Consultants
Consultants
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I coach and consult in all areas of nonfiction with an especial passion for memoir. My background in stage & screen, poetry, and fiction give me unique insights into often overlooked areas of nonfiction writing, and I provide guidance to beginning writers just learning their craft or applying to MFA programs all the way through advanced writers looking to find funding and land an agent. My particular strengths lie in my eyes, having studied and workshopped with prominent teachers, writers, and literature experts and beyond, as well as guiding marginalized writers as they face unique challenges in the world of writing. I provide deep in-line editing as well as macro-level feedback, and am particularly adept at suggesting readings that up my clients' game, often readings unknown to most traditional creative nonfiction programs and courses. I enjoy doing "close readings" and find great value in guiding students through works of the masters not only to reveal the inner workings of their magic, but also to show what is possible. As a queer, disabled person of color adopted by a white, American family and raised on the West Coast and rural South and educated on the East Coast, I am able to see through many lenses of experience, and specialize in helping others explore and express their personal, intergenerational, and historical/cultural trauma on the page with wisdom and grace. Whether you are interested in writing for commercial publications or well-regarded literary magazines, I can help you tailor your voice and bring an editorial eye from many different segments of the industry.
NOTE: Rate for GrubStreet poc/lgbt/disability scholarship recipients: $100/hr
BIO
Mee Ok Icaro is an award-winning essayist, poet, and memoirist. She placed as runner-up in the Prairie Schooner Creative Nonfiction Contest and was a finalist for the Scott Merrill Award for poetry as well as the Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction. Her writing has appeared, or is forthcoming, in the LA Times, Boston Globe Magazine, River Teeth, Bennington Review, Witness, Cincinnati Review, American Journal of Poetry, Michael Pollan’s “Trips Worth Telling” anthology, and elsewhere. She is also featured in [Un]Well on Netflix. More at Mee-ok.com
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Short Fiction, The Novel, Memoir, Personal Essay
AREAS OF INTEREST
As a reader, I am drawn to vivid imagery, tight sentences, snappy dialogue (think Elmore Leonard), and quirky characters who stand out from the scenery. As your writing coach and editor, I will give you the tools to help you pare down your sentences to just the right length and rhythm (I excel at line-editing!). I will show you how to take a step back from the pages and look at the overall narrative and how each of its pieces fit into the bigger picture: we’ll cut what is weak and flabby, and we’ll dissect and rearrange the various parts, if necessary—all with the goal of making your creative work the strongest it can be.
What I bring to the table: publication of two novels and numerous short stories and essays, more than 30 years of professional editing at newspapers and magazines, and experience leading several writing workshops.
Though I read widely across all genres, I am particularly drawn to literary fiction, mystery, memoir, Young Adult, narrative non-fiction, history, and biography. As someone who served in the military for 20 years, I also work with writers who need a little insider knowledge in that regard.
BIO
David Abrams is the author of Brave Deeds and Fobbit. Publishers Weekly called Fobbit “an instant classic” and named it a Top 10 Pick for Literary Fiction in Fall 2012. It was also a New York Times Notable Book of 2012, an Indie Next pick, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, a Montana Honor Book, and a finalist for the L.A. Times’ Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Abrams’ short stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and appeared in the anthologies Watchlist, Fire and Forget and Montana Noir. Other stories and essays have appeared in Esquire, Glimmer Train Stories, Narrative, Salon, F(r)iction, High Desert Journal, Salamander, Connecticut Review, The Greensboro Review, Consequence, and many other publications. Abrams earned a BA in English from the University of Oregon and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. He blogs about books at The Quivering Pen: www.davidabramsbooks.blogspot.com
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AREAS OF INTEREST
I love writing that is personally brave and socially conscious, that innovates and breaks boundaries in order to find the true shape of a story. It's an honor for me to work with writers to encourage their unique voice and to reflect their strengths. My suggestions for development are based on what's already on the page, rather than relying on so-called writing rules or formulas. I work with writers to find inspiration in other books as well as other art forms, such as film, visual arts, and performance. My primary interest is creative nonfiction but I have a background in fiction and poetry and find inspiration in mixed genre work. Thematic interests include cross-cultural stories of immigration, exile, and diaspora. I am drawn to family histories, multi-generational stories, and explorations into inter-generational trauma. Stories of social change and social justice, especially in the lived experiences of BIPOC queer folx, are of prime interest to me. Literary heroes include Gloria Anzaldua, Audre Lorde, and Jeanette Winterson, more recently Carmen Maria Machado, Alexander Chee, and Randa Jarrar, among others. With thirty years of experience teaching at the college level and in community settings, I'm well-versed in devising writing prompts, giving individualized feedback from line-editing to structural suggestions, and breaking down projects into lessons and goals. I've helped writers to publish their work in literary journals, to enter MFA writing programs, and to draft and complete manuscripts. Finally, as a mentor, I believe active listening and a sense of humor can inspire writers to find their own creative and professional solutions.
BIO
Nancy Agabian is a writer, teacher, and literary organizer, working in the spaces between race, ethnicity, cultural identity, feminism and queer identity. Her recent novel, "The Fear of Large and Small Nations", was a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially-Engaged Fiction and is forthcoming from Nauset Press. She is currently working on a personal essay collection, In Between Mouthfuls, which frames liminal spaces of identity within causes for social justice; select essays have appeared in The Margins, The Brooklyn Rail, Kweli Journal, Hyperallergic, and elsewhere. She was awarded Lambda Literary Foundation's Jeanne Cordova Prize for Lesbian/Queer Nonfiction in 2021. Nancy is the author of Me as her again: True Stories of an Armenian Daughter (aunt lute books), a memoir that was honored as a Lambda Literary Award finalist for LGBT Nonfiction and shortlisted for a William Saroyan International Writing Prize, and Princess Freak (Beyond Baroque Books), a collection of poetry, prose, and performance art texts. Both books deal with the intimacies of Armenian American identity via stories of coming-of-age and intergenerational trauma (resulting from the Armenian genocide of 1915), with a focus on gender and sexuality. A longtime community-based writing workshop facilitator, she teaches creative writing at universities, art centers, and online, most recently at The Gallatin School of Individualized Study at NYU and The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in NYC. As a literary organizer, she has coordinated Gartal, a multicultural Armenian literary reading series, and Queens Writers Resist, with writers Meera Naira and Amy Paul. She currently serves on the board of directors of the International Armenian Literary Alliance. Nancy is a caregiver for her elderly parents in southeastern Massachusetts, where she lives.
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Short Fiction, The Novel, Memoir, Personal Essay, Literary Journalism, YA and Children's Literature, Genre Fiction
AREAS OF INTEREST
As a former literary magazine editor, I'm constantly reading and assessing short and long-form fiction on both a micro level (word choice, grammar, syntax, sentence-level mechanics, etc) and a macro level (characters, plot, story logic, big-picture themes and ideas), and I bring this same attention to technique and craft to my one-on-one consulting work. I love dissecting stories from a technical, craft-based perspective in order to help writers understand what's working, what could be working better, and most importantly, what the particular piece is trying to be and how it can get there. I love a wide array of styles and genres, though I'm particularly drawn to speculative fiction as well as writing that boldly embraces plot, stakes, voice, and/or has some sense of innovation, daring, and risk-taking to it. I also love helping writers better understand the world of literary magazines and the process of submitting their work, as well as all the other aspects of publishing and career.
Disclaimer: My feedback style is rigorous and for writers who are committed to the revision process and overall growth and improvement of their craft.
Important: For all book-length editing projects, I require a beginning consultation on the first chapter(s) before proceeding (usually 2 - 5 hours, depending on length). Book-length editing is a significant investment, and it's important that you feel comfortable with my approach and feedback style before continuing; it's also important that I feel I'm the right editor for you and can add significant value to your project.
BIO
JOY BAGLIO (BAH - lee - oh) is a speculative-literary fiction writer whose work has appeared widely in journals such as The Missouri Review, Tin House, The Iowa Review, American Short Fiction, Conjunctions, The Fairy Tale Review, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. She’s received fellowships, scholarships, and awards from Yaddo, The Elizabeth George Foundation, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Sewanee Writers' Conference, Vermont Studio Center, Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, and most recently The Kerouac Project, where she'll be the spring 2023 writer-in-residence in Jack Kerouac's Florida house. Joy holds an MFA from The New School and is the founder of the literary arts organization Pioneer Valley Writers’ Workshop, which hosts a wide array of virtual workshops and community literary events. Joy is a frequent presenter at conferences, most recently the 2022 AWP Conference in Philadelphia and Grub Street's Muse and the Marketplace. She is at work on both a collection of short stories and a first novel. She is represented by Peter Steinberg at Fletcher & Co. and Sean Daily (for film/TV). Find her online at www.JoyBaglio.com and follow her on Twitter @JoyBaglio.
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the Novel, Short Fiction, Personal Essay, Memoir, Children’s & YA Literature, Genre Fiction.
AREAS OF INTEREST
Sound matters. I am delighted when I get to help clients write sentences that shine, characters that feel true and relatable, and story arcs that are surprising yet inevitable. I love writing, reading, and helping other writers with both literary and genre fiction, and am especially excited about work that bridges the two. I consult on pilots, features, literary fiction, historical fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, and cross-genre work. I have experience in both the literary world and Hollywood, and am happy to talk to you about these industries.
BIO
Carmiel Banasky is an award-winning short-story writer and novelist who recently made the leap into television, staffing on the Amazon series, UNDONE, and she is a Film Independent fellow. She is the author of the novel The Suicide of Claire Bishop, which Publisher's Weekly calls a "tour de force," and her writing has appeared in The Guardian, LA Review of Books, Glimmer Train, The Rumpus, and NPR, among other places. She specializes in climate sci-fi and fantasy in the TV and podcasts spaces, and she is currently adapting a feminist cli-fi fantasy novel, FROST AND THORN. She has taught Creative Writing at Hunter College (where she earned her MFA), UCLA Extension, and other programs. Prior to LA, where she lives with her dog, Shadow, she spent four years on the road at writing residencies, including a stint on a ship in the Arctic, studying and writing about climate change. As a young political organizer, she once tried (and failed) to open a Planned Parenthood in Mississippi. She is from Portland, Oregon.
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Literary Journalism (e.g. Op-eds, etc.), Memoir, Personal Essay, Book-Length Nonfiction, Publishing & Promotion, Career Development
AREAS OF INTEREST
***PLEASE NOTE: E.B. is currently not taking on new consulting clients.*** I love everything nonfiction, but, in particular, I love narrative writing that tells human stories (memoir, personal essays, and autobiographical comics, but also novels and short stories) and blends genres (combining the researched and the personal, fiction and nonfiction, images and words). I have a personal interest in reading and promoting work by women, people of color, and the LGBTQ community. Favorite writers include Bonnie Tsui, Jesmyn Ward, Sy Montgomery, Margo Jefferson, Eula Biss, Zadie Smith, Brian Doyle, and Maxine Hong Kingston. I am happy to consult on nonfiction of any length -- from one essay or personal statement to a full memoir or book-length manuscript. My favorite work to read and edit is nonfiction that intersects the personal and the researched, though I also love working on a pure memoir/personal essay and I have also previously consulted on works of fiction (especially historical/researched fiction). In addition to the writing itself, I have worked with clients on MFA (and other grad school) applications that have resulted in acceptances to programs, and I have helped writers assemble book proposals and manuscripts that have landed agents and editors. I am also big on planning and outlining and have been hired to help writers, not only edit and revise their work, but also to come up with an action plan for how to move forward even once they stop working with me.
BIO
E.B. Bartels is a nonfiction writer, a former Newtonville Books bookseller, and a GrubStreet instructor, with an MFA from Columbia University and a BA from Wellesley College. Her writing has appeared in Slate, Salon, Literary Hub, WBUR, Catapult, Electric Literature, The Believer, and The Rumpus, among others. She is the author of Good Grief: On Loving Pets, Here and Hereafter, a narrative nonfiction book about the world of loving and losing animals, exploring the singular nature of our bonds with our companion animals, and how best to grieve for them once they’ve passed away, which was published in August 2022 by Mariner Books/HarperCollins. She also runs the interview series Non-Fiction by Non-Men on the site Fiction Advocate. E.B. has taught at Columbia's Summer Program for High School Students, Columbia's Intro Writing Program, The Door (a drop in center for homeless teens in Manhattan), Mother Caroline Academy in Dorchester, and the Noble and Greenough School in Dedham. Her students have ranged in age from fifth grade to retiree. E.B. lives in Arlington, Massachusetts with her husband, Richie, and their dog (Seymour), tortoises (Terrence and Twyla), pigeons (Bert and Dan), and a dozen fish (all African cichlids, all named Milton). You can visit her website at www.ebbartels.com, find her on Twitter at @eb_bartels, and see photos of her dead pets on Instagram at @goodgriefpetsbook.
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Short Fiction, Literary Fiction, the Novel, Memoir, Essay, Booklength Nonfiction
AREAS OF INTEREST
I am currently working on a historical novel set in an orphanage in Atlanta in the 1920s. I also have written about music, popular culture, and Jewish cultural history, and have had my work collected in numerous anthologies.
BIO
Steven Lee Beeber is the author of The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB’s: A Secret History of Jewish Punk (Chicago Review Press), the editor of AWAKE! A Reader for the Sleepless (Soft Skull Press) and the associate editor of the literary journal Conduit. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, Harper's, The New York Times and elsewhere. He has an MFA in Fiction from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and teaches creative writing and creative nonfiction at Lesley University and Harvard Summer School. His website is www.jewpunk.com.
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Short Fiction, The Novel, Literary Journalism, Memoir, Personal Essay, Book Length Nonfiction, Poetry, Historical Fiction.
AREAS OF INTEREST
I love helping people with their writing, period. There is nothing more exciting to me than living the writer’s life. I spend mornings with my own work. After a lunch break, I boil water for tea and dig in to a client’s or student’s work. That’s an ideal day as far as I’m concerned. That said, I do particularly respond to socio-political, historical, philosophical, contemplative, funny, quirky, inventive, poignant, intense rule-breaking writing. Gutsy. Quiet reflective. See? I kind of like it all.
BIO
Cara Benson is an award winning writer whose stories, poems, book reviews, and essays have been published in The New York Times, Boston Review, Best American Poetry, The Brooklyn Rail, Identity Theory, Fence, Electric Literature, Hobart, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, 3:AM, and in syndication. She has received a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Literature and the bpNichols award. She is the author of (made), a collection of microprose, of which the Huffington Post writes: “Benson does more with the two-word sentence than many poets do in two stanzas or even two poems, largely because it would be difficult to find even a single wasted word." Her personal radio essay, "I Was a Funny Kid", aired in syndication on NPR. Cara lives in the unceded homelands of the Stockbridge Munsee Band of Mohicans. Her online home is: carabensonwriter.com.
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Poetry
AREAS OF INTEREST
I am interested in poetry of all styles. If you would like to work on a series of poems or a full manuscript, I can give extensive line edits or general feedback. I love conversing about the poems you are working on, but if you prefer email correspondence, I can work with that as well.
Past clients have gone on to receive recognition and awards such as the Martha’s Vineyard Writing Fellowship, Scholastic Writing Awards, Youth Poet Laureate, and publications in respected journals such as The Chicago Review, CrazyHorse, Okay Donkey, and Puerto Del Sol.
