Instructors

Dzidzor's life mission is to create space for people to tell their stories. Dzidzor facilitates Poetry/Hip Hop workshops in schools, organizations, galleries/coffee shops and holds a monthly Jam Session called Black Cotton Club for artists. Dzidzor is a Ghanian folk-performing artist and the author of "For Girls Who Cry in Yellow". She loves hugs and the feelings of grass on her bare feet. Dzidzor finds power in creating spaces that push people to tell their stories. Check her work on @writedzidzor

Alysia Abbott is the author of Fairyland, A Memoir of My Father (W.W. Norton), named one of the best books of 2013 by the San Francisco Chronicle, Shelf Awareness and GoodReads, and recently optioned by film-maker Sofia Coppola. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Vogue, Real Simple, Slate, Psychology Today, and TheAtlantic.com, among other publications. She's a graduate of the New School's MFA writing program and was a recipient of a Ragdale Fellowship. Visit her online at www.alysiaabbott.com.

Allison Adair has been with Grub Street since 2002, first as an instructor and then as a board member (2004-2011). She has taught at the University of Iowa, Boston University, and Boston College, where she is currently a faculty member in the English department. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Best New Poets 2015, Boston Review, Los Angeles Review, Mid-American Review, Mississippi Review, The Missouri Review (Poem of the Week), National Poetry Review, New South, Shenandoah, Southwest Review, Tahoma Literary Review, Third Coast, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal. Flash pieces appear in The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Lascaux Review, and Nano Fiction; and literary hypertext projects appear at Electric Literature and The Rumpus. Winner of the Fineline Competition from Mid-American Review and the Orlando Prize from the A Room of Her Own Foundation, Allie is a Contributing Editor at The Brooklyn Quarterly. She holds an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she received the Teaching-Writing Fellowship. 

Memoir, short and long form fiction, the personal essay, lyric nonfiction, more adventurous forms of cultural, literary, and art criticism. My biggest strengths as a consultant include helping other writers access an authentic voice, handle issues of time and narration more nimbly, create vivid scenes and imagery, and tackle larger structural and thematic concerns in both short and book-length projects.

Kim Adrian is the author of two books of lyric criticism, Dear Knausgaard (published as part of a series that aims to "reinvent literary criticism") and Sock ("reflects on the brilliance present in the minutiae of our lives" —Shelf Awareness). Her 2018 memoir, The Twenty-Seventh Letter of the Alphabet, uses the form of a glossary to tell the story of a mother's mental illness. It is part of University of Nebraska's American Lives Series, edited by Tobias Wolff, and is a Next Generation Indie Book Awards finalist. Kim is the editor of The Shell Game: Writers Play with Borrowed Forms, an anthology of lyric essays that a review in The Millions praised as providing “a sense of hope about literature and its capacity for evolution and change.” Several of Kim's essays and stories have been listed as Notables in the Best American and Pushcart Prize anthologies; two have been translated into Mandarin for Chinese literary magazines. Her work has been supported by the Edward Albee Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writing Seminars, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, PEN/New England, The Ragdale Foundation, and others. She has taught creative writing in the nonfiction program at Brown University, as well as at Boston and Suffolk Universities. She runs a free, monthly, craft-focused newsletter for writers, with writing tips and prompts, called Write On (writeonnewsletter.com).

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 intergenerational 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.

Nancy Agabian is a writer, teacher, and literary organizer, working in the intersections of queer, feminist, and Armenian identity. Her recent novel, The Fear of Large and Small Nations, was a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially-Engaged Fiction and was recently published by 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 father in southeastern Massachusetts, where she lives.

