothers' new Fox sitcom, Unhitched. As a result of the writers' strike, however, she won't even use the words "writer/producer." Somebody else just wrote those words for her. She also now hates pens, quills, computers, and people who write on the walls with their own feces. Her current position on humping is "pro."

KATE NIELSEN (Love Notion #9)
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Kate was raised in Denver by evangelical Christians. After getting kicked out of Bible College for homosexual behavior, she headed West to the streets of San Francisco where she freely caroused around for several years before deciding to pursue a career in television. She was fired from her first gig as a writers' assistant on Northern Exposure for spending too much time on her own writing.

The next several years were sucked up by 14-20 hour days writing on sit-coms including The Naked Truth (NBC, starring Tea Leoni), Brother's Keeper (ABC) and Movie Stars (WB, starring Harry Hamlin). After swearing she'd never pick up a pen again, the temptation of TV money proved too great a temptation. So, in true Machiavellian fashion, she's writing pilots and willing to do whatever it takes to get staffed… preferably, a one-hour show with no child actors.

She currently can be seen wandering the streets of Silver Lake in a Scotch- induced stupor looking for a new place to live.

LESLIE NIPKOW (Mantooth)
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Leslie Nipkow came to NY with dreams of a career on the Broadway musical stage, but her jazz hands quickly atrophied in roles like: Nurse, Cop, CSI, Demolition Worker, Female Officer, and Erica Kane’s prison guard on All My Children. The latter inspired her one-woman show, GUARDING ERICA, published in Talk to Me: Monologue Plays (Vintage Books). Because God has a sense of humor, she found herself doing a stretch in the soapwriting world, for which she brought home a Daytime Emmy. Meanwhile, her screenplay, SARA CHARLOTTE, was a Sundance and Chesterfield finalist, her plays have been performed and read at La MaMa, HERE, the Women’s Project, and the Ohio Theater, and her essay A Long Day’s Journey Into Lip Gloss recently appeared in the New York Times.

ALAN OLIFSON (Outdoor Education); (Summoned)
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Alan Olifson is a comedian, award winning humor columnist and public radio commentator. Of these three skills, obviously public radio commentator is the most exciting and dangerous. You can currently hear Alan's commentaries on Weekend America and To the Best of Our Knowledge. His column ran for over a year in the Boston Phoenix and is currently being compiled into an easy-to-digest-and-purchase book format. Alan also co-produces WordPlay (www.myspace.com/wordplayshow), a monthly reading series at L.A.'s The Fake Gallery combining personal essays with live DJ soundtracks. For more information -- or to fritter away otherwise valuable time -- visit www.olifson.com.

LAUREL OLLSTEIN (Frieda Tannenbaum -- The Toughest Broad in New York); (Lucky Lindy)
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Laurel Ollstein was born in the wilds of Los Angeles to two therapist parents. In order to survive this she became an actress. In order to survive THAT she started writing. She has worked in new play development as an actress, writer, director and teacher, in San Francisco, Minneapolis, Los Angeles and New York. As a member of the award winning Actors' Gang for over ten years, she worked as an actress in Hysteria, Blood Love Madness, and MMC. Laurel is currently a member of ABOUT PRODUCTIONS -- collaborating as writer and actor in On Earth as It Is in Heaven. She wrote and directed Showing Our Age at Inside the Ford supported by a grant from the NEA. She is also the project director for AB's STAGES program, which writes senior citizens life stories into theatrical monologues.

Her plays produced around the country include her one woman show LAUGHTER HOPE AND A SOCK IN THE EYE (about Dorothy Parker), performed in New York, Minneapolis, and in Los Angeles was nominated for best one person show by the LA Weekly. Other stage plays include: OPA! the musical, ANATOMY OF A BRAIN INJURY, INSOMNIAC, BIAS CUT, STORAGE ROOM, POT ROAST, CHEESE, BLACKWELL'S CORNER, THE DARK AGES, DOROTHY PARKER IS IN THE BATH and ESTHER'S MOUSTACHE. She received the FAITH BROOME PLAYWRIGHT IN RESIDENCE for 2012 at the University of Oklahoma. Her screenplay STRESS is currently under option. Freshyarn.com, The Middle English Literary Group, The Sea Oats Review and Tiny Lights literary review have published her essays and memoir pieces. She is currently working on her full length memoir THE BULLET IN THE BIRTHDAY CARD. She holds an MFA from UCLA in playwriting and has held teaching positions at CalArts, UCLA, LMU, UC Redlands, UC San Bernardino and OTIS. Check out laurelollstein.com and Esthersmoustache.com for more info.

BRETT PAESEL (SNAP)
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Brett Paesel has developed and written shows for HBO, Comedy Central and Oxygen. Currently, she performs her own material at spoken word venues in Los Angeles-- most notably Sit n Spin and Uncaberet's Say the Word. Her short story, "Slow to Warm," appears in the book Toddler: Real-life Stories of Those Fickle, Irrational, Urgent, Tiny People We Love. She has also published essays in Brain,Child, Hip mama, Literarymama.com and Violet magazine. Her book, Mommies Who Drink will be released next year (Warner, Spring 2006).

As an actress, Brett was in the cast of Mr. Show with Bob and David. She has also appeared on Six Feet Under, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Gilmore Girls.

CHRISTINE PALAU (Bandwagon Breeding)
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Christine Palau is a speechwriter at the Korean Consulate in Los Angeles. Her lofty and often inspirational prose can be heard at political and community events around town. When she's not toiling at preventing nuclear war on a certain peninsula, she enjoys writing about her copious neuroses.

Christine has documented her pathologies, among other things, on her quasi-blog: www.femecovert.blogspot.com

NIYA PALMER (I Hate Black History Month)
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Niya Palmer studied communications at Howard University and mistakenly attempted a career as a publicist representing pharmaceutical companies. After billing clients for "a whole bunch of nothing,"and several bad reviews, Niya packed up and moved to Los Angeles like countless others confused about the direction of their life.

Niya is a NPR commentator, Nickelodeon Screenwriting Finalist, and a graduate of Second City's writing program where she wrote and performed February is the Shortest Month. Niya is currently participating in the Warner Bros. Comedy Writing Program. To check out samples of Niya's writing visit: www.niyapalmer.com

ADAM PAUL (Large Charge of Completion)
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ADAM PAUL is an actor/writer/director living in Los Angeles. He's appeared on such television programs as Curb Your Enthusiasm, Entourage, Without a Trace, and Las Vegas, as well as countless plays in the Los Angeles area you probably haven't seen. Adam co-wrote and co-starred in the play King of the Moon -- about Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin fighting over who gets to be the first man to walk on the Moon -- which played at the HBO Workspace, The Groundlings and Off-Broadway. He also produced the film version of King of the Moon, which was an official selection of the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival. This past year, Adam co-wrote and co-directed I'm Not Gay, which recently won the Delray Beach Film Festival and sold to HBO Latin America (so if you're in, say, Honduras with nothing to do, switch on HBO…). You can read more of Adam's writing at www.dailydistraction.net.

ANITA PHILLIPS (Ghost Child)
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Anita Phillips has been writing personal essays and short fiction for three years, and participates in the UCLA Writer's Program. Marketing Coordinator for an architectural firm in West Los Angeles, she writes about architecture, the process of design, and the fleeting moments of life that escape between the lines. Anita is honored to share this very personal piece, and is expecting a healthy baby girl this spring.

