More bios will be added as they become available.

Jeff Adams is the author of the Hat Trick series, which will conclude this summer with Hat Trick 3:. Penalty Shot His most recent release is the young adult romance Flipping for Him. He’s currently working on a new young adult series he hopes to debut in 2016 as well as some new short stories.

James Aiello is the author of Forbidden Child; the story of the beautiful and sensual, illegitimate daughter of Marilyn Monroe and JFK. At the young age of 12 a thought came to him; he wondered what a child of Marilyn Monroe and JFK would be like. After the death of his life partner in 2013 James immersed himself in his writing and Forbidden Child was born.

Ann Aptaker Native New Yorker Ann Aptaker has earned a reputation as a respected if cheeky exhibition designer and curator of art during her career in museums and galleries. Taking the approach that what art authorities find uncomfortable the public would likely enjoy, exhibitions Ann has curated have garnered favorable reviews in the New York Times, Art in America, American Art Review, and other publications. She brings the same attitude and philosophy to her first love: writing, especially a tangy variety of historical crime fiction. Ann’s short stories have appeared in two editions (2003 and 2004) of the noir crime anthology  Fedora. Her flash fiction story, “A Night In Town,” appeared in the online zine Punk Soul Poet. In addition to curating and designing art exhibitions and writing crime stories, Ann is also an art writer and an adjunct professor of art and art history at the New York Institute of Technology. CRIMINAL GOLD, Book One in the Cantor Gold crime series, is her debut novel. Book Two, TARNISHED GOLD, is scheduled for release in September. BOLD STROKES SHOWCASE

Tom Baker is a graduate of the College of William & Mary. He enjoyed a career in advertising, producing award-winning campaigns for a diverse list of clients that included Ford Motor Company, Procter & Gamble and The Beverly Hills Hotel. He was partly responsible for blowing up the Jack-in-the-Box clown in the 1980’s. He later moved into publishing where he was the Travel Manager for the Readers Digest, contributing over 300 pages of content to the magazine every year. Tom currently writes full time and lives in a tree house in Santa Monica Canyon. His works include The Sound of One Horse Dancing and FULL FRONTAL: to make a long story short. His latest novel, Paperwhite Narcissus was just named winner of the 2015 Beverly Hills Books Awards for LGBT fiction.

Kris Bryant presently lives in Kansas City and earned her B.A. in English from the University of Missouri. She enjoys traveling, photography and poetry. Jolt, a Lambda Literary Award Finalist, is her debut novel. BOLD STROKES SHOWCASE

Brian Centrone is the author of the short story collections I Voted for Biddy Schumacher: Mismatched Tales from the Mind of Brian Centrone and Erotica, and of the debut novel An Ordinary Boy. Most recently his poem “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World” was published in Minetta Review.

Cheryl Clarke is a poet, essayist, and author of four books of poetry, NARRATIVES: POEMS IN THE TRADITION OF BLACK WOMEN (1982; now an ebook), LIVING AS A LESBIAN (1986; reprinted 2014), HUMID PITCH (1989), EXPERIMENTAL LOVE (1993), THE DAYS OF GOOD LOOKS: PROSE AND POETRY, 1980-2005 (2006), and the critical study, ‘AFTER MECCA’: WOMEN POETS AND THE BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT (2005). Her essay “By Its Absence: Literature and the attainment of sociall justice consciousness” appears in Routledge’s INTERNATIONAL HANDBOOK OF SOCIAL JUSTICE (M. Reisch, ed, 2014). She retired from Rutgers University, New Brunswick, in 2013 after 41 years in administration. She received the David Kessler Award in 2013 from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center for her service to LGBTQ communities.

FEATURED READER—
Kelly Cogswell is a journalist, activist and artist. Co-founder and co-editor of The Gully online magazine (2000-2006), her work has appeared in a range of venues including the International Herald Tribune and New York’s Gay City News where her column has been recognized by the New York Press Association. A finalist for a Lambda Literary Award for lesbian memoir/biography, she is the author EATING FIRE: MY LIFE AS A LESBIAN AVENGER, “a marvelous, timeless tale of wit, survival, determination, and ultimately facing history.”