Autumn Allen writes books for children and teens, and wears many other hats in the world of children’s literature. As an educator, she leads literature circles and writing workshops for children and teens outside of traditional school settings, and teaches children's literature at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is a senior editor at Barefoot Books, a small, independent publisher of children’s books in Massachusetts, where she acquires and develops picture books and board books. She also reviews books for publications like Kirkus Reviews.   Autumn was the 2020-21 Writer in Residence selected by the Associates of the Boston Public Library, where she worked on her young adult novel, All You Have to Do, which also won a 2020 Susan P. Bloom Discovery Award. All You Have to Do will be released by Kokila, an imprint of Penguin Random House, on August 29, 2023. Her picture books,Step On Board, illustrated by Ekua Holmes, and Answered Prayers, will be published by Knopf. ​ In 2021, Autumn was selected for the Highlights Foundation's Muslim Storytellers' Fellowship along with 15 other creatives. Autumn’s work on writing, children’s books, and parenting has appeared on the We Need Diverse Books blog, Embrace Race, and the Calling Caldecott blog. Autumn holds master's degrees in education, children's literature, and writing for children from Harvard and Simmons Universities.  ​

Steve Almond (www.stevealmondjoy.org) is the author of ten books of fiction and non-fiction, most recently "Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country." He has three rambunctious children, one patient wife, and significant debt.

Yasmine Ameli (she/her) is a biracial Iranian American writer from and currently based outside Boston, Massachusetts. She holds a BA in English from Johns Hopkins University and an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Virginia Tech. Her poems and essays have been published or are forthcoming in POETRY Magazine, Ploughshares, The Sun, the Southern Review, AGNI, Narrative, Black Warrior Review, A Public Space, Shenandoah, Copper Nickel, ROOM Magazine, Frontier Poetry, The Rumpus, Crazyhorse, Mizna, BITCH Media, Nimrod, Nowruz Journal, and elsewhere. Yasmine teaches creative writing through the Loft Literary Center and Grub Street, and she offers writing coaching services independently.

Mary-Kim Arnold is the author of Litany for the Long Moment (Essay Press, 2017). A multidisciplinary artist, her work has appeared in a number of literary and art journals, including Tin House, The Georgia Review, Day One, and Hyperallergic. She was born in Seoul, Korea and was raised in New York. She serves on the Advisory Committee for The Rumpus, where she was Essays Editor from 2013-2015. She holds graduate degrees from Brown University and Vermont College of Fine Arts. She lives in Rhode Island.

Serena Arora is an avid writer, playwright, and screenwriter, while also an actress and performer. She has received a BA in English with a minor in Performance Studies from Boston University. She’s been writing for over 10 years, and has taken over seven creative writing workshops. Further, she has been performing in theatre since 2010 along with writing and directing productions as well. She has a passion for dark stories, psychological horror, Shakespeare, emerging female contemporary playwrights, and her solitude moments in nature. She loves her cat, family, and cooking. ser[email protected] https://serenaarora.journoportfolio.com

Lauren Artiles (she/they) is GrubStreet's Stage Manager. Lauren previously worked in events at Harvard Book Store and is passionate about fostering connection and community amongst fellow readers and writers. She received her MFA in Writing from the CalArts School of Critical Studies, a BA in English and Creative Writing from Muhlenberg College, and is an alum of GrubStreet's Short Story Incubator program. Outside of arts administration and thinking about fiction, Lauren loves horror films, gardening, cooking, and adding more books to the precarious TBR pile on her nightstand.

