Contributors to The May Queen

Samina Ali was born in Hyderabad, India and raised both there and in the United States. Her debut novel, Madras On Rainy Days (Farrar Straus Giroux), chronicles a young Muslim American woman's journey to freedom and was awarded the Prix Premier Roman Etranger 2005 Award (Best First Novel in Translation of the Year) by France and was also chosen as the finalist for both the PEN/Hemingway Award in Fiction as well as the California Book Reviewers Award. Poets&Writers named Madras as one of the Top 5 Best Debut Novels of the Year. The novel has been translated into many different languages and released around the world. Ms Ali is the recipient of the Rona Jaffe Foundation and Barbara Deming Memorial awards for fiction. She has written for publications as diverse as Self and Child Magazines, The New York Times and The San Francisco Chronicle. She resides in California with her son. Visit her online at http://www.saminaali.com.

Kimberley Askew covers haute couture and the latest trends in pop culture for the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising. Her short stories have appeared in SOMA Literary Review and Urge Magazine. Askew's book reviews have appeared in Elle and been excerpted in The New York Times. After a three- year exile in Los Angeles, she returned to San Francisco where she maintains two personal blogs, Kim Said and Romancing the Tome, a commentary on literary adaptations.

Julianna Baggott is the author of four novels, including bestseller Girl Talk and Which Brings Me to You: A Novel in Confessions cowritten with Steve Almond (April 2006), as well as a book of poems, This Country of Mothers, and a series of novels for younger readers, The Anybodies. Her work has appeared in such publications as Best American Poetry, Glamour, TriQuarterly, as well as read on Here and Now and Talk of the Nation. She teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Florida State University. She lives in Tallahassee with her husband, David GW Scott, and their three kids. Her website is www.juliannabaggott.com.

Jennifer Baumgardner is a Fargo-bred writer an activist living in New York City with her son, Skuli. She is the coauthor, with Amy Richards, of Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000) and Grassroots: A Field Guide to Feminist Activism (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005). Jennifer writes for numerous venues including Glamour, The Nation, Ms., Harper's, and NPR's All Things Considered. In 2003, she created the I Had an Abortion project to reduce stigma around that procedure and, for that campaign, produced the film Speak Out: I Had an Abortion (with the director Gillian Aldrich). Her book on bisexuality, Look Both Ways: Girls and Sex, is due out in late 2006.

Lily Burana is the author of two books, a memoir, Strip City: A Stripper's Farewell Journey Across America, and Try, a novel. Her journalism and criticism have appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, GQ, Details, The Village Voice, Entertainment Weekly and many other publications. Visit her website at www.lilyburana.com.

Veronica Chambers is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, Mama's Girl. She has also written five books for children, most recently Celia Cruz, Queen of Salsa and several books for adults including a new novel, Miss Black America. She has contributed to several anthologies including the best-selling Bitch in the House, edited by Cathi Hanuaer. She has written and edited for national magazines for over twelve years, including Premiere, the New York Times Sunday Magazine and Newsweek. She has been the recipient of several awards, such as the Hodder fellowship for emerging novelists at Princeton University and a National Endowment for the Arts fiction award. She was born in Panama and grew up in Brooklyn. Veronica has written several episodes for UPN's hit show Girlfriends. She currently divides her time between Los Angeles and Tokyo. She is married to Jason Clampet, an architecture and travel writer. Her website is www.veronicachambers.com.

Heather Chaplin is the author of Smartbomb: The Quest for Art, Entertainment and Big Bucks in the Global Videogame Industry, an investigation of the business of the modern videogame industry and the culture it's created. Chaplin has been a business and culture writer for ten years, writing "The Reluctant Capitalist" column for Salon.com, and the media critic column for American Demographics. Before leaving to write Smartbomb, she was a senior writer for Fortune Small Business, and is currently working on a book about American entrepreneurship. She continues to write about fashion, video games, culture, and business from her home in Brooklyn, where she lives with her husband and two dogs. Heather's book website is www.smartbomb.us.

Meghan Daum is the author of the popular essay collection My Misspent Youth and the critically acclaimed novel The Quality of Life Report, which was a New York Times notable book in 2003. Her articles and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including The New Yorker, Harper's, GQ, Vogue, New York, Black Book, The Los Angeles Times and the New York Times Book Review. She has contributed to National Public Radio's Morning Edition and This American Life and has been a visiting artist at the California Institute of the Arts. She lives in Los Angeles. Her website is www.meghandaum.com.

