Ellen Dye http://www.ellendye.com

At the age of nine, Ellen Dye decided she was going to be a writer when she found her aunt Nettie's trunk of True Confession magazines and spent untold hours reading the lot, a bag of Munchos potato chips and a frosty RC cola at her side. Then she promptly became lost in the pesky business of growing up and forgot all about it. Many years later she spotted a confession magazine on the grocery store shelf and began tapping out her own stories, which she had the thrill of seeing published. Now she spends her days creating Happily-Ever-Afters for The Wild Rose Press.   #

Jenny Gardiner http://www.jennygardiner.net

Jenny Gardiner’s work has been found in Ladies Home Journal, the Washington Post and on NPR’s Day to Day. She likes to say she honed her fiction writing skills while working as a publicist for a US Senator. Other jobs have included: an orthodontic assistant (learning quite readily that she was not cut out for a career in polyester), a waitress (probably her highest-paying job), a TV reporter, a pre-obituary writer, and a photographer (claim to fame: being hired to shoot Prince Charles–with a camera, silly!). Her debut novel, Sleeping with Ward Cleaver, won Dorchester Publishing/RT's American Title III contest, and this and three other novels she's written have won or finaled in several RWA chapter contests. She lives in Virginia with her husband, three kids, two dogs, one cat and a gregarious parrot. In her free time she studies Italian, dreams of traveling to exotic locales, and feels very guilty for rarely attempting to clean the house.  #

Darelene Gardner http://www.darlenegardner.com

Darlene Gardner worked as a newspaper sportswriter for years before realizing she'd rather make up quotes than hope some athlete would say something interesting. Since then, she’s sold nineteen books, most of them romantic comedies, to three different publishers: Harlequin/Silhouette, Dorchester Love Spell and Avalon. Within the Harlequin/Silhouette family, she's written for Temptation, Duets and Intimate Moments and will be writing for Superromance. Darlene, a Penn State graduate, lives in Virginia with her journalist husband and two children.   #

Glenda Garland http://www.glendagarland.com

At 14, Glenda Garland started writing what she had learned at her engineer father’s knee: science fiction. Her first space opera still brings tears to her eyes. It’s the nostalgia as much as how bad it is, you see. Fortunately she also discovered Jane Austen and Agatha Christie, and is now the author of five Zebra Regency romances with mystery and intrigue, including the most recent, A Delightful Folly (3/05), which earned a Romantic Times’ Top Pick. Her next Regency, In Pursuit of a Proper Husband, is out in July, 2005. Since Glenda and her family have lived all over the country, she has belonged to many RWA chapters; you can believe her when she says WRW has a wonderful focus on craft and professionalism.   #

Shirley Hailstock http://www.geocities.com/shailstock

Shirley Hailstock is the author of seventeen novels and novellas. She has received numerous awards for her work, including the Holt Medallion, the Barclay Gold Award and the Waldenbooks Best-selling Romance Award. Romantic Times awarded her a Career Achievement Award and one of her books made the Top 100 Romances of the 20th Century list. Shirley's books have appeared on Blackboard and the Library Journal Best Seller Lists. Shirley is a past president of Romance Writers of America.   #

Kim Headlee http://www.kimberlyiverson.com

Kim Headlee has been a member of RWA and WRW since 1997. She enjoys judging the Marlene contest each year. She also has helped compile bookstore mailing lists and volunteers at the annual Retreat whenever possible. Her first novel, Dawnflight, was published in 1999 and garnered rave reviews, awards and award nominations. Writing as Kimberly Iverson, her novel Liberty was published in 2006 by HQN Books. She currently resides on her farm—complete with a cave and the remains of a 200-year-old homestead—in southwestern Virginia with her husband, children, and assorted cattle, goats, cats, fish and sundry wildlife, including turkeys and deer.  #