An award-winning producer and personal manager of actors and writers, Marilyn R. Atlas is equally at home in the worlds of film, television, and live theater. Among her credits as film producer are “Real Women Have Curves” for HBO, which won the Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival, “A Certain Desire,” starring Sam Waterston, and “Echoes,” which won the Gold Award at the Texas International Film Festival. In addition to producing a variety of programming for the cable/ pay TV market, Marilyn served as a production consultant on the film “Call Me.” She was also involved as a producer in the development of the MOW “Nightwalker” and “Playing for Keeps.” In live theater, Marilyn co-produced the West Coast premiere of the musical “God Bless You Mr. Rosewater” by Ashman and Menken (the writers of both “Enchanted” and “Tangled”). She also co-produced the award-winning play “To Gillian on Her 37th Birthday,” which was made into a film starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Peter Gallagher. Her additional credits as a producer in live theater include “Today’s Special” and “As I Sing.” Marilyn is a member of the National Association of Latino Independent Producers. She has spoken at their Writers’ and Producers’ retreats, the DGA-sponsored LA Asian Film Festival, as well as various other symposia for the Sherman Oaks Experimental College. She is a founding member of Women in Film’s Luminas Committee which supports the portrayal of women in non-stereotypical roles in film and television. She has spoken at events such as The San Francisco Writers Conference, the Santa Fe Screenwriters Conference and Richard Krevolin’s USC Screenwriting Retreat. Marilyn has also taught several actor workshops. Additionally, she was a guest lecturer in the Writing Program at USC, where she also teaches a class every year on creating three-dimensional, non-stereotypical characters. She has spoken at the Texas Bar Association and was a guest lecturer at Whittier Law School. Marilyn has been a guest at various colleges, including Harvardwood, UCLA, USC, Emerson, University of Redlands, and the University of Wisconsin. She has served as the professional-in-residence (in theater and film) at Ball State University, and was the speaker at the International Writer’s Conference at Hollins University (2010). She structured an intensive course at Skyline College in San Francisco covering the inception, development and promotion of a script in “The Business of Screenwriting: The Idea – and its Execution.” Her clients have appeared in shows such as Star Trek, Fringe, Pretty Little Liars, 90210, Revenge, Hart of Dixie, NCIS:LA, True Blood, Dexter, Chuck, Castle, and Criminal Minds. In addition, her clients have worked on feature films such as Holes and Transformers. Marilyn herself has been in development on pilots for Showtime and ABC Family. In addition to Marilyn’s film/TV credits, she has sold (first time) novels “Chasing the Jaguar” to HarperCollins, “Hungry Woman in Paris” to Grand Central Publishing, and the “Ave Maria Bed & Breakfast” to Hachette Publishing, and the “Last Ride of Caleb O’Toole” to Source Books. Recently, Marilyn has been developing the “Brides’ March” for Lifetime Television as well as a limited television series. She previously produced the musical version of “Real Women Have Curves” in Los Angeles in 2009 and is involved in the current development of “Real Women Have Curves” for 2015. In the fall of 2012 she co-produced the play “Detained in the Desert” at the Guadeloupe Theater in San Antonio. As of late, her Lifetime movie “The Choking Game” based on the YA book by Diana Lopez aired in summer 2014. She is also featured in the book “Write Now!” from Penguin/Tarcher. She is the co-author of a relationship-based, screenwriting guide called “Dating Your Character,” about an organic approach to character creation for Stairway Press’s Fall 2015 catalog. She was also recently a speaker at the International Women’s Writer Conference in Italy. 

Ulya Aviral is a writer and director for film. Her upcoming two international co-productions "Shut Your Eyes I'm Gonna Dance" about a trans man's journey to an alternate universe, which is composed by Utar Artun, a former GRAMMY Awards jury, and "My Nature" about a Mid-Eastern woman's escape from war are in the festival circuit. "My Nature" was screened at Court Métrage Short Film Corner at Cannes Film Festival. Her film "Colors Inside" is in the festival run: it is awarded and screened at festivals in Los Angeles, Romania, Toronto and Montreal. Ulya received her BA with a double major in Sociology and Studies in Cinema & Media Culture, and a minor in Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature from the University of Minnesota. Ulya worked with Diane Lake, the head writer of Frida (2002) researching for a feature screenplay. She assisted Rob Sabal, the Dean of the School of the Arts at Emerson College for his pedagogy class and departmental curriculum evaluations. In 2017, Ulya Aviral received her MFA in Film and Media Art from Emerson College with a focus on writing, directing and producing films.

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.

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.

Rebecca is an independent writer and editor specializing in marketing and SEO, with a background in journalism. She writes about a broad range of topics to serve a diverse clientele, which currently includes marketing agencies and startups, and has years of experience as a freelance journalist and copywriter.