JUDD PILLOT (Let's Stop Here, Dad)
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Judd Pillot writes and produces television. Mainly sitcoms. Remember those? They were weekly stories about funny characters you grow to love. It was back in the time before Who Wants to Shave a Dwarf? and I Can Eat 30 Badger Balls, How 'Bout You?

With partner John Peaslee, Judd wrote and produced Coach for five years, and wrote and Executive produced Mad About You, Something So Right, Just Shoot Me, and Eight Simple Rules to name a few -- besides creating countless pilots tragically overlooked by the networks. He's currently working on According to Jim. He's won Emmy, Peabody, and Cable Ace awards, and has been nominated for both the Writers Guild and Directors Guild awards.

Before moving to Hollywood from New York, Judd was a documentary filmmaker. But his first love (besides his wife and two boys) is writing prose. Judd thinks FRESH YARN is a really cool idea and he's happy to be a part of it.

JEANNINE PITAS (Cool)
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Jeannine M. Pitas is 30% hippie, 30% yuppie, 40% confused twenty-something twixter and 100% nerd. Her insatiable wanderlust has led her to live in England, Poland, Uruguay, Nicaragua, and most recently Canada, where she is drinking lots of ice wine and pursuing a PhD in comparative literature at the University of Toronto. However, Buffalo, NY will always be home. Her writing has appeared online in Ghoti, Flashquake, Boxcar Poetry Review and Hackwriters, and her translation of Uruguayan poet Marosa Di Giorgio's The History of Violets will be forthcoming later this year from Ugly Duckling Presse. She thanks you for reading her piece, and she hopes that publication on Fresh Yarn will finally admit her to the ranks of the cool.

SUZIE PLAKSON (Kicking It)
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Suzie has played a curmudgeonly sportswriter regularly on Love and War, a gay gynecologist recurringly on Mad About You, a nasty ex-wife on Everybody Loves Raymond, a wacky psychiatrist on Bette once, someone else she can't remember on Judging Amy, a personal assistant in Wag the Dog, an engineer in Disclosure, way too many aliens on Star Trek, a blue brontosaurus real estate agent on Dinosaurs, as well as many guest dinosaurs, and other TV/film credits that are more like debits. She also appeared in LaBete on Broadway, Light Up the Sky at the Pasadena Playhouse, and other theatre stuff, but let's face it, nobody cares.

She's a dilettante writer of a few short stories, some songs, some scenes, some poetry, a children's book, a slowly growing allegorical solo show, and really slowly growing TV (and accompanying book) comedy-fantasy series, which should be ready to go in about 67 years. She sculpts and sells elves, hands, and trees. She sings.

MATT PRICE (True Love and After That), (My Life in Spain)
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Matt has appeared on-screen most recently on Arrested Development, The West Wing, Reno 911, and in the Bob Odenkirk directed film, Melvin Goes to Dinner.

Matt has written for various things on Comedy Central, MTV, and VH1, and he currently writes for Cheap Seats on ESPN Classic. He has also written for several magazines, including US Weekly, Blender and ESPN the Magazine.

Matt co-produces Show and Tell, an essay reading series in Los Angeles. You can find out more about upcoming shows at www.showandtellshow.com.

Matt used to sell Cutco knives in his hometown of Evanston, IL, but he had to quit because he caught mono. He then became a lifeguard. He then went to the University of Michigan, and then all of the other stuff he already mentioned happened.

KIRK PYNCHON (My Non-Sexual Date with Mr. George Clooney)
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Kirk Pynchon is a writer living in Los Angeles. He is the author of the plays Man Card, Kirk du Soleil, Poppin' and Lockdown and Poppin' and Lockdown 2: Dance the Right Thing. He is also one of the co-creators of the cult short film, Stunt C*cks. Currently he is developing an animated series entitled
Titans of Justice.

ELIZABETH REYNOLDS (Avon Calling)
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Elizabeth originates from a theatrical and modeling background in Los Angeles, New York, and England. A dual citizen of the UK and US, she still insists on being considered more of a Brit than being from Los Angeles. Elizabeth has been playing the part of renaissance women lately as actor, massage therapist, theatrical agent, and freelance writer. She has appeared at Los Angeles spoken word hot spots Tasty Words and Spark.

She is currently working on her memoir, Boxed In, about growing up the child of an obsessive compulsive hoarder. Elizabeth lives in Studio City where her latest indulgence is Bikram Yoga which she swears clears the cobwebs and kicks the shit out of the all too sensitive whiner within. Namaste.

PAMELA RIBON (Three Questions )
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Pamela Ribon is a writer/performer living in Los Angeles. Her acclaimed website, pamie.com, chronicles her adventures in love, books, Hollywood and cat puke. She is the creator of the cult classic stage show CALL US CRAZY: THE ANNE HECHE MONOLOGUES.

Pamela is currently adapting her bestselling novel WHY GIRLS ARE WEIRD for the screen. Pamela has also contributed to an anthology called COLD FEET, which will be out in May, and her next book, PICK ME, will be in stores next summer, both by published by Downtown Press.

J.B. RABIN (Warnings and Disclaimers); (George Clooney Needs a Nap)
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J.B. RABIN is a freelance writer whose essays and other nuggets have appeared in publications as varied as Nerve.com, Seventeen, Clamor, Natural Home, and The Portland Mercury. She is currently hard at work on a memoir and divides her time between its creation and trying to get her dog not to chew gum.

She lives with her husband in a small suburb of Los Angeles called Portland, Oregon. You can check out her website at www.jbrabin.com.

KAREN RIZZO (When This is Over)
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Karen is the author of THINGS TO BRING, S#!T TO DO… and other inventories of anxiety, a BookSense Pick for October '06. Her essays and stories have been featured in The Los Angeles Times, Salon.com, several women's magazines, and two Random House anthologies of humor. Her plays and performance pieces have been seen at New York's Ensemble Studio Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, Samuel Beckett Theatre, and ARCADE in Los Angeles.

MARK RIZZO (Jerry's Kid)
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Mark Rizzo was born and raised in Scranton, PA. As a member of America's workforce, Mark has packaged crucifixes for export to Central and South America, taught pre-school without certification, worked the overnight shift at a compact disc factory, hawked beer at a minor league baseball stadium, tutored kids on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and in South Central Los Angeles, hauled trash, shoveled manure, umpired Little League baseball and inspected asphalt for the Pennsylvania Turnpike Authority.

As an actor, Mark has worked in regional theatre, off-Broadway, off-off Broadway and independent film. Jerry's Kid is one-fifth of his solo show, Terror and Pity, which has been presented in New York at Double Helix Theater's ONE Festival and in Los Angeles at the Comedy Central Stage. Mark recently developed a new half-hour comedy with Dreamworks and NBC. He is grateful to his many excellent teachers, including the fine folks at The Groundlings, The SITI Company in NYC, Philippe Gaulier and Scott Zigler.

ROSEMARY ROGERS (Little Judy)
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Rosemary Rogers is a writer and humorist. She has co-authored, with Sean Kelly, the best-selling humor/reference book, Saints Preserve Us!, currently in its 15th international printing and one of the books in print recommended by the reader's catalogue of the New York Review of Books.

