A Night of Nonfiction 2025: Debut CNF Author Readings & Discussions

Annamaria Formichella is the winner of our 2025 We Love Short Shorts Contest for Flash Creative Nonfiction. Originally from New England, Annamariay teaches in the English department at Buena Vista University in Storm Lake, Iowa. Her creative work has been published in several collections and magazines, including Gyroscope Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, New Flash Fiction Review, Litbreak Magazine, and Anacapa Review. Her dreams include returning to the ocean and writing stories that hit the reader with a quiet crash.

Tia Levings is the New York Times Bestselling author of A Well-Trained Wife, her memoir of escape from Christian Patriarchy. She writes about the realities of religious trauma and the trad wife life, decoding the fundamentalist influences in our news and culture. Her work and quotes have appeared in Teen Vogue, Salon, the Huffington Post, and Newsweek. She also appeared in the hit Amazon docu-series, Shiny Happy People. Her second book releases with St. Martin’s Essentials May 5, 2026.

Theresa Okokon is an award-winning writer, storyteller, and teacher. A Wisconsinite living in New England, she is the co-host of Stories From The Stage who teaches storytelling and writing, coaches other tellers, hosts storytelling events, collaborates with nonprofits on narrative-driven special projects and events. An alum of both the Memoir Incubator and Essay Incubator programs at GrubStreet, Theresa’s memoir of essays about memory, family stories, and the death of her father — Who I Always Was — was published by Atria Books at Simon & Schuster in 2025.

Hyeseung Song is a first-generation Korean American painter and the author of Docile: Memoirs of a Not-So-Perfect Asian Girl. Docile has been called a “savagely beautiful memoir” by David Henry Hwang, a “revelation” by Chloé Cooper Jones and was named a “Best Book” by Apple and “Most Anticipated” by Electric Literature, BookRiot and more. Raised in Texas, Song studied philosophy at Princeton and Harvard Universities, and painting at the Grand Central Atelier in New York City. Song lives in Brooklyn and upstate New York, and is at work on her first novel.

Casey Mulligan Walsh writes about living with grief beside joy, embracing uncertainty, and the nature of true belonging. Her memoir, The Full Catastrophe: All I Ever Wanted, Everything I Feared, was published by Motina Books in February 2025. She has written for The New York Times, Next Avenue, Modern Loss, Hippocampus Magazine, Split Lip, and numerous other literary journals and is a founding editor of In a Flash literary magazine. Her essay, “Still,” was nominated for Best of the Net. Casey lives in Upstate New York with her husband, Kevin, a chatty orange tabby, and too many books to count.

Brendan O’Meara is the host of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast and the author of The Front Runner: The Life of Steve Prefontaine. Subscribe to Pitch Club, where writers audio annotate their pitches that led to publication and Rage Against the Algorithm, Brendan’s monthly, up-to-11 newsletter. You can follow him @creativenonfictionpodcast on Instagram and @brendanomeara.bsky.social on Bluesky. Learn more at brendanomeara.com.

Leslie has interviewed hundreds of authors from poets to memoirists. Her rich and insightful interviews have been featured in The Millions, CRAFT Literary, The Rumpus, LitHib, Hippocampus Magazine, The Florida Review, The Cincinnati Review, among others. Her interdisciplinary work, including photography, focuses on ancestry, architecture, art, nature, science, and motherhood, and been featured in DIAGRAM, The Smart Set, and Brushfire Review. Her work has been nominated for Best American Short Stories. Leslie resides in Greater Chicago.