Tanya Donelly is a founding member of three seminal recording groups: Throwing Muses, the Breeders, and Belly. The latter earned a Grammy nomination, a gold record, and the coveted front cover of Rolling Stone magazine. Living in the Boston area since the release of her first solo album, Lovesongs For Underdogs, Tanya and her husband, Dean Fisher, have raised their daughter Gracie, now five. Tanya continues to tour internationally and release albums, the last two of which were Beautysleep and Whiskey Tango Ghosts. Visit her online at www.tanyadonelly.com.

Erin Ergenbright is the coauthor of The Ex-Boyfriend Cookbook, with Thisbe Nissen. She is co-director of the Loggernaut reading series, and her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Believer, Tin House, After: Parenting Fiction from America's Top Writers (Overlook Press), Colorado Review, Indiana Review, The Oregonian, the Portland Tribune, and elsewhere. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Louise Jarvis Flynn's nonfiction has appeared in Travel and Leisure, Elle, Glamour, Self, Marie Claire, Redbook, and the New York Times Book Review, among other national publications. She lives with her husband, Sean Flynn, and son, Calvin, in Durham, North Carolina, where she is at work on a novel.

Ayun Halliday is the sole staff member of the quarterly zine The East Village Inky and the author of Job Hopper, No Touch Monkey! and The Big Rumpus: A Mother's Tale from the Trenches. She is BUST magazine's Mother Superior columnist and also contributes to NPR, Hipmama, Bitch, Utne, and more anthologies than you can shake a stick at without dangling a participle. Ayun and her well-documented husband and children live in Brooklyn where she's allegedly "hard at work" on Dirty Sugar Cookies, a food memoir to be published in the spring of 2006. Dare to be heinie and visit www.ayunhalliday.com.

Heather Juergensen produced, co-wrote and starred in the hit indie film Kissing Jessica Stein. An accomplished writer, she has written screenplays or teleplays for Miramax, Warner Bros., ABC, VH-1 and CBS among others. Her work has been honored at the Chicago International Film Festival, the Miami International Film Festival, and the Indie Spirit Awards. Her acting credits range from the dark independent character drama Red Roses and Petrol starring Malcolm McDowell to the family comedy Haunted Mansion starring Eddie Murphy. Most recently she wrote , directed and starred in the short film The Suzy Prophecy, currently playing at film festivals. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband and two dogs. Visit her website at www.heatherjuergensen.com.

Carla Kihlstedt, violinist, vocalist, and composer, studied violin at the Peabody Institute and the Oberlin Conservatory. She is a founding member of the groups Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Tin Hat Trio, and 2 Foot Yard. She has performed on numerous contemporary music series, including New York's Music at the Anthology, and has written music for the Bang On A Can All-Stars. She has worked with John Zorn, Fred Frith, and with the ROVA Saxophone Quartet, and has contributed to recordings of Tom Waits, Ben Goldberg,and Mr. Bungle. Carla's band websites which share equal billing in her lifer include www.2footyard.com, www.tinhat.org, www.sleepytimegorillamuseum.com.

Laila Lalami was born in Rabat and educated in Morocco, Britain, and the United States. Her work has appeared in Mizna, The Baltimore Review, First Intensity, the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Review, The Independent, and elsewhere. Her debut book of fiction, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, will be published by Algonquin Books in October 2005. She is also the editor of the popular literary blog Moorishgirl.com. She lives in Portland, Oregon. Her personal website is www.lailalalami.com.

Ivy Meeropol is a writer and filmmaker. She directed and produced the film Heir to an Execution and has written for such publications as the New York Times and O The Oprah Magazine. Ivy's screenplays include, with Mark Campbell, an adaptation of Dawn Powell's The Happy Island and, with Allison Anders, Against the Wind. Her six-part documentary series The Hill premieres in the fall of 2006. She lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and son.

Flor Morales is a native of El Salvador. She immigrated to San Francisco from El Salvador in 1998. She runs her own house-cleaning business and lives in northern California with her husband and two sons, Erick; eleven and Jonathan; 6.

Deb Norton is a playwright, actress and teacher. At A.C.T. in San Francisco, she played roles in 1918, Babylon Gardens, Twelfth Night and more. She also spent several seasons with San Francisco's Encore Theater Company. Then after a six-year stint in N.Y.C., where she was the unrivaled queen of off-off-off-off Broadway, she began writing to keep herself creatively alive. Recently she authored and starred in her first full-length play, The Whole Banana, in Los Angeles, where she garnered rave reviews and a movie option. Deb now lives, writes and gardens in the mountains of Ojai, California. Visit Deb Norton online at www.officialdebnorton.com.