BIO
Mark Kyungsoo Bias is a Korean American poet, educator, and adoptee. He is a recipient of the 2022 Joseph Langland Prize and the 2020 William Matthews Poetry Prize. A semi-finalist for the 92Y Discovery Prize, his work has been published or is forthcoming in Academy of American Poets, The Adroit Journal, Best New Poets, The Common, Hayden's Ferry Review, Los Angeles Review, New England Review, The Offing, PANK, and Washington Square Review, among others. He has been offered support from Bread Loaf, Tin House, and Kundiman, and has been featured in LitHub, Poetry Daily, and Winning Writers. He holds an MFA and Film Certificate from The University of Massachusetts Amherst and currently teaches creative writing in Korea.
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The Novel
The Novella
Short Fiction
Social Media
Query Letters
AREAS OF INTEREST
Are you working on a novel or short story and you keep getting the "We love this, but it's not for us" rejection letter? Jenna Blum may be the consultant for you. Jenna is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of novels Those Who Save Us and The Stormchasers and the novella "The Lucky One" in postwar anthology Grand Central; she is one of Oprah's Top Thirty Women Writers and has been teaching fiction and novel workshops at Grub since 1998. Jenna is interested in consulting on novels, novellas and short stories in their final stages of revision; she specializes in literary and some eras of historical fiction. (No genre, please!) Jenna will also provide consultation on troubleshooting your novel's outline, perfecting your query letter and creating/ fine-tuning your social media platform. Known for contributing to her novels' success via her marketing tactics, Jenna will help you identify your comfort zone and skills and help you create a marketing platform on social media and in person. Jenna specializes in Facebook, Twitter, and mainstream social media as well as writer websites, book club connection and public speaking.
Consultations accepted via submission only. Jenna's fee is $150/hour. Please contact Jenna via Grub or her website, www.jennablum.com.
BIO
Jenna Blum is the New York Times and internationally bestselling author of novels Those Who Save Us, The Stormchasers, and The Lost Family as well as the novella "The Lucky One" in anthology Grand Central. Jenna is also one of Oprah's Top 30 Women Writers. Jenna has taught for GrubStreet since 1997 ; she currently runs the master novel workshop and seminars focusing on craft and marketing.
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BIO
Sari Boren is an essayist, playwright, and museum exhibit developer who has built a career around storytelling and environments devoted to learning. She received a 2018 fellowship from Vermont Studio Center, a 2016 Emerging Artist Award from the St. Botolph Club Foundation, and a 2014 Finalist grant in Creative Nonfiction from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Her essays have been published or are forthcoming in Copper Nickel,The Southeast Review, Sycamore Review,Lilith Magazine, Alimentum, Pangyrus, Hobart, Gamba, War, Literature & the Arts, and psychologytoday.com. Sari was a member of the 2019 PlayLab Unit for emerging playwrights at Boston's Company One Theater. Her solo play EXHIBITING premiered at the Newton Theatre Company in 2019 and her short play TO REST at the 2019 Somerville Theater Festival. She has also written the exhibit text for dozens of visitor centers, history museums, children’s museums, and science museums across the country, including many sites for the National Park Service. She received her B.A. from Brandeis University and her Ed.M from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Learn more at: sariboren.com.
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AREAS OF INTEREST
Whether it's a poem, screenplay, short story, novel section... or a multi-genre "ahhh I don't know what this is yet!" I can offer feedback at any stage of the writing process. I particularly respond to layered, lyrical writing that pushes at the boundaries of genre and form, plays with time, moves beyond realism, and/or creates a link between the reader and a specific sociopolitical context. I have particular expertise and training in science fiction, fantasy, speculative fiction, magical realism, dialogue, structure, feminist writing, visual narratives, experimental work, character-driven narratives, LGBTQ+ and non-binary themes, multilingualism, translation, and adaptation. I am fluent in French and originally from the Midwest, so hit me up about those things.
I am also happy to consult on the business of being a writer: time management, motivation, promotion, navigating submissions, to MFA or not to MFA, and all those little things that come up. I have strong experience in graphics & social media and would be happy to help you develop a promotional plan, create a logo, build a website, and more.
BIO
Stephanie K. Brownell is a multi-genre writer, artist, and educator from Wisconsin who holds an MFA from Boston University. A 2018 Sewanee Writers Conference Tennessee Williams Scholar, Stephanie has participated in residencies and fellowships nationwide including the Company One’s PlayLab, Taleamor Park Residencies, and Ensemble Studio Theatre’s New York Theatre Intensives. ‘She Eats Apples’ was the winner of the National Partners of the American Theatre Playwriting Excellence Award. Stephanie’s work has also been selected as Editor’s choice by Solstice Literary Magazine and Typishly Literary Magazine, and as a Gary Garrison Award national finalist and the UT WomenWorks 2015 runner up. In 2018, ’This Place/Displaced’ was selected by The Arts Fuse as one of the Best Stage productions of the year. Stephanie’s fiction, poetry, and drama have been published in Great Lakes Review, Seven Circle Press, Punt Volat, Decoded: Pride Anthology, Crab Fat Magazine, and elsewhere.
In Boston, Stephanie teaches creative writing at GrubStreet, develops socially-engaged performances with Artists’ Theater, consults on manuscripts and book marketing, and leads a ragtag band of SFF writers. They have previously taught at Carroll University, Boston University, Bentley University, the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, The Eliot School, the Urbano Project, and Lycée Marguerite de Valois, among others. Stephanie’s creative work is visual, intersectional and magical and their scholarly work focuses on discourses of oppression, resistance, and imagination in contemporary and speculative literature. You can find more about Stephanie’s work at www.skbrownell.com or on Instagram or Twitter @skbrownell.
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BIO
Olivia Kate Cerrone is the author of The Hunger Saint (Bordighera Press, 2017), a historical novella about the child miners of Italy. The book was praised by Kirkus Reviews as “a well-crafted and affecting literary tale.” The Brooklyn Rail named it one of the "Best Books of 2017" and it was also listed as a 2017 Fiction Bestseller for six consecutive months on SPD Books. Her Pushcart Prize-nominated fiction won the Jack Dyer Prize from the Crab Orchard Review, the Mason's Road Literary Award, and first place in Italian Americana's annual literary contest. The Hunger Saint won a 2014 “Conference Choice Award” from the SDSU Writers’ Conference.
Her writing has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor, Psychology Today, Publishers Weekly, The Rumpus, The Brooklyn Rail, The Huffington Post, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of various literary honors, including fellowships at the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers (Scotland), the Ragdale Foundation, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts and Sciences, where she was awarded a "Distinguished Fellowship" from the National Endowment for the Arts. Cerrone earned an MFA in fiction from New York University and a BFA from the Writing, Literature and Publishing program at Emerson College. She is at work on a novel called DISPLACED and currently lives in Boston, MA where she teaches writing at Suffolk University.
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Short Fiction, The Novel, Memoir, Poetry, Literary Journalism, Personal Essay, Intensive Line-Editing.
AREAS OF INTEREST
The Northeast, coming-of-age fiction, historical fiction, page-turners, memoir, essay, criticism, literary and lyrical work.
BIO
John Cotter is the author of the memoir Losing Music, forthcoming from Milkweed Editions, portions of which have appeared in Raritan, Catapult, Indiana Review, and Guernica. His novel, Under the Small Lights, was published by Miami University Press in 2010, and his fiction, essays, criticism, and theater pieces have appeared in New England Review, Washington Square, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, Georgia Review, The Literary Review, Denver Quarterly, and Commonweal. In 2018 he was Artist in Residence at SPACE Gallery in Portland, Maine, and in 2022 he’ll be a resident fellow at the James Merrill House in Stonighton, Connecticut.
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Memoir
Personal Essay
Op-Ed
Book length Nonfiction
Blog posts
Query letters and Book Proposals
Application Essays
AREAS OF INTEREST
Memoir and personal essays on any topic, with particular expertise in writing about adversity, trauma and grief (Writing to Heal) and Narrative Medicine; Travel Writing; Op-Eds on any topic; blogs/columns that aim to inform readers about a particular topic; application essays (both undergraduate and graduate, with particular expertise in medical school essays and secondaries).
BIO
Jennifer Crystal holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Emerson College and a B.A. from Middlebury College. She specializes in non-fiction, especially writing to heal/narrative medicine, travel writing, memoir, personal essays, and op-eds. She is the author of Et Voilà: One Traveler's Journey from Foreigner to Francophile (Belfort and Bastion), and spoke at the 2017 Boston Book Festival about that book. She is currently seeking publication for her second memoir, Long Hauler.
Jennifer's work has appeared in Aeon's Psyche, The Boston Globe, wbur.org, poetryandcovid.com, Transitions Abroad, Abroad View, Spry Literary Journal, and many other publications. She writes a weekly column for Global Lyme Alliance, which has received mention in CQ Researcher, The New Yorker and weatherchannel.com. Her website is www.jennifercrystal.com.
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BIO
Kavita Das writes about culture, race, gender, and their intersections. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Kavita’s work has been published in WIRED, CNN, Teen Vogue, Catapult, Fast Company, Tin House, Longreads, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, Kenyon Review, NBC News Asian America, Guernica, Electric Literature, Colorlines, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. Kavita’s second book Craft and Conscience: How to Write About Social Issues (Beacon Press, October 2022) is inspired by the Writing About Social Issues class she created and teaches. Her first book, Poignant Song: The Life and Music of Lakshmi Shankar, was published by Harper Collins India in 2019. In the real world, she lives in New York with her husband, toddler, and hound. And in the virtual world, she can be found on Twitter: @kavitamix and Instagram: @kavitadas and at kavitadas.com.
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The Novel; The Novella or Short Novel; Short Fiction; Individual Essay; Book-Length Non-fiction
AREAS OF INTEREST
Literary or historical fiction of any kind, with a special affinity for family relationships, coming-of-age stories, and period pieces. I'm also interested in research-based nonfiction.
BIO
Ursula DeYoung is an author living in Cambridge, MA. She earned a B.A. in History and Literature from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in History from Oxford University. Her first non-fiction book, a biography of 19th-century physicist John Tyndall entitled A Vision of Modern Science, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2011. Her first novel, Shorecliff, was published by Little, Brown in 2013 and tells the story of a large family that gathers in Maine in the summer of 1928. She is the founder of the literary journal Embark, which features the openings of unpublished novels.
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Short Fiction, Flash Fiction, Essay, Intensive Line-Editing, Proofreading, Guidance in Submitting to Literary Magazines, Book Research Assistance, Preparing the MFA Application, Applying for Awards, Fellowships, & Retreats, Personal Writing Coaching
AREAS OF INTEREST
I can be a supportive, sensitive critical reader for short stories of all kinds, literary fiction, work in which place, setting, and social or cultural context are essential; hybrid/cross-genre work; essays and stories about cities and suburbs, family and immigration; Spanglish narration and dialogue; writing that deals with art as subject matter, or writing in dialogue with art. I do literary translation from Spanish to English; and English/Spanish and Spanish/English non-literary translation. I'm a native Floridian and can help you nail Sunshine State-specific settings. My experience as an arts administrator and grantwriting consultant can be especially useful if you're developing applications and funding proposals for books, residencies, and community projects. I'm happy to work with writers struggling with ADHD and executive functioning difficulties.
BIO
Denise Delgado is instructor, consultant, and Neighborhood Program Fellow at GrubStreet, teaching classes, including bilingual workshops in English and Spanish, and doing outreach in Boston neighborhoods and public libraries. She has facilitated creative writing and art workshops for adults and teens as well as socially-engaged arts projects at libraries, schools, museums, a prison and other community spaces since 1998.
Denise's fiction and critical work have appeared or are forthcoming in The Southeast Review, Inch, Hinchas de Poesía, Jai-Alai Magazine, 2040 Review, Fiction Writers Review, the anthology Florida Flash, and various contemporary art publications. Since 2010 she has organized the Free School for Writing, an itinerant classroom for literary craft talks and workshops. From 2005-2013 she worked for the Outreach Division of the Miami-Dade Public Library System as Curator for Art Services and Exhibitions and later, project director for the Vasari Project Archive. As a writer and multidisciplinary artist, Denise has received grants from New England Foundation for the Arts, Alternate ROOTS/The Ford Foundation, and Tigertail Productions’ Artist Access Program. Delgado received an MA in Media Studies from The New School and an MFA in fiction from Warren Wilson College. She is currently at work a collection of linked short stories set in Miami and Cuba around two families connected through Operation Peter Pan.
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Short Fiction, Memoir, Personal Essay, Poetry, Young Adult & Children's Literature, Guidance in Submitting to Literary Magazines, Personal Writing "Coaching," Preparing the MFA Application, Copy-Editing, Proofreading.
AREAS OF INTEREST
I can consult with writers working on poetry manuscripts, submission selections, or individual poems. While my primary focus is poetry, I've worked with many clients in other genres, providing both detailed and general editorial responses. I’m also able to offer advice on submitting to literary journals and happy to offer feedback on the cover letter.
Additionally, I'm available as a professional copyeditor and proofreader.
BIO
Valerie Duff's poems have appeared in POETRY, Ploughshares, The Common, AGNI, and elsewhere; they have also been featured as a Gulf Coast online exclusive. Her book, To the New World (Salmon Poetry), was shortlisted for the 2011 Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for Poetry. Recent book reviews have appeared in The Boston Globe, PN Review, and The Critical Flame. She holds an MA from Boston University and an MPhil in Creative Writing from Trinity College, Dublin. A recipient of grants and fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, St. Botolph Foundation, Writers' Room of Boston, and VCCA, she is the poetry editor of Salamander Magazine. She is also the copyeditor for Post Road Magazine and works as a freelance writer.
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Short Fiction, Personal Essay
AREAS OF INTEREST
Literary, speculative, and experimental fictions. Critical, reflective, and political essays. Book-length manuscripts welcome.
BIO
Jane Dykema’s fiction and nonfiction has appeared in Guernica, Electric Literature, Fanzine, the anthology, Cover Stories, and elsewhere. She’s a 2016 Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellow and her fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She holds an MFA from UMass Amherst, teaches writing at Clark University, and is a Program Assistant for the Disquiet International Literary Program.
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Screenwriting.
AREAS OF INTEREST
Character-driven, high-concept and indie, drama, comedy, historical, and adaptations.
BIO
Cheryl Eagan-Donovan is a writer and documentary filmmaker. She studied writing and literature at Goddard College, has a BS from Boston University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University. She has published poetry and articles about Shakespeare, screenwriting, and film. She teaches screenwriting, film and literature at Lesley University and Northeastern University. Her new film, Nothing is Truer than Truth, is based on the book Shakespeare By Another Name. Cheryl is a lecturer at Shakespeare conferences around the country. Her debut documentary, All Kindsa Girls, screened at art house theaters and film festivals in London, Toronto, and throughout the US, is featured in Paul Sherman's book Big Screen Boston, and was short-listed for the PBS series POV. The film's theatrical screenings included the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago, and the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Boston. She served as President of Women in Film & Video/New England for several years and was the 2012 Judge for the WIFVNE Annual Screenwriting Competition. She also served as a panelist for the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts 2012 Play/Screenwriting Fellowship. She served on the Board of Directors of The Next Door Theater in Winchester, Massachusetts for five years, and was just elected to the Board of Trustees of the Shakespeare Oxford Fellowship.
