- Marianna Beck
- Marianna Beck (under the name of M.L. Collins) won the CWA's 2017 Book of the Year in Indie Fiction for her novel Out the Door! She began working as a free-lancer in Chicago in the early 1980s. She co-founded a community newspaper in 1984 (The Lincoln Park Spectator) as well as a national literary journal in 1988 (Libido: The Journal of Sex and Sensibility). She has lectured extensively at various institutions in Chicago including the School of the Art Institute, the University of Chicago Graham School and most recently, Columbia College. She divides her time between the big city of Chicago and a small town on the Door peninsula in Wisconsin where she lives with her husband John Wilson.She is working on her second novel, The Party's Just Begun.