Roberta Degnore has authored from noir to science fiction, with romances in between. She was a Lambda Literary Award nominee in 2014 for Invisible Soft Return:\ and has four novels currently on Amazon. She will be reading in Rome in May and at the first Flame Con in Brooklyn in June. But for the Rainbow Book Fair she will present the first read of her memoir of the 1980s with Sam Wagstaff.  It is a lurching memory of that time of a vanished New York–when cocaine was not addictive and AIDS was only a whisper.

Maurice W. Dorsey is the author of Businessman First, Remembering Henry G. Parks, Jr. 1916-1989, the biography of a mid-century African American bisexual businessman, founder of one of the largest black-owned U.S. businesses, Parks Sausage Company. Dorsey is retired after a 42-year career in government and higher education. This, his first book, is the story of his friend.

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Mark Doty‘s Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems, won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2008.  His eight books of poems include School of the Arts, Source, and My Alexandria. He has also published four volumes of nonfiction prose:  Still Life with  Oysters and Lemon, Heaven’s Coast, Firebird and Dog Years, which was a New York Times bestseller in 2007. The Art of Description, a handbook for writers, appeared in 2011.

Georgette Gouveia is the author of “Water Music,” the first in her series of novels “The Games Men Play,” which is also the name of the sports/culture blog she writes. A former award-winning senior cultural writer with Gannett Inc., Georgette is the editor of WAG, a luxury lifestyle magazine, and the author of “The Essential Mary Cassatt.” Visit her at thegamesmenplay.com.

KT Grant is a self-proclaimed eccentric redhead who not only loves to read a wide variety of romances, but also loves writing them. Under her alter-ego, she is a well-known book reviewer and blogger who doesn’t shy away from voicing her opinion. A proud native of New Jersey, KT is multi-published and known for writing “out of the box” romances. KT has been a top ten best-selling author at Amazon, as well as being a multiple All Romance Ebooks best seller and a Night Owl Reviews Top Author Pick. She is the author of The Princess’s Bride and Scandal in the Wind, all pop culture lesbian best sellers in the romance market.

Kevin Scott Hall an adjunct professor at City College and BMCC and an entertainment journalist for EDGE Media. In the ’90s, he was a singer/songwriter and recording artist. He is the author of the novel “Off the Charts!” and last year’s acclaimed memoir, “A Quarter Inch from My Heart.”

Dena Hankins writes aboard her boat, wherever she has sailed it. After eight years as a sex educator, she focused on erotic tales with far-flung settings—India, North Carolina, deep space—and a queer/trans* romance novel, Blue Water Dreams, about magnetism and self-sufficiency. Her Hawaiian romance, Heart of the Lilikoi, will debut at Provincetown Women’s Week in October. BOLD STROKES SHOWCASE

Jonathan Harper is the author of the short story collection Daydreamers (Lethe Press, March 2015). He received his MFA in Creative Writing from American University. His writing has been featured in such places as The Nervous Breakdown, Chelsea Station, Big Lucks and in several anthologies including Homewrecker: An Adultery Reader (ed. Daphne Gottlieb, Soft Skull Press) and Best Gay Stories 2013 (ed. Steve Berman, Lethe Press). He lives in Northern Virginia.

Patrick E. Horrigan is the author of the novel Portraits at an Exhibition (due from Lethe Press, May 2015), the memoir Widescreen Dreams: Growing Up Gay at the Movies, and the play Messages for Gary.  He is the co-author, with Eduardo Leanez, of the solo show You Are Confused!  He teaches English at LIU Brooklyn.

