Melanie Brooks is the author Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art from Trauma (Beacon Press, 2017). She teaches creative nonfiction in the M.F.A. program at Bay Path University and professional writing at Northeastern University in Massachusetts. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast writing program and is completing a Certificate in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University. She has had numerous interviews and essays on topics ranging from loss and grief to parenting and aging published in the HuffPost, Psychology Today, Yankee Magazine, The Washington Post, Ms. Magazine, Creative Nonfiction, and other notable publications. She grew up in the Canadian Maritimes, but now lives in New Hampshire with her husband, two children (when they are home from university), and two Labs.


Mark Doty is author of nine books of poems, including FIRE TO FIRE: New & Selected Poems, which won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2008. He has also published five volumes of nonfiction prose, including HEAVEN'S COAST and WHAT IS THE GRASS: Walt Whitman in My Life. He lives in Valatie, New York, and in New York City.