Michelle Richmond is the author of the novels Dream of the Blue Room and Ocean Beach (forthcoming). Her collection of linked stories, The Girl in the Fall-Away Dress, follows four sisters as they leave their Gulf Coast childhood behind and venture into the world. Her stories, essays, and travel writing have appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including Salon.com, Playboy, Glimmer Train, and others. She lives with her husband and son in San Francisco, where she teaches creative writing and edits the online literary journal Fiction Attic. Michelle's personal website is www.michellerichmond.com.

Marisa de los Santos has published poems in many literary magazines, including Poetry, The Antioch Review, Southwest Review, and Prairie Schooner, and her collection From the Bones Out (University of South Carolina Press) appeared in the James Dickey Contemporary Poetry Series in 2000. Her first novel, Love Walked In, was published by Dutton in December 2005. The novel's foreign rights have been sold in eight countries and film rights were sold to Paramount Pictures. Marisa lives in Wilmington, Delaware, with her husband, David Teague, and their two young children. She's working on a second novel. Visit Marisa online at www.marisadelossantos.com.

Tanya Shaffer is the author of the book Somebody's Heart Is Burning: A Woman Wanderer in Africa, which was selected as one of the San Francisco Chronicle's Best Books of 2003. She is an award-winning playwright and solo performer whose plays Brigadista and Baby Taj and solo shows Miss America's Daughters and Let My Enemy Live Long! (winner of a Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award for solo performance) have toured to over forty cities in the United States and Canada. Her stories have appeared on Salon.com and in numerous anthologies, as well as being translated into Italian and read on Australian National Radio. Visit her online at www.tanyashaffer.com.

Dao Strom is the author of Grass Roof, Tin Roof. She was born in Vietnam and grew up in northern California. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop and has been the recipient of an NEA grant and a James Michener Fellowship, among other awards. Dao is also a singer-songwriter who released her debut album, Send Me Home, last year. Her second novel, The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys, is forthcoming from Counterpoint Press. Dao lives in Austin, Texas, with her son, Lincoln. Her website is www.daostrom.com.

Amanda Eyre Ward is a novelist and short story writer. Her first novel, Sleep Toward Heaven, was optioned by Sandra Bullock and Fortis Films. Her second novel, How To Be Lost, was optioned by Frank von Zerneck Films. How To Be Lost was released in paperback by Ballantine Books in October, 2005. Amanda's short story "Motherhood and Terrorism" is included in the upcoming anthology Stumbling and Raging: Politically Inspired Fiction, (MacAdam/Cage, January 2006). Amanda lives with her family on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Visit her website at www.amandaward.com.

Ashley Warlick is the author of three novels, The Distance from the Heart of Things, The Summer After June, and Seek the Living. She teaches in the MFA Program at Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina. She is at work on a new novel based on the life of MFK Fisher. Ashley's website is www.ashleywarlick.com.

Jennifer Weiner made her debut with Good in Bed, the first of four novels: In Her Shoes, now a major motion picture starring Cameron Diaz, Toni Collette and Shirley MacLaine, Little Earthquakes, and Goodnight Nobody. She graduated from Princeton University and worked as a columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer. Her work has also appeared in Seventeen, Redbook, TV Guide, YM and Salon.com. She lives in Philadelphia with her husband and their daughter. Visit her online at www.jenniferweiner.com.

Erin Cressida Wilson is a writer and professor in the Program in Literary Arts at Brown University. She won the 2003 Independent Spirit Award for her screenplay, Secretary, starring James Spader and Maggie Gyllenhaal. She also wrote the film Fur, starring Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey Jr., directed by Steven Shainberg. Her twenty plays have been produced regionally, off-Broadway, and abroad. She coauthored The Erotica Project with Lillian Ann Slugocki, produced at Joe's Pub and published by Cleis Press. She is a graduate of Smith College.

Sara Woster has exhibited her painting and animation in New York, Japan, London, and Amsterdam and she was the cofounder of the Brooklyn gallery Aaron America. She also creates quilts and T-shirts that are so overpriced that her parents ask her if she's kidding when she tells them how much they sell for. Her first novel, Survival Skills, has been optioned for a movie while her second book, a love letter to her grandmother entitled My Grandma Is Insane in Her Head, is just getting started. She breaks up the monotony of living in New York with frequent trips to the Midwest. Visit her online at www.sarawoster.com.