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Short Fiction, The Novel, Preparing the MFA Application, Applying for Awards & Fellowships, Proofreading, Intensive Line-Editing, Querying Literary Agents, & Submitting to Literary Magazines.
Regarding writing program specific coaching, programs my clients have been accepted into include Boston University, The New School, American University, University of North Carolina Greensboro, Columbia College, University of New Hampshire, Bennington College, Vermont College of Fine Arts (VCFA), University of Montana, Pratt Institute, and the University of Edinburgh.
AREAS OF INTEREST
I'm interested in literary fiction of any kind, with particular interest in cross-cultural, international, and identity narratives.
BIO
Jonathan Escoffery is the author of the linked story collection, If I Survive You, forthcoming 9.6.2022 from MCDxFSG. He is the winner of The Paris Review’s 2020 Plimpton Prize for Fiction and is the recipient of a 2020 National Endowment for the Arts (Prose) Literature Fellowship. His story “Under the Ackee Tree” was among the trio that won The Paris Review the 2020 ASME Award for Fiction from the American Society of Magazine Editors, and was subsequently included in The Best American Magazine Writing 2020. His most recent stories have appeared in Electric Literature, Zyzzyva and American Short Fiction.Jonathan has taught creative writing and seminars on the writer’s life at Stanford University, the University of Minnesota, the Center for Fiction, Tin House, Writers in Progress, and at GrubStreet in Boston. He has received support and honors from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, Aspen Words, Kimbilio Fiction, the Anderson Center, the Somerville Arts Council, the Writers' Room of Boston, and elsewhere. He is a graduate of the University of Minnesota’s Creative Writing MFA Program and attends the University of Southern California’s Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature Program as a Provost Fellow. He is a 2021-2023 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.
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AREAS OF INTEREST
I offer detailed consultation for full novel/short story manuscripts (line edits, structural and thematic feedback, etc.) as well as personal coaching for writers working on ongoing projects. I'm happy to consult on fiction manuscripts from any genre, but am most at home with speculative genres (sci-fi, fantasy, horror) or works that push boundaries of form and structure. If your work straddles the line between speculative and literary fiction, or if you have a hard time pinning down its genre, we're a good match. Queer writers, writers of color, or writers from other marginalized communities are especially welcome.
BIO
David Farrow is the author of the bestselling Neverglades books, a series of paranormal mystery stories which are currently being adapted as a video game. His work has appeared in Mythaxis Magazine, Haven Speculative, and is forthcoming on the NoSleep Podcast. A graduate of Lesley University's MFA program in Fiction, David has years of experience working with aspiring writers as a consultant and teacher, with an emphasis on storytelling craft across genres. He is particularly interested in speculative fiction and works that explore narratives of queerness and identity.
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BIO
Mark Fogarty was a story consultant and producer on the film, The Killers Next Door. You can check out the film here: https://killersnextdoor.com/
Mark runs the filmmaking program at Bishop Hendricken High School. The program allows students to study film every day of their High School career and combines theory with production.
Before becoming a teacher Mark worked as a video editor and cameraman for Numark, and Pet Fashion Week. He has made every kind of video imaginable, including short films, fashion videos, DJ tutorials and more.
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Literary Journalism, Memoir, Personal Essay, Book-length Nonfiction, Short Fiction
AREAS OF INTEREST
Memoir and personal essay, with themes of family, adolescence, mental health, loss; travel and food writing; fiction with a strong first-person voice. I’m drawn to writing that is lyrical, thematically taut, deeply honest, and that blends scene with an introspective impulse. I’m also happy to consult on professional matters, such as fine-tuning MFA applications and submitting work to literary journals.
BIO
Dorian Fox’s essays, articles and stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Brevity, The Rumpus, Gay Magazine, Atticus Review, Booth, SmokeLong Quarterly, Longridge Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, december, Under the Gum Tree, Gastronomica, Los Angeles Review of Books and elsewhere. He received his MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Emerson College and has lived and worked in the Boston area for many years.
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Short Fiction, The Novel, Memoir, Personal Essay, Cultural Consulting/Sensitivity Reading (Particular experience working with mental health concerns/ depictions of women/ themes of gender and sexuality)
AREAS OF INTEREST
I love working with writers at all stages of the drafting process! I am particularly interested in fiction and memoir that explores character at a psychological or interior, subjective level. My consulting approach varies from project to project, based on the needs of each individual writer, but my goal is always to help make each project the most itself it can be, to find what is already there, and help intensify or deepen this unique quality. As a reader of your work, I would pay close attention to the sentence-level, to scenes and description, as well as broader narrative or formal concerns.
In my own work, I am interested in writing about sexuality, gender, and intimacy, and the arc or shape of a life. As a bilingual Quebecois who has lived in Europe and Latin America, I am also keen to consult on writing in French and Spanish, or in helping with memoir or fiction set in countries other than the United States. Themes of exile, migration, and living between languages and cultures are also of great interest to me.
BIO
Sara Freeman is a Montreal-born fiction writer. She graduated with an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University, where she was a Writing Fellow and Teaching Fellow and the 2013 winner of the Henfield Prize. She has taught writing in Columbia's University Writing Program, at the Fashion Institute of Technology, SUNY, and Emerson College. She has received scholarships from the Breadloaf Writers' Workshop. Her debut novel, Tides, is forthcoming from Grove (US).
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TV writing, Screenwriting, Playwriting, 3-Act Structure Across Genre
AREAS OF INTEREST
Consults on TV pilots & bibles, full-length screenplays, ten-minute and full-length plays (excluding one-person shows), and solving story problems with 3-act structure (across genre including fiction, creative non-fiction and memoir, in addition to TV/screen/playwriting). Specializes in helping clients develop not only their projects but also their personal processes to maintain momentum and keep projects moving forward! (Note: Shari is not accepting new clients for fall 2022.)
BIO
Shari’s TV pilot, UNFASHIONED CREATURES, a historical romcom series based on true’ish events, with original pop music, is currently under a shopping agreement. Other TV pilots and screenplays have placed in the Academy Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowships, Page International Screenwriting Awards, Final Draft Big Break Screenwriting Competition and Austin Film Festival Screenwriting Competition.
Shari's plays have been produced at the Boston Theater Marathon and the Warner International Playwrights’ Festival, among others. THE DRIVING LESSON is published in New World Theatre’s A Solitary Voice: A Collection of Epic Monologues. I JUST LOVE THAT KEITH URBAN is published in Smith & Kraus’ The Best Ten-Minute Plays 2017. BANG FOR THE BUCK is published in the 2015 edition.
Shari is a 2022-2023 Artist-in-Residence at Emerson College where she teaches screen- and tv writing, and a member of the adjunct faculty at Lesley University, where she also received her MFA in Creative Writing, with a concentration in Writing for Stage & Screen. She has also read for the Austin Film Festival.
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Memoir, Individual Essay, Book-Length Non-Fiction, Journalism, Feature Writing.
AREAS OF INTEREST
Genres of writing I'm drawn to: Memoir; narrative nonfiction; personal narrative; personal essay; commentary/op-ed; stunt/immersion ("gonzo") journalism.Subject areas I'm drawn to: I love writing on all topics, but in particular, I'm drawn to personal essays, narrative nonfiction and stories about personal relationships, family, childhood, adolescence; travel, pop culture, geek culture, fantasy/science fiction and subcultures; overcoming family/medical trauma .I also help students reach their goals in publishing their work -- with a particular focus on the personal essay and oped --- as well as submitting work to agents and editors. I can serve as a personal writing coach and writing career planner.
BIO
A GrubStreet instructor since 2005, Ethan Gilsdorf is a journalist, memoirist, essayist, critic, poet, teacher, performer and nerd. He is the author of the travel memoir investigation Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms, named a Must-Read Book by the Massachusetts Book Awards. His essay "The Day My Mother Became a Stranger" was cited in the anthology Best American Essays 2016. His fiction, poetry and essays have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, The Quarterly, Exquisite Corpse, The North American Review, The Massachusetts Review, New York Quarterly and dozens of other literary magazines and in several anthologies, and he is the winner of the Hobblestock Peace Poetry Competition and the Esme Bradberry Contemporary Poets Prize. Gilsdorf got his start in journalism as a Paris-based travel writer and food and film critic for Time Out, Fodor's and the Washington Post. He has published hundreds of feature stories, essays, op-eds and reviews about the arts, pop, gaming and geek culture; and media and technology, and travel, in dozens of other publications worldwide including the New York Times, New York Times Book Review, Boston Globe, Boston Globe Magazine, Boston Magazine, Wired, Salon, WBUR's The Artery and Cognoscenti, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and Art New England. A regular presenter, performer, and event moderator, he frequently appears on programs such as NPR, The Discovery Channel, PBS, CBC, BBC, and the Learning Channel, and also lectures at schools, universities, festivals, conventions, and conferences worldwide, including at this TEDx event, where he nerded out about D&D. Gilsdorf is co-founder of GrubStreet's Young Adult Writers Program (YAWP), and teaches creative writing at GrubStreet, where he served on the Board of Directors for 10 years. He teaches essay, memoir, journalism and other workshops, and is also the instructor of GrubStreet's 8-month Essay Incubator program and serves as coordinator of GrubStreet's Providence program. He’s also the lead instructor for the Westerly (RI) Memoir Project. He has led writing workshops for non-profit social justice organizations and also teaches writing and Dungeons & Dragons classes for younger students, in schools, libraries and community centers. He had also served on the Boston Book Festival Program Committee and as a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics. He received his BA from Hampshire College, and an MFA in Creative Writing from Louisiana State University. Follow Ethan’s adventures at ethangilsdorf.com or Twitter @ethanfreak, and read his posts on Grub's blog, GrubWrites.
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Poetry, short fiction, memoir, personal essay, literary journalism, and book length nonfiction.
AREAS OF INTEREST
Nonfiction in the areas of education, parenting, health, and science-related topics; poetic series; lyric esssay and memoir; fiction and non-fiction with an international outlook.
BIO
Rebecca Givens Rolland is the author of The Wreck of Birds (Bauhan Publishing, 2012), which won the 2011 May Sarton New Hampshire First Book Prize, as well as the chapbook On the Refusal to Speak (dancing girl press, 2012) and the chapbook The Vine of Somewhere (dancing girl press). She has a debut work of nonfiction forthcoming from HarperOne, a division of HarperCollins. She has received the Dana Award in Short Fiction, as well as the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship, the Clapp Fellowship from Yale University, and an Academy of American Poets Prize. Her fiction has been published or upcoming in The Literary Review, North American Review, Slice, and Hobart, her poetry in The Kenyon Review, the Colorado Review, and the Cincinnati Review, and her nonfiction writing in Brain, Child Magazine and Education Week. She has a doctorate in education from Harvard and a master's degree in English from Boston University.
She teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and serves as faculty and Module Director for Scientific Communication for a writing program at Harvard Medical School. She also consults as a nationally certified speech-language pathologist.
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Short Fiction, Memoir, Journalism, Feature Writing, Young Adult Fiction, Children's Literature.
AREAS OF INTEREST
Writing for Children through Young Adult: All themes, genres and subject matter welcome. Fiction, non-fiction, historical fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, picture books, chapter books, middle grade, young adult.
BIO
Beth Raisner Glass is a children's book author, newspaper writer and teacher. She has taught in the Massachusetts public school system, and was Associate Professor of Education at Wellesley College. Her first picture book, Noises at Night, was published to wide acclaim and was featured on the Today Show's "Best Books for Children" segment. Her picture book, Blue Ribbon Dad, was published in 2011, and is now a featured book on Reading Rainbow's iPad app. Noises at Night was also selected as a Reading Rainbow ebook for their ipad app. She received her Bachelors in Education from Lesley College, and M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Lesley University. You can follow her online on her websitewww.bethglass.com and on Facebook.
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○ The Novel
○ YA and Children’s Literature
○ Genre Fiction
○ Publishing & Promotion
○ Career Development
○ Submitting to Agents/Editors
○ Intensive Line-Editing
○ Career Planning
○ Novel Planning Coaching
AREAS OF INTEREST
I love all genres of young adult and middle grade fiction, however, I’m not the best fit for a heavily sports-oriented story. For adult novels, I’m best suited to historical fiction, contemporary fiction, rom-com, psychological thrillers, women’s fiction, light science fiction and contemporary fantasy. I offer big-picture developmental edits and have a strong knack for line edits to strengthen prose. I am well-skilled in helping with plot issues and can brainstorm at the outset of a project as well as after a full draft. I also have an extensive background in copyediting.
BIO
Lori Anne Goldstein is the author of Love, Theodosia, her adult historical debut called a “Romeo and Juliet for Hamilton fans”. She is also the author of four novels for young adults, which include the Becoming Jinn contemporary fantasy series, and the contemporaries Screen Queens and Sources Say. She is a manuscript consultant and teaches creative writing and novel planning at Grub Street in Boston. She has a background in journalism, lives in the Boston area, and is mildly addicted to Instagram. Follow her at @lorigoldsteinbooks.com, www.lorigoldsteinbooks.com, and sign up for her newsletter to receive book news and events at http://eepurl.com/helMzr.
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Short Fiction, The Novel, Memoir, Personal Essay, Book-Length Non-Fiction, Young Adult & Middle Grade Children's Literature
AREAS OF INTEREST
Upmarket fiction, memoir, young adult, nonfiction health, education, psychology, with a focus on the depth and complexities of relationships, mental health, medical trauma, childhood, adolescence, family. I'm especially interested in helping writers find the right structure for their projects and dig to the heart of the emotional narratives that drive their work.
BIO
Lynne Griffin is the author of the novels Girl Sent Away (SixOneSeven Books), Sea Escape (Simon & Schuster) and Life Without Summer (St. Martin's Press), and the nonfiction guides, Let's Talk About it: Adolescent Mental Health (SixOneSeven Books) and Negotiation Generation (Penguin). In addition to teaching at Grub Street, Lynne teaches in the graduate program of family studies at Wheelock College. She is the family life contributor for Boston's Fox Morning News and writes for Psychology Today. Her short fiction, essays, and articles have appeared in Solstice, Slate, Brain Child, Parenting, Scholastic Parent & Child, The Writer, Boston Globe, The Drum Literary Magazine, Parents, and more. For more about Lynne's work, visit her website www.LynneGriffin.com.
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AREAS OF INTEREST
I'm happy to work with authors on any stage of the writing process in both fiction and nonfiction from idea generation, to drafting, to either big picture edits or line edits, as well as submission strategy, and launch/publicity strategy. My career experience has been in nonfiction book writing and journalism with a specific focus on business and technology. I also provide cultural sensitivity services with a particular interest in Asian and biracial narratives, and have spent time living in India, China, Indonesia and Malaysia.
BIO
Shalene Gupta has a BA in writing seminars and psychology from Johns Hopkins and an MS from Columbia Journalism School. In the past Shalene was a reporter on Fortune where she wrote about the intersection of diversity and tech in Silicon Valley. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Harvard Business Review, ESPN, and Kirkus Reviews. Internationally it has appeared in The New Straits Times, The Jakarta Post, and Mint. Before working as a reporter, she taught English in Malaysia on a Fulbright scholarship and wrote a book documenting the history of the Malaysian Fulbright program. She's a graduate of Grubstreet's Novel Incubator program, where she was a Pauline Scheer fellow. She's the co-author of The Power of Trust: How Companies Build It, Lose It, Regain It with Harvard Business School professor Sandra Sucher (Public Affairs, 2021). She's currently working on a YA novel and a nonfiction book on women's health (Flatiron, exp Jan 2024).