Yu-Mei Balasingamchow is the co-author of Singapore: A Biography and co-editor of In Transit: An Anthology from Singapore on Airports and Air Travel. Her short fiction has received a Pushcart Prize Special Mention, won the Mississippi Review Fiction Prize and been shortlisted for the Sewanee Review Fiction Contest and the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University and is writing a novel with the support of grants from the Elizabeth George Foundation and Mass Cultural Council. Originally from Singapore, she now lives in Boston. Learn more at https://www.yumeibalasingamchow.com/.

Katie Bannon is a Boston-based writer of memoir and personal essay. She works as a writing instructor at Emerson College, where she also earned her MFA in creative nonfiction. Her work has appeared in NPR, Salon, Narratively, Brevity's Nonfiction Blog, Cognoscenti, and more. Her memoir was a finalist for the Permafrost Nonfiction Book Prize, a nominee for the Bill Knot Thesis Prize at Emerson College, and a winner of the Morton N. Cohen Creative Writing Award at Tufts University. She is a GrubStreet Memoir Incubator alum, as well as a former Muse and the Marketplace Teaching Scholar. She was a recipient of the Wesleyan Scholarship for the 2014 Wesleyan Writers Conference, and completed a residency at Lemon Tree House in 2016. You can find her online at www.katiekoppel.com.

Lynne Barrett is the author of the story collections Magpies (Gold Medal, Fiction, Florida Book Awards), The Secret Names of Women, and The Land of Go (all, Carnegie Mellon University Press). She edited Tigertail: Florida Flash and co-edited Birth: A Literary Companion. Her stories can be found in Fifteen Views of Miami, Trouble in the Heartland: Crime Stories Inspired by the Songs of Bruce Springsteen, Fort Lauderdale Magazine, Wraparound South, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Delta Blues, and One Year to a Writing Life. A recipient of the Edgar Award for best mystery story and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, she teaches in the MFA program at Florida International University and is editor of The Florida Book Review. Learn more about Lynne here: www.lynnebarrett.com.

Katytarika Bartel (they/she) is an artist, educator, and organizer based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Katytarika is a queer, mixed race Thai-American writer, photographer and award-winning filmmaker interested in shining light on spaces of in-between. Katytarika is fiercely passionate about making photography more accessible, letting young people do things, and the color yellow. Katytarika is the co-founder and co-director of the Boston-based art collective, ANGRY ASIAN GIRLS, which works actively in the community to promote and uplift the narratives of APIA young folks. Katytarika engages the tools of spoken word poetry, writing, and media to teach social justice topics to young people. Katy is the former Teen Program Coordinator at Castle Square Tenants Organization, and also teaches with the WallTalk program at the Institute of Contemporary Art.

***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.

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.

Sarah Ruth Bates is a nonfiction writer currently based in Watertown, MA. She is an MFA candidate in creative nonfiction at the University of Arizona, where she teaches composition and edits the Sonora Review. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Aeon, Guernica, the New York Times, the Boston Globe Magazine, WBUR, and elsewhere. She has a Master of Bioethics degree from Harvard Medical School.

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Matthew Battles received his MA in fiction from Boston University's Creative Writing Program in 1996. Since then, he has written for such venues as The American Scholar, The Atlantic, The Boston Globe, Harper’s Magazine, and The New York Times; his books include the short-story collection The Sovereignties of Invention and Library: an Unquiet History. His forthcoming volume, a material and cultural history of writing entitled Palimpsest, will appear in Spring 2015. A fellow at the Berkman Center and Society, he serves as associate director of metaLAB at Harvard, a research group dedicated to exploring and expanding the frontiers of networked culture in the arts and humanities.

Ann Bauer holds an MFA from the University of Iowa. She is the author of three books, including the novels The Forever Marriage (2012) and A Wild Ride Up the Cupboards (2005).  An award-winning essayist, Bauer has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Sun, Salon, Redbook and Elle. She has taught creative writing at Brown University and Macalester College. Bauer splits her time between Boston and Minneapolis; but wherever she is, she writes each morning from 7-9:30 a.m.

