Staff Bios
Diane Turnshek (Alpha Director) is an astronomer (MS from U of AZ) and a science fiction author whose short fiction has been published in Analog Magazine and elsewhere. She's taught astronomy and history of astronomy classes at the University of Pittsburgh since 2001 and St. Vincent College since 2003. She has also taught astronomy at Carlow College and Chatham College and worked as a planetarium operator at the Carnegie Science Center's Buhl Planetarium. She hosts a monthly public lecture series on astronomy at Allegheny Observatory.
For five years, Diane has been mentoring science fiction, fantasy and horror graduate students in the Master’s Degree Program in Writing Popular Fiction at Seton Hill University. She founded the largest genre writing group in Pittsburgh (Write or Die) and Alpha, the SF/F/H Workshop for Young Writers (a ten-day residency workshop). Diane started a local, yearly series of SF anthologies and edited the first book (Triangulation 2003). From August 2004 to July 2007, she served as Eastern Regional Director for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), a professional organization of 1500 writers. She’s helped organize science fiction conferences on local and international levels including running the 2007 SFWA weekend business meeting and Nebula awards ceremony in NYC.
John Schmid (Alpha Coordinator)
Ann Cecil
Thomas Seay is a graduate student in creative writing at the University of Kansas and communications director for Congresswoman Nancy Boyda of Kansas. His fiction has appeared in Boys' Life, Realms of Fantasy, Fantastic Stories, and several other publications. While working for the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas, Thomas built the AboutSF.com website and directed AboutSF programs.
David Barr Kirtley has been profiled as part of “Speculative Fiction: The Next Generation” by Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market. His short fiction appears in magazines such as Realms of Fantasy and Weird Tales, and in anthologies such as New Voices in Science Fiction and Fantasy: The Best of the Year. He grew up in Katonah, New York and majored in Government at Colby College. David currently lives in Los Angeles and is a graduate student in screenwriting and fiction at USC. He has studied writing with many well-known figures, including T.C. Boyle (The Road to Wellville), Orson Scott Card (Ender's Game), and Karen Joy Fowler (The Jane Austen Book Club).