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Short Fiction, the Novel, Flash Fiction, Young Adult and Children's Lit, Genre Fiction, Screenwriting, and Career Development.
AREAS OF INTEREST
My literary interests include sci-fi, fantasy, YA, and most speculative fiction in short or long form. I'm very passionate about accurate representation of gender, race, sexuality, and ability in fiction, so I'm especially interested in narratives that want to develop their female, queer, poc, and disabled characters. I want to help genre writers find that balance between complex worldbuilding and accessibility for your readers. I can also be a resource for your personal writing goals and habits, for example if you want to have monthly/weekly check ins and discuss your work in progress and get continuous feedback. I can also help you submit to literary magazines, especially for speculative fiction. If you have writer's block or are stuck at any stage in the writing process I can help get you through that and come up with tangible steps forward to continue your work! I prefer working with long-term clients with big or multiple projects.
BIO
Marcella is a writer, dancer, and assistant pig keeper who writes speculative and feminist fiction and poetry. She holds an MFA from UMass Amherst and is the Managing Editor of Moonflake Press. She was a Tin House YA Scholar, received a Summer Literary Seminars Poetry Fellowship, and was a finalist for the Dell Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing. Her work has appeared in Variant Literature, Everyday Fiction, Okay Donkey, Phantom Kangaroo, and others.
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AREAS OF INTEREST
As a queer writer and editor, I love having the opportunity to work on queer narratives of all shapes and kinds, with a special place in my heart for speculative, fabulist, and genre fiction and work that plays with form.
BIO
Kit Haggard earned her BA from Sarah Lawrence and her MFA from Emerson College. Her fiction has appeared with The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Electric Literature, and The Masters Review, among other places; critical essays on queer literature and fabulism have appeared in a number of outlets. Haggard is the recipient of the St. Botolph Emerging Artists Award, the Rex Warner Prize, and the Nancy Lynn Schwartz Prize for Fiction. She is a developmental editor at the queer press Bywater Books and the copy editor for Ploughshares.
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Short Fiction, The Novel, YA and Children’s Lit, Genre Fiction
AREAS OF INTEREST
I read widely across genres, so I would love to help with your literary fiction, your fantasy, your mysteries, and your “I’m not sure what to call this yet.” I love working on novel manuscripts and I am obsessed with the construction of linked short story collections. I also love working on individual short stories and helping clients submit to literary magazines. I am interested in fiction for both adult and young adult markets. I especially love dark comedy, and work that walks the line between the real and the fantastic. I could talk forever about the MFA degree, and I am always happy to help with the dreaded statement of purpose.
BIO
Annie Hartnett is the author of the novels Rabbit Cake (Tin House, 2017) and Unlikely Animals (Ballantine/Random House, 2022). She has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Associates of the Boston Public Library. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island with her husband, baby, and dog
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AREAS OF INTEREST
Coaching authors in developing marketing and event strategies for their book(s). I have worked with authors of all genres and publishing paths, with a concentration in children's book and YA authors.
I also coach pre-published authors on how to think about their brand, social media platforms, and marketing connections as part of their career goals.
As a reader (and writer) I enjoy science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, literary fiction, short stories, children's and young adult literature, food writing, and personal essay. I currently have select availability for consults/full manuscript reviews in these genres.
BIO
Allison Pottern Hoch is a writer and event coach with over a decade of experience in marketing, publicity, sales, and event planning. She spent four years promoting academic titles at The MIT Press before she went to work for Wellesley Books as a bookseller and event coordinator. She organized, hosted, and promoted over 150 events during her tenure, ranging in size from intimate workshops and lunches to multi-media events with over 700 attendees. She worked with veteran authors, celebrities, and debut authors alike. She has a B.A. in Creative Writing from Carnegie Mellon University where she coordinated the Adamson Visiting Writers series. Allison is currently working on her second novel and teaching courses on writing and marketing at Grub Street and The Writer's Loft. For more information on her workshops and coaching services, visit http://www.pottern.com
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Short Fiction, The Novel, Memoir, Individual Essay.
BIO
Jessamyn Hope is an award-winning novelist and memoirist. Her novel SAFEKEEPING was a recommended read by The Boston Globe; acclaimed by The Globe and Mail; a New York Public Library Staff Pick; winner of the J.I. Segal Award in English Fiction; a finalist for both the Ribalow Prize and Paterson Fiction Prize; and found at number two on BuzzFeed's "53 Books You Won't Be Able to Put Down." Her memoirs—originally published in Ploughshares, The Common, Prism International, and other literary magazines—have received two Pushcart Prize honorable mentions, been named a Best American Notable Essay, and have been anthologized in Best Canadian Essays and The Broadview Anthology of Expository Prose. Her short stories have appeared in The Fiddlehead, The Hopkins Review, Descant, J Journal, and elsewhere. She was the Susannah McCorkle Scholar in Fiction at the Sewanee Writers Conference and has an MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Learn more at jessamynhope.com.
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Short Fiction, Novel
AREAS OF INTEREST
I am a novelist and fiction writer with an interest in all aspects of great storytelling, with an emphasis on how character, language, and story can interact to thrill readers. I’m open to any and all subject matters, though my own writing interests tend towards explorations of spirituality, the role of women in spiritual spaces, and coming-of-age stories.
I’ve worked with a number of authors to help shepherd their novels or story collections toward completed, polished drafts, in the interest of refining writers’ visions and finding the heart of a compelling project.
BIO
BLAIR HURLEY is the author of THE DEVOTED, published by W.W. Norton, which was longlisted for The Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize. Her work is published or forthcoming in Electric Literature, The Georgia Review, Ninth Letter, Guernica, Paris Review Daily, West Branch, and elsewhere. She received a 2018 Pushcart Prize and scholarships from Bread Loaf and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. She has her B.A. in English and Creative Writing from Princeton University and her M.F.A. in Fiction from NYU.
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Poetry, Memoir, Personal Essay, Publishing & Promotion, Career Development, Preparing the MFA Application, Submitting to Lit Mags, Cultural Consulting/Sensitivity Reading (for those writing about characters from the African diaspora), self-publishing guidance
AREAS OF INTEREST
I am a writer, editor, and educator with nearly 10 years of experience in uplifting the unique voices of writers while helping them reach their goals. My editing, consulting, and workshops have helped writers (of all genres) prepare for publication, MFA programs, fellowships and more. I am also very interested in helping writers of color succeed and would love to consult, workshop, and edit work, aimed towards inclusion and enhancing the visibility of BIPOC writers. I offer a range of $100-$150 per hour for consulting services, along with customized rates based on the project and the writer's goals.
BIO
Tatiana (she/her/hers) is a writer, artist and educator. Her writing explores identity, trauma, especially inherited trauma, and what it means to heal. Her work was selected as a finalist for the Black Warrior Review Poetry Contest (2020), the Solstice Literary Poetry Prize (2020) and received honorable mention for the Auburn Witness Poetry Prize in the Southern Humanities Review (2019). She’s also received honorable mention for the 2021 and 2020 Academy of American Poets Prize and is a 2017 Pushcart Prize nominee. She completed her MFA in Creative Writing at Emerson College and is a 2021 Tin House Scholar. She also serves on the board for VIDA: Literary Arts. Find her work in or forthcoming at Ploughshares, Kenyon Review, Pleiades, and others. She’s represented by Lauren Scovel at Laura Gross Literary.
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Memoir, Poetry, Personal Essay, Graphic Novel/Comics, YA and Children’s Literature, Publishing & Promotion, Career Development
AREAS OF INTEREST
I’m passionate about books and writing. I’m interested in the author’s truth. I need to read the story behind the story. As a consultant, clients can expect me to be engaged with their work, provide honest feedback and expert guidance. I’m an avid reader and enjoy a good story. I have experience with articles, essays and research papers. Clients will receive reliable information to help their creative career.
BIO
Shirley Jones-Luke is a poet and a writer. Ms. Luke also provides public speaking services. Shirley lives in the Lower Mills section of Dorchester. She is a Boston Public Schools teacher of English Language Arts. Ms. Luke has an MA in English from UMass Boston and an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. Her work has been published in several journals and magazines, such as Anti-Heroin Chic, BlazeVOX, Cadaverous, Deluge, For the Sonorous and Long Leaf Review. Shirley has participated in conferences such as The Muse & The Marketplace, Breadloaf, Tin House and Voices of Our Nation (VONA).
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Short Fiction, The Novel, Memoir, Individual Essay, Feature Writing.
AREAS OF INTEREST
Literary fiction, relationship and emotion-centered issues; lifestyle subjects including health, people profiles, education, business, travel, home design, family, spirituality, music, aging. Please contact for rates and availability.
BIO
Jessica is the author of the two novels, a short story collection, and co-author of a business memoir. Her debut novel, Night Swim, was a national bestseller. Her follow-up novel, Strangers In Budapest (Algonquin Books), was an Indie Next Pick, a Southern Independent bestseller, and selected as a best new book by Entertainment Weekly, Real Simple, Chicago Review of Books, and others. Her story collection, Women In Bed, includes stories that have garnered awards and a listing in The Pushcart Prize under 100 Outstanding Writers. Other honors include: a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a Joan Jakobson Scholarship from Wesleyan Writers Conference, and a 2022 fellowship from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts (VCCA). She has written more than a 100 features for nat'l magazines including The Boston Globe, Design New England, and O, The Oprah Magazine. The memoir she co-authored and sold on proposal--Time to Make the Donuts--is the definitive story of Dunkin' Donuts founder William Rosenberg's extraordinary life. She has taught writing at Boston University, Brown University, U. of Miami, FL, and selected fiction for Agni magazine, Ploughshares, and The Atlantic. Recent essays have appeared in WBUR's Cognoscenti, one of which was included in ALONE TOGETHER: Love, Grief, and Comfort in the Time of COVID-19, an anthology which won the 2020 Washington State Book Prize in Non-fiction. Jessica especially enjoys helping writers find their truest voice in their writing and coaching them through challenging points of resistance or blind spots. A tenth anniversary edition of Night Swim is forthcoming in February 2023. She has also just completed a new novel. For additional links and details, please visit her website: www.jessicakeener.com.
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Social Media Training, Social Media Strategy
BIO
Crystal King is a 30-year marketing, social media and communications veteran, freelance writer and Pushcart-nominated poet. She is the author of the FEAST OF SORROW, about the ancient Roman gourmand, Apicius, and THE CHEF'S SECRET about the famous Renaissance chef Bartolomeo Scappi. Currently Crystal works as a social media professor for HubSpot, a leading provider of Inbound marketing software. Crystal has taught classes in writing, creativity, and social media at Harvard Extension School, Boston University, Mass College of Art, UMass Boston and GrubStreet writing center. A former co-editor of the online literary arts journal Plum Ruby Review, Crystal received her MA in Critical and Creative Thinking from UMass Boston, where she developed a series of exercises and writing prompts to help fiction writers in media res. Find her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or at her website: crystalking.com
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Short Fiction, The Novel, Memoir
AREAS OF INTEREST
I love working with writers. I've spent several years working with aspiring and established authors alike. My goal is to get your manuscript to be the best possible version of itself. I see this as a diagnostic process, like a doctor listening to a patient, and I find it incredibly rewarding. My favorite moment is when a writer says to me, "This is how my book was always supposed to be." The actual content of your work—whether it's a novel about immigrants, a literary thriller, or a deeply personal memoir—isn't what speaks to me. The book's potential (its heartbeat) does.
BIO
Maya Shanbhag Lang is the author of What We Carry: A Memoir (Random House, April 2020), and The Sixteenth of June: A Novel. Her memoir was a NYT Editor's Pick. Her novel was long listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Winner of the Neil Shepard Prize in Fiction, Lang has received support from the Rona Jaffe Foundation and Bread Loaf. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature and is the daughter of Indian immigrants.
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Children's Poetry, Picture books, Middle Grade and YA fiction, Thrillers, Mysteries and Fantasy.
AREAS OF INTEREST
Nature, magic, fairy tales, post-modernism, pop culture, family, childhood, tween and teens, as well as all aspects of Kid-lit, historical fiction, fantasy, thrillers, cozies, and detective fiction.
Doug Atkins, sci-fi thriller writer and client said,
“When I first started my session with Cheryl, I thought the whole thing would be a big let-down and my writing effort over the past two years was all wasted. But as we were talking, her creative wheels started spinning. She said to concentrate on my MC’s problem and because my hook read like a mystery, think about querying mystery agents. Finally she made what I think is an absolutely brilliant suggestion. I have PTSD due to some past tragic events in my life. Cheryl said, “why don’t I give my MC PTSD? I could speak from experience and it would add an entirely new dimension of authority to my MC. Write about what you know .” That’s something I never thought of, and thanks to Cheryl, that’s exactly what I’ve already started doing.
She’s the best money I’ve spent on writing in quite some time.”
BIO
Cheryl spent much of her youth migrating with her family to places like The Hague and London. She was a biotech attorney for 25 years before she decided to write full-time. Following the award of her MFA from Lesley University, Cambridge, MA , she taught creative writing at Lesley and at Grub Street in Boston, and now writes and consults from her home in MA. Her debut picture book, the acclaimed Dario and the Whale (Albert Whitman) released in 2016, followed by Elephants Walk Together (Albert Whitman, 2017). In 2023, she'll launch her newest picture book, Featherita (Pegasus Publishers), along with a new co-creative venture called Write On Productions, and the easy-to-follow self-guided course: Writing Kidlit 101. You can find out more about Cheryl at target="_blank">www.cheryllawtonmalone.com, on Twitter at @MaloneLawton and on Facebook as Cheryl Lawton Malone Author. "https://linktr.ee/cheryl.lawtonmalon"
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The Novel, Personal Essay
AREAS OF INTEREST
I'm interested in literary fiction, complex characters, international settings, and political novels. My background as a former academic roots me in the long tradition of the novel, so I can offer good guidance to writers working with novel form either to tweak or modify established structures. I'm also especially interested in coaching writing and can work with writers at any level to help them devise short-term and long-term motivational plans.
BIO
Henriette Lazaridis' novel TERRA NOVA is forthcoming from Pegasus Books in December 2022. She is the author of the best-selling novel THE CLOVER HOUSE. Her short work has appeared in publications including Elle, Forge, Pangyrus, Narrative Magazine, The New York Times, New England Review, and The Millions, and has earned her a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artists Grant. Henriette earned degrees in English literature from Middlebury College, Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar, and the University of Pennsylvania. She teaches at GrubStreet in Boston and runs the Krouna Writing Workshop in Greece.
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The Novel, Memoir, Book-length Nonfiction
AREAS OF INTEREST
I love working with writers. Sometimes a book doesn't quite work because the structure isn't right--and structure is easy to learn. Sometimes it's a problem of voice or character arc or pacing. I consider every manuscript a beautiful puzzle to solve, and my job is to help you bring forth the diamonds that I know are sprinkled there. I read as both a writer, a teacher, a book critic and a voracious reader. I'm warm, supportive, funny, and I give you tools you can use on every other book you write. Plus, we have video chats if you would like them. I'm partial to any sort of memoir, and any sort of fiction except experimental or fantasy.