Young adult author Katie Bayerl has built a career around words and teaching. She has taught writing in high schools, nonprofits, detention facilities, and online; served as Features Editor of a youth-generated magazine; directed the communications efforts of a Boston-based education nonprofit; and helped to capture the stories of dozens of schools and nonprofits in Boston and across the country. She currently teaches classes for teens and adults at GrubStreet, with a focus on the novel. Katie holds two degrees in education and and a Master of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is a winner of the PEN New England/Susan P Bloom Children's Book Discovery Award and was honored to serve as the 2018 Michael L Printz Author in Residence and the 2018 Lois Lowry Fellow. Her debut young adult novel, A Psalm for Lost Girls (Putnam/Penguin) was named a top pick from Amazon and Book-a-Million, a "can't miss" by Boston Magazine, and a 2019 TAYSHAS selection by the Texas Library Association. Katie will read anything with great sentences, but she's especially in love with haunting literary fiction, atmospheric mysteries, and young adult fiction that tackles big questions with honesty, wit, and heart.

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. 

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.

Monica Benevides (née Busch) is an award-winning journalist and editor based in Massachusetts. Most recently, she was a senior staff writer at the Worcester Business Journal, where she covered health care, manufacturing, and the emerging cannabis market. Before that, she was a reporter at the Sentinel & Enterprise in North Central Massachusetts, a news writer for Bustle, and a reporter for The Martha’s Vineyard Times. She specializes in writing about class experience, religion, and feminism. Her freelance work appears in places like Bitch, Man Repeller and the Columbia Journalism Review. She holds an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University.

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. 

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.

Ben Berman’s first book, Strange Borderlands, won the 2014 Peace Corps Award for Best Book of Poetry and was a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Awards. His second collection, Figuring in the Figure, was recently selected as a Must-Read by the Mass Center for the Book. And his new book, Then Again, came out last November. He has received awards from the New England Poetry Club and fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and Somerville Arts Council. He teaches at Brookline High School and lives in the Boston area with his wife and two daughters. www.ben-berman.com

Sharon Bially is a professional publicist and founder of the boutique PR firm BookSavvy PR. In addition to BookSavvy, she directs media relations campaigns for businesses as a consultant to MBS Value Partners.  Author of the independent novel Veronica's Nap Sharon is an active Grub Street member and a regular contributor to the popular blog Writer Unboxed.

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.

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, AGNI, The Adroit Journal, Best New Poets, The Common, Georgia Review, Los Angeles Review, New England Review, The Offing, and PANK, 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.

Kevin Birmingham is the author of The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce's Ulysses (Penguin Press, 2014). He received his Ph.D. from Harvard, where he was a lecturer in History & Literature and where is currently an instructor in the university's writing program. He was a bartender in a Dublin pub featured in Ulysses for one day before he was unceremoniously fired.

Nicole Blades is a novelist, speaker, and journalist. She started at Essence magazine, later co-founded the online magazine SheNetworks, and worked as an editor at ESPN and Women’s Health. Nicole's work has appeared in The New York Times, Cosmopolitan, Women’s Health, Good Housekeeping, WashingtonPost.com, MarieClaire.com, BuzzFeed, and other publications. Her latest book, HAVE YOU MET NORA?, is out now, along with her previous novels THE THUNDER BENEATH US and EARTH’S WATERS. Listen to her weekly podcast, Hey, Sis!, about women finding their focus and place in business, art, culture, and life. And find out more at: NicoleBlades.com.

David Blair is the author of two books of poetry. His first book Ascension Days was chosen by Thomas Lux for the Del Sol Poetry Prize in 2007, and his second book Arsonville will be published in the spring of 2016 by New Issues Poetry & Prose as part of the Green Rose Series. Blair's poems have appeared in Agni, Boston Review, Fence, The Harvard Review, Terminus, storySouth, Ploughshares, and Slate Magazine, and they have been featured in the anthologies The Best of Lady Churchhill's Rosebud Wristlet, edited by Kelly Link and Gavin Grant, and also in Devouring the Green: Fear of a Human Planet from Jaded Ibis Press. He has twenty years experience teaching creative writing and has taught at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, the New England Institute of Art, and in the MFA Program in Writing at the University of New Hampshire. A Pittsburgh native, he lives with his family in Somerville, Massachusetts.