Rogers partnered with Linda Stasi to write the immensely popular Boomer Babes: A Women's Guide to the New Middle Age, which has a humorous and upbeat take on the issues facing baby boomer women at midlife. Boomer Babes garnered its writing team a great deal of national media attention, and the women gave countless television and radio interviews. Ms. Rogers' other writings include the following humor/reference books, all published by Random House: Who in Hell…A Guide to the Whole Damned Bunch, How to be Irish (even if you already are), The Birthday Book of Saints and The Saint-a-Day Guide. Her most recent book, Mother-Daughter Movies: 101 Films to See Together was written with her daughter, Nell Rogers Michlin, and released by St. Martin's Press in May, 2004. She has written articles for The New York Times, Time Out New York, Backstage, Channels, Lifetimetv.com and O. The Oprah Magazine. In addition to books and magazine articles, Ms. Rogers has also written calendars, travel journals and inspirational journals for Barnes & Noble.

Her television appearances include The Today Show (daily and weekend editions), The View, MSNBC, BBC, PBS, CNN, NY1, Good Day New York, Live at Five, and Metro TV; radio engagements have included NPR and several network and syndicated shows. In 1995, she was a performer in the New York Toyota Comedy Festival. Ms. Rogers, married to filmmaker Robert Downey Sr., lives in New York City.

GEMMA ROSKAM (Fire Escape)
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Gemma Roskam has appeared in several national commercials, in the film The Replacements as an uncoordinated cheerleader and most recently on the Tyra Banks Show where she received a make-over . (She cleaned up real nice but evidently not well enough to be considered for Tyra's other TV show.)

She co-produced Speakeasy: A New Spin on Storytelling at the Fake Gallery and co-produces Melt in Your Mouth, a monthly reading series, at the Secret Rose Theatre in North Hollywood. She has also performed at Word-a-Rama and Show and Tell and was chosen as the winner of the one-woman show competition 15 Minutes of Fem VI.

Epilogue to Fire Escape: Despite their housekeeping differences, Gemma and her roommate lived together for five years and when she gets married in the Fall of 2006 he will be her Maid of Honor.

MELISSA ROTH (A Lesson Before Driving)
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Melissa Roth had her first essay published in Crosscurrents when she was 19. Since then, she has written thousands of post-its, emails, and instant messages, countless ads, personal essays, and one extremely apologetic note left on the windshield of a Jaguar in West Hollywood.

Melissa has appeared on television (Captain Kangaroo) and on stage (as Hot Box Girl #3 in O. Henry Junior High's production of Guys and Dolls.) Though she and her iBook now reside in Los Angeles, she is one of those annoying people who constantly compares L.A. to her hometown (New York) and is happy to debate this issue ad nauseum.

CHEYENNE ROTHMAN (The Day After Sam Rockwell and I Went Fishing)
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Cheyenne is currently a hospital social worker living in Los Angeles. She started writing when she realized that social work wasn't as glamorous and high-paying as she had been lead to believe. She has since teamed up with Jay Rondot to write several original screenplays and make a short film entitled Release the Cracken which screened at The Cinevegas Film Festival and can be seen at Jay's website solidgoldfantastic.com. She is currently writing a series of short stories about her experiences in a pediatric hospital, and regularly spends time in prison where she is working with Susan Atkins on a memoir about Ms. Atkin's experience with Charles Manson and her subsequent life sentence for the Tate-LaBianca murders. People often ask Cheyenne if she finds her work with chronically ill children and convicts depressing. She often tells them it is hilarious. This usually makes those who asked uncomfortable.

MEIKA ROUDA (My Peeps Are Whiteys)
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Meika Rouda went to Bard College where she regretfully transferred from the literature department to the film department her first semester. She has worked for a variety of companies mostly as a production grunt including MTV, Tech TV and the robot combat TV show BattleBots.

She produced the feature film Quality of Life, which won an audience award at the 2004 Berlin Film Festival, and is currently playing in select cities www.qualityoflife-themovie.com. She has written several film scripts including Celebrity Assistant that she has yet to show anybody. Currently she is co-writing a script about growing up in Marin County, and works for the Telluride Film Festival. She lives with her husband and vicious looking mutt named "Muffin" in San Francisco. This is her first published piece.

WADE ROUSE (Six Degrees of Marlo Thomas)
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Wade Rouse is the author of the critically-acclaimed memoir, America's Boy, (Dutton) which was named as one of the Best Literary Memoirs of 2006 by Borders (alongside someone named Hillary Carlip and some guy name Gore Vidal) and A Best Book of 2006 by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. His second memoir, Confessions of A Prep School Mommy Handler will be published in hardcover September 4, 2007, from Random House/Harmony Books.

Wade is also a contributing writer to a forthcoming humorous essay collection on working in retail, The Customer Is Always Wrong, from Counterpoint (featuring an assortment of terrific writers). His essay centers on his work experience at Sears -- the Husky's Hell of his youth. He is a regular essayist for Lake Magazine (www.lakemagazine.com), and his articles have appeared in numerous national magazines and newspapers. Wade earned his B.A. in communications from Drury University and his master's in journalism from Northwestern University. Wade now lives in Michigan with his partner and their lovable mutt, Marge, on over three acres of woods filled with pines and sugar maples. His return to his rural roots has been alternately beautiful and nightmarish, ranging from Hamptson-esque days on the beach to The Shining. In between blizzards and beach weather, he is working on his third memoir, which is tentatively titled, Racoons, Rattlers and Resorters: A City Man's Search for Serenity, a book he terms as "Sex and the City Goes Country," and equal parts Walden and Funny Farm.

MAGGIE ROWE (Literally), (Pink Elephant)
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Maggie has appeared on several sitcoms, including My Wife and Kids, The Geena Davis Show, What About Joan? and Two Guys, A Girl, and a Pizza Place. She has been a commentator for NPR's All Things Considered and is currently writing on Oxygen's Big Girl's Don't.

Maggie also co-produces the long-running stage hit Sit 'n Spin with Jill Soloway at the Comedy Central Space. For more info, check out www.sitnspin.org. She also created and produced Hollywood Hellhouse and wrote the short Burn Baby Burn currently up on ifilms.

JULIA RUCHMAN (The Big Bounce)
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After graduating from Williams College, Julia Ruchman moved to New York to write television. Her first pilot went into development hell at a marginally well-known network. She followed that "real life industry experience" with a few freelance writing jobs; and then moved to Los Angeles against her better judgment. She still lives in LA where she battles road rage, meditates and writes many, many television scripts which are sure to win her Emmys one day.
Julia is currently writing a pilot for a producer, trying to live up to the writing fellowship she was just awarded and can be seen performing her stories at various reading series around town. She thanks you for reading this, Fresh Yarn for publishing it and apologizes for writing about herself in the third person.

BARBARA RUSHKOFF (In Defense of Hanukkah); (The One Armed Babysitter)
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Barbara Rushkoff's first paying writing job was interviewing MC Hammer
for a teen magazine. After that she started a zine about Barbie dolls which promptly bought her a highly-publicized cease and desist order from Mattel. Then she published the acclaimed jew zine Plotz (which is alive on the web at www.plotzworld.com). Her writing has also appeared in Index, Rolling Stone, People Magazine and Venus.

Her first book, Jewish Holiday Fun... For You! has just been released. It will no doubt rile up Jews worldwide and she is very, very excited about that. Also, she is 38 weeks pregnant and ready to pop any minute.

