Delia Kostner, Ph.D. is a psychologist and psychoanalyst practicing in New Hampshire. She is on the faculty of the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute. She is the guiding teacher of Souhegan Insight Meditation and has written and lectured on the interface of psychotherapy and Buddhism. She is also an avid outdoors person and backpacker.

Sarah Perry's memoir, After the Eclipse, was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice; other work has appeared in Off Assignment, The Guardian, and elsewhere. Perry is a 2020-2022 Tulsa Artist Fellow and has received fellowships from the Edward F. Albee Foundation, VCCA, Playa, and The Studios of Key West. She has taught at Columbia University, Davidson College, Manhattanville College, and numerous community writing centers.

Cynthia Eyster is a social worker who has worked in individual and group psychotherapy practices. She is a teacher of mindfulness meditation, trained by Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield. She writes poetry and leads meditation and writing workshops in the New York area. She looks forward to participating in The Things They Carry Project.

Cathy Schen, MD, an adult and adolescent psychiatrist and psychotherapist, teaches psychiatry residents at Harvard Medical School. She has published papers in academic journals on race in supervision, walking psychotherapy, writing about patients, and other topics. She farms at a nearby organic farm and has published essays in literary journals on farming and doctoring, landscape and memory, and Willa Cather. She is currently writing about her father.

Anna Vodicka's essays have appeared in AFAR, Brevity, Guernica, Harvard Review, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Ms., Paste, and Best Women’s Travel Writing. She is a grant recipient of Artist Trust and 4Culture, and has earned residency fellowships to Vermont Studio Center and Hedgebrook. Anna teaches creative writing at Seattle’s Hugo House and to women incarcerated at the King County Jail.

Elissa Ely worked as a community psychiatrist in Boston for 30 years, most of them in street shelters, community clinics and state hospitals. In another life, she was a long-time commentator for “All Things Considered” on NPR, and wrote “The Remembrance Project” a series of radio obituaries about people neither rich nor famous, but highly beloved; ordinary people who lived extraordinary lives.

Helen Betya Rubinstein’s essays have appeared in venues like Literary Hub, Jewish Currents, The Kenyon Review, and The New York Times. She holds MFA degrees in fiction and nonfiction, from Brooklyn College and the University of Iowa, respectively, and her work has been honored with fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and many others. She teaches at The New School and works one-on-one with other writers as a coach.

Leslie Leitner is a psychotherapist in LA. She holds a certificate in psychoanalytic psychotherapy from the Los Angeles Institute and Society for Psychoanalytic Studies. Her clinical interests include working with adults and families dealing with anxiety, depression, complex trauma, grief, illness and death. Leslie splits her time between private practice and the PCH Treatment Center where she works with families and has led therapeutic writing groups for several years.

Sherry Amatenstein, LCSW is a NYC-based psychotherapist. She has written 3 self-help books, edited the anthology HOW DOES THAT MAKE YOU FEEL? True Confessions from Both Sides of the Therapy Couch, and contributed to numerous publications including vox.com, New York and Washington Post. She is a former adjunct writing professor at The New School and NYU and co-led the workshop Women Writing to Change The World at Omega Institute.

Lauren Dockett is a writer and book and magazine editor specializing in mental health and social justice. A former caseworker and counselor, she’s written for the Washington Post, Salon, and NPR. In her current job as senior writer for the National Magazine Award-winning publication, Psychotherapy Networker, she writes long-form features at the intersection of mental health and society. Her books are Facing 30, The Deepest Blue, and Sex Talk.

Rob Wright is a fiction editor to the magazine Able Muse. He’s been awarded three Fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and has been twice nominated for the PushCart Prize. He has published in Able Muse, Angle, Big City Lit, The Evansville Review, Measure, and Rattle. His book of poems, Last Wishes is published by Able Muse Press. Recently, he won the Frost Prize for Metrical Poetry.

Angier Brock, a long-time believer in the healing power of writing and in the value of using writing to help make meaning of one's experiences, has taught for over 35 years in secondary schools and colleges and in small private writing classes. Her poetry and reflective essays often have a spiritual theme. Recent publications include texts set to music by American and British composers and sung by choirs at home and abroad. She lives in eastern Virginia.

Carola Chase is a clinical social worker and child psychoanalyst with a private practice in New York City. She works with children, adolescents, adults, and older adults. She is a member of The Contemporary Society and a graduate of the New Directions Writing Program. She has published two short stories in the New Directions’ Journal, and several articles in psychoanalytic journals and publications. She is currently completing her second novel.

Dana Brotman, PhD is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Falls Church, Virginia. She works with children, adolescents and adults and provides clinical supervision. She is also a painter and is currently working on developing her most recent gallery show, Pillow Book: Pages from a Pandemic, into book form. In addition, she is writing and illustrating a children's book, Tiny and Sunflower.

David Rowell is the author of the novel The Train of Small Mercies (2011) and Wherever the Sound Takes You: Heroics and Heartbreaking in Music Making (2019), an exploration of the inner lives of musicians. He has taught literary journalism in the MFA department at American University and is the deputy editor of The Washington Post Magazine.

Colleen Kinder has written essays and articles for The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, VQR, The Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic.com, Creative Nonfiction, and Best American Travel Writing 2013. A graduate of the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program, she has received fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell, Ucross and the Fulbright. She is the co-founder of the magazine Off Assignment, the editor of Letter to a Stranger (forthcoming, Oct 2021), and teaches for Yale Summer Session in France.

Tessa Cochran is a psychologist psychoanalyst and graduate of the New Directions Writing Program. She has served on the faculties of SUNY Stony Brook Allied Health Professions and Michigan State’s College of Human Medicine. In her clinical practice, she has encouraged patients to use writing for self-discovery, supplementing talk therapy.

Aria Beth Sloss is the author of Autobiography of Us, a novel.  Her writing has appeared in Glimmer Train, the Harvard Review, Ploughshares, Joyland, One Story, Martha Stewart Living, and Best American Short Stories 2015.  A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she is the recipient of fellowships from the Iowa Arts Foundation, Yaddo, and the Vermont Studio Center. She lives in New York City with her family.

Stephanie Friedman holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and has taught for many years in the Writer's Studio, a creative writing program for adult students at the University of Chicago. Her fiction, essays, and poetry has appeared in venues such as Michigan Quarterly Review, The Minnesota Review, RiverTeeth's "Beautiful Things" series, and was listed among the "Notables" for the year in Best American Short Stories.

Shelley Costa is the author of You Cannoli Die Once, Basil Instinct, Practical Sins for Cold Climates, A Killer’s Guide to Good Works, several stories in The Georgia Review, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Blood on Their Hands, Odd Partners, and The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories. Writing as Stephanie Cole, her most recent books are Al Dente’s Inferno and Crime of the Ancient Marinara.