Francis DiClemente is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker who lives in Syracuse, New York. He is the author of multiple poetry collections, most recently The Truth I Must Invent (Poets Choice, 2023).
His full-length stage play, Beyond the Glass, inspired by the Edward Hopper painting Nighthawks, was produced by a regional theater in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 2017.
He received a bachelor’s degree in communications/journalism from St. John Fisher University in Rochester, New York, and earned a master of arts in film and video from American University in Washington, DC. His blog can be found at https://francisdiclemente.com/.
Rebecca Faye Smith Galli is an author and columnist who writes about love, loss, and healing. Surviving significant losses—her seventeen-year-old brother’s death; her son’s degenerative disease and subsequent death; her daughter’s autism; her divorce; and nine days later, her paralysis from transverse myelitis, a rare spinal cord inflammation that began as the flu—has fostered an unexpected but prolific writing career. The Baltimore Sun published her first column about playing soccer with her son—from the wheelchair. 400 published columns later, she launched Thoughtful Thursdays—Lessons from a Resilient Heart, a weekly column that shares what’s inspired her to stay positive. She also periodically contributes to the Baltimore Sun’s Op-Ed pag
Janis Harper is a writer, editor, singer-songwriter, actor, and former adjunct English professor turned expressive arts therapist. Her lifelong passions for the arts, metaphysics, spirituality, and philosophy come together in her 2021 philosophical-spiritual novel, "Jonas and the Mountain: A Metaphysical Love Story" (Sacred Stories). Although fictional, she considers it to be the truest work she’s ever written. Janis's writing can be found in literary journals and anthologies, including in two creative nonfiction anthologies that she conceived and edited: "Body Breakdowns: Tales of Illness and Recovery" and "Emails From India: Women Write Home." She has presented her work in Canada, the US, and India, and lives in British Columbia. https://