DEE RYAN (Twenty Minutes)
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Writer/Improviser/Teacher/Mother of Two, has written for Disney Animated Features, has been featured on NPR's "All Things Considered" and The Office. She teaches improvisation at Second City, and drives carpool.

ALAN SAFIER (Of Floods, Irvine Hall and the Electric Clays)
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Alan Safier began his writing career at the age of 12, when he published, edited, co-wrote, and delivered The Tolland Gazette, a monthly newspaper dealing with the events of his residential street in suburban Cleveland. He pursued journalism into junior high, high school and college, but then fell in with a bad crowd and became an actor.

Alan still maintains his career as a busy actor in theatre, television and voiceovers, and can be heard on hundreds of radio and TV commercials (he's the Kibbles 'n' Bits dog!) He recently starred in the Los Angeles premiere of The Men From the Boys, Mort Crowley's sequel to his seminal play The Boys in the Band. His stories have been published in Futures, The Wascana Review and Wit's End. Alan is currently working on a novel and a collection of essays and short fiction. For more info go to www.alansafier.com

SCOTT SALTZBURG (Witness Protection)
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Scott Saltzburg is a comedy writer whose work has been featured on NBC, CBS, TLC, GSN, Planet Green and the Premiere Radio Networks. Scott is best known for his work on the long-running favorite Hollywood Squares, for which he contributed such chestnuts as "circle gets the square," "I'll take Carrot Top for the block," and "For chrissake, somebody wake up Carol Channing!" He and his wife reside at their dog's home in Los Angeles.

CHRISTINE SCHOENWALD (Car-Ma)
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Christine Schoenwald has had a long and varied career/hobby in Hollywood. She is proudest of the show Off-Kilter: The Monologues of Christine Schoenwald in which some of the most talented and funny actresses in Los Angeles performed her character monologues. The L.A. Weekly called her one-woman show, Adventures in Slutland, "trenchantly funny" whatever that means. She has created the live shows Pinata a personal essay show, The Extra Credit Show, Seen on Screen, The Movieland Murder and Mayhem Tour: Roosevelt Hotel Edition, and Skater Dater. She was last seen on MadTV.

SARAH SCHULMAN (My First Vision)
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Sarah Schulman is the author of eight novels and three nonfiction books. A Guggenheim Fellow in playwrighting, her plays include The Burning Deck (The La Jolla Playhouse with Diane Venora), Carson McCullers (Playwrights Horizons with Jenny Bacon) and Manic Flight Reaction, to be produced by Playwrights Horizons in NY, October 13-November 5,2005 (directed by Trip Cullman). That will be followed by a reading of her new play, The Lady Hamlet, at New York Theater Workshop (directed by Diane Paulus). Also in development, Mercy with Jessica Hecht, and the theatrical adaptation of Isaac Bashevis Singer's Enemies, A Love Story.

Awards include Guggenheim in Playwrighting, Fullbright in Judaic Studies, Revson Fellow for the Future of New York at Columbia University, Stonewall Award for Improving the Lives of Lesbians and Gays in the United States, two American Library Association Book Awards, and a finalist for the Prix de Rome.

J. CONRAD SCHULZE (The Little Tycoon)
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J. Conrad Schulze has had a decidedly unglamorous life as a bartender, disc jockey, waiter at a Chinese restaurant, women’s shoes salesman, short-order cook, gas-station attendant, telemarketer, and courier. He has even taught 3rd grade Science and Math. His only brush with fame (so far) was in his twenties when he was a musician in Baton Rouge, playing in such bands as Johnny Epileptic and the Seizures, Chemical City, Mike and the Mormons, System Six, and Burning Bridges.

His latest gigs have been as an English Instructor at the University of New Orleans and at The University of Memphis. Although he has published an academic essay in Ellipsis, UNO’s journal, and won 2nd place in the Memphis Shelby County Anti-Drug Coalition’s Poetry contest in 2006, he considers “The Little Tycoon” to be his first creative publication.

HEATHER SCOTT (Saying Goodbye); (Doggy-Style)
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Heather Scott began her artistic career as a photographer, having earned a Masters Degree in Photography from the California Institute of the Arts. Her photographic narrative installations have been exhibited in galleries in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Her work has appeared in the LA Times, LA Weekly, and was a featured stage production for James Taylor's United States Tour. She's photographed Josh Groban, The Backstreet Boys, and Martina Navratilova, among others.

In 2004, she began publishing essays, which prompted her to meld photography and prose. Saying Goodbye is an excerpt from a book she is writing, The Grace Period is Over, a humorous chronicle of coming out to her parents.

HILARY SHEPARD (I'm a Believer); (Second Coming)
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Hilary Shepard is an actress, writer, musician and game inventor. She was the singer-bass player in the all-girl band, American Girls on IRS records in the late '80s, then segued into acting as a member of The Groundlings improv comedy group, and appearing in many TV shows and movies -- from Star Trek deep Space 9 to playing the evil queen Divatox in the Power Rangers movie as well as in the series.

She produced the documentary Searching For Debra Winger, and co-created the TV show Material World, which ran on the CBC in Canada for three years. Together with actress Daryl Hannah, she created the board games "Love it or Hate it", and "Liebrary", and her new invention licensed by American Idol, Car-E-Oke comes out in Dec '07. is the author of the upcoming book, Boy Crazy!, and lives in LA with her two daughters, Cassidy 14 and Scarlett 8.

ALIZA SHERMAN (Bush)
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Aliza is the author of five books that weren't best sellers including PowerTools for Women in Business: 10 Ways to Succeed in Life and Work, which has some good advice but won't tell you how to write a best seller. She's a masochist so is working on her sixth book while juggling writing assignments from business magazines, small-to mid-size women's magazines and dog magazines. When not writing, she is producing radio segments for Wyoming Public Radio in hopes that NPR will pick them up and Ira Glass will discover her and say "Baby, where've you been all my life?" She is also producing a 12-part series on family issues for Wyoming Public Television.

New to blogging, she has started three blogs just because she has so much time to kill with no need to make a living, pay bills or shower. You can find her blogging at http://babyfruit.typepad.com. And Hillary made her add: Aliza is a Web pioneer, starting the first woman-owned, full-service Internet company in 1995 (Cybergrrl, Inc.) and first women-only Internet networking group (Webgrrls International), received a lot of attention, won awards, traveled the world, helped women and girls get online and benefit from the Web, then left to pursue her writing, some of which is archived at www.mediaegg.com.

ROBIN SHORR (Family F'ing Ties!)
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Robin Shorr grew up in the San Fernando Valley but somehow has a Chicago accent. Her writing credits include Fox's The Loop, NBC's Teachers, and the upcoming Glenn Martin DDS for Nick at Nite, and she very recently started writing on ABC's Samantha Who?.

She lends her voice to cartoons like The Replacements, and Techies, and will be appearing in Dreamworks' She's Out of My League in Spring 2009. She was so troubled by how often she watched a certain MTV reality show that she created The Hills: A Staged Reading at Upright Citizen's Brigade. She is super close with her sister these days.

RAPHAEL SIMON (Feeling Small)
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Hollywood native Raphael Simon has written for film and television, including the Nickelodeon series Rocket Power (trust me, an eight year old would be impressed!) His essays have appeared most recently in The Los Angeles Times and the anthology Mentsh: On Being Jewish and Queer.

