Dr. Nyri A. Bakkalian is an author, journalist, historian, and accomplished raconteur. She is a staff writer for Unseen Japan, and the author of Grey Dawn: A Tale of Abolition and Union (Balance of Seven Press, 2020) and Confluence: A Person-Shaped Story (Balance of Seven Press, 2022). She hosts the podcast Friday Night History and co-hosts the podcast Cleyera: Conversations on Shinto. The secret to her success is Arabic coffee. She misses Sendai daily. You can support her work by subscribing at patreon.com/riversidewings

Shira Glassman is a bisexual Jewish violinist passionately inspired by German and French opera and Agatha Christie novels. She lives in north central Florida, where the alligators are mostly harmless because they're too lazy to be bothered. A note on my reviewing style: I read lots of books, but writing reviews is work and I only really do them to endorse books that I enjoyed enough to signal boost. That's why my reviews are mostly positive. It's not that I like every book ever :P

Xan West is the nom de plume of Corey Alexander, an autistic queer fat Jewish genderqueer writer and community activist with multiple disabilities who spends a lot of time on Twitter. Xan's erotica has been published widely, including in the Best S/M Erotica series, the Best Gay Erotica series, and the Best Lesbian Erotica series. Their work has been described by reviewers as “offering the erotica equivalent of happy ever after”, and “some of the best transgressive erotic fiction to come along in recent years”. Xan’s story “First Time Since”, won honorable mention for the 2008 National Leather Association John Preston Short Fiction Award. Their recent collection of queer kink erotica, Show Yourself To Me, is out from Go Deeper Press, and has been described by M. Christian as “a book that changes what erotica can and should be.” Xan blogs about trans representation in literature, kink, queerness, disability, and writing at https://xanwest.wordpress. com/.