Debra Hyde pens the newly released The Charlotte Olmes mystery series, which re-imagines the famous cohorts as lesbian women set in 1880s New York City just as the Gilded Age and all its social and scientific advances take hold. Debra’s lesbian BDSM novel, Story of L, won the 2011 Lambda Literary Award for lesbian erotica. A modern retelling of the classic Story of O, it updates the original tale to reflect the contemporary lesbian leather world and the women in it. She is a contributing author to the ground-breaking interactive erotic Entwined series, penning two lesbian novellas for it, Hers and Provenance. Her short fiction backlist spans over a decade of writing and will be re-released as mini-collection in ebook during 2014.

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Saeed Jones’ debut poetry collection Prelude to Bruise was the winner of the 2015 Stonewall Book Award/Barbara Gittings Literature Award and a finalist for the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award (currently a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry and the Publishing Triangle Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry). His work has appeared in publications like Guernica, The Rumpus, Hayden’s Ferry Review, andBlackbird among others. Saeed is the recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem and Queer / Art / Mentors.

Wade Kelly lives in conservative, small-town America where it’s not easy to live open in one’s beliefs while writing passionately about controversial issues. She strives to make a difference in the world by bringing hope and making people think. She likes snakes, can’t spell, and has a tendency to make people cry.

Jeremy Jordan King grew up in New Jersey, somewhere between the Pine Barrens and the ocean. His debut novel, In Stone, was published by Bold Strokes Books in 2012 and was listed in Advocate’s “Top 10 Books for Young LGBT Folks and Anyone Who Wants to Understand Them” and recommended by the American Library Association’s GLBT Round Table. His sophomore release, Night Creatures, was a finalist for the 2014 Rainbow Award in fantasy. The third installment of the series, Dark Rites, hit shelves in February. In addition to fiction, Jeremy is the librettist for the new musical, Eighty-Sixed, which is currently being developed. He lives in Manhattan. BOLD STROKES SHOWCASE

Jee Leong Koh is the author of four books of poems, including The Pillow Book, shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize. A new collection, STEEP TEA, is forthcoming from Carcanet Press (UK) in July 2015. Originally from Singapore , Jee lives in New York City , where he curates the arts website Singapore Poetry and the Second Saturdays Reading Series.

Mala Kumar, the author of The Paths of Marriage, is an international development and ICT4D practitioner based out of New York City. She has held innovative jobs with the United Nations, and is excited to use her global network and The Paths of Marriage to connect people as part of a growing community and dialogue on building a more compassionate, open, and empathetic world. pathsofmarriage.com

Sassafras Lowrey is a straight-edge queer punk who won the Lambda Literary Emerging Writer Award and was named to the inaugural Trans 100 list by We Be Trans. Sassafras’s books, Kicked Out, Roving Pack, and Leather Ever After, have been honored by organizations ranging from the National Leather Association to the American Library Association. Hir forthcoming novel, Lost Boi, will be released by Arsenal Pulp Press on April 14th, 2015.

FEATURED READER—
David Margolick: long-time contributing editor at Vanity Fair, previously legal affairs reporter and columnist at The New York Times, a graduate of the University of Michigan and Stanford Law School, books include Dreadful: The Short Life and Gay Times of John Horne Burns; Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock; Beyond Glory: Joe Louis vs. Max Schmeling, and a World on the Brink; and Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song. Currently completing a book on Sid Caesar and Your Show of Shows and a portrait of Jonas Salk, both for Yale University Press’s “Jewish Lives” series, he has written for the New York Times Book Review, The N. Y. Review of Books,The Wall Street Journal, and Kindle Singles.

Donna Minkowitz is the author of Growing up Golem, which was a 2014 finalist for the Judy Grahn Nonfiction Award and a Lambda Literary Award. Her first memoir, Ferocious Romance, was about her experiences covering the Christian right as an openly lesbian journalist, and she has also written for the New York Times Book Review, Salon, and The Nation. She is currently the restaurant critic for Gay City News.