JEN SINCERO (My Homeless Boyfriend)
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Jen Sincero is a musician, comedienne, and author. Her books include Don't Sleep With Your Drummer, which is currently in development at HBO, and the forthcoming The Straight Girl's Guide To Sleeping With Chicks (February 2005, Simon & Schuster).

She lives in Los Angeles where her one-woman show, No Experience Necessary is due to hit the stage this fall, and where her current band, the cleverly named Jen Sincero, sometimes has gigs. Go to www.jensincero.com for more info.

C. BRIAN SMITH (You Don't Seem)
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C. BRIAN SMITH reluctantly uses the "C." in his name. It comes in handy at airports.

Brian grew up in Fairfield, CT. After barely graduating from Yale University, where he sang in The Whiffenpoofs and The Bakers Dozen, Brian started a band called Brown Couch. Opening for life-supported versions of The Violent Femmes and Blondie eventually took its toll, so he moved to New York City and studied acting at the William Esper Studio. While in New York, Brian managed the legendary Blue Mill Tavern next to the Cherry Lane Theater. So he has most likely seen you drunk.

Suffering from an overabundance of self-confidence and sure-footedness, Brian recently moved to Los Angeles, where he currently works as a writers' assistant on My Boys (TBS) and Side Order of Life (Lifetime).

Brian is honored to be a regular performer at acclaimed spoken word series Sit n' Spin at the Comedy Central Stage in Hollywood.

JOE SMITH (Pornomime)
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Joe Smith is a Worcester, MA native writer/actor/voice-over guy now living in Los Angeles. He has at one point or another played a houseplant, a talking newspaper box, an ice cream sundae, and a Texas diner waitress. He also created and continues to produce the public radio parody program IPR: Irrational Public Radio (www.IrrationalPublicRadio.com). He has read his story/essay things at the LA reading series Sit 'n Spin, Spark on Rose, and Tasty Words, among others. He is also frighteningly good at Scrabble. More about what he's currently up to at www.joesmith.com.

COLEY SOHN (What a Waste of a Beautiful Pair of Breasts)
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Actress/writer/improviser, the most recent addition to Coley's bio is breast cancer survivor and reconstructionist. She's currently somewhere between phase II and phase III, waiting for her nipples.

As a kid, Coley did a lot of theater in her native Washington D.C., across the country and on Broadway. She graduated magna cum laude from the University of Vermont with a BA in English and the ability to ski icy east coast conditions and do beer bongs. She's an avid improviser, having trained and performed with numerous L.A. groups including her current posse, Captain Creamcicle's Laughateers. She wrote and starred in Demo Reel - A Tragedy in 10 Minutes, which premiered at HBO's Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen. She didn't ski while she was there.

Coley and her girlfriend Andy have an affinity for fixing up old houses and re-selling them. They live in Chinatown with their four needy dogs.

ELAINE SOLOWAY (From Your Lips to God's Ears)
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Elaine Soloway is a public relations consultant and freelance writer whose essays have appeared in the New York Times Money & Business, Chicago Tribune WomanNews, ActiveTimes Magazine, Today's Chicago Woman and Web Sites 2Young2Retire.com, jewishmag.com, and skirtmag.com.

Elaine has just completed a memoir, THE DIVISION STREET PRINCESS (which her essay for FRESH YARN is adapted from), a coming-of-age-story of a girl, a store, and an old Chicago neighborhood. Set in the 1940s, the book takes its title from the street where Elaine lived in a three-room-flat above her family's grocery store. Along with her freelance writing, Elaine has had a long career in public relations. Her company specializes in housing, health care, and economic development; and previously, she worked as a press aide to Chicago Mayor Jane Byrne and School Superintendent Ruth Love.

Elaine lives in Chicago with her husband Tom, and golden retriever Buddy. She has two daughters and two grandchildren. Both daughters are in the entertainment industry: Faith is a musician and producer of rock operas who also works in a violence prevention program with the Boston public schools. Jill (fellow FRESH YARN contributor) was a writer on Six Feet Under and is the author of TINY LADIES IN SHINY PANTS, just published by the Free Press, a division of Simon and Schuster. You can read Elaine's essays on her web site.

JILL SOLOWAY is a writer/director and community organizer. Her short film, UNA HORA POR FAVORA, premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. She is currently in pre-production on her first feature, shooting in Chicago in the summer of 2012. Jill wrote/produced SIX FEET UNDER for four years and was showrunner for HOW TO MAKE IT IN AMERICA and UNITED STATES OF TARA. She authored TINY LADIES IN SHINY PANTS, a post-feminist manifesto/memoir.

Jill co-created theater experiences REAL LIVE BRADY BUNCH, SIT N' SPIN and HOLLYWOOD HELL HOUSE. She lives with her husband and two sons in Silver Lake. More can be learned about Jill at www.jillsoloway.com.

SARAH STANLEY (Years and Years and Years)
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Sarah Stanley is a writer, singer/songwriter, and actor and has lived in LA for years and years and years. One of her one-person plays was made into a half hour HBO special, HBO Workspace Presents… and she's had acting and writing development deals with HBO Independent Productions, Rysher Entertainment and the now defunct APG. She recently sold and adapted her play All About Eggs to be a Lifetime movie, and often her reality feels like a Lifetime movie. She's currently writing a spec film script, and has a few pitches swirling around her head.

Sarah is the house singer for LA's Triangle Room and was a recent musical guest at Sit 'n Spin. She and her band have regular gigs at the Cinema Bar in Culver City, and Taix in Echo Park, and she'll be playing at Ronnie Mack's Barndance at El Cid on February 1st. Her new c.d. includes some songs that have been used on indie feature soundtracks, and she'd love her songs to be used on more. The c.d. can be purchased at www.cdbaby.com, or at www.sarahstanley.com where you can listen to a couple of songs or check out the band schedule.

SHANNON STARR (High Atop the Christmas Tree)
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Shannon Starr almost graduated from the USC School of Cinema Television Production and has the student loans to prove it. Two of her scripts, Albert on Ice and Smoke on the Water were optioned and then the producers disappeared off the face of the earth. If anyone can get a hold of James Brolin tell him he can now have the option on Albert on Ice, for free.

She then moved to Riverside California and worked as a reporter for The Press-Enterprise for five years. She stood up one day and quit, taking it as a sign of her genius. Unfortunately no one else did.

She now lives near Sage California in a double-wide with her incredibly sexy husband and two dogs, Woody and Sullivan who are not so incredibly sexy. Her day job is unimaginative and boring.

ALBERT STERN (Keep it to Yourself); (First They Came For the Dogs, But I Was Not a Dog)
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Albert Stern's one-person shows, Let Me Digress... and Well, I Hope You're Happy, were staged in New York. He is a member of the storytelling group Mouthpiece, which features some of New York's best monologists, and will be touring in the Northeast in the summer of 2007. For more information, check out the website: www.mouthpieceonstage.com.

