Rockford Area Writers is a community of local authors who are passionate about writing, publishing, and promoting their work. We believe that by connecting with other writers, we can grow our skills, knowledge, and network. Our homepage showcases some of our talented members so you can find them and their work. If you’re interested in joining our community or learning more about what we do, visit our about page.
Megan Alberto
Megan Alberto is Licensed Clinical Mental Health Therapist and freelance writer. Her work can be found in Register Star Media and Rockford Parent Magazine and Visible Magazine.
Heath D. Alberts
Heath D. Alberts is the author of four novels, three novellas, and a marketing and business strategy guide geared toward cottage & small business owners. He has also co-authored two addiction & recovery memoirs, compiled and contributed to the ‘Rockford Writes’ & ‘Forest City Stories’ book projects, and has been a contributor to a number of other works as well. A native of Rockford, Illinois, he is a co-founder of Digital Ninjas Media, Inc., and is an active member of the Represent.US movement. He is also an avid collector of rare & interesting books. He now resides in Rockton, Illinois, and is currently at work on a pair of new novels.
Ryan Burritt
Ryan Burritt is a poet based in Rockford IL whose work mainly focuses on the struggles of his own life.
Themes of loss, love, depression, drinking, and any other musings that cross his mind.
You can find him on Instagram:
Personal: @orderofthegash
Poetry Page: @theheartwants9
Dylan Garcia
Dylan Garcia (they/them) is a performance poet and self-published author.
They are the only poet to ever represent the city of Rockford, IL at the Individual World Poetry Slam (2017). They received a Best Of The Net nomination for a poem published in Radius (2016). They ranked as an individual finalist during the Rustbelt Regional Poetry Slam (2015). They also competed at the National Poetry Slam as part of the Lethal Poetry team from Chicago (2013).
They have also performed at several institutions of higher education including: Rockford University, Northern Michigan University, Rock Valley College, Northern Illinois University, and Knox College.
Their first chapbook, Not Every Word A Fist, was self-published in 2011. Their second collection, Untangled Gardens, is forthcoming in 2023.
Author Website | Amazon Author Page | YouTube | Facebook | Ko-Fi
Susan Goldberg
Susan Goldberg is an audiobook narrator, writer, and lawyer whose best job ever was travelling around the world on a ship. Susan has recorded four books for Learning Ally, a nonprofit organization that provides audiobooks for struggling young readers. Susan writes poetry and prose, often about growing up in rural Indiana, her year in France at age 21, and her role as a mother of three creative and funny children. Susan’s opinion pieces and poetry have often been aired on NPR station WNIU/WNIJ. She is a longtime writer of legal topics for Lexis/Nexis.
Jenna Goldsmith, PhD
Jenna Goldsmith is the City of Rockford Poetry Laureate. She is a Lecturer in English at Rockford University. She is the author of 4 chapbooks of poetry, including CRUSH, the 2022 winner of the Baltic Writing Residency Chapbook Contest, and TITLE NINE, which was published by Press 254, the teaching press of Illinois State University. Published or forthcoming poems appear in Tilde, New Delta Review, and South Carolina Review, among other venues.
“We’ve got to believe in our blueprints?
We’ve got to believe in our beautiful impossible blueprints.
Right. What next?” –Doris Lessing
Books:
Gary Hill
Gary Hill has been publishing Music Street Journal (musicstreetjournal.com) since 1998. Since 2018 Hill has published MSJ simultaneously on-line and in book form. In August of 2006 his first book The Strange Sound of Cthulhu: Music Inspired by the Writings of H.P. Lovecraft was published. Since then several other books have been released including the book length space-opera Wizard Song and the horror novellas The Homestead and It Ends in the Graveyard. Hill has also written for cable television (Cops 2.0 on G4), All Music Guide, Rockford entertainment website Beet Cafe, Rock Valley Publishing publications, Demand Media Studios and more. He launched Tales of Wonder and Dread Publishing to release science fiction and horror books in 2018, but published a collection of those types of stories in 2017 titled “Dark Dreams and Worlds.” Under the Tales of Wonder and Dread nameplate, Hill has published more than three dozen books. Hill launched Spooky Ventures in 2019 and has been doing video interviews, Spooky News segments and more for the Spooky Ventures YouTube Channel since then.
Rachel León
Rachel León (she/they) is a writer, editor, and social worker. Her work has appeared in Catapult, The Rumpus, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. She’s the co-author of Pub Cheerleaders, a newsletter where she shares her anxiety and wide-eyed optimism to encourage other writers.
Donnie Light
Donnie Light is an American author of several novels and shorter works. He writes genre-bending dark fiction – paranormal stories that include elements of mystery and thriller.
His stories have been featured in two anthologies focused on dark fiction – Softly Creeping and Lyrical Darkness.
Donnie Light lives in rural Northern Illinois and is currently working on his next novel.
Author Website | Facebook
Constanza Mayer
Constanza Mayer was born in Santiago, Chile. She spent most of her childhood living in different cities across Chile until she finally settled down for about six years in the small village of Beecher City, Illinois. There, she began her true journey into the realm of fantasy and all things magical—Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars fed her imaginative mind. This is when, at 13, she began to write her first fantasy novel, but, sadly, it was lost due to a computer virus.
In 2004, she moved back to Chile with her family where the cultural shock, and having lost what she had written, stopped her writing streak. Only in her last years of university could she write again. This is where “The Battle of the Erathiel” began to develop. The seed was planted.
