The Fiction Sessions

Alys Arden was raised by the street performers, tea leaf-readers, and glittering drag queens of the New Orleans French Quarter. She cut her teeth on the streets of New York and has worked all around the world since. She either talks too much or not at all. She obsessively documents things. Her hair ranges from eggplant to cotton-candy colored. One dreary day in London, she missed home and started writing The Casquette Girls. Her debut novel garnered over one million reads online before it was acquired. (Skyscape) The fifth book, The Immortal Saint-Germain is due out in 2023. Her first graphic novel, Zatanna: The Jewel of Gravesend (DC Comics) illustrated by Jacquelin de Leon is out now!

Michelle Kelleher (she/her) is a speculative fiction/ horror writer and theater artist currently living in New Orleans, LA. With fifteen years of experience helping to tell stories as a Stage Manager and Lighting Designer in New York (where she’s from) and New Orleans (where she lives with her wife), Michelle is new to publication, but you can find her work in Cosmic Horror Monthly under M. Kelleher. You can follow Michelle on Twitter at @mizkelle.

BarbaraLynn Cantone is an end-of-life doula, author, and board member for Third Lantern Lit . She is currently an MFA student at LSU New Orleans and has just completed her first full-length novel, The Trials of St. Christina, a witchy murder mystery set in New York and New Orleans. BarbaraLynn lives in the Bywater with her pitbull terrier, Queenie, who is a very good dog. (Yes. Yes, she is.)

Marguerite Sheffer is the author of the collection The Man in the Banana Trees (University of Iowa Press, 2024) which won the Iowa Short Fiction Award and was a Finalist for the 2025 PEN America Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection. The collection was also named a “Best Debut Book” by Debutiful and a “Most Exciting Debut Story Collection” by Electric Literature. Her short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Cosmic Background, Cast of Wonders, BOMB, Literary Hub and other magazines. At Tulane University Marguerite teaches courses in design thinking and speculative fiction as tools for social change. She is a founding member of Third Lantern Lit, a New Orleans writing collective, and the Wildcat Writing Group. She can be found online at www.margueritesheffer.com and @mlensheffer.

Amber Sanchez is a historical fiction writer whose work spans short stories, novels, poetry, and essays. While grounded in realism, Amber’s stories frequently brush against the strange and the supernatural, blurring the line between history and myth to reveal hidden truths about the human experience. Her published work can be found in Aesthetica, Forbes and Fifth, Wilderness House Press, and The Bangalore Review.

Paula Ibieta is a first-grade teacher at Trinity Episcopal School and an aspiring YA author. She is originally from Tempe, Arizona, and has lived in New Orleans since 2019. Paula and her husband Jordan live uptown with their 18-month-old daughter Penny, dog Lena, and cat Charon.