FEATURED READER—
Dale Peck is the author of twelve books in a variety of genres, including the novels Martin and John, Greenville, and The Garden of Lost and Found; the essay collection Hatchet Jobs, the young adult novel Sprout (winner of the Lambda Literary award); and the memoir Visions and Revisions, published in April 2015 by Soho Press. He lives with his husband in New York City, where he teaches in the New School’s Graduate Writing Program. Hosted by The Penguin Random House LGBT Network

Doreen Perrine has published her novels through Bedazzled Ink Publishing Company, and her third novel, Kid, about a lesbian mother’s battle to keep her daughter, has just been released. A recent finalist in South Africa’s Bloody Parchment Literary Festival, Doreen has published her short stories in numerous anthologies and literary ezines such as The Copperfield Review, Lacuna, Harrington Lesbian Literary Quarterly, Sinister Wisdom, and Queer Collection. Doreen, whose plays about hate crimes have been performed throughout New York City, is also an artist and teacher who makes her home in the Hudson Valley region of New York. Her website address is http://www.doreenperrine.com/.

Raymond L. Rigoglioso is the author of Gay Men and The New Way Forward and the founder of the Gay Men of Wisdom project. He is certified as a life coach and has a professional background as a writer, editor, trainer, and facilitator in the nonprofit sector. He lives with his partner Keith and dog Baxter in White Plains, New York.

Cindy Rizzo’s first novel, Exception to the Rule, won the 2014 award for Best Debut Author from Golden Crown Literary Society and was a finalist for the Rainbow Book Awards. In September 2014, her second novel, Love Is Enough, was released.  Her upcoming book, Getting Back, will be released by Ylva Publishing in September. Cindy lives in New York City and works in philanthropy.

FEATURED READER—
Martha Shelley was one of the founders of Gay Liberation Front-New York. Her grandparents were Orthodox. Her parents had been socialists during the Great Depression but were forced to keep a low profile during the McCarthy years. These influences are manifest in her most recent works: Haggadah-A Celebration of Freedom, a Passover seder in poetry; and two novels of the ancient Middle East, The Throne in the Heart of the Sea and The Stars in their Courses.

Rachelle Lee Smith is an award winning, nationally, and internationally shown and published photographer. Her photographic essay Speaking OUT: Queer Youth in Focus explores a wide spectrum of experiences from a diverse group of LGBTQ young people and has been published as a brand new book and in magazines such as The Advocate, School Library Journal, HRC’s Equality, showcased by World Pride, the Equality Forum, the Human Rights Campaign, and NPR. Join Rachelle at the PM Press table throughout the day to get a copy of Speaking OUT signed.

Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz, publisher at Lambey Press is a zinester, writer, and librarian, seeking to promote queer of color voices. She documents the narratives of black lesbians with her project Her Saturn Returns.

Lyle Blake Smythers is an actor, writer and librarian in the Washington, D.C., area. He has published fiction, poetry, satire and literary criticism in Manscape, FirstHand, Playguy, The William and Mary Review, Insights, School Library Journal and Children’s Literature Review. His first book, the heroic fantasy/swords and sorcery novel FEASTING WITH PANTHERS, was published in 2012 by Pink Narcissus Press, and his story “Monsters So Fair” appeared in the original Pink Narcissus anthology QUEER FISH.Jerry Wheeler of Bold Strokes Books just let me know that I’ve been included as a reader during Bold Stroke’s session at th Rainbow Book Fair. Thank you for including me in the reading program. As a debut author, I appreciate this opportunity.

Jane Summer, a New York City native, worked for two decades as an editor in women’s magazines. The editor of Not the Only One: Lesbian and Gay Fiction for Teens, Ms. Summer is also the author of The Silk Road, a novel. She reads today from her new title just published by Sibling Rivalry Press, EREBUS, a documentary-style hybrid collection that mixes prose, poetry, images, facts, and figures in examination of a 1979 plane crash that claimed 257 lives, including a friend of the author.

Jerry Wheeler of Bold Strokes Books just let me know that I’ve been included as a reader during Bold Stroke’s session at th Rainbow Book Fair. Thank you for including me in the reading program. As a debut author, I appreciate this opportunity.