In recognition of LGBTQ Pride Month - moderated by Tobi Harper, founder and editor of Quill, a Queer publication series (Red Hen Press imprint)

TOBI HARPER is Deputy Director of Red Hen Press. While completing an M.A. in English Literature, Tobi served as Editor-in-Chief of San Francisco State University’s graduate student journal Interpretations and wrote a thesis titled “‘What is it?’: Examining Narrative Shifts in Twentieth-Century Genderqueer Novels.” This thesis was presented in an abbreviated form in 2014 at Queer Yo Mind Conference in San Francisco, CA, and in 2013 at Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Conference in San Diego, CA. While serving as the “Queerstorian” Officer of the Queer Student Union, Tobi co-founded and co-organized the First Annual Isla Vista Pride Festival in 2010 as well as the Big Queer, Little Queer mentor program in 2009. Tobi Harper, along with Red Hen Press, is committed to the queer in the matter, the wicked other, the celebration of acceptance, love, and the story that dare not speak its name.

MARTHA K. DAVIS is a writer, editor, and teacher living in San Diego. Her writing has appeared in CALYX, The Gay & Lesbian Review, River Styx, Stone Canoe, StoryQuarterly, and elsewhere. She received her MFA in fiction from Columbia University.  Her novel SCISSORS PAPER STONE is “…an ambitious coming of (lesbian) age story that is a movingly honest inquiry into the messy, still beautiful transmogrification of what it means to be a family in a post-WWII America, ruptured by racism, homophobia, and the generational divide…” – Celeste Gainey, author, THE GAFFER; & judge, 2016 Quill Prose Award Parts of Scissors, Paper, Stone were written during residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program.

JOSH GERSHICK’s works include the plays Dear ONE: Love & Longing in Mid-Century Queer America, Coming Attractions, Assisted Living, and Bluebonnet Court, winner of the GLAAD Award for Outstanding Los Angeles Theatre; the film Door Prize, winner of the Alfred C. Kinsey Award, honoring film that furthers understanding of gender or sexuality; and two acclaimed oral histories Gay Old Girls, winner of the ForeWord Book of the Year Award for LGBT Nonfiction, an American Library Association Book of the Year Nominee, and a Lambda Literary Award Finalist; and Secret Service: Untold Stories of Lesbians in the Military, winner of the  ForeWord Book of the Year Award for LGBT Nonfiction and a C-SPAN Book TV featured book. Gershick earned an MFA from the USC School of Dramatic Arts & an MPW from the USC Dornsife College. Gershick is the Southern California Regional Representative for the Dramatists Guild of America.

DAN LOPEZ'S work has appeared in The Millions, Storychord, Time Out New York, and Lambda Literary, among others. THE SHOW HOUSE is his first novel. He lives in Los Angeles.

"The Show House…is a mystery that brings together murder, passion, family, and ideas of what it means to be gay in the face of normative pressures. Less of a typical whodunit, Lopez’s debut novel will be, for many, a refreshing exploration of why-did-they-do-it. Which, being read as a question left unanswered, is a powerful nod to the gulf that exists between action and intent in the face of tragedy... a thought provoking meditation on the anxieties and pain that lurk within contemporary gay life."—Theodore Kerr, Lambda Literary

BRANDI SPAETHE received her MFA in poetry from Fresno State. Her poems have appeared in The New Engagement (nominated for a Pushcart Prize), SPUNK, and BLOOM, to name a few. Her chapbook, To You Who Wants In, was released in December 2012. Spaethe received the 2012 C.G. Hanzlicek Poetry Writing Fellowship and a 2013 poetry fellowship at Lambda Literary Foundation's Emerging Writer's Retreat. She is currently the administrative assistant at Lambda Literary Foundation and also teaches at California State University, Los Angeles.