Without a Net

Kimberly Cooper Griffin is an award-winning author and software designer. Her technical career spans almost three decades and while she's always been a writer, she's focused on it more recently, effectively melding her technical and creative passions. Over that time, she has pondered two major issues: 1 - Publishing has a diversity problem, 2 - The overly complex process of getting published, whetherthrough self-publishing or a traditional publisher. She attributes these issues to the barriers to entry: time, money, and knowledge. These have led to marginalized voices getting left behind in a historically straight, white, cis male-dominated industry. To address this, with the help of partners, she founded a software company called Inkstacks, which is working to establish a nurturing community for writers that providessoftware-guided navigation, simplifying a complicated process to produce high-quality manuscripts. This supports all writers, particularly marginalized groups who have been historically shut out of a clear path toward publication. Kimberly's vision is to provide writers with visibility and readers and publishers with a wider, richer pool of diverse talent, by removing hurdles, and allowing writers to do whatthey love to do most-write. Kimberly can be found at www.KimberlyCooperGriffin.com and on Twitter @kcoopergriffin.