Authors on Fire

Michael R. Schultheiss is a lifelong daydreamer. He has been escaping into other worlds since he was a boy.
His early influences include Tolkien, Terry Brooks, and David Eddings on the fantasy side of things, and Ray Bradbury and H.G. Wells for science fiction.
Over time, he graduated to George R. R. Martin, Brandon Sanderson, Alec Hutson, Jim Butcher, Steven Erikson, and R. Scott Bakker. 
In addition to fantasy and science fiction, he is a lifelong history buff. His obsessions include the Roman Empire, Medieval Europe, Persia (ancient and medieval), the early Islamic world, the Ottoman Empire, and Early Modern Europe. 
He grew up in the Sierra foothills around Grass Valley, California. He spent much of his childhood either reading or chasing insects, lizards, and snakes.
Michael currently lives in Oregon with his wife, Beka, and their puppy Oswald. He likes to read multiple books at the same time – usually at least one historical non-fiction and a couple of novels.
At any time, there’s a good chance he’s plotting his next novel.
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Marcie's debut novel, Em’s Awful Good Fortune, is based on her experiences living overseas as a tagalong wife. Her play Girls Together Always—a collection of coming-of-age stories about “growing up girl”—won the ENCORE! Producer’s Award at the Hollywood Fringe Festival. Maxfield lives in Los Angeles where she volunteers for WriteGirl, a non-profit organization that mentors underserved youth through creative writing. She is married with two kids, a French bulldog, and two rescue cats named Hunky and Dory.
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Patricia Leavy, Ph.D., is a best-selling, award-winning author, publisher, arts advocate, and internationally recognized leader in research design and arts-based research.
She is widely considered the world’s most visible proponent of arts-based research as a means of making research publicly accessible. Moreover, she coined the terms “social fiction” and “fiction-based research” and has been pioneering the world-wide effort to legitimate fiction as a research practice. A prolific author, Dr. Leavy has published over 40 books.
She has earned critical and commercial success in both nonfiction and fiction, and her work has been translated into numerous languages. Dr. Leavy’s works have garnered a slew of book awards including USA Best Book Awards, Independent Press Awards, International Impact Book Awards, National Indie Excellence Awards, International Book Awards, New York City Big Book Awards, and American Fiction Awards.
Recently, Celestial Bodies: The Tess Lee and Jack Miller Novels was the 2022 Firebird Awards first-place winner for Romance.
On the academic side, Dr. Leavy earned her Ph.D. in Sociology at Boston College in 2002. She was a tenured Associate Professor of Sociology at Stonehill College from 2002-2012 where she also served as Founding Director of the Gender Studies Program and the Chairperson of the Sociology & Criminology Department. Dr. Leavy previously taught at Boston College, Northeastern University, and Curry College. In 2012 Dr. Leavy left academia to focus her full-time efforts on her work as an author and public intellectual.
Dr. Leavy serves on the advisory board for the Arts and Humanities in Medicine Program at The University of Maine.
In addition to her own writing, Dr. Leavy is widely recognized for her pioneering work creating innovative publishing opportunities for other scholars and artists, through the ten book series for which she has served as creator and series editor over the course of her career for Oxford University Press, Guilford Press, and Brill/Sense. The Social Fictions series she created, for which she served as editor for 10 years, is the first and only academic book series to solely publish full-length literary works. The ground-breaking series received global attention, earned a national creativity award, and produced many award-winning and best-selling titles under Dr. Leavy’s tenure as editor and creative visionary. In 2021 she launched Paper Stars Press, her own publishing imprint.
A vocal advocate of public scholarship, Dr. Leavy has appeared on national news, radio, and is regularly quoted by the print and online news media (for example, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today). She is also routinely interviewed about her work by popular and scholarly media. She has blogged for The Huffington Post, The Creativity Post, We Are the Real Deal, and other outlets.
Dr. Leavy has received numerous career awards. In recognition of her significant contributions to the discipline of sociology The New England Sociological Association named Dr. Leavy the 2010 New England Sociologist of the Year. Dr. Leavy received a 2014 Special Achievement Award from the American Creativity Association which honors creativity and innovation in every field. The Special Achievement award recognizes her extraordinary work advancing arts-based research and the ground-breaking Social Fictions series. Arts-based scholars from all over the world, including many of the Social Fictions authors, sent in letters of support calling Dr. Leavy “a visionary” and the Social Fictions series “a watershed moment in the academy.”
In 2015 Dr. Leavy was announced as the youngest recipient of the Special Career Award given by the International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry. The award recognizes her entire body of work, and particularly honors her advancement of qualitative and arts-based research. In that same year Dr.