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.

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.

Will Boast was born in England and grew up in Ireland and Wisconsin. His story collection, Power Ballads, won the 2011 Iowa Short Fiction Award and was a finalist for a California Book Award. His fiction and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Best New American Voices, Virginia Quarterly Review, newyorker.com, Narrative, Salon, Glimmer Train, The American Scholar, and The New York Times, among other publications. He’s been a Stegner Fellow in fiction at Stanford University and a Charles Pick Fellow at the University of East Anglia in the UK. His memoir, Epilogue, is forthcoming from W.W. Norton Co/Liveright and Granta Books.

Laura is a children's writer, a teacher, and an avid ice cream eater. She has taught creative writing with Asheville Writers in the Schools & Community and the Thurber House, creative art at Roots + Wings School of Art and Design, Spanish in a Waldorf school, and English in South Korea. You can find her picture book, Writing Home: The Story of Author Thomas Wolfe, released by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, or her story, "The Day the Sea Split," in Spider Magazine. She is currently attending Simmons College for a M.A. in Children's Literature and a M.A.T. in Elementary Education. Laura is over the moon to be a part of the Grub team.

Keena Boling’s poetry has appeared in The White Whale Review, Snow Jewel 2, The Writing Disorder, Grey Sparrow Press, The Furnace Review, Into the Teeth of the Wind, and other print and online journals. Her first poetry chapbook, Consider Some Flowers was published in 2020 by Finishing Line Press. A graduate of the MFA program at Emerson College, Keena lives in Boston with her husband and two daughters.

Character-driven fiction: literary, young adult, adult coming-of-age, speculative fiction. Lisa’s services include coaching to finish a first draft and developmental editing of finished drafts. More than a dozen of her former students and clients have gone on to publish their novels with presses like Viking, Harcourt and Penguin.

Lisa Borders’ second novel, The Fifty-First State, was published by Engine Books in 2013. Her first novel, Cloud Cuckoo Land, was chosen by Pat Conroy as the winner of River City Publishing’s Fred Bonnie Award and received fiction honors in the 2003 Massachusetts Book Awards. Lisa has published humor in McSweeney’s, essays in The Rumpus and several anthologies, and short stories in Washington Square, Black Warrior Review, Painted Bride Quarterly and other journals. She has taught creative writing since 1997, shifting her focus to the novel when she developed GrubStreet’s Novel in Progress courses in 2005. She also co-developed and co-taught GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator from 2011 – 2013, and developed and led the Novel Generator from 2014-2017. She now teaches in the University of Arkansas at Monticello’s online MFA program. For more information on Lisa and her work, visit lisaborders.com.

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.

Michelle Bowdler is a debut author and her book Is Rape a Crime? A Memoir, an Investigation and a Manifesto (Flatiron) was longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Nonfiction, named a Must Read Book by TIME Magazine, and on the Best Books list in Publishers Weekly, Book Page and the Boston Globe. Michelle is a recipient of the Barbara Deming Memorial Award and has been a Fellow at Ragdale and MacDowell. Michelle's writing has been published in two anthologies, the New York Times, Ms. Magazine, Psychology Today, Hippocampus, Gertrude Press, LitHub, and other literary journals and nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize. She is a graduate of the Memoir Incubator and had a non traditional path to publication.

I'm an Episcopal priest and author of two books and a blog. I live in Cambridge and have also taught a day-long course at Grub St. called The Art and Craft of Spiritual Writing. It is a time of fun, lots of time to write, conversation about the particular characteristics of spiritual writing, samples of such writing, and some of the differences between, and distinguishing qualities of religion and spirituality, without trivializing either.

Lisa Braxton is the recipient of a 2020 Outstanding Literary Award from the National Association of Black Journalists for her debut novel, The Talking Drum, published in May 2020 by Inanna Publications. Her stories and essays have appeared in The Boston Globe, WBUR’s Cognoscenti, Vermont Literary Review, Black Lives Have Always Mattered, Chicken Soup for the Soul and The Book of Hope. She is a fellow of Kimbilio, a fellowship for fiction writers of the African diaspora, and an Emmy-nominated former television journalist. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Mass Media from Hampton University, her Master of Science degree in Journalism from Northwestern University and her Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing from Southern New Hampshire University and is a former newspaper and television journalist.

