Sonali Dev
Award winning author, Sonali Dev, writes Bollywood-style love stories that let her explore issues faced by women around the world while still indulging her faith in a happily ever after. Sonali’s novels have been on Library Journal, NPR, Washington Post and Kirkus Best Books lists. She won the American Library Association’s award for best romance in 2014, is a RITA Finalist, RT Reviewer Choice Award Nominee, and winner of the RT Seal of Excellence. Sonali lives in the Chicago suburbs with her very patient and often amused husband and two teens who demand both patience and humor, and the world’s most perfect dog. Find out more at sonalidev.com.
Patience Bloom
Patience Bloom is a senior editor at Harlequin Books. She has been in the field since 1997. Originally from the Northeast, she has lived in France, Connecticut, Ohio and New Mexico and now resides in New York City. She has a master’s degree in French literature, which hasn’t really helped with her work as an editor. In addition to editing, her real-life story of editing romance and marrying her high school’s popular class clown, ROMANCE IS MY DAY JOB, came out in February 2014 from Dutton Books.
Katy Regnery
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Katy Regnery started her writing career by enrolling in a short story class in January 2012. One year later, she signed her first contract and Katy’s first novel was published in September 2013. Twenty-five books later, Katy claims authorship of the multi-titled, New York Times and USA Today Blueberry Lane Series, which follows the English, Winslow, Rousseau, Story, and Ambler families of Philadelphia; the six-book, bestselling “A modern fairytale” series; and several other standalone novels and novellas. Katy’s first modern fairytale romance, The Vixen and the Vet, was nominated for a RITA® in 2015 and won the 2015 Kindle Book Award for romance. Katy’s boxed set, The English Brothers Boxed Set, Books #1–4, hit the USA Today bestseller list in 2015, and her Christmas story, Marrying Mr. English, appeared on the list a week later. In May 2016, Katy’s Blueberry Lane collection, The Winslow Brothers Boxed Set, Books #1-4, became a New York Times E-book bestseller.
In 2016, Katy signed a print-only agreement with Spencerhill Press. As a result, her Blueberry Lane paperback books will now be distributed to brick and mortar bookstores all over the United States. Katy lives in the relative wilds of northern Fairfield County, Connecticut, where her writing room looks out at the woods, and her husband, two young children, two dogs, and one Blue Tonkinese kitten create just enough cheerful chaos to remind her that the very best love stories begin at home.
Eloisa James
A reviewer from USA Today wrote that she “found herself devouring [Eloisa’s] book like a dieter with a Hershey bar”; People Magazine raved that “romance writing does not get much better than this.” Eloisa wrote her first novel after graduating from Harvard, but alas, it was rejected by every possible publisher. After she got a couple more degrees and a job as a Shakespeare professor, she tried again, with much greater success. Over twenty best-sellers later, she teaches Shakespeare in the English Department at Fordham University in New York City. She’s also the mother of two children and, in a particularly delicious irony for a romance writer, is married to a genuine Italian knight.
Radclyffe
Radclyffe has written over fifty romance and romantic intrigue novels, dozens of short stories, and, writing as L.L. Raand, has authored a paranormal romance series, The Midnight Hunters. She is an eight-time Lambda Literary Award finalist in romance, mystery, and erotica—winning three times in romance and erotica. A member of the Saints and Sinners Literary Hall of Fame, she is also an RWA Prism, Lories, HODRW, Aspen Gold, and Bean Pot winner. In 2014 she was awarded the Dr. James Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Award by the Lambda Literary Foundation and in 2015, she was a featured author in the documentary film Love Between the Covers, from Blueberry Hill Productions.
She is also the president of Bold Strokes Books, one of the world’s largest independent LGBTQ publishing companies. She lives in upstate New York with her spouse.
Find her at facebook.com/Radclyffe.BSB, follow her on Twitter@RadclyffeBSB,
and visit her website at Radfic.com.
Sarah Wendell
Sarah Wendell is the author of Lighting the Flames: A Hanukkah Story. She is also the co-author of the book Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels and the co-founder of smartbitchestrashybooks.com , one of the most popular blogs examining romance fiction. The site specializes in reviewing romance novels, pondering the history and future of the genre in digital form and in print, and bemoaning the enormous prevalence of bodacious pectorals adorning male cover models.
Allison Case
Alison Case received her BA from Oberlin College and her PhD from Cornell University. She is a professor of English at Williams College, where she has taught since 1991. Her published critical work includes Plotting Women: Gender and Narration in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Novel and, with Harry Shaw, Reading the Nineteenth-Century Novel, as well as numerous articles on Victorian poetry and fiction. Her debut novel, Nelly Dean, about the housekeeper at Wuthering Heights, was published in the UK in 2015 and in the US in 2016.