Kyomi O’Connor moved to the States from Japan in February 1990 to work as a post-doctoral researcher at the NIH in Bethesda, Maryland. Soon, she fell in love with her husband-to-be, Patrick. Their journey together led them to change their careers, move to San Diego, and practice Buddhism. They grew spiritually together, and became leaders in their Buddhist community and inseparable partners through the many hardships they faced together. Patrick fell ill in the summer of 2013 with the diagnosis of stage IV metastatic melanoma in the brain, and passed away three years later on July 4, 2016. After his death, writing helped Kyomi rediscover light in her life. These days, she spends her time writing (she’s an active writer online at Medium), practicing yoga and Qi Gong, cooking, traveling, and taking photographs. Kyomi lives in San Diego with her two cats, Tommy and Omi.
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As a graduate from the U.S.A.F. Academy class of 1993, Sebastian went on to serve a tour of active duty, followed by tours in the Air National Guard and Reserve service. He retired in 2016. Throughout his military career, he integrated his imaginative inspirations, exploiting his creativity to find innovative solutions to the challenges in various assignments and literary projects. An avid science fiction fan, he honed his craft by taking inspiration and sketching imaginative storylines throughout his various tours of duty. After completing master's degrees from National University in software engineering, business administration, program administration and public administration, he decided to augment his career in public service by releasing the first title. When not writing, he can be found enjoying family and his furry canine friends, exploring the great outdoors, or reviewing cutting-edge innovations or discoveries in science and technology. 
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I was raised in Unicoi County, surrounded by the traditions and dialect of the area. I embraced the regional stories, mountain views, culture-except sweet tea and unannounced visits-and sought to correct the misconceptions about the local people and the town stories that turned into rumors.
I reside in Erwin, Tennessee, with my children and husband. I have hiked the section of the Appalachian Trail near my home, visited many of the caves and other mountain trails in the area, and am fascinated by their enigmatic appeal.
I like reading, writing, and any reasonable music. Most of all, I enjoy sharing stories and adventures with my children and making memories through their experiences.
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Carmen María Navarro has worked in marketing and brand story telling in top 500 companies since graduating with her MBA from Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College in 2004. She serves on the Board of Center for Human Services, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting youth and eliminating youth homelessness.

Carmen María is a stepmom of four, a biological mom of two, and a foster mom of a few children who she loves, sometimes at a distance. With her memoir, Fostering: A Memoir of Courage and Hope, she endeavors to bring awareness to the issues surrounding the foster care system and share her passion for protecting vulnerable youth.
She enjoys dancing, especially tango, food and wine, and traveling.
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I started writing poetry in college as a way to deal with troubling emotions and traumatic memories from my childhood. In graduate school, I was more courageous, and I wrote scenes from memory, trying to recapture the mood of much of my life with a mentally ill parent. During the day, I taught high schoolers about literature; in the evening, I studied and wrote, eventually amassing more than 200,000 words about my journey from homelessness and foster care to safety and love. Those words, critiqued, edited, and rewritten countless times, have come to shape the memoir I am proud to share with the world.
I write about love, loss, and the consequences of trauma, with an emphasis on healing and hope. Currently, I work in the publishing industry, helping others achieve their dreams of putting amazing stories into readers’ hands.
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Since establishing his company, TALENT, in 1986, Tony has written hundreds of television and radio commercials and collateral pieces as part of multimedia advertising campaigns, conducted national media relations programs, conceived and developed successful promotional events, and won several awards at many levels, including the prestigious International Newspaper Marketing Association Award in 2005 for direct-response marketing. Tony's work has been frequently published in newspapers and magazines. Past subjects have included food, wine, destination travel, general business, and celebrities such as Sylvester Stallone, Kirk Douglas, Scott Eastwood and Playboy's 2015 Playmate of the Year, Dani Mathers, among others. Additionally, Tony's versatile voice has been heard on television and radio commercials, industrial videos, feature films, and in venues from London to Los Angeles at major sporting events, including the volleyball competitions of the 1984 and 1996 Olympic Games. Tony was born in Chicago, raised in Denver, and is a graduate of New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, N.M. He has resided in the San Diego area since 1981.
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Rebecca Johnston graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelors in English and Modern European History in 2015, and in 2017 she graduated with her Masters in English from the University of Texas at Tyler. Currently Rebecca is pursuing a doctoral degree from the University of Exeter while also serving as the Vice President of the Florida Hemingway Society. She has had academic articles published both nationally and internationally, and she has received research grants from the Hemingway Society and the JFK Library in Boston. Rebecca is an English Professor at Santa Fe College in Gainesville, Florida, while living nearby on an island off the coast of Florida.
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