MEGAN STIELSTRA (It Seems Our Time Has Run Out, Dr. Jones)
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Megan Stielstra is a writer, storyteller and Director of Story Development for 2nd Story, Chicago’s urban storytelling series held in wine bars where she regularly tells stories to drunk people. She’s performed for The Chicago Poetry Center’s No Love For Love show featuring Ira Glass, Neo-Solo at the Neo-Futurarium, Storyweek Festival of Writers, Undershorts Film Festival, The Dollar Store and WBEZ’s Writer’s Block Party. Her work has appeared in recent or forthcoming issues of Other Voices, Pindeldyboz, Swink, Venus and Punk Planet. She teaches fiction writing at Columbia College and the University of Chicago, and spent 2004 in Prague, teaching Kafka and working on a novel. She doesn’t speak Czech, she recently eloped and you can visit her at www.meganstielstra.com where she blogs about things she doesn’t understand, which is actually most everything.

DEBORAH STOLL (You Think G-D Would Have Given You Hair Like That if He Loved You?); (The Truth About Peeps)
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Deborah Stoll is a native New Yorker who actually enjoys living in L.A. She contributes arts pieces to The Economist's on-line literary magazine, More Intelligent Life and writes cocktail inspired stories for the L.A. Weekly. She is currently in development with producer Carrie Beck for a TV show called 86'd based on her short stories about drinking. She is also in development with producer Jennifer Kelly for a TV show called Allison's Automotive Car Manual based on the book of the same name by Brad Barkley. Her feature film What Makes Her Tic - about a burlesque dancer with Tourette's - was in the finals for The Sundance Lab, and a handful of her short stories will appear in Slake, Laurie Ochoa's seminal literary magazine due out soon.

You can find more of her tawdry tales and late-night journalistic musings on the website she built late at night with more than a little help from her trusty friend, Jameson: www.bubbemaisse.com.

MATT SULLIVAN (How to be a Third Wheel)
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Matt Sullivan's writing has appeared in Black Book, Salon, the book Six Word Memoirs On Love And Heartbreak (Harper Perennial, 2009) and on his parents' fridge.

DENA TAYLOR (An Open Letter to the Lunesta Butterfly)
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Dena Taylor is a freelance writer, voiceover artist and sometime actor living in Austin, Texas. In addition to providing award-winning copy for a variety of marketing clients, she has written for Austin Woman magazine, and written and performed with Austin's Gag Reflex sketch comedy group with performances at the Chicago Snubfest and DC comedy festivals. Her decade in Seattle includes stand-up at the Comedy Underground, and studies at Unexpected Productions Improv School and Freehold Theatre Lab. Profound turning-point credits include modeling used formalwear for the Austin American-Statesman, and doing a voiceover for a clinical study on depression.

Dena is foremost an experienced handler of projectile feline hair vomit and sweet potato fries, but not at the same time.

For more information, check out denataylor.com and gagplanet.com/austin

LOU LOU TAYLOR (V.I.P.)
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Lou Lou Taylor is an actress, writer and filmmaker. She has performed theatrically in numerous venues in N.Y.C. some of which include The Ensemble Studio Theatre, The Rattlestick Theatre, and the New York Comedy Club. Her love for the theatre enticed her to take on the role of a producer for a show performed at The Third Eye Repertory. From there, Lou Lou started to land bit parts on television shows, inclduding As the World Turns, Guiding Light, and Autopsy. Her most recent films, Madness and Genius, and Four Dead Batteries are touring the indie film circuit. A selection of her credits can be seen on IMDB.com under the name of "LG TAYLOR".

She recently completed directing a commercial for T.J. Maxx and has just completed an action comedy adventure screenplay. And, as if that doesn't fill her plate enough, Lou Lou also finds time to be a caring Aunt, practice yoga and read at least one chapter from a book per day. She is extremely grateful to be alive.

MARIANNE TAYLOR (The Grand Union and My Mother's Career)
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Marianne Taylor was the winner of Ms. Magazine's 2005 Fiction Contest. Her short stories have appeared in The Boston Review, Dogwood, The Ledge, and many others. Her first novel, The Pathology of Love was a finalist for the 2003 Bakeless Prize. Last year, her first non-fiction book (co-authored by Laurie Lindop) was published by Simon and Schuster: The Starving Artist's Survival Guide, a black humor book for struggling creative types.

Marianne Taylor teaches Visual Art and Media Literacy in the public schools of Brookline MA. She lives in nearby Boston.

BETHANY THORNTON (Foremothers); (Boundaries)
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The moment Bethany saw her 6th grade Christmas poem published in the district newsletter, she knew she wanted to be a writer. Upon graduating from college, she was hired to cover women's sports for the local newspaper. With great enthusiasm she wrote about everything from horseshoe competitions to octogenarian marathon runners. She loved the job but couldn't pay her bills, so she joined the corporate world and began writing ad campaigns and video scripts for medical companies. Her objective was to make surgical instrumentation appear as interesting and glamorous as possible.

Twenty years later, she escaped the corporate office with her desire to write still intact. Other work has appeared in the Santa Barbara News-Press and Coastal Woman magazine. She has studied in the UCLA writer's program and just finished her first novel. It's a scintillating tale she has yet to show anyone -- even her husband and three children whom she lives with in Santa Barbara.

SARAH THYRE (Losing My Religion)
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Sarah Thyre is a writer and actor from Louisiana. While living in New York City, she played ugly hillbillies on Late Night with Conan O'Brien, read her stories on WNYC's "The Next Big Thing" co-starred in Comedy Central's Strangers With Candy, wrote a zine, originated roles in David Sedaris plays including One Woman Shoe and Incident at Cobblers Knob, did throaty Brenda Vaccaro-esque promos for MTV and performed with the Upright Citizens Brigade.

Since moving to Los Angeles, she has been auditioning, getting depressed, writing a book, boozing, getting less depressed, and chasing after a three-year-old boy. She also reads at the acclaimed series Sit 'n' Spin. Contrary to how she appears in this picture, she is not a descendant of Marty Feldman.

SUZANNE TILDEN-MORTIMER (Brushes with Evil)
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Suzanne Tilden-Mortimer grew up in Tucson, Arizona. Over a forty-year span, she worked as a broadcast media buyer for advertising agencies in Los Angeles, Phoenix and Tucson. In 1972 she earned an Associate Degree in art from Los Angeles City College and during the seventies attended California State University at Northridge.

She is a member of the Society of Southwestern Authors and The Arizona Mystery Writers. Suzanne's memoir, Do I Know You? was published in 2005 by Sun Rising Press, and her mystery Dead Air is out on submission. At age sixty, she married Bill Mortimer, news anchor at KUAT/KUAZ NPR Radio, and classmate from elementary through high school. They reside in Tucson with their three dogs, Curly, Peabody and Sparky all controlled by a Sun Conure named Nallie.

She appeared on Broadway in A Chorus Line, Hurlyburly and Doonesbury and in the films When A Man Loves a Woman, Mr. Jones, With Friends Like These, Catfish in Black Bean Sauce, and Manhood with John Ritter. She has worked with directors such as Peter Sellars and Joanne Akalaitis at the Goodman and Guthrie Theaters, the La Jolla Playhouse and the Kennedy Center. Her one-woman show, 25 Psychics, premiered at HBO'S U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen. The show received Dramalogue Awards for Best Performance and Best Direction.

Lauren's voice work can be heard in the animated series, Futurama, King of the Hill, Codename: Kids Next Door, Teacher's Pet, Rocket Power, Max Steele, Batman, Superman, Kim Possible, Baby Clifford, American Dragon and the upcoming feature, Mulan II.