After a few years of hard work and living in Buenos Aires, Argentina, she finished the first novel of her series in Santiago, Chile on October 29, 2016. Currently, she is working on the Spanish edition of “Across the Enchanted Sea” with Chilean editorial Tríada Ediciones and preparing an anniversary edition of her first book. Book two of the series is soon to start its edition process as well.
Constanza is an avid reader, a lover of the arts, and a devoted piano player and composer. Among her dreams, she hopes to continue traveling across the world to fill herself with more experiences to write from, as she typically says:
“Hay que vivir para poder escribir.”
“You must live so that you may write.”
On June 5, 2023, she married the love of her life, Carter Shoemaker, making her dream of finding true love a reality. She is now Mrs. Shoemaker but will continue using Constanza Mayer as her pen name.
Patrick J. Murphy III
Patrick J. Murphy III writes Paranormal Fantasy, Neo-Noir, YA Romance, and Poetry. He was born in Chicago and grew up in Columbus Ohio, where he attended Ohio State University for theater and film studies. Patrick currently lives in Northwestern Illinois where he does volunteer work for The LIAM Foundation, a non-profit organization focusing on the needs of the LGBTQIA+ community. As a member of the LGBT+ community, he feels that it is important to “share our stories, teachings, and history”. Published works include “Thunder and Lightning”, “Doppelganger”, and a contributing author on Tell Me About It 3: LGBTQ Secrets, Confessions, and Life Stories and More Than a Coincidence: True Stories of Divine Intervention. When not writing, Patrick enjoys reading, watching Netflix, and cooking.
“Any book that helps a child to form a habit of reading, to make reading one of his deep and continuing needs, is good for him.” –Maya Angelou
Follow him on social media:
Author Site | Amazon Page | Facebook | Instagram | Goodreads.com | TikTok
Brendan Noble
Brendan Noble is a Polish and German-American epic fantasy author based in Rockford. In recent years he has sought inspiration in the folktales of his Polish heritage, evolving myths and legends into his fantasy writing along with his “Slavic Saturday” blog posts and videos about mythology.
Outside of writing, Brendan is a data analyst, soccer referee, and the president of Rockford FC (Rockford’s semi-pro soccer club). His top interests include German, Polish, and American soccer/football, Formula 1, analyzing political elections across the world, playing extremely nerdy strategy video games, exploring with his wife, and reading.
Author Website | Book Links | Patreon | Instagram | Facebook | Youtube | Twitter
Kasia Nowak
Kasia Nowak has been dreaming of writing her own teen book since she herself was thirteen. Her debut novel, Iris Aqua: The Stolen River, is the first book of her oncoming series. The story has been growing up with her for over a decade, and she’s so excited to finally bring it to life.
Sheri Poe-Pape
Though Sheri Poe-Pape has written many internet articles about people in the arts and in history, “Cassie’s Marvelous Music Lessons“, “Cassie Pup Takes the Cake??“, “Cassie Pup’s Favorite Ladybug and Snake Stories,” “Koala Ballerina’s Superhero Bowling Rescue,” and “A Grandma Spells L-O-V-E” are the author’s first five children’s books. She has been awarded 15 children’s book awards. She has also been Director/Educator of the Pape Conservatory of Music for the past forty years.
The author is a graduate of Northern Illinois University, where she studied Music, English, and Creative Writing. She lives with her family in Northern Illinois, where she continues to write and teach music.
David W. Pedersen
David W. Pedersen is a midwestern surrealist author and poet from Rockford, Illinois. His written work was most recently published in Loose Dog Press and Beat Scene Magazine. He is the owner and operator of the Rockford’s independent bookstore, Maze Books, and a current Poetry and Prose graduate student at Northwestern University.
Discover more about Dave and Maze Books here: https://www.maze-books.com/
JP Rindfleisch IX
JP Rindfleisch IX (he/they) is a writer, editor, and podcaster from Rockford with a persistent desire to network and build communities for writers. If they could sum up their writing into one tagline, it would be “Curator of things Dark, Strange, and Queer.”
The moment they attribute as the launch of their writing career was when they took the leap and ended up in the basement of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, crafting a story world for an apocalyptic anthology with a collection of amazing indie authors. Since then, they have discovered an amazing community of writers, and now they want to bring that excitement to Rockford.
Emily K. Sipiora, M.A.
Emily K. Sipiora was born and raised in Rockford, Illinois. She received her Master of Arts in English from Eastern New Mexico University, where she centered her thesis on Cormac McCarthy and adaptation theory. Her work has appeared on Pom Pom Press, Heaven Magazine, Currant Jam and elsewhere. Emily has also worked as a secondary educator, where her interests in literature and civic engagement intersect.
Website | Instagram
Cat Stark
Cat Stark was raised in California and now lives in Illinois with her fiancé. She hopes to continue writing and publishing for years to come.
Jim Taylor
Jim Taylor is a magazine writer who moved to Rockford from Winnipeg in 2016. He is currently a writer and editor with Northwest Quarterly Magazine. Jim’s background includes sketch comedy, standup comedy and screenwriting for animation and live action children’s television. He is also very accomplished at writing in third person narrative.
Thomas L. Vaultonburg
Thomas L. Vaultonburg is a haikuist, Poet In Residence at Maze Books, and with his creative partner, Tre, one half of Wolf Twin Books.