I charge $90 per hour, which includes detailed track changing and comments on the work, at least a 4-page editorial letter, and 2 hour long video discussions about the book. Of course you have unlimited email contact with me throughout the process.
BIO
Caroline Leavitt is the New York Times Bestselling author of Is This Tomorrow and Pictures of You, and eight other novels. Is This Tomorrow was also an Indie Next Pick, a Jewish Book Council Bookclub Pick, long listed for the Maine Readers Prize,a Best Book of the Year from January Magazine, and a San Francisco Chronicle Lit Pick. Is ThisTomorrow was on the Best Books of the Year Lists from the San Francisco Chronicle, Kirkus Reviews and Bookmarks Magazine, as well as being a Costco "Pennie's Pick". Her new novel, Cruel Beautiful World, will be published October 4, 2016 from Algonquin Books. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times "Modern Love," the New York Times Book Review, More, Redbook, Salon, and more. She is a book critic for People Magazine, The Boston Globe, and the San Francisco Chronicle. The recipient of a New York Foundation of the Arts Grant in Fiction, she was also a finalist in the Sundance Screenwriting Lab and the Nickelodeon Writing Fellowships. She teaches novel writing online at Stanford and at UCLA Extension Writers Program, as well as working for agents and private clients. Visit her at www.carolineleavitt.com.
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Memoir, Individual Essay, Feature Writing.
AREAS OF INTEREST
Identity, sense of place, writing about the Midwest/regional writing, sports writing, gay and lesbian topics, coming of age, Jewish identity and culture. Performance pieces (i.e. spoken word and developing a one-person show), consulting on self-publishing.
BIO
Judah Leblang is a Boston-based writer, teacher and storyteller. His radio essays have appeared on almost 200 NPR and ABC-network stations around the US, and on several college and community radio stations. His column, "Life in the Slow Lane," appears regularly in Bay Windows, a Boston-area newspaper. The second edition of his memoir, "Finding My Place: One Man's Journey from Cleveland to Boston and Beyond," was published in 2013.
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Short Fiction, The Novel, Genre Fiction, Memoir, Personal Essay
AREAS OF INTEREST
I consult on short fiction, flash fiction, novels and creative nonfiction of various lengths, with an avid interest in literary and speculative fiction. I strive to work empathetically with authors, and give particular attention to authors’ creative intentions and considers how they might be more effectively achieved through specific elements of literary craft. To demystify the submission process, I also gladly provide walkthroughs of the Submittable online submission platform or recommends resources for finding calls for submission. For assistance on projects that may require more time to develop, I can work with authors on a regular basis with weekly, bi-weekly or monthly coaching sessions.
BIO
Albert Liau is an editor at Atmosphere Press who works closely with authors to hone their novels for publication. Albert is also a contributing editor at CRAFT Literary where he provides feedback on submissions and co-authors the column “The Art of the Opening,” an ongoing series that looks at how the beginnings of stories achieve their effects.
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Short Fiction, The Novel, Literary Journalism (e.g. Op-eds, etc.), Memoir, Personal Essay, Book-Length Nonfiction, Genre Fiction, Screenwriting/Playwriting
AREAS OF INTEREST
I began my writing exploration with fiction, but have crossed all genre lines in favor of telling my stories in the best possible way. This includes establishing great characters who have depth and live in fleshed-out worlds. It's also important to me to treat these stories with sensitivity and inclusion in mind. As a former college first-year writing instructor and current copyeditor in the publishing field, attention to detail rounds out my areas of interest and importance as a writer.
BIO
Zyanya Avila Louis received her MFA in Fiction from Emerson College and now teaches in their First Year Writing Program. In her time working with students at Emerson, she as developed a passion for working with international students, multilingual students, and other diverse student populations, which is born from being bilingual herself. She loves writing and reading fiction and non-fiction, and occasionally enjoys poetry. Zyanya was born and raised in El Paso, TX and now lives in Quincy, MA with her husband, their demon cat, and her growing library of books.
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Short Fiction.
AREAS OF INTEREST
Literary, mystery, and particularly experimental fictions, loosely defined.
BIO
Ron MacLean is author of the story collections We Might as Well Light Something On Fire and Why the Long Face? and the novels Headlong and Blue Winnetka Skies. MacLean’s fiction has appeared widely in magazines including GQ, Narrative, Fiction International, and elsewhere. He is a recipient of the Frederick Exley Award for Short Fiction and a multiple Pushcart Prize nominee. He holds a Doctor of Arts from the University at Albany, SUNY, and has been a proud member of team Grub since 2004.
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Poetry, Author Website Production
AREAS OF INTEREST
Poetry and folklore, folk narrative, oral history, lyric poetry, narrative poetry, prose poetry, hybrid forms, naturalism, surrealism
BIO
Kentucky poet, folklorist, naturalist, and educator Sarah McCartt-Jackson is the author of the award-winning poetry collection Stonelight, which won the Phillip H. McMath Award in Poetry, the Weatherford Award in Poetry, and the Airlie Prize. Her chapbooks include Calf Canyon, Vein of Stone, and Children Born on the Wrong Side of the River, which won the Mary Ballard Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared in Indiana Review, Bellingham Review, Journal of American Folklore, NANO Fiction, The Maine Review, among others, and she has exhibited her poetry in collaboration with visual and performance artists at several galleries. She has received support from the Kentucky Arts Council, Barbara Deming Memorial Fund for Women, and Kentucky Foundation for Women.
In addition to teaching poetry, Sarah has served as folklorist and oral historian for Great Smoky Mountains National Park, assistant curator for Mammoth Cave National Park, and artist-in-residence for the Great Smoky Mountains, Catoctin Mountain, and Acadia National Parks.
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Short Fiction, Literary Journalism, Memoir, Personal Essay, Book-Length Nonfiction
AREAS OF INTEREST
I’m eager to consult on many forms of creative nonfiction, including the personal essay, memoir, literary journalism, flash nonfiction, and writing about literature. I’m also very happy to assist with flash fiction.
My particular interests include braided essays and memoirs, and writing about trauma, family, mental illness, race, gender, sexuality, and class. I very much enjoy character-based, scene-driven prose.
I’m particularly excited about writing that engages and interrogates the personal narrative amidst the backdrop of historical, political, and social contexts, queer stories, and writing about the body and identity.
I have a wide range of experience in revising, editing, and publishing—and teaching writing and literature in college and community classrooms—and can help writers prepare writing samples for MFA applications, fellowships, and grants.
BIO
Caitlin McGill’s work appears in Blackbird, The Chattahoochee Review, Gastronomica, Iron Horse, The Los Angeles Review, McSweeney's, Vox, and others. She was a finalist for the 2021 Chautauqua Janus Prize, and winner of the 2020 Indiana Review Creative Nonfiction Prize and the 2014 Crab Orchard Review Rafael Torch Nonfiction Award. She has been a writer-in-residence at the The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Newnan ArtRez, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and is a 2016 St. Botolph Emerging Artist Award winner. She has also received scholarships and grants from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Emerson College, and the Somerville Arts Council. A resident of Lynn, MA, she teaches at Emerson College, GrubStreet, and Harvard University, and is a workshop facilitator for Writers Without Margins. She’s writing a Miami-based, coming-of-age memoir about hiding the truth, for six years, about her abusive, drug-addled relationship with an older man and his tenuous tether to reality. Two essays from her book were named Notables in The Best American Essays series. You can find her on Twitter @caitlindmcgill, or at caitlinmcgill.com.
For more information please visit caitlinmcgill.com & follow her on Twitter @caitlindmcgill.
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Short Fiction, The Novel, Memoir, Individual Essay, Ghost Stories.
AREAS OF INTEREST
I am happy to consult on any form of literary fiction, creative non-fiction, and writing about literature, art, theatre or music. My particular interests are dramatic novels and long stories which relish style, language, setting, and deep character, coming-of-age narratives, family-based memoir, the travel essay, writing about illness and narrative medicine, eerie stories, and literary biography. I have broad experience and a successful track record in editing fiction and non-fiction books and articles for publication, and can help writers choose, edit and prepare creative writing samples for MFA applications, fellowships and grants. I have been thrilled, in recent years, to see so many of the authors I have coached and edited at GrubStreet published in journals and imprints of note and admitted to competitive creative writing programs around the country.
BIO
After completing an M.Phil in English Literature at Oxford, Nicole Miller worked at The New Yorker and The Oxford English Dictionary, where she is a longstanding scholarly reader in etymology. Her short stories have appeared twice in The May Anthology of Short Stories, edited by Jill Paton Walsh and Sebastian Faulks, and her creative nonfiction won the Dorothy Cappon prize for the essay in New Letters magazine in 2014. An excerpt of her novel appeared in Defying Gravity ed. Richard Peabody, and her long form essays have been published in New Letters, Arts & Letters, The Switchgrass Review, and Litmag. "Last Night at the Breakers" gained honorable mention in Best of American Essays 2016, ed. Jonathan Franzen. She held the Graduate Fellowship in Creative Writing at Emerson College, Boston, gaining her MFA in 2012. In 2012, she was also awarded a Ph.D in Victorian Literature from University College, London. For a decade, she edited faculty manuscripts and conducted research on Renaissance literature for the faculty of Harvard’s English Department in Cambridge, and at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. Since moving to D.C. in 2014, Nicole has taught creative writing at Kingston University, Kingston-upon-Thames, UK, the Writer’s Center in Bethesda/ Hill Center in Capitol Hill, the nineteeth and twentieth century British novel, ranging from Charles Dickens to Lawrence Durrell, and the twenty-first century update of the traditional bildungsroman; more recently she has expanded into comparative literature, teaching the novels of Thomas Mann and the short stories of Anton Chekhov at Politics and Prose bookstore. She has attended residencies and received scholarships to attend writer's conferences at Vermont Student Center, Wesleyan Writer's Conference, Tin House, the Iceland Writers Retreat and the Arteles Colony of Finland. Her interests span the novel, short story, ghost story, personal essay, travel essay, criticism of the visual arts, theatre, and music, memoir, immigrant and post-colonial narratives, tales of illness and healing, and the translation of Modern Greek poetry.
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Short Fiction, The Novel, Memoir.
AREAS OF INTEREST
Literary fiction and personal narrative nonfiction on all topics, including but not limited to work that takes on travel, war issues, science and medicine, illness, grieving, music, and suspense. Please contact for rates.
BIO
Jenny Moore has provided thoughtful, constructive critiques to writers for two decades. Since earning her MFA at the New School in 2000, Jenny has honed her critiquing and writing chops in master-level workshops and one-on-one work with writers at every stage of the publishing process. Currently she’s working on her second novel and is an editor for literary, cultural, and financial publications. She is a contributor to the anthologies Spent: Exposing Our Complicated Relationship with Shopping (Seal Press, 2014) and Walk With Us: How the West Wing Changed Our Lives (CH Books, 2016). Her writing also has appeared in journals and online, as well as in Boston City Hall and Grub’s own Free Press.
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Short Fiction, the Novel, Literary Journalism, Memoir, Personal Essay, Book-length Nonfiction
AREAS OF INTEREST
Everyone has the resources within themselves to get to a polished, dynamic manuscript that reflects their ideas, but sometimes writing can feel unwieldy, or creating a structure is daunting, or maybe help is needed to mine for material that sings and resonates for both the writer and the reader. The answer can be in asking the right question, or offering an alternative solution, or it can be in finding magic and atmosphere at the level of the sentence. This is an exciting time to be writing fiction or memoir because both genres have developed into open territories and almost anything goes—meaning the possibilities are many and the writer can learn to play at the same time as accomplish the work. I can help the writer develop their project so it’s aligned with what they really want to express.
My specific interests are memoir, creative nonfiction essays, literary journalism, and fiction that ranges from short stories, including flash, to novels. Style can range from realism to fabulism, as I love the excitement of writing that pushes boundaries, as well as traditional narratives. Subjects could be personal history, special needs, the natural world, or ideas related to science, art and culture, and, whether it’s expressed through fiction or memoir, writing that reaches toward the mysteries of being human.
BIO
Maria Mutch is the author of Know the Night, a memoir that was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Awards and chosen by Oprah.com as one of its "Memoirs Too Powerful to Put Down," as well as the story collection, When We Were Birds. Her debut novel, Molly Falls to Earth, will be released in April, 2020. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in Poets & Writers, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Normal School and Guernica, among others. She practices Vipassana meditation and is currently in the teacher-training Mindfulness Meditation program through All That Matters Yoga Center, under Erin Sharaf. She lives with her husband and two sons, one of whom has Down Syndrome and autism, in Rhode Island.
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Memoir, Personal Essay, Short Fiction
AREAS OF INTEREST
I'm particularly interested in cross-cultural narratives, narratives that aim to represent marginalized communities, stories about trauma, mental illness, identity, war, and mother/daughter relationships. I have extensive experience editing and giving detailed feedback on memoir and personal essays, and have helped students apply for graduate school and write query letters to agents.
BIO
Rani is a professor of Creative Writing Ethnic American and Postcolonial Literature at Emerson College and Curry College. She has taught at institutions such as Harvard, Yale, and Johns Hopkins University. Her work has appeared in ELLE.com, Al Jazeera English, The New York Times Book Review, Refinery29, Salon, Longreads, Catapult, The Rumpus, amongst other places. Additionally, she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her essay in Redivider and her essay in Longreads. She was awarded a 2017 Archie D. and Bertha H. Walker Scholarship at the Fine Arts Works Center in Provincetown, MA. She is a 2017 Pauline Scheer Fellow and graduate of the Memoir Incubator at Grub Street working on a transnational memoir about fractured identity and her relationship with her mentally ill Bengali immigrant mother. She is represented by Erin Harris at Folio Literary Management.
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Individual Essay, Book-Length Non-Fiction.
AREAS OF INTEREST
Science, brain science, education, music, medicine, health, parenting, politics.
BIO
Dr. Ogi Ogas is a Research Fellow at the Harvard University School of Education, where he serves as Director of the Dark Horse Project. He co-authored the books A Billion Wicked Thoughts (Penguin, 2010), Shrinks (Little Brown, 2015), The End of Average (Harper One, 2016), The Drug Hunters (Arcade, 2016), and Dark Horse (Harper One, 2018). Shrinks was longlisted for the PEN Literary Science Writing Award and is currently being developed as a documentary series by PBS. He is presently working on the neuroscience book The Journey of the Mind (Norton, 2021) and a book about music entitled This is What It Sounds Like (Norton, 2022) .
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The Novel, Memoir, Book-Length Nonfiction, YA Literature
AREAS OF INTEREST
As a literary agent, I am familiar with both the publishing industry and the craft of writing. I know what editors and other agents are looking for in a manuscript or proposal and am pleased to provide an array of editorial services to help you give your work its best shot at publication. Please send me an email description of your project and the kind of assistance you need. If the project seems like a possible fit for me, I will request an excerpt to determine whether or not I am the right editor for your work. My editorial experience is wide-ranging but some topics do fall outside my field of expertise or interest and I will not take on a project that I do not feel I can enhance or help to develop. Rates vary by service.
Thematic interests include but are not limited to: contemporary + historical fiction; family relationship + coming-of-age stories; history + current affairs; social + cultural issues; memoir; food.