LAN TRAN (Sparkly Things)
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Writer/Performer Lan Tran (pronounced "lon tran") has more library cards than credit cards, loves traveling to places where you're not supposed to drink the water, and knows how to jimmy a parking meter. Her solo performances, including her one-woman show How to Unravel Your Family, have been produced at numerous off-Broadway theaters, in the Lincoln Center Theater -- sponsored American Living Room Festival, at New York City Hall and, most recently at REDCAT in the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Lan, who regularly performs with the Quarterly Report, has published fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry in literary journals and in the anthology Falling Backwards: Stories of Fathers and Daughters (Hourglass Books, 2004). She is a 2005 recipient of the PEN/Rosenthal Fellowship and has a story about her Vietnamese-Texan upbringing in Waking Up American (Seal Press, 2005). Lan also likes food that no one else likes to eat. For more info see www.lantranonline.com

SUSAN VAN ALLEN (The Way we Were)
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SUSAN VAN ALLEN grew up on the Jersey shore and then spent a lot of time in San Francisco acting in ensembles and writing and performing one woman shows including, AKA Susan Van Allen, Jersey Girls, and One Day In The Life of Florence D'Ambrisi. She toured Jersey Girls to New York, Seattle, and Los Angeles.

Now in LA, she's written on staff for Everybody Loves Raymond, done commentaries for NPR's "Marketplace" and "Savvy Traveler," and performed her stories at lots of venues around town, including "Sit 'n Spin." Susan also writes about her travels to Italy for newspapers and magazines. You can listen to her on www.savvytraveler.org.

She is a ten city veteran of The Vagina Monologues, a glorious experience. As an eighteen year survivor, she is an advocate for breast cancer awareness and motivational speaker. She also just published her first book. Both her speech and her book are entitled Don't Look Back, We're Not Going That Way. The title is a quote from her larger than life father. Of course he also used to say, "If I don't see you again, the mule is yours," so not everything he said was deep. The book is subtitled "How I overcame a rocky childhood, a nervous breakdown, breast cancer, widowhood, fire and menopausal motherhood and still manage to count my lucky chickens." For more info visit www.marciawallace.com.

ELIZABETH WARNER (Fun with Entropy); (Queens Surface Transport)
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Writer, actor and monologist Elizabeth Warner spent 10 years authoring junk
mail for all of Time Inc.'s magazines in NYC, luring millions of Americans
into purchasing magazines with the promise of a Sneaker Phone. Her solo show The Wandering Eye premiered at HBO's Aspen Comedy Festival in 2002 and she's been telling stories at Sit n' Spin, Say The Word, various Comedy Central Stage vehicles, and Annabelle Gurwitch's FIRED! ever since.

She has just signed a two-book contract with the Random House imprint Villard; her first collection of essays Ditched By Dr. Right (and Other Distress Signals from the Edge of Polite Society) arrives in bookstores July 2005. Eagle-eyed viewers can catch her in the films Beethoven's 5th, Surviving Eden and Wannabe. She lives in Los Angeles but, no fool, maintains a New York residence as well. For more information, go to www.elizabethwarner.com.

DAVID WATTS (That Bastard Flud Talley Gets His)
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David Watts is a writer/actor trying to figure out why the hell he lives in Los Angeles. He is a story editor for MTV where he just wrapped the first season of Rob and Big.

He is the 2001 Austin Film Festival Sitcom Award Winner for his South Park script Eric Cartman and the Cheesy Poof Factory. His screenplay Cheesers, which made quarterfinals in the 2002 Austin Film Festival Comedy Screenplay Competition, is still being kicked around Hollywood like a redheaded stepchild.

David has worked with Pixar and Walt Disney Feature Animation adapting the screenplays for Cars, The Incredibles, and Chicken Little into audio plays for Walt Disney Records. Chicken Little actually went platinum in Germany where David can't buy a bratwurst without getting mobbed.

After David finished the advanced class at The Groundlings, he co-wrote and co-produced the DramaLogue award winning sketch comedy show Smooth Down There.

David's plays have been produced all over Los Angeles; in fact, one might be going on your bathroom right now. His play Eight Items or Less was selected for the Audrey-Skirbal Kenis Library of plays.

If you love infomercials -- David was the guy that brought Tivo to a world of disgruntled television viewers. He lives with his wife and two boys in the smog-choked San Fernando Valley. He still hides under the table when he sees the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz.

BARBARA WEBER (Have You Hugged Your Considerate Neighbor Today?)
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Barbara has unfortunately made her living as a graphic artist although her degree is in interior design, meaning she has few dollars in her bank but many efficient traffic patterns in her house.

Being a vegan, a shameless wearer of plaid, and a devout believer in the genius of Don Knotts, she has happily set up camp on the outer fringes of society and has written three books and five screenplays (in her head) from this vantage point. She is currently working on translating her writing into words. Barbara shares her life and love with her partner, Christina, and their five furry daughters. This is her first published piece.

NICHOLAS WEINSTOCK (Help)
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Nicholas Weinstock is the author of the nonfiction book The Secret Love of Sons, and the novels As Long as She Needs Me and, most recently, The Golden Hour. His writing has been featured on National Public Radio and in The New York Times Magazine, The Nation, Spy, Vogue, Glamour, Nerve, Poets & Writers and many other publications. In addition to his writing, he works as Vice President of Comedy Development at 20th Century Fox Television. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and three children.

PHIL WEST(Plastic Crap)
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Phil West is a writer, publicist, and adjunct English instructor at three San Antonio-area colleges. He grew up in Seattle and then made his full conversion to Texan upon his arrival in Austin in 1994. He received his MFA from the James A. Michener Center for Writers in 2000. His first book of poetry, The Arsenal of Small Stars, was published by The Wordsmith Press in 2005, available via thewordsmithpress.com, and has published poetry and essays in numerous journals and anthologies. He has also written features and critical reviews for the Los Angeles Times, Seattle Times, Austin Chronicle, and San Antonio Express-News. You can hear what he sounds like on his fledgling podcast, Funnelcake.

West has also involved with poetry slam for over a decade, including a brief and happy reign as a National Poetry Slam finalist as chronicled in the 1997 documentary film SlamNation. He co-directed the 1998 National Poetry Slam in Austin, and will co-direct the 2006 and 2007 editions, also in Austin.

ALEXIS WIGGINS (What You Are)
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Alexis Wiggins is an American writer living in Spain. Her work has appeared in Rivet, Dimsum, Flashquake, Lime Tea, and Brevity, and is forthcoming in Creative Nonfiction. She was recently nominated for the upcoming Pushcart Prize. Alexis is completing her M.F.A. at the University of New Orleans and is currently at work on her first novel. She lives in Madrid with her husband, Diego, where she works as a freelance writer, editor, and teacher.

STEFANIE WILDER-TAYLOR (Preggo Land)
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Stefanie Wilder-Taylor considers herself the consummate New Yorker. Born in Queens, she gave the city 2 years before deciding they didn't "get her" and headed for Los Angeles. Her father is the briefly legendary stand-up comedian Stanley Myron Handleman The influence of his skewed, abstract style on his daughter was apparent when, upon leaving school and losing numerous waitressing and temp jobs, she set out to follow in his footsteps.

