Dr. Marci Bowers
Marci Bowers is a 1986 graduate of the University of Minnesota medical school. During her 20+ years as an Obstetrician/Gynecologist, she has delivered more than 2000 babies, and has served as Ob/Gyn Department Chairperson at Swedish (Providence) Medical Center and as the only physician member of the Washington State Midwifery Board. She took over the Gender Reassignment Surgery Department in Trinidad, Colorado, in 2003 having been hand-picked by the legendary Dr. Stanley Biber. She has now performed more than 550 primary MTF vaginoplasties and annually performs more than 220 gender-related surgeries.

Charles Baxter

Charles Baxter was born in Minneapolis and graduated from Macalester College, in Saint Paul. After completing graduate work in English at the State University of New York at Buffalo, he taught for several years at Wayne State University, in Detroit. In 1989, he moved to the Department of English at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and its MFA program. He now teaches at the University of Minnesota.

The Feast of Love is just that–a sumptuous work of fiction about the thing that most distracts and delights us. In a re-imagined Midsummer Night's Dream, men and women speak of and desire their ideal mates; parents seek out their lost children; and adult children try to come to terms with their own parents and, in some cases, find new ones.

Melinda Barlow
Melinda Barlow, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Film Studies, researches the work of living female independent video and film makers. She is the editor of Mary Lucier: Art and Performance (JHUP, 2000), and the author of Lost Objects of Desire: Video Installation, Mary Lucier and the Romance of History, forthcoming from the U. of Minnesota Press. Professor Barlow received the Boulder Faculty Assembly Excellence in Teaching Award, the Gold Best Should Teach Award from the Graduate Teacher Program, and the Dorothy Martin Woman Faculty Member Award from CU.

Katy has been doing various types of artwork for over 50 years. She received a BFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1973.  Katy enjoys both drawing and sculpture and decided to combine the two in her wire sculptures. If she can draw it she can make a sculpture.

Mark Newport
Mark Newport’s work has been exhibited throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe, including solo exhibitions at here gallery, Bristol, United Kingdom; The Arizona State University Art Museum, and The Chicago Cultural Center. His work has been recognized with grants from the Creative Capital Foundation, the Arizona Commission on the Arts, and the Herberger College of Arts at Arizona State University.

Newport is the Artist-in-Residence and Head of Fibers at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. He earned his BFA at the Kansas City Art Institute in 1986 and his MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1991.

Laura Pritchett
Laura Pritchett is the author/editor of five books. Her fiction includes the novel Sky Bridge, which won the WILLA Fiction Award; and the short story collection Hell's Bottom, Colorado, which won the Milkweed National Fiction Prize and the PEN USA Award.

She is also the editor/co-editor of three anthologies: The Pulse of the River, Home Land: Ranching and a West that Works, and Going Green: True Tales from Gleaners, Scavengers, and Dumpster Divers.

Joe Quirk
"Joe Quirk is a TV talk show darling for his hilarious non-fiction It's Not You. It's Biology: The Science of Love, Sex & Relationships, making him a crowd pleaser with his layman's look at the latestscientific research that explains the biology of human courtship."
– Carmel Authors & Ideas Festival