BIO
Amaryah Orenstein, founder and president of GO Literary, a Boston-based boutique agency, is thrilled to help writers bring their ideas to life. Aiming to give voice to a broad range of perspectives, she represents a wide array of literary and commercial fiction and narrative nonfiction, and is always looking for works that wed beautiful writing with a strong narrative and tackle big issues in engaging, accessible, and even surprising ways. Amaryah began her career at the Laura Gross Literary Agency in 2009 and, prior to that, she worked as an Editorial Assistant at various academic research foundations, including the Tauber Institute, where she edited books for Brandeis University Press/University Press of New England. Originally from Montreal, Canada, Amaryah earned a BA at McGill University before coming to the United States to pursue graduate studies in American History. She completed an MA at Ohio University’s Contemporary History Institute and a PhD at Brandeis University, and currently serves as Co-President of the Boston chapter of the Women’s National Book Association.
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Short Fiction, Flash Fiction, The Novel, The Novella or Short Novel, Memoir, Individual Essay.
BIO
Catherine Parnell is the author of the memoir The Kingdom of His Will (Arrowsmith Press, 2007), and her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Barnhouse, Redivider, The Southampton Review, Post Road, The Baltimore Review, slush pile, roger, Dos Passos Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Stone’s Throw Magazine, and Consequence Magazine, among others. Her essays and reviews have appeared in numerous newspapers and newsletters. She’s a contrubuting editor for Salamander and the senior associate editor for Consequence Magazine. She received her BA from Boston University and her MFA from Bennington College. She recently completed a collection of short stories and is working on a novella.
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BIO
Kristen was the first graduate of both the Memoir and Essay Incubators. She's a graduate student at Lesley University, where she's earning her licensure to teach middle-school English. Kristen kicked off GrubStreet's Book Club in the Seaport. She instructs adults in the micro-flash form; the memoir proposal; the hermit crab essay; and the flash essay, and youth on YAWP Saturdays and summer camp. Kristen was a 2020 winner of micro-flash contest Boston in 100 Words. Her work has been published in the Boston Globe
(where she was a singles columnist); New York Times; Creative Nonfiction; Flyway Journal of Writing & the Environment; and Solstice Literary Magazine. She edits the Writing Life column for Hippocampus Magazine and has presented at HippoCamp, Gotham Writers Workshop, More to the Story, and the Boston Book Festival. Kristen is a founder of Tell-All Boston, the city's only nonfiction literary series. Through her service Title Doctor, she has titled more than a dozen works of fiction, nonfiction, memoir, a craft book, a memoir-in-essays, and The Writer’s 2021 contest-winning essay. She seeks representation for her memoir and good coffee everywhere.
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Short Fiction, Flash Fiction, The Novel, The Novella or Short Novel, Poetry, Memoir, Individual Essay, Book-Length Non-Fiction, Genre Fiction (Sci-Fi, Fantasy, etc.), Young Adult Fiction, Children's Literature, Line-edits, copyediting
AREAS OF INTEREST
I'm interested in all forms of story, including speculative fiction (fantasy, weird fiction, horror, and other genre fiction), literary fiction, cross-genre/hybrid writing (or any writing that plays with form), fiction (long and short form) and nonfiction. I'm most excited by writing that plays with form, and that critiques and is concerned with gender, sexuality, popular culture, memory, and history.
BIO
KL Pereira's chapbook, Impossible Wolves was published by Deathless Press is 2013. Her fiction, poetry, and nonfiction are forthcoming or appear in The Drum Literary Magazine, Shimmer Zine, Lightning Cake, The Golden Key, Innsmouth Free Press, Innsmouth Magazine, Mythic Delirium, Jabberwocky, The Medulla Review, Bitch Magazine and other publications. Pereira’s work on fairy tales, sexuality, Wonder Woman, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer are featured on Studio 360 and other radio programs, cited in numerous publications, and assigned in courses all over the United States and Canada. Find Pereira online on klpereira.com and @kl_pereira.
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CONTACT
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Short Fiction, The Novel, Memoir, Personal Essay, Genre Fiction
AREAS OF INTEREST
I’ve provided consultation services on everything from poetry chapbooks to book-length academic projects to historical novels published by New York Times-bestselling authors. I'm particularly interested in helping clients who wish, with their writing, to shed light in these dark times. To that end, I'm drawn to stories from and about under-represented groups. I love working with clients operating within different genres, as I believe stories can be compelling whether they take place down the street today, 50 years ago, or on another planet. Come talk to me about your literary novel, your slipstream flash fiction, your comedic memoir, or your historical novella!
I also offer cultural consulting & sensitivity reading; as a queer black woman who immigrated from Jamaica when I was young, I grew up noticing certain things about American culture(s) that my education and reading have helped me to name, enabling me to guide other writers who want to respect our complex human community.
BIO
Maria Pinto is an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in Frigg, Necessary Fiction, The Toast, Word Riot and elsewhere. She studied Creative Writing and Women’s and Gender Studies at Brandeis University, where she was awarded the Dafna Gesundheit Prize for Fiction. She was an Ivan Gold Fellow at the Writers’ Room of Boston shortly after graduation, and in the summer of 2017 was selected to spend a month with four other writers in the Berkshires as a resident at The Mastheads, working in a studio on Herman Melville’s estate. When she’s not reading, writing her second novel, teaching creative writing, or freelance editing, she can be found in the woods exercising her left brain functions by studying fungi as an amateur mycologist.
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short fiction, the novel, memoir, personal essay and book-length nonfiction.
AREAS OF INTEREST
Thematic interests include but are not limited to contemporary fiction, women's issues, travel, class, humor, race. Please contact for rates.
BIO
Heidi Pitlor has been the series editor of The Best American Short Stories since 2007. Previously, she was a senior editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for ten years. She is the author of the novels The Birthdays (W.W. Norton, 2006) and The Daylight Marriage (Algonquin, 2015). Her writing has appeared in Ploughshares, The New York Times, The Boston Globe and many other places. She will join the faculty of the low-residency MFA program at Regis College in Denver in 2017.
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Novel, Short Fiction, Personal Essay
AREAS OF INTEREST
I help people write stories that matter.
BIO
Andrew holds an MFA in Fiction from New York University, as well as graduate and undergraduate degrees in Philosophy from the Graduate Center at CUNY and William & Mary, respectively. His writing has appeared in So It Goes (the Kurt Vonnegut Memorial Library's annual journal) and Oblong Magazine. An English Instructor with the Veterans Upward Bound program at Suffolk University, Andrew reads fiction and creative nonfiction for Harvard Review. Currently, he's working on his first novel, about a trauma survivor's journey to give voice to the unspeakable. After ten years abroad in Berlin and London, Andrew and his family moved to Brookline, Massachusetts, in 2018.
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BIO
Sophie Powell grew up in London and on a sheep farm in Wales. She is the author of the novel The Mushroom Man (Putnam Penguin) which received glowing reviews, including one from the New York Times Book Review, and which has been translated into several languages. She has also published short stories, including one in a collection selected by Zadie Smith. With a BA in Classics from Cambridge University and an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University, she is especially fond of writing that involves myth, magic and fantasy. She has taught Creative Writing at Boston College, New York University, George Washington University and on seminars abroad, as well as in prisons and libraries. For more about Sophie, visit www.meetsophiepowell.com.
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Short Fiction, The Novel, Literary Journalism (e.g. op-eds), Memoir, Personal Essay, Book-length Nonfiction
AREAS OF INTEREST
Women's and commercial fiction, memoir, voice-driven narratives, inspirational stories, race/cultural explorations, pop culture, anything that will make me laugh...or cry.
BIO
For the last fifteen years, I’ve had the privilege of discovering and publishing incredible books and being able to work with amazing writers to develop their craft and deliver their stories to the world. I’ve been an in-house editor at various Big Five imprints, including Doubleday, Broadway, Hyperion, and, most recently, as a Senior Editor at Simon and Schuster. I’ve also worked independently, contracting with publishers, agents and writers for editorial work, content development and ghostwriting. And, I’m starting a new journey on the “other side,” having sold two novels of my own (written with my amazing friend and writing partner, Jo Piazza.) The first, We Are Not Like Them, will be published by HarperCollins/Morrow in Spring 2021.
Throughout my publishing career, I’ve worked on a diverse range of projects across many categories, including many New York Times bestsellers. The through line to all of my work is a commitment to champion accomplished story-telling, distinctive voices, and narratives that drive discussion and offer emotional resonance and inspiration.
Stories can change hearts, minds— and the world. Hokey, but true and I’m committed to delivering (and helping others deliver) those sorts of stories to readers who are eager for them. Perhaps I can help you?
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The Novel, The Novella or Short Novel, Genre Fiction (Thriller, Suspense, Mystery, etc.), Genre Fiction (Sci-Fi, Fantasy, etc.), Young Adult Fiction.
AREAS OF INTEREST
Character-based, imaginative fiction; dialogue and description; visual and performing arts, pop culture, camp and kitsch; revision technique. I love stories about outsiders, weirdos and dreamers, rendered vividly through close attention to language, details and style.
BIO
Kate Racculia is a writer who called Boston home for many years and currently resides in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She is the author of the novels THIS MUST BE THE PLACE and BELLWEATHER RHAPSODY, winner of the American Library Association’s Alex Award. Her third novel, TUESDAY MOONEY TALKS TO GHOSTS, was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in October 2019. You can find her online at www.kateracculia.com.
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The Novel, The Novella, Personal Essays, Memoir, Genre Fiction (Sci-Fi, Speculative), Screenwriting, YA and Children's Literature, Cultural Consulting/Sensitivity Reading (higher rate applies)
BIO
Asata Radcliffe is a writer and multimedia artist. She received her MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from Antioch University. She writes fiction, speculative/science fiction, and essays. She has writing that has appeared in anthologies and literary journals, including her work in The Chart Anthology, and Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia Butler (The Collection), released by Twelfth Planet Press. She currently enjoys teaching Creative Writing at GrubStreet and working as a Developmental Editor for Atmosphere Press where she supports authors who write in fiction, nonfiction (memoir), and sci-fi/fantasy.
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Novel, Movie, Memoir, Short fiction, Live storytelling, Corporate storytelling
AREAS OF INTEREST
Chemistry of story or Aristotle's "pity, fear, catharsis" arc that Hollywood uses. Story BEATs in novels and movies. Screenwriting and adaptation of books into films. Editing upmarket novels with a commercial hook focusing on character and plot. Story producing and consulting on documentaries and feature films with the “hero’s journey.” Coaching live storytelling. Organizing storytelling events for nonprofit and corporate events for entertainment and organizational change. High-end translation and subtitling of Persian (Farsi and Dari) and Pashtu languages. Familiar with InQscribe, Avid, Premiere, and Da Vinci Resolve editing software.
BIO
Javed Rezayee is the Story Producer of the National Geographic film Retrograde and TIME’s Ayenda. He’s a writer, developmental editor, and script and story consultant. He’s worked with Academy Award-nominated director Matthew Heineman and Oscars-winning director Carol Dysinger. Other works include Frontline’s Opium Brides, One Bullet Afghanistan, and Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You’re a Girl). Javed’s writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Hill, and Open Society Foundations. He’s authored an introduction to The Forbidden Reel (Daylight 2014) and a few short stories. He is currently working on a memoir, novels, and screenplays. Javed graduated from Tufts University in 2010, as an adult student, where he now teaches a featured course on the art of live storytelling: The Power of Story.
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AREAS OF INTEREST
I consult on speculative fiction, poetry, and literary translation. Speculative Fiction: science-fiction, fantasy, and related subgenres that explore the possible and impossible (urban fantasy, dark fantasy, steampunk, cyberpunk, space opera, etc.). Novel-length manuscripts welcome, as well as individual short works or collections of short works. Poetry: traditional form, poetry manuscripts, chapbooks, free verse, prose poetry, experimental forms, text in public space. Translation: Spanish/English, fiction or poetry in translation, individual pieces or manuscripts in translation. I am also happy to offer coachings for works-in-progress.
BIO
Sara Daniele Rivera is a Cuban/Peruvian writer, artist, educator, and translator from Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her poetry and speculative fiction have appeared in The Loft Anthology, Origins Journal, DIALOGIST, Storyscape Journal, Embark Journal, The Green Mountains Review, The Breakbeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext, in Boston's City Hall as part of the 2015 and 2017 Mayor's Poetry Program, and elsewhere. She was awarded a 2017 St. Botolph's Emerging Artist Award in Literature and won the 2019 Stephen Dunn Prize in Poetry from Solstice Literary Magazine. Her book of translated poems by the Peruvian poet Blanca Varela (The Blinding Star: Selected Poems of Blanca Varela) will be published in 2021 by Tolsun Books.
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Short fiction, The novel, Memoir, Genre fiction, YA
AREAS OF INTEREST
Literary fiction, with a particular interest in climate fiction, nature writing, speculative fiction, and dystopia, as well as work that's cross-cultural, international, and/or has a strong sense of place. I'm British, currently living in Los Angeles, and I've previously lived in Argentina and New York, so I have a good handle on those cultures and the experience of cultural displacement, as well as having fluent Spanish and good French. I'm also sober, and interested in work that explores addiction and mental illness. And I write nonfiction about gender and feminism, and like to help people to explore cultural and personal power dynamics in their writing. Underlying all these thematic interests is my most abiding obsession: the complexity—actually, downright weirdness—of humans, and the way that the universes we each carry on our shoulders shape relationships and the world.
BIO
Ellie Robins is a literary critic, fiction writer, translator, and editor with more than a decade's experience both in-house and freelance, for publishers ranging from Penguin Random House to small indies. She has a first-class BA honours degree in English Literature from University College London and an MA with Distinction in English Literature 1850 to the Present from King's College London. She has worked as a writer and editor in London, Buenos Aires, New York, and Los Angeles, where she currently lives. Her translation of Alan Pauls's novel A History of Money (2015) was described by Publisher's Weekly as a "stylistic tour de force." You can read her literary criticism in the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, the LA Times, the LA Review of Books, and elsewhere. She's nearing completion on a novel about a family fractured and reunited in Cornwall, southwest England, in a near future of global displacement.
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BIO
Aviv Rubinstien is a screenwriter, director, and teacher living in LA. He is writing this bio himself, in the third person, and feels very awkward about it.
With an MFA in screenwriting from Boston University, Aviv has worked as a screenwriter and/or script consulted for over a dozen feature films and TV Pilots. These works include Lift Me Up, Starring Shane Harper, Directed by Mark Cartier and Produced by North of Two Productions, Good Grief, Starring Rachel True, Erik Michael Cole and Jordan Ladd and Directed by Brandon Ford Green, and The Reason, Directed by Randall Stevens and starring Tatyana Ali and Oscar Winner, Louis Gossett Jr.
As a Director, Aviv has created narratives and documentaries including the musical road trip film The Anchorite, which calls on Aviv's own two-decade-long experience as a musician and music video director, and the extreme sports documentary Survive DC, which was recently optioned by 1620 Productions for packaging as a television series. Most recently, Aviv signed a two picture deal with AIR Media which finds him traveling to Asia to direct an original horror movie, Kingdom, and to Nevada to shoot an original western Desertion.
