Today on Pen Pals, we're thrilled to welcome Ali Gordon, whose debut novel We Have Reached the End of Our Show was released September of 2025. She is a writer, performer, and educator living in Los Angeles. A New York City native, Ali spent many years in New York working as a musical theater actor as well as performing comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade theater. Ali also writes musicals such as Power Trip and Gross Prophets, and has performed and taught comedy all over the world. She promises she is quite funny despite the subject matter of this, her debut novel, which centers around grief at the end of the world.

Cait Flanders is a bestselling author from an island off the west coast of Canada. Her first book, THE YEAR OF LESS (2018), was described by Vogue as “a fascinating look into a living experiment that we can all learn from.” It became a Wall Street Journal bestseller, has sold more than 200,000 copies in English, and been translated into 11 languages. Her second book, ADVENTURES IN OPTING OUT (2020), is a field guide to changing paths and leading a more intentional life. 

As a child, she moved around constantly, and grew up learning how to start over and make friends everywhere she went. To that end, it’s not surprising she continued to move/travel extensively for many years, before ultimately deciding where to settle. Cait now lives in the UK countryside.

Chelsea Hodson is the author of the essay collection Tonight I’m Someone Else, publisher of the independent press Rose Books, founder of the Morning Writing Club, where she offers writing coaching meetings and editorial consultations. 

Her debut single “Belong to Nobody” is streaming now.

Emily Halnon lives, writes, and runs in Eugene, Oregon. She can be found collecting stories on trails and mountains around the Pacific Northwest and oversharing her adventures and misadventures on the internet. Some of her most notable runs include setting the overall FKT on the 460-mile Oregon PCT and traversing every Domino’s Pizza in Eugene city limits.

Most of Emily’s writing explores the intersection of the outdoors and the human experience. She has published work in outlets including The Guardian, The Washington Post, CNN, Runner’s World, Salon, Trail Runner Magazine, and Adventure Journal. Her debut memoir, To the Gorge, came out May 7, 2024 from Pegasus Books. Emily is represented by Stephany Evans at Ayesha Pande Literary.

Emily Zipps is the author of Alice Rue Evades the Truth and the forthcoming The Two Lives of Amelia Waxler, both from the Dial Press. She's passionate about telling queer love stories about women, works in higher education focusing on equity, inclusion, and conflict transformation, and is also a disability advocate living with MS. She's based in New Mexico with her wife and their dog Kona, who apparently has the personality of a queen of a small but proud nation.

J.T. Ellison is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than 30 psychological thrillers and domestic noir novels, and the Emmy® award-winning co-host of A Word on Words on Nashville PBS. 

She also writes contemporary fantasy as Joss Walker, including the award-winning Jayne Thorne series. With millions of books sold across 30 countries, her work has earned critical acclaim, prestigious awards, and multiple TV options. J.T. lives in Nashville with her husband and twin kittens—one of whom is a ghost—where she’s crafting her next suspenseful tale.

Lesley Bannatyne received the Grace Paley Prize for her 2025 novel in stories, LAKE SONG. She is also one of the country's foremost authorities on Halloween, and has shared her knowledge on television specials for the History Channel ("The Haunted History of Halloween," "The Real Story of Halloween"), with Time Magazine, Slate, National Geographic, and contributed the Halloween article to World Book Encyclopedia. 

Mark Sarvas is the award-winning author of the novels @UGMAN (ITNA Press), MEMENTO PARK (FSG, Picador) and HARRY, REVISED (Bloomsbury).

He teaches advanced novel writing in the UCLA Extension Writers Program and holds an MFA in Creative Writing & Literature from Bennington College. He lives on the Monterey Peninsula and can be found on Bluesky and he maintains an irregular newsletter called Eternal Recurrence.

Olivia Muenter (pronounced Men-ter) is a writer, reader, and the co-host of the Bad on Paper podcast. Her first novel Such A Bad Influence (Quirk Books) was an instant USA Today Best Seller. Her second novel Little One (Little, Brown) will be published in 2026.

A former fashion & beauty editor and freelance writer, Olivia’s work has been published in Glamour, Byrdie, Bustle, Brides, Health.com, Philadelphia Magazine, and more. You can find her most personal writing via her weekly newsletter where she shares about her life, her work, and everything in between.

For more regular life/work updates, follow Olivia on Instagram.

Rachel Hochhauser is a writer and co-founder of Piecework, a cult-favorite puzzle brand. Raised in Santa Barbara, she studied at New York University and earned her master’s in fiction from the University of Southern California. She now lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and two young daughters.

Her debut novel, Lady Tremaine, will be published by St. Martin’s Press (U.S.), Orion (U.K.), and Fleuve-Éditions (France) in March 2026.

Vicki Tan is a digital product designer, based in San Francisco, with over a decade of experience crafting widely used and beloved experiences. As a design leader at Pinterest, Spotify, Headspace, Lyft, and Google, she blends behavioral science with design to create meaningful products that help people find inspiration and build healthy habits. She holds a degree in Behavioral Psychology from the University of California, San Diego.