Speak Up Talk Radio Network

Angie K Elliston and her husband have been married over 20 years. Together they have adopted from the foster care system, adoption disruption, internationally and privately. Their oldest child at adoption placement was 16 and their youngest was a newborn. They are committed to one another and the challenges of adopting children from an array...

  Born and raised in Oakland, CA Natasha learned the importance of resilience at a young age. As a teen, she struggled with homelessness, addiction and a suicide attempt. By her early 20’s she was determined to turn her life around. With faith, hard work and a radical shift in mindset she created the life...

JULIE SCOLNIK is a concert flutist and the founding artistic director of Mistral Music, a chamber music series which since 1997 has been known for its virtuosic artists, imaginative programming, and the personal rapport she establishes with her audiences. Since her treatment and recovery from breast cancer in 2005, Scolnik has found ways to play and organize...

Award-winning author Lukman Clark lives with his wife, Dr. Linda Strahan, and two cats in Riverside, California. He works as a fulltime writer and gardener in his own backyard. Long ago, Lukman earned his BA in Communications/English Lit and an MBA in International Marketing. From there he went on to executive positions in banking, finance...

Patricia Leavy, Ph. D., is a best-selling, award-winning author, publisher, arts advocate, and internationally recognized leader in research design and arts-based research. She is widely considered the world’s most visible proponent of arts-based research as a means of making research publicly accessible. Moreover, she coined the terms “social fiction” and “fiction-based research” and has been pio...

Lisa Charles is a federal prosecutor turned singer/actress, wellness expert, certified health coach/consultant, and an acclaimed speaker. She is the fitness/wellness research coordinator for the Rutgers University Aging & Brain Health Alliance, CEO of Embrace Your Fitness, LLC, and the author of YES! COMMIT. DO. LIVE. She successfully directed her struggle with temporary vocal loss...

  Jacqueline Shortell-McSweeney is a proud member of Sisters in Crime, Women’s National Book Association and Honorary Member of Women Make Movies and Suffolk Bar Association. Jacqueline Shortell-McSweeney writes only when inspired, or when her Muse, Noreen, stands over her with a metaphorical rolling pin. At other times, she has worked as a producer for...

Steve is a multi-award winning and international selling author. He is the creator of the Polish Dragon P. I. series and was born in the Slavic Village area of Cleveland, Ohio where many of his stories take place. He is a member of the Private Eye Writers of America. He has wanted to be an...

  Allergic to the modern world, trapped in a bubble and now illegally alive; Summer asks the question “Do our lives not matter?” in her new book “Canary in a Bubble.” Unexplained throat swelling, pain, and nausea mark only the start of Summer’s decade-long search for answers that spanned numerous hospitals and state lines. Her...

  Wendy Sanford grew up in an upper-middle-class white suburban family in Princeton, New Jersey. During the socially turbulent time of the 1970s, she became a feminist, a lesbian, and a Quaker. A founding member of the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, Wendy co authored and edited many versions of Our Bodies, Ourselves, the women’s...

ALSO $500 GRAND PRIZE WINNER Nicholas L. Chiarkas was the Director of Wisconsin’s State Public Defender Agency for 22-years. Under his leadership, the agency received several awards for excellence. He was the founder of Justice Without Borders, was an adjunct professor of law at the University of Wisconsin Law School, and a visiting lecturer in...

Mary Lou Wells is an award-winning author of poetry, non-fiction, and a semi-fiction dark fantasy epic series. In 2021 she won a Firebird Book Award in the Series category for the second installment of the Annals of Aeternum series with Spear of Destiny: Finding Bucephalus, the sequel to Spear of Chaos: Legend of the Undead,...

S.G. was born in a faraway land of castles, monarchies and fallen dictatorships, aka Hungary. Hollywood movies were forbidden under Soviet oppression during her childhood, but her dad smuggled them in anyway, risking his life so that his children could experience the magic and hope inherent in those stories. She watched rebellions unfold in real...

Prior to Gary Lee Miller beginning his writing career, he was a successful businessman and entrepreneur. Miller’s writing is rooted in life experiences and people who have crossed his paths in his life’s journey. He draws on his ability to translate his observations into very relatable stories by readers. Gary lives in “the Scenic City...

Joni Iraci is a retired Registered Nurse who, after raising three children, returned to college to pursue her dream of becoming a writer. She earned a BFA in liberal studies with a concentration in literature and creative writing. She then earned an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University in her 60’s and published “Reinventing...

Deborah Wynne began writing as a young girl, filling dog-eared spiral notebooks with whimsical stories and terrible poetry. A University of Colorado alumna, Ms. Wynne entered the workforce listening to the advice of her parents who said, “Get a good government job.” She subsequently had two distinctly different careers in municipal government before becoming a...

Caitlin Billings lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.  She is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and has a thriving therapy practice specializing in complex trauma. She is working on her second book. VISIT THE WEBSITE You are listening to a short radio spot   LISTEN TO CAITLIN’S INTERVIEW

Carolyn drew upon her thirty years as a social science researcher and ten years as a relationship workshop assistant to create the dating project in Fifty First Dates after Fifty. A native Californian from Los Angeles with a New England education, Carolyn found her true home in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she prepared...

Deanie Humphrys-Dunne is a multi-award winning children’s author of eight books : My Life at Sweetbrier–A Life Changed by Horses, Charlie the Horse, Charlene the Star, Charlene the Star and Hattie’s Heroes, Charlene the Star and Bentley Bulldog, A Tractor Named Wilbur and  Un Tractor Llamado Wilbur and Wilbur’s new Home. Many of her fictional books are beautifully illustrated...

F. Coe Sherrard Jr, a former United States Navy aviator and longtime businessperson retired and living in Edinburg, Virginia. Born in Havre de Grace, Maryland, Coe grew up in the farming community of Rising Sun, Maryland, and graduated from Western Maryland College (now called McDaniel College) in 1971. During college, he adopted the pen name,...

  Diane Wald’s novel Gillyflower was published in April 2019 by She Writes Press, and won first place in the novella category from the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, first place in the novella category from American Book Fest, first place in Fiction: Novella from International Book Awards, and a bronze medal from Reader’s Favorite. You can...

Donna lives in a small, Iowa town with her husband Marty; an ordained minister, who also does construction work and painting. A stage four cancer survivor, she started to write when, during treatments, she could do nothing else.  After decades in management  positions for large companies, she suddenly had nothing to manage and asked God...

Adam is a motivational keynote speaker on topics ranging from foster care, child welfare, youth homelessness, and trauma-informed care. As a product of the foster care system who broke the cycle, he empowers audiences to uplift at-promise youth by tapping into community resources to convert the potential in our youth toward positive outcomes. He serves...

Ames Sheldon is the lead author and associate editor of the monumental reference work Women’s History Sources: A Guide to Archives and Manuscript Collections in the United States, which taught her to love writing about the history of women in America. She is the author of two award-winning historical novels with strong female protagonists. Eleanor’s...