Kelley J. P. Lindberg writes award-winning YA and adult fiction, magazine articles, essays, and how-to books. Her fiction and essays have appeared in literary magazines such as The Baltimore Review, The Citron Review, and 99 Pine Street; in anthologies including RMFW’s Bizarre Bazaar and Pikes Peak Writers’ Journeys into Possibility; and in the Tellables app for Amazon Alexa. When she isn’t writing, she’s traveling as far and as often as she can. Visit her at www.KelleyLindberg.com or follow her on X-Twitter and Instagram at @KelleyLindberg1
Rachel Dempsey has written and directed over a dozen plays for numerous acclaimed theater organizations such as Imagination Stage and ArtStream. Her prose has won contests such as The Colorado Gold Rush Literary Awards, the Denver Women’s Press Club Emerging Writers Contest and the Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Competition. Her short fiction appears in anthologies from Shacklebound Books, Brigids Gate Press, Timber Ghost Press, and Twenty Bellows (Pushcart nominated, 2023). She holds a BFA in Drama and English from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, a Master’s degree in Journalism from Georgetown University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Regis in Denver where she currently lives with her husband and three daughters.
Ann Gordon is a former English and Computer Science teacher, technical writer, copy editor and instructional designer. She has a B.A. in English and a Masters in Computer Science. She’s currently semi-retired and trying to complete a YA novel. She has written and published short stories and lots of articles, along with plenty of technical docs. She has also co-authored and/or copyedited six historical fiction books, self-published on Amazon, and is a webmaster for five websites. She’s won writing awards in most categories, including flash fiction. She wrote her first stories in elementary school and continued writing fiction until she was twenty, when she had to stop writing to make a living and raise a family. She’s been a member of RMFW for years and attends the Western Slope meetings when she can. She is president of the online chapter of the League of Utah Writers; her chapter has a large critique group. She lives in a tourist town in SE Utah.
A Colorado native, Rainey Hall (writing as L. Treloar) has been an RMFW member since 2012 and is happy to belong to one of the best critique groups ever: The 93rd Street Irregulars. She has self-published “The Frozen Moose,” a short story available on Barnes and Noble in e-book. In her spare time, she enjoys organizing anything from closets to military family retreats to rodeos and parades. Along with teaching her cat to retrieve, she volunteers at church and The Horse Protection League. With an Associate degree in Applied Science/Land Surveying, she learned she far prefers words over math.
Hilary Linnertz is a romance author who has one completed contemporary romance novel and several works in progress. Born and raised in Colorado, she currently lives in Eaton with her family. Hilary enjoys reading, writing, and traveling and never grows tired of learning as much as possible about the craft of writing.
Laurie Marr Wasmund is the author of My Heart Lies Here, a novel of the Ludlow Massacre; Clean Cut, A Romance of the Western Heart; and the White Winter Trilogy, which is set in Colorado during the Great War and the 1920s. The third book of the Trilogy, To Walk Humbly, was a 2020 finalist for the Mainstream/Literary book award from the Colorado Authors League. It also received a 2020 EVVY third place award in Historical Fiction from the Colorado Independent Publishers Association. She is the current Vice President and Membership Chair of Colorado Authors League. Visit her website at https://lostranchbooks.com/ or her Amazon Author Central page at https://www.amazon.com/stores/Laurie-Marr-Wasmund/author/B00IVTLMCM
In a career that’s included work as a journalist, a psychologist, and the founder of a national art consulting company, Maggie Smith added novelist to her resume with the publication of her debut, Truth and Other Lies, a women’s fiction novel set in Chicago and released in March 2022 by Ten16 Press. It won NIEA’s Juror Grand Prize, the Star Award for Debut Fiction from Women’s Fiction Writers Association, and the Foreword INDIES Gold Metal for General Fiction, and was selected for the Women’s Book Association Great Group Reads. Her second novel, a psychological suspense called Blindspot was released in May 2024. In addition to her writing, Maggie hosts the weekly podcast Hear Us Roar (215+ episodes), blogs monthly for Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, and is Managing Editor for Chicago Writer’s Association Write City E-Zine. She resides in Milwaukee, WI, with her husband and her aging but still adorable sheltie.
Mark Stevens is the author of the The Fireballer (Lake Union, 2023) and The Allison Coil Mystery Series including Antler Dust, Buried by the Roan, Trapline, Lake of Fire, and The Melancholy Howl. Trapline won The Colorado Book Award for Best Mystery. Stevens has also published short stories in Denver Noir (Akashic Books, 2022), Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and Mystery Tribune, among others. Stevens is longtime member of Mystery Writers of America. In 2023, Stevens was named Writer of the Year by Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers for the second time. He lives in southwest Colorado.
Past Contributors
Donald Paul Benjamin is an American cartoonist, photographer, and mystery novelist. He was born in Greeley, a mid-sized settlement on Colorado’s eastern plains. He grew up writing stories about local characters and sketching animals on his family’s small acreage. As a teen, he worked on his high school newspaper. Upon graduation in 1963, he enlisted in the U.S. Army, serving three years as a military journalist, including a stint in Korea from 1965-66. Honorably discharged, he returned to Greeley to earn his teaching degree from the University of Northern Colorado (UNC). He taught first grade, then returned to campus to serve as UNC’s first campus ombudsman. In 1982, he earned a master’s degree in college student services administration at Oregon State University. From 1982-2014, he lived in Arizona and worked in higher education, most recently as an e-advisor for Phoenix College. In 2014, he retired to the wild Western Slope of Colorado, where he lives in the small town of Cedaredge. He works as a contributing writer for the Delta County Independent Newspaper, and fishes and hikes in the surrounding wilderness. He recently married Donna Marie, his publishing collaborator, who’s a graphic designer and production artist. According to the Ancestry.com saliva test, he is a combination of Welsh and Dutch with a little German and Martian on the side. Visit Don at https://benjaminauthor.com/, or follow him on Facebook or Instagram.
Mary Gillgannon began writing historical romance soon after she discovered the genre. She loves how these stories allow her to portray the excitement and high stakes of past eras, yet focus on relationships and create a happy ending. She’s written seventeen novels, including romances set in the dark ages, medieval and Regency time periods, time travel, and historical fantasy. Her books have been translated into Russian, Chinese, Dutch and German. She’s worked at the local public library for over twenty-five years and acquires adult fiction as part of her job.
Kendra Griffin has a passion for writing about underdogs, family relationships, social inequality, and teenage characters who develop strong identities despite all social pressure to the contrary. She recently self-published The Pox Ward, the first novel in her dystopian, post-plague YA series. The sequel, Apocalypse Thoughts, arrives this March. Kendra is also a singer-songwriter and occasional poet whose poetry appears in the recent release of Fresh Starts, a Pikes Peak Writers publication. Kendra loves to encourage others in their creative process. She teaches writing at Aims Community College, frequently hosts creative writing workshops in her community, and was the winner of the 2020 NOCO Jerry Eckert Scholarship.
Mandy Miller is a lawyer and editor at Literary Wanderlust. Her debut novel, States of Grace, A Grace Locke Mystery, will be published on April 1, 2021.