Aviv has been consulting and teaching screenwriting and filmmaking since 2007. He primarily teaches at Studio School in Los Angeles and Grub Street in Boston. He has guest lectured at Boston University and The University of Rhode Island.
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Short Fiction, Flash Fiction, The Novel, The Novella or Short Novel, Personal Essay, Book-Length Nonfiction, Feature Writing
Other Services: Preparing the MFA Application, Submitting to Literary Magazines, Submitting to Agencies and/or Editors, Applying for Awards, Fellowships, Conferences, and Retreats, Intensive Line-Editing, Personal Writing Coaching, Career Skills for Writers
AREAS OF INTEREST
Flash fiction, historical fiction, realism, magical realism, fabulism, experimental writing, column writing, social commentary, personal essay, lyric essay
BIO
Matthew Salesses is the author of a novel, I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying, a novella, The Last Repatriate, and two chapbooks. In 2014, Thought Catalog Books will release two ebooks, Different Racisms and All-American Bear Terrorizes Canada. His current project is a serialized, illustrated novel, Marked, to be published by Gazillion Voices. Matthew has written nonfiction for The New York Times, NPR, Salon, the Center for Asian American Media, The Rumpus, and most often for The Good Men Project, where he is a Contributing Writer and Fiction Editor. His stories appear in Glimmer Train, American Short Fiction, Witness, PEN America, West Branch, and over 50 others. He has received awards and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Glimmer Train, Mid-American Review, [PANK], HTMLGIANT, IMPAC, Inprint, Emerson College, where he did his MFA, and the University of Houston, where he is a PhD candidate in Creative Writing & Literature. He has taught writing at Grub Street, CCAE, 826 Boston, Writespace, and Inprint. More at matthewsalesses.com.
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Memoir, Personal Essay, Book-Length Nonfiction
AREAS OF INTEREST
I genuinely enjoy teaching writing and working with writers. I focus on personal narrative and memoir because the personal is what I avoided when I tried writing fiction. You know Superman’s disguise as Clark Kent? That was me with fiction; my true self always came out. So, I gave into memoir and concentrated on writing and studying it for my MFA.
The more complicated the subject matter, the more I am moved to find how to explore it in writing. Working with tough subjects is one of the areas I focus on when I teach creative nonfiction. Most of us, who struggle to write our traumatic stories, can’t find a way that feels right to portray in our narratives and I like to help other writers find the best ways to communicate hard truths.
When I am not teaching, I coach writers on book-length projects in nonfiction, give editorial input on professional writing and storytelling, I do some copyediting, and lead seminars on writing. When I coach writers, I like to set meaningful and attainable goals that further a project along. If I am helping in a revision process, it is a truly collaborative approach in which the author and I continuously find ways to get deep into the narrative and the concept for the work. I’ve worked in person, and I’ve also done virtual editing work. All of these situations come with a different energy, and I look forward to each and every single one of them.
I am bilingual in English and Español.
BIO
Daphne Santana Strassmann is a Memoirist. She writes about the intangible spaces between her Latino heritage and her American life. She’s passionate about memoir as craft and its relationship to memory, especially in the digital age. As an academic, she teaches bright first-year college students, and budding memoirists in several Boston universities. Her work has been featured in Creative NonFiction, GrubWrites, Tex{t}Mex, and several textbooks. Daphne runs generative writing seminars every month in different locations in the Boston area, she leads a group of memoirists at MIT, and she coaches organizations with big-scale writing projects. Creating physical and metaphorical spaces where writers can engage or re-engage with their process is a big part of what inspires and motivates her teaching.
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Short Fiction, Flash Fiction, The Novel, The Novella or Short Novel, Memoir, Individual Essay, Book-Length Non-Fiction.
AREAS OF INTEREST
International fiction and nonfiction, travel writing, nature writing, family memoir.
BIO
Shuchi Saraswat is the associate editor and a co-nonfiction editor at AGNI. Her writing has appeared in Ecotone, Tin House, Arrowsmith, Quick Fiction, The Boston Globe, Women's Review of Books, and Literary Hub. She received the Gulliver Travel Research Grant from The Speculative Literature Foundation and has received fellowships and scholarships to Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Writers Omi at Ledig House, The Writers' Room of Boston, Tin House Summer Writers' Workshop and Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. She founded the Transnational Literature Series at Brookline Booksmith and served as its director from 2018-2020, and she has judged a number of prizes, including the National Book Award in Translated Literature (2019) and the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing: Nonfiction (2021). She currently lives in Boston.
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Short Fiction, The Novel, The Novella or Short Novel, Memoir, Individual Essay, Book-Length Non-Fiction, Feature Writing, Humor Writing.
AREAS OF INTEREST
Historical and literary fiction, short stories on all topics, memoir and book-length narrative nonfiction. I'm especially intrigued by themes that explore the conflict between the individual and the environment, whether political or personal. I love working with novices helping them find their voice and story, and I do significant work with seasoned writers preparing their material for submission. I help writers find the right tone and content for their query letter; choose the right material to showcase; and/or put together a compelling and relevant nonfiction book proposal. Agents and editors often hire me to work with their writers. While most of my editing is big picture, I also line edit and ghostwrite.
BIO
Katrin Schumann is the author of The Forgotten Hours (Lake Union, 2019), a Washington Post bestseller; This Terrible Beauty, a novel about the collision of love, art and politics in 1950s East Germany (March, 2020); and numerous nonfiction titles. She is the program coordinator of the Key West Literary Seminar. For the past ten years she has been teaching writing, most recently at GrubStreet and in the MA prison system, through PEN New England. Before going freelance, she worked at NPR, where she won the Kogan Media Award. Katrin has been granted multiple fiction residencies. Her work has been featured on TODAY, Talk of the Nation, and in The London Times, as well as other national and international media outlets, and she has a regular column on GrubWrites. Katrin can also be found at katrinschumann.com, and on Twitter and Instagram: @katrinschumann.
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AREAS OF INTEREST
Please inquire as rates vary according to project and client needs
BIO
Stephanie Seales is a storyteller, dreamer, and doer who is passionate about racial equity. She’s also a children’s literature expert who’s worked in almost every aspect of the children's book industry. She understands the power of story and follows Toni Morrison's advice, writing the books she wants to read. She dreams and creates near the water.
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AREAS OF INTEREST
Courtney offers intensive line-editing, overall editorial feedback, copyediting and proofreading, and personal consultations on fiction projects, both short stories and longer works. She is enthusiastic about helping you make your work the best it can be. References available upon request.
BIO
Courtney Sender's short stories have appeared in The Kenyon Review, AGNI, Tin House, American Short Fiction, Glimmer Train, and many others. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times' Modern Love, The Atlantic, The Lily at Washington Post, and others. A fellow of Yaddo, MacDowell, and Ucross, she holds an MFA from the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars and an MTS from Harvard Divinity School. She currently teaches fiction-writing at Tufts University and is a creative writing tutor at Harvard. Her debut story collection, IN OTHER LIFETIMES ALL I'VE LOST COMES BACK TO ME, is forthcoming this spring.
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Short Fiction, The Novel, Literary Journalism, Memoir, Personal Essay, Book-length Nonfiction, YA & Children's Literature
AREAS OF INTEREST
I love character driven stories - short or long, but particularly love the deep dive of coaching someone while they work through their manuscript length projects. I'm attracted to bold and brave writing that confronts the human condition with honesty - sentences that don't shy away from the drama and wildness of the heart. I love a crazy sentence as much as I love an impactful, simple one. I'm particularly skilled in helping writers find systems that work for them in developing balance between deep understanding of craft as a functional, grounding force and the illusive, dreamlike nature of the intuition. It's always a deep privilege to support writers in making their stories - fiction or not - the best versions of themselves.
BIO
Kate is the Assistant Director of Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop, a Grub Street writing instructor, and a workshop facilitator for Writers for Recovery in Vermont. She received an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and her fiction has received an honorable mention in Glimmer Train's Short Fiction contest and been published in The Laurel Review, The Foundling Review, and in Storychord.com, where she was the fiction editor for two years.
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Short Fiction, The Novel, Memoir, Personal Essay, Book-length nonfiction
AREAS OF INTEREST
I specialize in editing and providing constructive feedback on fictional narratives, be it short stories, novellas, or novels. While literary fiction is my primary focus, I appreciate genre-bending work that defies easy categorization. I love working with emerging and established writers committed to honing their craft and elevating their manuscripts to achieve new heights. Given that much of my fiction incorporates historical elements, I have completed extensive research in the areas of stand-up comedy, nineteenth and twentieth-century American history, post-WW II Japan, and Jewish culture. Aside from manuscripts, I am eager to assist writers with book/story research and literary magazine submission strategies.
BIO
Douglas Silver's fiction has appeared in The Rumpus, The Cincinnati Review, New England Review, The Chicago Tribune Printers Row Journal, Crazyhorse, The Literary Review, Callaloo, Blackbird, and elsewhere. He has been a finalist in competitions by Narrative Magazine, Glimmer Train, American Short Fiction, and Zoetrope: All-Story. A grant recipient of the Elizabeth George Foundation and former writer-in-residence at the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, he lives in Manhattan where he writes and fosters rescue dogs. Read more at www.DouglasSilver.com
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Literary Journalism, Memoir, Personal Essay and Book-Length Nonfiction, Applying for Awards, Fellowships & Retreats, Intensive Line-Editing, Cultural Consulting/Sensitivity Reading, Personal Writing Coaching
AREAS OF INTEREST
My areas of interest include works of nonfiction that explore personal transformation, social justice, politics, race, gender, education, music, pop culture criticism, art history, cultural history, literary criticism and the complexities of American identity and history. I am interested in consulting on both research-based works and personal reflections. I enjoy working with writers from all backgrounds, particularly writers of color and underrepresented writers.
BIO
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Short Fiction (individual or collections), The Novel, Historical Fiction, Memoir, Personal Essay
AREAS OF INTEREST
For the past sixteen years I've worked with writers of all ages and experience levels to figure out what story they're trying to tell and how they want to tell it. Whether I'm consulting on a memoir, a short story, a novel, or a personal essay, I approach each project with the writer's particular goals in mind, whether that means developing a particular aspect of their craft; getting a manuscript into polished shape for agents; or rethinking the scope or shape of a given story. I'm especially skilled at helping writers deal with structural problems at every level, encouraging them to take necessary risks, and pointing them toward published work that speaks to what they're trying to do, on craft and/or thematic levels. I'm particularly interested in stories that explore the intersection of the personal and the political. My own work often explores immigration, class, women's lives (contemporary and historical), marriage, Jews, faith more generally, nature and the environment, mental health, history, and more. Read a recent essay about my own journey as a novelist here: https://newsletterest.com/message/63134/Lit-Hubs-The-Craft-of-Writing-Anna-Solomon
BIO
Anna Solomon is the author of three novels—The Book of V., Leaving Lucy Pear, and The Little Bride—and a two-time winner of the Pushcart Prize. Her short fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Ploughshares, One Story, The Boston Globe, Tablet, and elsewhere. Anna is the recipient of awards from MacDowell, Yaddo, Bread Loaf, the Rhode Island State Council for the Arts, and The Missouri Review, among others, and her short story “The Lobster Mafia Story” was chosen as Boston’s One City One Story read. Anna is co-editor with Eleanor Henderson of Labor Day: True Birth Stories by Today’s Best Women Writers. Previously, she worked as an award-winning journalist for National Public Radio’s Living on Earth. A graduate of Brown University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Anna teaches writing at Barnard College, Warren Wilson’s MFA Program in Creative Writing, Brooklyn College, and the 92Y Unterberg Poetry Center. Born and raised in Gloucester, Massachusetts, Anna lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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Memoir, Personal Essay, Book Length Nonfiction, Children’s Literature
AREAS OF INTEREST
I’ve helped novice and veteran nonfiction writers improve their work and get published through careful attention to macro issues such as structure, flow, audience, voice, and purpose; as well as micro issues such as grammar, punctuation, and redundancy. I view my role as a collaborator, coach, and cheerleader. My specialties include personal essays, creative nonfiction, narrative nonfiction, and memoir.
As an award-winning picture-book author, I consult with prospective or active children’s-lit writers who want help with project concepts, manuscript editing, and/or industry information.
In addition, I offer specialized individual coaching (@$150/hour) and support groups to help writers understand and work through writer’s block and other inner obstacles to creativity, with a special focus on learning to befriend one's Inner Critic.
BIO
Debbie Sosin is a writer, writing coach, editor, teacher, and psychotherapist. Her picture book, Charlotte and the Quiet Place (Parallax Press, 2015), was named the Gold Winner in Foreword Reviews' 2015 INDIEFAB Book of the Year Awards. The book also won the 2016 Silver Medal for Children's Picture Books (7 & Under) from the Independent Publisher Book Awards and was named a 2015 Bronze Winner by the National Parenting Publications Awards. A self-help workbook, Breaking Free of Addiction: 42 Therapeutic Tools to Help You Recover from Problem Drug and Alcohol Use, originally published by Between Sessions Resources in 2017, has been acquired by New Harbinger Publications; a new edition is forthcoming in Spring 2024. A craft essay, "The Self as Antihero in the Essays of Nora Ephron, David Sedaris, and Steve Almond," was the cover story in the Oct/Nov 2015 issue of The Writer's Chronicle. Other essays have appeared in The New York Times, Boston Globe, Globe Magazine, Zone 3, Brevity Blog, The Manifest-Station, JMWW Journal, Writer's Digest, The Review Review, Journal News, on Salon, Cognoscenti, in the Chicken Soup for the Soul series and the Perspectives in Modern History series.
Since 2009, Debbie has facilitated Write It Like It Is freewriting groups in the Boston area. She also offers personal coaching, especially to work with the Inner Critic, and manuscript consultation for writers at all levels. She earned her MSW from Smith College School for Social Work and her MFA from Lesley University. Learn more at www.deborahsosin.com.
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Short Fiction, The Novel, Memoir, Personal Essay
AREAS OF INTEREST
Literary fiction of any sort, with particular interest in character-driven fiction, family sagas, historical fiction, research-based fiction, and the immigrant experience. I am also interested in personal or research-based non-fiction.
BIO
Kate Southwood is the author of Falling to Earth (a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick) and Evensong. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Prairie Schooner, HCE Review, Fiction Writers Review, Literary Hub and elsewhere. She has an MFA in Fiction from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and lives and writes in Oslo, Norway. Her website is katesouthwood.com.
“Kate's ability to see a piece of writing simultaneously in a structural/developmental sense and on a sentence level has been critical to my work as an essayist and memoirist. She offers multiple developmental suggestions in a way that is inspiring rather than overwhelming, and she has an uncanny ability to identify even the slightest misstep in tone. She makes me want always to strive to give her my very best work, because I know it will come back to me sounding even more like the way I want to write. Her turnaround time is lightning fast. I highly recommend her.” – Elisabeth Fairfield Stokes (contributor to Not That Bad, ed. Roxane Gay)
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Rate: $100
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BIO
Jenn stanley is a writer and time-based artist whose work is primarily focused on confronting the oppressive nature of sexual and gender binaries and the laws and practices that strip people of body autonomy. Lately, Jenn's a regular contributor to WBUR's arts and culture desk, The Boston Compass, and local zine boxes.