Under Eve’s (she/her/hers) leadership, GrubStreet has grown into a national literary powerhouse known for artistic excellence, working to democratize the publishing pipeline and program innovation. An active partner to the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture, Eve was the driving force behind securing chapter 91 space in the Seaport to build a creative writing center. Eve was recently awarded the 2023 WNBA Award by the Woman's National Book Association, an award given every two years to a living American woman who has made exceptional contributions to the book industry beyond the scope of her profession. She is a 2019 Barr Fellow, and having graduated from its inaugural class, Eve remains active with the National Arts Strategies Chief Executive Program, a consortium of 200 of the world’s top cultural leaders, which addresses the critical issues that face the arts and cultural sector worldwide. Eve has presented on the future of publishing, what it takes to build a literary arts center, and the intersection of arts and civics at numerous local and national conferences. Her essays and op-eds on publishing, the role of creative writing centers and the importance of the narrative arts have appeared in The Boston Globe, Huffington Post, Cognoscenti, Writer's Digest and TinHouse. Eve serves on the Advisory Board of The Loop Lab, a new Cambridge-based nonprofit dedicated to increasing representation in the Media Arts and on the Advisory Board of Getting to We, a nonprofit dedicated to civic rights and social action. Eve worked as a literary agent at The Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Literary Agency (now Aevitas Creatve Management) for five happy years where she developed, edited, and sold a wide variety of books to major publishers. Before starting GrubStreet, she attended Boston University’s Writing program on a teaching fellowship, farmed in Oregon, and ran an international bookstore in Prague.

Elena is a writer and editor from coastal Maine. She became a Grubbie in 2015 while working in book publishing in Boston. Elena holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Vanderbilt University, where she was a Teaching Fellow. In addition to teaching at GrubStreet and Vanderbilt, she has both worked and volunteered with community writing programs in Nashville, TN (The Porch Writers Collective & Slant) and Portland, ME (The Telling Room). Elena has been awarded scholarships and grants from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Juniper Summer Writing Institute, and the New York State Summer Writers Institute. She is Assistant Fiction Editor at Four Way Review. You can find her writing in Bat City Review, BookPage, Nashville Review, and elsewhere.

Regina Brooks is the founder and president of Serendipity Literary Agency LLC, based in Brooklyn, New York. Her agency has represented and established a diverse base of award-winning clients in adult and young adult fiction, nonfiction, and children's literature. Her authors have appeared inUSA Today, New York Times and the Washington Post as well as on Oprah, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, FOX, MSBNC, TV ONE, BET and a host of others. She has held senior editorial positions at John Wiley and Sons and McGraw-Hill companies. Brooks is the author of the titles Never Finished Never Done(Scholastic), Writing Great Books For Young Adults (Source Books), and You Should (Really) Write A Book: How To Write, Sell, And Market Your Memoir (St. Martin’s Press), has edited over nearly 100 titles and is a blogger for the Huffington Post and Essence.com. Brooks is also on the faculty of the Harvard University publishing course and the Whidbey Island Writers MFA program and annually teaches at more than twenty worldwide conferences. She has been highlighted in global media outlets including Forbes, Media Bistro, Essence magazine, Ebony magazine, Writer’s Digest magazine, The Writer, Jet, Rolling Outand Publisher’s Weekly. She also is a co-publisher of an imprint of Akashic called Open Lens.