Her humble comedy origins included a constant struggle to pay the rent, a bitter loss on Star Search and an accidental appearance as the only Jew on a born-again Christian stand-up show. Stefanie then went on to hone her off-center, conceptual style on many non-denominational shows including numerous appearances on Make Me Laugh, Evening at the Improv, Comedy Central and a performance in the Montreal "Just For Laughs" festival . Since then she's written and produced more than 30 television sketch, clip and variety shows including Whose Line Is It Anyway?, Blind Date, Show Me the Funny, and was the only female joke writer for Hollywood Squares. Most recently, she's written a book called Sippy Cups Are Not For Chardonnay: And other things I had to Learn as a New Mom, and she encourages (begs) you to buy a copy. You can currently find her at home with her husband and new offspring.

MARCIA WILKE (Just a Fall)
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Marcia Wilkie still moved to Los Angeles from Chicago, even though the 1994 Northridge earthquake happened the day after her show This Girl I Knew toured to the Coast Playhouse on Santa Monica Boulevard. Groundbreaking is an adjective Wilkie would be honored to have as a career descriptive. She has performed her four solo shows including Are You Happy? at many universities and theaters including the Joseph Papp Public Theater, HBO New Writers Series, Live Bait Theater in Chicago and the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center. She has also had the tremendous kick of performing in Spoken Interludes, Sit n' Spin, The Triangle Room and The Big Goddess PowWow.

Television studio executives refer to her as "The Host Whisperer," because of her work with various celebrity talk show hosts on their opening monologues for Buena Vista, Columbia Tri-Star and Warner studios. She was the head writer on the Donny & Marie talk show, Executive Producer of the nationally syndicated radio show Marie & Friends, and also authored Marie Osmond's New York Times best-selling book Behind the Smile. She has had articles published in Newsweek, Good Housekeeping and the QVC Insider.

APRIL WINCHELL (Clash of the Titans)
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April has worked in the family business, doing cartoon voices (her father, the late Paul Winchell, created hundreds of well-known characters, the most famous of which was Tigger). She has provided voices for thousands of animated projects, including The Simpsons, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Antz and Toy Story 2, to name a few. She is the voice of classic Disney cartoon characters Cruella De Vil and Clarabelle Cow, and appears in current favorites such as Lilo and Stitch, Kim Possible and The Legend of Tarzan (taking over for Rosie O' Donnell). She can also be heard in the recently released feature, Queer Duck.

April had a radio show which aired on LA based KFI AM 640 for nearly three years, and enjoyed the fastest growing weekend audience in the station's history. Currently, she can be heard twice a month on KABC radio, when she brings her critical view of pop culture and not so soothing music to the "Ask Mr. KABC Show". She was recently named "One of the 25 Funniest People in Hollywood" by Los Angeles Magazine.

As a former advertising executive, Winchell has won every major advertising award in the world, including the Cannes, Clio, Grand Mercury and Grand Andy. And now, after having lost 130 pounds, she is embarking on an on-camera career.

April's website, www.aprilwinchell.com, enjoys over one million hits a month. There she hosts her growing collection of musical oddities, daily ramblings and hundreds of hours of archived radio shows. It was recently hailed by The Guardian as "The hottest site of the year", which means almost nothing.

ALBERT J. WINN (T'shuvah)
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Albert Winn is a photographer and a writer. He has exhibited in the International Center of Photography, LACMA, SFCamerawork, Houston Center for Photography, and the Jewish Museum, among other places, and is in the collections of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the Library of Congress, the Jewish Museum and the VisualAIDS Archive. He received an NEA/WestAF Fellowship for "My Life Until Now" a collection of stories and photographs.

He has read his stories on NPR's "Soundprint," and at Beyond Baroque and the Loft Stage. He has published in ZYZZYVA and The Jewish Quarterly Review. He has been the photographer for KlezKamp for 13 years and has done projects on the Radical Faeries and his body. He lives with his spouse, Scott, and when not watching his dogs and cats sleep, he is working on a project about deserted and abandoned Jewish summer camps and looking for a publisher. He teaches at Cal Arts and the Oakwood School. His work can be seen at www.albertjwinn.com.

CASSANDRA WISEMAN (Equator, Equator, You Said You Would Be There)
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Cassandra grew up both in Sausalito, California, and in the Australian Outback. She studied in England at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, and graduated with honors from the University of California at Berkeley with a BA in Slavic Language and Literature. At Berkeley, she was awarded a Presidents Fellowship to translate and produce three Russian One Act plays. As Cassandra Webb, she had a successful acting career in Australia, starring in the British sci fi film Starship, and played the blind Kelly Burns on the television series Sons and Daughters. Her stage work includes Nora in the Australian National production of Brighton Beach Memoirs, Columbia in the Rocky Horror Show and has played several of Shakespeare's girls, Hermia, Juliet, Desdemona. In 1987, she moved to Topanga Canyon where she has been raising her three children. She has served on the board of several charities, and has focused on providing free classes in the arts to children at risk.

While most of her writing has been confined to letters of the “please excuse my child” type read by the educators at Malibu High and Topanga Elementary, or writing non-fiction articles for the Topanga Messenger, she has occasionally managed to get a story out and in print elsewhere.

MATT WYATT (A Phantom Passing)
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Tall, brown-haired and generally bipedal, Matt Wyatt is a recent graduate of USC's School of Cinema-Television. He has written for stage, screen and, during the period from 8th to 11th grade, in white-out on the lower pocket of his backpack. Commissioned by a debonair Maltese producer to write a screenplay, he penned a sweeping historical epic about the ancient city of Pompeii and its catastrophic demise. While Warner Brothers subsequently found the material thin, the trip to Pompeii was free, the gnocchi was delicious, and he would gladly write a movie that way again. Perhaps something set in Narnia or on the moon next time...

While it would be chic to say Matt splits his time between Los Angeles and Paris, it would also be a lie. Actually, he splits it between his place off La Brea and his girlfriend's place in West Hollywood. His emotional outlook is split 90% spunky and fresh-faced, and 10% dark and jaded. Matt hopes soon to be paid for his creativity, rather than his ability to command a multi-line phone system with ruthless efficiency (a very sexy sight, if you're into the illusion of power). More of Matt's work can be found at the similarly titled but completely unaffiliated www.amazingyarns.us.

STEVE YOUNG (My Blank Canvas Theory)
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Steve Young is a Connecticut native and graduate of Syracuse University, where he studied Russian and Television Production. He has called Los Angeles home for nine years and fully assimilated about two years ago, the day he called his friend from his cell phone at Starbucks to say he'd be able to work with him on the screenplay later but it would have to be after yoga and before seeing his shrink.

If you've read IN Los Angeles magazine, the dearly departed Vodka magazine, the back of the box of the Showgirls DVD, or the scintillating executive perspectives section of a certain Silicon Valley company's website, you're already familiar with his work. Steve used to work in the music video world and had a laugh out loud moment the day he realized that Britney Spears and others of her ilk were indirectly putting a roof over his head.

TIFFANY ZEHNAL (What Plastic Patio Furniture in my Living Room?)
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Tiffany used to live in Texas. Now she doesn't.

Tiffany has worked as a writer on Veronica's Closet, Dag, That '80s Show and Lost at Home, to name a few and/or all of them. She was then intimate with her husband and made a baby. Since then, she's been taking care of aforementioned baby, trying to find where she put her career, and writing a genius screenplay. She's currently in cahoots with Bruce Willis' production company and Liquid Theory, developing a show for cable, and is also tinkering with an idea for NBC.

Her mom does not presently live in a trailer.