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Poetry
(all aspects from the page to the stage), Playwriting (generative, short plays - flash plays and 10-minute and 1-acts), scenes, full length development), Personal Essay, Short Fiction (especially flash fiction), interdisciplinary and performance work; social action writing/writing in collaboration with communities and organizations, touring universities (speaking, lectures, performing), marketing your work, teaching writing, building your platform and audience.
AREAS OF INTEREST
As a poet, playwright, performer, and educator, my mission is to create, and help others create, work that provokes dialogue around themes such as race, gender, and the body in order to provoke dialogue and social change. My belief is that through writing we can recover lost narratives and forge new ones drawing from a rich diversity of perspectives. While I have training in poetry and playwriting, I am drawn towards work that experiments with and plays with form, the page, and performance. In my poetry, I utilize archival texts to create a poly-vocality when rendering history; I like to use the page as a sort of visual map for these voices and moments in time. While I am interested in fragmentation and visual and sonic qualities to language, I also am drawn to narrative and lyrical poetry that emulates the voice and is inspired by speech and music. As a playwright, I utilize interdisciplinary modes for storytelling. I encourage my students to take risks, do research, dig into your own histories. In my one-on-one consulting, I am interested in how you can find your own unique voice, seeing all of the tools of writing as exciting paint colors and textures in a palette - or instruments to make just the right sounds. Since teaching writing has been my profession since 2002, I am passionate about encouraging, nurturing and supporting students in generating language, expressing yourselves, and using the editing process as one of refining and making your work shine. Writing should also be cathartic, illuminating, and fun, and I hope to support you in finding such discoveries.
BIO
Poet, playwright, performer and college instructor Aimee Suzara has graced stages and classrooms nationally with spoken word, plays and workshops. A Mills MFA alumni (2006), her poems have been published widely and her first poetry book, SOUVENIR, was a Willa Award Finalist (2015). Her plays have been staged at the Berkeley Repertory Theater, Thick House, Bindlestiff Studios and Brava Theater; her play TINY FIRES was a finalist for the Bay Area Playwright's Festival. She has collaborated and performed as a performing poet with Dance Theater companies such as Deep Waters Dance Theater and Ramon Alayo Dance Company, and her poetry has been adapted into an opera, a choreographed dance piece, and theatrical scripts. Her work has earned the YBCAway Award, AROHO Spirited Woman Award and she was a 2016 Artist Investigator with CalShakes. Committed to helping writers develop their voices, she has been teaching English, Composition, Creative Writing and Interdisciplinary Studies for 15 years at the college level as well as poetry and spoken word to youth and adults; she is currently a lecturer at San Francisco State University and working on a commissioned play about Sappho to premiere in Spring 2022 with Cutting Ball Theater.
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BIO
Grace Talusan lives in Somerville and teaches writing at Tufts University. She has published essays and stories in Creative Nonfiction, The Boston Globe, Brevity, Buran, Tufts Magazine, Colorlines, and other publications. She earned an MFA from the University of California, Irvine and a Massachusetts Artist Grant in Fiction.
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Short Fiction, The Novel.
AREAS OF INTEREST
I'm curious about the whole spectrum of novels and short stories, both literary and genre. Through my own writing, I have a lot of experience working with historical fiction, as well as magic realism, fantasy, and other forms of speculative fiction.
BIO
A 2014 James Jones First Novel Fellow, Cam Terwilliger's writing has appeared in a number of magazines, including West Branch, Electric Literature, Gettysburg Review, American Short Fiction and Narrative, where he was selected as one of the magazine's "15 Under 30." His fiction has also been supported by fellowships from the Fulbright Program, Brown University, Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Elizabeth George Foundation, and the American Antiquarian Society. A graduate of Emerson College's MFA, he teaches at NYU when he isn't teaching at Grub Street .
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Short Fiction
Flash Fiction
The Novel
Personal Essay
Young Adult Fiction
Children’s Literature
Poetry
AREAS OF INTEREST
YA and Children's Literature: young adult and middle grade fiction and nonfiction, verse novels, biographies, picture books, poetry, translation, especially Japanese>English. Adult: Fiction, narrative verse, poetry, personal essays, translations. In adult fiction: contemporary realism, cross-cultural, international, diverse, Asia-set, Asia-related, science/natural history threads, and historical.
BIO
Holly Thompson is the author of the YA verse novels The Language Inside and Orchards, winner of the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature (both Delacorte/Random House), and the middle grade verse novel Falling into the Dragon's Mouth (Henry Holt). She is also author of the adult novel Ash (Stone Bridge Press), the picture books The Wakame Gatherers (Shen's/Lee & Low) Twilight Chant (Clarion), and One Wave at a Time (Albert Whitman), and the forthcoming Listening to Trees: George Nakashima, Woodworker. She compiled and edited Tomo: Friendship Through Fiction--An Anthology of Japan Teen Stories (Stone Bridge Press) to support teens in 2011 tsunami impacted areas of Tohoku. Originally from Massachusetts and a longtime resident of Japan, she holds a B.A. in biology and an M.A. from the NYU Creative Writing Program and serves as Co-Regional Advisor for SCBWI Japan. Holly visits schools and offers workshops in the U.S., Japan and internationally, and teaches creative writing at Grub Street, Yokohama City University and U.C. Berkeley Extension.
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The Novel
AREAS OF INTEREST
Consults on novel-length projects with a particular interest and expertise in transgender and non-binary narratives, queer narratives, and themes exploring poverty, class, mental health, and gender. Available for both cultural consulting and craft guidance, including voice, structure, and outlining. Also offers guidance on query letters, pitches, and expectations of the agent process.
BIO
Milo Todd is a writer, editor, and educator represented by Michael Nardullo of LGR Literary. His fiction focuses on trans and queer history, with additional works on the trans experience and the trans body. His fiction has appeared in SLICE Magazine, Hare's Paw Literary Journal, Response Magazine, Foglifter Journal, Home is Where You Queer Your Heart (Foglifter Press), and Emerge: The 2019 Lambda Fellows Anthology (Lambda Literary Press). His other works have appeared on Writer Unboxed, Dead Darlings, GrubWrites, and Everyday Feminism, among others. Milo was selected as a 2020 Pitch Wars Mentee and a 2019 Lambda Literary Fellow in Fiction for his novel Downhead and received a fellowship to attend the Lambda Literary Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices. He was additionally selected for the 2021 Tin House Winter Workshop and received a 2021 Monson Arts residency. Milo is an Assistant Fiction Editor for Foglifter Journal and a Fiction Reader for Split Lip Magazine. He's an instructor at GrubStreet, where he teaches courses on fiction, the novel, and trans and non-binary representation in literature. He is an alum of GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator Program, where he received a Pechet Fellowship for his novel The Falcon of Doves. He has been on the selection committee for the Novel Incubator Program and the Bisexual Book Awards. He is a speaker on writing, inclusion, and the queer and trans experience. Milo has presented regularly at the Boston Book Festival and The Muse & The Marketplace. He curates Writing Beyond Binaries, a panel series celebrating trans and non-binary writers’ experiences in various stages of their careers. He consults on fiction manuscripts and transgender inclusion in the classroom.
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Screenwriting: (TV, Stageplays, Dialogue, Monologue Writing, Format, Structure, Script Coverage, Script Editing, Translation from Spanish to English or English to Spanish, Co-Writing, Script Doctor)
AREAS OF INTEREST
If you are interested in writing a screenplay or a stage play but do not know where to start, I can offer one-on-one consultation on screenplay format, structure and help you with feedback on dialogue and character development. I also offer script coverage, script editing and even script translation from English to Spanish or Spanish to English. If you are looking for a co-writer or script doctor for your script idea, I would be happy to help with that as well! If you need help with anything related to the development of your script I would be happy to help.
BIO
Paloma Valenzuela is a Dominican-American writer, director and actress originally from the city of Boston. She studied Writing for Film and Television at Emerson College and graduated in 2009. After graduating from Emerson she moved to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic to work on developing projects in film and television including working as Second AD for the television show "Juanita's Gran Salon y Spa". In 2010 she started La Gringa Loca Productions, a multi-media production operation which has since produced three stage plays both in Boston and the Dominican Republic: "RANT!" (2008), "Show Up" (2012), and "Queseyocuanto" (2012), a 60 Min. Narrative Film "Saturday" (2010), two promotional videos for Miss Rizos "Lecciones en La Calle" (2011), a Documentary Web Series, "Onomatopeyas Dominicanas" (2013-2014), an official commercial for Miss Rizos Salón in Santo Domingo (2015 and 2016), a comedic web series “The Pineapple Diaries” (2015-2016). In 2016 Paloma was the recipient of the New England Foundation for the Arts Creative City Grant. With this grant she produced, through La Gringa Loca Productions, season two of "The Pineapple Diaries". Episode 17 "Pero Mi Cédula No" of season one won the Special Jury Prize at the International Festival of Santo Domingo Mujeres en Cortos 2016. The Episode "Brunch" from "The Pineapple Diaries" was Official Selection at the Roxbury International Film Festival 2017. The Episode "Untitled" was Official Selection at the Latino Short Film Festival 2017, Official Selection at the Howard University Film Festival 2018, Finalist at the Rolda Webfest 2018, Official Selection at the Providence Latin American Film Festival 2018 and Official Selection at the New Orleans Film Festival 2018. Paloma continues to produce and direct for various projects through La Gringa Loca Productions including the Official Music video for Dominican artist AcentOh for his song “2020” and a promotional video for Write Boston’s Teens in Print Program. She plays the role of Lolita in the upcoming Dominican coming-of-age comedy, "Un 4to de Josue" set to premiere in October of 2018. Paloma has worked as Second AD for three Dominican feature films and is currently in Boston touring "The Pineapple Diaries" Monologue Writing Workshop. Paloma has been awarded as one of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Creative Luminaries of 2018-2019. She is very excited to be joining GrubStreet as a Teaching Artist!
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Young Adult Fiction, Middle Grade Fiction, and Adult Fiction.
AREAS OF INTEREST
I am open to consulting on all types of fiction, as well as preparing queries and synopses for publication. I specialize in middle grade and YA fiction, especially novels in verse.
BIO
Mary Sullivan's YA novel in verse, High (Regal House), won the Eric Hoffer Award for YA literature. Her middle grade novel, Dear Blue Sky (Penguin), won the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle Award. She is also the author of the novels Stay and Ship Sooner, and she has ghostwritten for the Beacon Street Girls series. She has received a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant for Literature, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Award, and a St. Botolph's Award. She was also chosen as one of the Borders' Original New Voices. She lives in Cambridge with her husband, and they have four children and a tabby named Ollie.
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Poetry, Short Fiction, Personal Essay, Academic/Analytic Essay, Literary Journalism, Memoir, Curriculum Development, Reading List Compliation
AREAS OF INTEREST
I'm primarily a poet who has taught writing across genres including workshops and intensives dedicated to academic writing, fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and literary journalism. Prior to focusing on poetry, I trained with a range of platforms in the journalism industry and am interested in the intersection of poetry and reportage. As an instructor, I've created courses that consider the narratives of marginalized people and their experiences, digital literacy, and family/collective historical narratives among other themes. I'm excited to support writers at varying stages of the writing process as is useful, productive, and/or generative. I look forward to meeting you and your work!
BIO
Renia is a poet originally from Maryland who came of age in Riverdale, GA. She earned her BA in Journalism from Howard University and her MFA in Creative Writing from Cornell University. Her debut poetry collection CASUAL CONVERSATION, (BOA Editions, Ltd., 2022) was selected by editor-at-large Aracelis Girmay as a Blessing the Boats title.
Renia has taught university-level and pre-collegiate writing at Cornell University, The School of the New York Times, Pratt Institute, and Parsons School of Design (The New School). She's won awards such as the 2021 Freund Prize, the Hurston/Wright Foundation's College Writers award and Sonora Review's poetry prize and has been a finalist or semi-finalist for honors from Southern Indiana Review, Yemassee, Indiana Review, Puerto del Sol, PEN America and other publications & organizations. A two-time Pushcart nominee, her work appears in The Offing, Prelude, Tahoma Literary Review, Slice, Ruminate, Poetry Daily, No, Dear, and elsewhere. She lives in NYC.
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Short Fiction, The Novel, Memoir, Personal Essay, Book-Length Nonfiction
AREAS OF INTEREST
About me: I spent almost 20 years as an editor at a top literary journal, and as a teacher and a writer of novels and essays-- which means I know how it feels to be on both sides of the desk. At Tin House I edited books, short fiction, essays, and literary food and drink writing, and I have a particular affinity for stories about the complex bargains and specific weirdness of family, marriage and romantic relationships, and professional life. I’m more attuned to mining emotional complexities than formal experimentation, and am a big believer in creating a vivid sensory world. If you need assistance as you get your bearings in a new project, I'll ask questions to help firm up your intentions or guide you in experimenting productively, creating the situations that will yield story later—even if you don’t yet know what it will be. I especially love to help writers find the unexpected pathways in a situation or character. They say all the stories have been told, and they probably have, which is why I think human complexity is what will make yours new and intriguing. If you've hit a wall halfway through your draft, let’s talk about what I see in your pages so far. When you’re getting toward the final stages of a project, I can help you condense a baggy manuscript, polish a final draft for submission, and add texture and vigor to your prose. At all stages, I can design prompts and exercises for inspiration or to help you unlock a tricky writing problem or project.
I charge $125 per hour, which includes detailed tracked changes and extensive margin comments and an editorial letter of roughly 2 pages for a story or up to 10 +, single spaced, for a book-length manuscript. I also am happy to answer emails along the way as needed, and I include a follow-up phone or video conference, or two, after you’ve had time to go over my suggestions (or to get started as we decide how best to work together). I meet writers wherever they need help, so let me know what you’re working with and we can devise a productive method. We can also change it up, if needed.
BIO
Michelle Wildgen has over twenty years of experience as an editor and writer, including 18 years with the award-winning literary journal Tin House. She is the author of three novels: You’re Not You, which was a NYT Editor’s Choice and was made into a feature film starring Hilary Swank; But Not For Long; and Bread and Butter. Her essays and criticism have appeared in the New York Times Book Review and “Modern Love” column, Tin House, as well as O Magazine, Real Simple, The Writer, Best Food Writing, and in anthologies like Death by Pad Thai and Naming the World and Other Exercises for the Creative Writer. Her short fiction has appeared in Best New American Voices, StoryQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly and elsewhere. In 2013, with novelist Susanna Daniel, she cofounded the Madison Writers’ Studio, which offers small MFA-level workshops in fiction and nonfiction in Madison, Wisconsin, and has taught at UW-Madison, the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, and the Tin House Writer's Workshop, where she has mentored individual writers and consulted on their book manuscripts since 2005. You can find out more at www.michellewildgen.com or www.madisonwriters.com.
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BIO
Michael Zendejas studies for a fiction MFA at UMass Amherst. He runs the film blog, The Chicano Film Shelf, and was an inaugural recipient of the Rose Fellowship, a 2022 winner of the James W. Foley Memorial Prize and was a fellow in the inaugural cohort of the Emerging Writers Fellowship given by Writers in the Schools (WITS). He currently teaches classes on Fiction, Poetry and Screenwriting via GrubStreet. His work is featured or forthcoming in: Five2One Magazine, Liberation News, Peace Land and Bread Magazine, Acentos Review, Ginosko Literary Journal, Houston Review of Books and elsewhere.