Heather Cassell is founder and president of Whimsy Media, LLC, a professional writing, publishing and book marketing coaching and consulting firm for progressive independent authors, small presses, self-publishers, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies.

Currently, Cassell is a regular contributor to the Bay Area Reporter, where she was an assistant editor, Bay Area Business Woman News, TheGlassHammer.com, and Jane and Jane magazine, among other publications and new media. She is currently working on a ghost writing project and coaching Dalya Massachi, founder and owner of Writing for Community Success, through her publishing and book marketing campaigns for the forthcoming, Writing to Make a Difference.

Cassell has published articles covering lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, women’s, and senior issues as well as health care, employment, business, education, housing, human sexuality, nonprofit and philanthropy, and other issues.

Recently, she was the managing editor of Western Edition Newspapers, Inc. and assisted Nina Smith, founder and owner of Queercents.com, a queer financial syndicate, with her first book proposal. Her work has appeared in the Oakland, Just Out, ON, $pread, Babble.com, and GoodVibrations.com among other publications and new media. She also contributed to The Women's Movement Today: An Encyclopedia of Third-Wave Feminism, was a research assistant for The F-Word: Feminism in Jeopardy: Women, Politics, and the Future and consulted on Free Your Mind: The Book for Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Youth.

Cassell has worked in various aspects of the publishing industry from all forms of print to new media and the nonprofit sector from direct service to foundations for more than 15 years. She was the publicity assistant and chair of the publishing team for Down There Press, the now defunct publishing arm of Good Vibrations, and she was the office manager for the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Department of City College of San Francisco. Cassell founded the only West Coast office of the Third Wave Direct Action Corps (now the Third Wave Foundation), an all volunteer organization for feminists 15 to 35 years old, in San Francisco in 1995 and co-ran the organization until 1998.

Cassell received her B.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and lives and works in San Francisco.