Kate Gale and Amy Shearn at Union Market

Amy Shearn is the author of the novels How Far Is the Ocean from Here, featured as a notable debut by Poets & Writers and the Chicago Tribune; The Mermaid of Brooklyn, a selection of Target’s Emerging Authors program and a Hudson News Summer Reads pick; and Unseen City, the 2021 Independent Publisher Book Awards’ Gold Medal in Literary Fiction. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times Modern Love column, O, The Oprah Magazine, and several anthologies. A native Midwesterner, she earned an MFA from the University of Minnesota, and now lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her two children.

Kate Gale is the co-founder and managing editor of Red Hen Press, which has been publishing for more than thirty years in Los Angeles. She is also the author of seven books of poetry including The Goldilocks Zone and The Loneliest Girl, as well as several librettos including Rio de Sangre with Don Davis–who wrote the music to the Matrix movies. Kate grew up in an intentional community. From those beginnings, she has put herself through school, ultimately receiving a Ph.D. in English literature from Claremont Graduate University. Since 1989, she has taught writing at universities in Los Angeles every semester, and has also taught publishing at Oxford, Columbia University, Harvard University, and USC. She served as president of PEN USA from 2005-2006. Currently, Kate teaches publishing and poetry at Chapman University and lives in Los Angeles.

Shearn and Gale will be in conversation with Aliah Wright.