Colette Lafia is an award-winning writer, retreat leader, and spiritual director living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has spent decades guiding individuals into deeper contemplative practice through workshops, retreats, and one-on-one spiritual direction. A former school librarian and regular presenter for Spiritual Directors International, she brings a rare blend of poetic sensibility, contemplative depth, and accessible warmth to her work. Her new book is Leaving the Shore: Experiencing Poetry as Prayer (Monkfish Book Publishing, 2025). Learn more at colettelafia.com

GUEST WEBSITE: www.colettelafia.com

SOCIAL MEDIA:

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Peter Gribble is a writer and a lifelong student of history whose work explores the intersections of knowledge, power, and the human condition. His fantasy series, “The City of the Magicians,” is set in a civilization that rejects traditional warfare. The series examines how intellect, psychological strategy, and telepathic abilities can be both a society’s greatest strength and its most dangerous vulnerability.

Influenced by his childhood in postwar France—where silence about the war was as pervasive as its lingering shadows—Gribble crafts stories that explore the dangers of complacency and the consequences of pacifism and brutality colliding.

Gribble studied art at Sheridan College School of Design, experimental psychology at the University of Toronto, and education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. He has written for NUVO and various British Columbia publications, including gardening columns for two journals over a decade. His time working in bookstores reinforced his belief in the power of books to inspire, challenge and transform. Learn more at PeterGribble.com.

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Neuroscientist and psychiatrist Dr. Jennie Byrne (Dr. B) is changing that conversation. In her book “ADHD in Professionals: Embracing Your Brain,” she reveals why ADHD is often missed in leaders, why stigma runs deep, and what actually helps.

Dr. B is a refreshingly candid guest who blends real patient stories with sharp insights on leadership, gender differences, and the future of ADHD care. She challenges the idea of being “too high functioning” and reframes ADHD as a difference in directing attention, not a lack of it.

Grab a copy ADHD in Professionals: Embracing Your Brain- https://a.co/d/06l0lp4E

Sharon Agar grew up in Hampshire, England, and later moved to the US to attend Yale. After business school, she worked in a variety of fields including both finance and not-for-profit. Her life took a major turn when she was diagnosed with a potentially fatal lung disease and, over the next two years, underwent two lung transplant operations. Her debut novel Out of Options, a business thriller, was published in April of 2014. A lifelong singer and a passionate advocate for organ donation, Agar has three sons and currently lives with her husband in Los Angeles.

For more information, visit https://sharonagar.com/ or connect on social media at https://www.facebook.com/sharonvagar/.

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A San Francisco Bay Area poet, Veronica Kornberg is a recipient of the Morton Marcus Poetry Prize, and the Wandering Aengus Book Award in Poetry. Her work has appeared in numerous journals, including Alaska Quarterly Review, New Ohio Review, Poet Lore, Catamaran, Indiana Review, Plume, Calyx, and Beloit Poetry Journal. Veronica co-founded a long-running poetry reading club on the Peninsula and is a Peer Reviewer for Whale Road Review. At her home in Pescadero, you can find her exploring the tidepools or on her knees working the dirt in her habitat garden of coastal scrub. Her full-length poetry collection, Strange Gift.

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John Fadely lived in Asia for 30 years, including practicing law for 25 years in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore, and wrote Before Leaving the Island, winner of the 2025 Trail to Table Book Award in Poetry, as part of a midlife journey. Before Leaving the Island was published in April 2026 and is available for purchase.

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John Winn Miller is an award-winning investigative reporter (Pulitzer finalist), foreign correspondent, editor, newspaper publisher, screenwriter, movie producer, and novelist. He was named to the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame in 2026. The Lexington native also produced four indie films, including Band of Robbers, written and directed by Adam and Aaron Nee.

Miller has taught media literacy classes at his alma mater, the University of Kentucky, and Transylvania University. He is also a second-degree black belt in Shaolin karate. Miller and his wife, Margo, live in Lexington with two standard poodles and a Maine Coon cat. Their daughter Allison Miller is an actress-screenwriter-director who most recently starred in the ABC series, A Million Little Things. Miriam in the Shadows is the third novel in his Peggy C series following The Hunt for Peggy C and Rescue Run.

In Miriam in the Shadows, award-winning author John Winn Miller delivers a heart- pounding World War II thriller that explores the cost of resistance, betrayal, and survival.

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MARY KEATING is a lawyer, disability advocate, and three-time Pushcart Prize nominated poet. After a car accident at fifteen changed the trajectory of her life, she went on to Yale Law School, worked as an attorney at IBM, founded her own law practice—twice—and was appointed by Governors Jodi Rell and Dannel Malloy to serve on, and later chair, the Connecticut State Rehabilitation Council. Keating lives and works in Connecticut where her firm, Mary Keating Esquire, LLC, guides clients through estate planning, trusts, and planning for long-term care and disability.

Grab a copy of Recalibrating Gravity: A Memoir in Verse- https://a.co/d/08mIp7Mq