With a vision for helping others, Amy Atwell has been building communities for goal-oriented authors since she founded WritingGIAM in 2004. A 2008 Golden Heart® finalist, Amy’s indie release Ambersley has hit the Top 100 Books lists on Amazon, B&N, and Apple Books. In 2011, she received the RWA® Service Award for the scope of her volunteer activities. That same year, she founded Author E.M.S., an online education, and services company for indie authors, focusing on book production and distribution. An Ohio native, Amy has lived all across the country and now resides on a barrier island in Florida with her husband and a demanding (but loved) tiger-stripey cat.

Young Author's Day Speaker, Annika Christensen, is a high school senior at Annie Wright Schools in Tacoma, Washington. She is an avid reader and dedicated writer with a soft spot for fantasy. She is a two-time recipient of the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards’ Silver Key, and she was a finalist in the 2019 Tacoma Ocean Fest Youth Story Contest. She is co-captain of her school’s extracurricular creative writing activity, Annie Writers, which she’s been a part of for nearly four years, and she attended the PNWA conference with them last fall. Other than writing, Annika enjoys drawing, studying Chinese, and spending time with her family.

PNWA Treasurer, Brian Mercer is an award-winning author and has been prominently mentioned in Publisher’s Weekly. He has been featured on numerous international radio shows and is the Senior Editor at Author Magazine.

Anna Alexander is the award-winning author of the Heroes of Saturn and the Sprawling A Ranch series. With Hugh Jackman’s abs and Christopher Reeve’s blue eyes as inspiration, she loves spinning tales of superheroes finding love. Anna also loves to give back and has served on the board for the Greater Seattle Romance Writers of America as chapter president and the committee for the Emerald City Writers Conference.

Avis M. Adams was born in Puyallup, Washington. She is native to the Pacific Northwest and fosters a deep appreciation for the state and national parks and the Puget Sound region's local history, which she features in her writing. She earned an MA in English Literature from Central Washington University while raising her son and daughter. She currently teaches English at a Green River College, and she speaks at writing conferences on writing craft in the Puget Sound area. She also writes picture books and YA novels, coming to booksellers soon. She has one book of poetry, Quilcene.

Brian Thornton is the author of eleven books, including The Book of Bastards: 101 Scoundrels and Scandals from the World of Politics and Power, and Honest Abe: 101 Little-Known Truths About Abraham Lincoln. His short fiction has appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, The Big Click, the Akashic Books anthology Seattle Noir, and the late lamented BULLET UK. His double-volume anthology of crime fiction inspired by the music of jazz-rock legends Steely Dan was published by Down and Out Books in 2019. His latest, a three-novella collection of historical crime fiction entitled Suicide Blonde, is due out in October of 2020. He does all of his own stunts, loves the color blue and singing in the car with his wife and son, and lives in Seattle, where he has served numerous years as President of the Northwest Chapter for the Mystery Writers of America. He was the 2017 recipient of the Willow Award in recognition for his distinguished longtime service to MWA-Northwest.

Young Author's Day Speaker, Anna Parrott, is a high school junior at Annie Wright Schools in Tacoma, Washington. She is co-captain of the upper school for girls’ writing group, Annie Writers, and loves to write short stories. Anna has written a one-act play that was performed at a school-wide event and has written several poems and short stories. As a reader, she loves characters with skewed morals that go on unusual adventures. She also enjoys poetry related to the natural world, reflecting her passion for environmental advocacy.

Bob Mayer is a New York Times Bestselling author, graduate of West Point, and former Green Beret. He’s had over 75 books published and sold over 5 million, including the #1 series Time Patrol, The Green Berets, Area 51, and Atlantis. Born in the Bronx, having traveled the world (usually not tourist spots), he now lives peacefully at an undisclosed location.

Born and raised in Southern California, Brit Bennett graduated from Stanford University and earned her MFA in fiction at the University of Michigan, where she won a Hopwood Award in Graduate Short Fiction as well as the 2014 Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers. She is a National Book Foundation "5 under 35" honoree, and her essays are featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Paris Review, and Jezebel.