Laurie O’Connor Stephans

Not including all the years hoping for essay tests in school, Laurie (then just) O’Connor’s writing career began in the mid-70s as a reporter at The Cardunal Free Press, one of many small local publications in a not-much-bigger newspaper group in the Fox River Valley based in Carpentersville, Illinois. She wrote feature stories, did interviews, and covered various local government meetings.

Later, as a stay-at-home mom, Laurie O’Connor Stephans provided freelance writing services for everything from local businesses to an international economic council. She also wrote feature stories for The Northern Light, a monthly regional Lutheran newspaper, for twenty years.

Laurie’s initial exploration of creative writing began with her participation in the local cable access competition Project Publish in 2013. Check out all the episodes on her website. She now lives in Plano, Illinois, a far western suburb of her birthplace, Chicago (aka the greatest city in the world). By day, she works at a law firm. By night (when not fighting crime), she exercises her writing muscles in favor of the real ones. Most of her fiction features humor and twist endings, while she observes real life on the pages of her blog, We B Late.

She and her husband, Mike, share their empty nest with two ridiculously entitled dogs that (most days) they wouldn’t trade for anything in the world. She credits their harmonious forty-plus years of marriage to the shared joy of grandparenthood, and not the catharsis that comes from killing off characters whose resemblance to actual husbands–that is, persons–living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Laurie loves theater (especially musicals), the Chicago Blackhawks (and hockey in general), reading (of course), puzzles (crossword and jigsaw), games (especially trivia), and watching Jeopardy (“I’ll take overuse of parentheses for $1,000, Alex”).

“Once a Prompt a Time” is her first published book.

David W. Berner

David W. Berner is an acclaimed author of fiction, creative nonfiction, memoir, short stories, and poetry. His writing space is inside an 8×10 shed on the property of his Midwest home, a shed modeled after Dylan Thomas’ famous boathouse shed in Laugharne, Wales. 

He is the author of several award-winning books of prose and poetry, and is currently the Poet Laureate of Clarendon Hills, IL (2026-2028) His work has been honored by the Chicago Writers Association, the Eric Hoffer Award, the Society of Midland Authors, the National and Association of Independent Writers and Editors, to name a few.

David also has been privileged to serve as the Writer-in-Residence at the Jack Kerouac Project in Orlando, Florida and at the Ernest Hemingway Birthplace Home and Museum in Oak Park, IL.

David shares a home with his wife, Leslie, and dog, Sam, outside Chicago in Clarendon Hills, IL. Check out his website and sign up for his newsletter here: https://www.davidwberner.com/

Hallie Koontz

Hallie Koontz is a freelance writer and editor based in the Chicagoland area. She graduated from Cornell College (Mount Vernon, Iowa) with a degree in English & Creative Writing, departmental honors, the Winifred Van Etten Award for Creativity and Scholarship in the Department, and the Tom Garst Award for Academic Writing. Her short fiction has been published in the Macguffin, and she was a finalist in the 2024 NYC Midnight 100-word Microfiction Challenge. She is also the co-founder and co-owner of the flash fiction writing competition Jerboa Lit, which recently published its first-ever anthology of contest winners, and she’s going to see their mascot Jerbie to victory in their fantasy football league.

Nancy L. Davis

Nancy L. Davis publishes poetry and short fiction. Her work has appeared in Cutthroat, The Dewdrop, The Orchards Poetry Journal, SuperPresent, The Banyan Review, and The Connecticut Review, among others. She has received many awards for her writing including a Pushcart Prize Nomination in Poetry, First Place in the Sandy Crimmins National Poetry Prize, Second Place in the Chicago Poets & Patrons 67th Annual Poetry Contest, Honorable Mention in the Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, and the Atlanta Review’s International Merit Award. In 2019, Ghosts, her poetry chapbook, was published by Finishing Line Press. Voices in the Sky, a poetry collection, was published in July of this year and is the winner of the 2026 Prairie State Poetry Prize, available through Highland Park Poetry Press and Amazon. A native of Upstate New York, Davis is a retired Associate Professor of English with an MFA from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. She divides her time between Park Ridge, IL, and Long Beach, IN, on Lake Michigan. Learn more about Nancy and her work here: https://nancylynndavis.com/