The Zoetrope Online Writers Workshop is home to some of the finest emerging writers of this century. Many of the people featured below are the folks you'll soon be seeing on the New York Times Best Seller list. And if you don't it will only be a reflection of the decay of American publishing. Face it; most of today's best selling authors are the same ones that have been around for twenty years now, getting richer and staler with each new release. Many of the "top tier" authors are putting out garbage that their agents would reject after the first sentence or two if they weren't such big names. The real quality writing is going to come from the new voices. This pages features some of the best you'll find.

	"David Coyote is one of the true unsung heroes of American literature. His elegant and tight writing style has the reader feeling that he or she is conversing with an old friend, rather than reading a brilliant novel. This book belongs on any serious reader's shelf."  WWW.DCOYOTE.COM
	Marie, Marie:  Hold on Tight is about Marie Prescott, a teen art prodigy, who’s immersed in a struggle to understand her past, confronted daily by questions she can neither resolve nor tolerate nor dismiss from her consciousness:  the mystery of who killed Marie’s three-year-old sister, Alyssa Ellen, and the murky relationship  that Marie’s single mother plays in their lives, torment her.  Haunted by a blackness she can scarcely articulate, aided in her quest by her boyfriend, Dell Baker, a quiet but supportive young man obsessed with Marie’s inability to make love, Marie discovers what happened to Alyssa Ellen on a brilliant, sun-splashed morning in a Nebraska meadow that inexplicably--and eerily--reminds Marie of an African veldt, a fantasy world from which her bizarre upbringing emerged.
	As My Sparks Fly Upward by Matthew St. Amand: a collection of eleven short stories about ordinary people thrust into life-changing circumstances, where the fight-or-flight impulse kicks in, and the human heart is placed on life’s anvil for another hammer blow. HTTP://MATTHEWSTAMAND.COM
	The Blessings of Hard-Used Angels is John Cottle’s debut collection of short fiction. Winner of the 2003 George Garrett Prize, these are stories of everyday people, common on the surface but existing at the edges of ordinary life, quietly desperate, searching for small blessings and simple comforts. The characters run the gamut from lawyers to loggers, from preachers to drug dealers. Some are funny, some are tragic, some filled with hope, others with despair. All reveal a small slice of the human condition from a thoughtful and entertaining perspective. George Garrett (Death of the Fox) says of this book, “Beautifully written, crafted with care, strongly plotted, these stories are about superbly developed characters, people whose lives matter.”
	This soon to be released work of historical fiction is the first of a trilogy of historical fiction novels by Joyce Porte. Set in Colonial Africa, the story centers on Rebeka, a young girl orphaned by a smallpox epidemic that ravages her village. Adopted by German missionaries, Rebeka finds herself living two lives. Her natural heritage surrounds her everywhere she looks, yet her very existence immerses her in the world of her adoptive parents. African colonial history becomes real in this vividly paced novel by an exciting new voice in literature.
	THE FLAME TREE is a story told through the eyes of Isaac Williams, the precocious twelve-year old son of American missionary doctors in Java, Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim nation. The Williams family's life is totally unfamiliar to that of most Americans. The mother and father, both physicians, run a local missionary hospital. Blonde Isaac considers Indonesia to be his home and the locals to be his community. When the tranquility of the Williams' existence is shattered the family members are forced to confront the darker side of Islam and issues as to why America and Americans are so hated. THE FLAME TREE examines the Islamic faith and the thorny issues of Christian-Muslim interaction through the innocent eyes of a boy. It is a timely book, perhaps the first of its type to come out post September 11. Above all though, this is a moving, lyrically written novel about forgiveness and redemption.
	Cheeseburger Subversive follows Dak Sifter from grade seven to university, as he deals with his parents, his precocious sister, dirtbike-riding bullies, frenzied school bus riders, snarling attack dogs, a menacing pickle-factory foreman, a kid who thinks hes in contact with aliens, a religious-fanatic con-man, a manipulative used-car salesman, an ex-hippie English teacher, a control-freak art galley curator, a spiteful McDonalds counter-boy, an obsessive-compulsive roommate and a bunch of drunken engineering students in Hugh Hefner costumes, all while doggedly pursuing Zoe Perry, the girl of his dreams, who always seems to be one step ahead of him.