George Barthel is a New York City-based playwright who has had nine plays produced in small theaters around the city. “The Naked Enemy”, “Richard & Philip” “Uncovering Eden,” “Murder Uncensored,” “Through a Naked Lens” (see Wikipedia article) and “Alley of Masks,” were all originally produced as part of the Wings Theater Gay Play Series. Barthel is also the author of numerous poems and short stories, and the soon-to-be-published short novel A Harness for the Water.
L.J. Kleeman is a writer, stage-director, and journalist. She has been writing since the age of three, when she dictated a story about a lost dog to her nursery school teacher, and has had a lifelong fascination with underground tunnels and caves. The basic idea for Below the Surface came to her at the age of twelve, while riding in the first car of a New York City subway train and looking out the window at the tracks. Large sections of the book, especially Nahanni’s narrative, were first written when she was in high school and college. When not writing or directing, she teaches English at a CUNY college in the Bronx.
