Marie Cartier (http://mariecartier.com/) is a recipient of the Emerging Writers Award for the Literary Women Conference 2022. She was awarded the 2021 Drury Award in Fiction for her story “Beyond Desire: Working it Out,” and received an Honorable Mention in the Women Hold Up Half the Sky portion of the 2021 Roswell Award for her story “Yes.” Her fiction received a Certificate of Recognition from the City of West Hollywood in 2021. She also has recently published poetry in SAGA, and Sinister Wisdom, among many others. She currently studies fiction in the Creative Writing Program at Long Beach City College(LBCC). She holds three MFAs: Art (Claremont Graduate University), Film, and Theater (UCLA), and has previously published plays and short fiction.

She has a Ph.D. in Religion from Claremont Graduate University and is the author of the critically acclaimed book Baby, You Are My Religion: Women, Gay Bars, and Theology Before Stonewall (Acumen, 2013, Routledge 2014). She is a senior lecturer in Gender and Women’s Studies and Queer Studies at California State University Northridge, and is a perma-blogger for the site Feminism and Religion. She lives with her family in Southern California.