Jennifer Springsteen is the co-founder of PDX Writers, and a certified facilitator in the Amherst Writers and Artists method. She graduated with her Masters of Divinity from Starr King School for the Ministry in Oakland, California, and now lives in Fredericksburg, Virginia where she is a resident hospital chaplain at Mary Washington Hospital. Visit her at www.jenniferspringsteen.com. 

Jennifer was a finalist for the Tuscon Festival of Books Award for her novel WALLACE FARM, which is now represented by Joanna MacKenzie of the Nelson Literary Agency. She is the recipient of two 2018 Regional Arts and Culture Council grants: a Project Grant for her novel in progress, THE WISE SILENCE, and a professional development grant to attend Boston's Muse and Marketplace Literary Conference. She received the 2008 Oregon Literary Arts Friends of the Lake Oswego Library William Stafford Fellowship for fiction, and was a 2015 Fishtrap Summer Fellow. She co-founded Liars' League PDX, is the editor of VoiceCatcher4, and continues to review poetry for American Journal of Nursing.  She is a member of Women’s Fiction Writers Association. 

Alida Thacher is the co-founder of PDX Writers. She is a certified facilitator in the Amherst Writers and Artists method. She holds a BA in English and an MA in Instructional Technology from the University of Wisconsin. She has worked as an editor, a teacher, a television producer, a multimedia creator, and a web programmer. She is the author of eight children’s books and numerous short stories, and producer of several award-winning television programs. She has taught memoir writing, script writing, and television production to groups ranging from grade schoolers through senior adults. She was a founding member of ​Liars' League PDX, and has published short stories, memoirs, non-fiction, and technical articles. Her short fiction has received a Gimmertrain honorable mention; a Pushcart Prize nomination; and finalist selections in both the 2019 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story Contest and the p:ear Portland Noir Flash Fiction Contest. Alida's current projects include a short story collection and a young adult historical novel set in 1904 Portland.