I have a particular love for character-driven narratives with an emphasis on voice. Special interests include transnational, cross-cultural, and regional narratives; pop culture; literary criticism; and work that explores class, feminism, and identity. I have a keen eye for both sentence-level detail and big-picture editing, and work on projects ranging from flash to book-length. I also offer consultation on agent query letters and querying strategies. An experienced literary magazine editor and juror for literary contests, fellowships, and awards, I can offer guidance on submitting to literary magazines, grants, fellowships, residencies, and conferences from the perspective of both the applicant and the reviewer. Please see my website, colwillbrown.com, for details of my proofreading and copyediting services. A native of Great Britain, I'm particularly adept at authenticating settings, characters, and stories associated with the UK. I also offer cultural consulting on issues related to gender and class. For more information or to request a consult, please email [email protected].

Colwill is an instructor and manuscript consultant at GrubStreet, an associate editor at Bat City Review, and an MFA candidate at the University of Texas at Austin. After graduating a scholarship awardee of GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator program, Colwill found representation for her first novel, Before We Tear Our Selves Apart, with Robert Guinsler of Sterling Lord Literistic, which is currently on submission to publishing houses. She is the recipient of the Wellspring House Emerging Writer Fellowship, the Henry Blackwell Essay Prize, and a Crawley-Garwood Research Grant, and has received fellowships and support from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, The University of Texas at Austin, Boston College, Kansas State University, the Anderson Center for Disciplinary Studies, and GrubStreet. She was a finalist for the 2019 Tennessee Williams Fiction Prize, the 2019 Reynolds Price Award, the 2019 Far Horizons Fiction Award, the 2019 Disquiet International Literary Prize, and the 2019 Lit Fest Emerging Writer Fellowship. Colwill’s fiction is forthcoming in Granta and is anthologized in Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet (Press 53). She has served on the editorial team for Post Road magazine, The Conium Review,  Solstice Literary Magazine, and Pangyrus magazine. Colwill is a founding member of the  Back Porch Collective, a Boston-based group of writers. With members connected to Cuba, India, Albania, Atlanta, Bosnia, Miami, Jamaica, and the UK, they bonded over a common passion for global narratives and literature’s potential to create empathy and understanding across all geographical, political, and cultural borders. Hailing from Yorkshire, in the north of England, Colwill is determined to introduce the word “sozzard” to the American vernacular. For a full list of publications, projects, and services, please visit colwillbrown.com.

Eleanor Brown is the New York Times and international bestselling author of The Weird Sisters and The Light of Paris. Her debut novel, The Weird Sisters, received numerous honors—in addition to winning the Colorado Book Award, it was an Indie Next pick, an Amazon Best Book of the Month, and a Barnes & Noble Discover selection. Eleanor’s writing has also appeared in newspapers, magazines, anthologies, and journals, including The Washington Post, CrossFit Journal, Crab Orchard Review, and Publishers Weekly. She lives in Colorado and teaches and presents on writing at conferences and writing centers nationwide.

Gregory Brown is the author of the novel, The Lowering Days. His stories have appeared in Tin House, The Alaska Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, Epoch, and Narrative Magazine. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Napa Valley Writers' Conference, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and MacDowell. He grew up in Belfast and now lives in Casco with his family.

Laniesha Brown (She/Her/Hers) is GrubStreet's Program Manager. She holds an M.F.A in Poetry and an M.A. in English Literature from McNeese State University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Caribbean Writer, The Hunger, the minnesota review and more. She has also been recently featured as a 2021 Boston Poet of the Day by the Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture. When she's not writing, she enjoys playing fetch with her cats and eating fried plantains.

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.

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.

Steven Brykman left med school to become Managing Editor of National Lampoon. His work has appeared in Playboy, Cracked, Tablet, Nerve, and The New Yorker where he was featured in Talk of the Town. He has written for/appeared on Prairie Home Companion, Comedy Central, NPR, G4TV, and the Food Network. His stories have been featured in Awake: A Reader for the Sleepless, There is no Cholera in Zimbabwe, and Welcome to the Neighborhood: An Anthology of American Coexistence. He is a Literary Death Match “Champion,” and as a writing fellow at the University of Massachusetts, he was awarded the Harvey Swados fiction prize. 

Stace Budzko has been published or is forthcoming in Blip, Southeast Review, Versal, Upstreet, Necessary Fiction, Norton Anthology of Hint Fiction, Press 53, PANK, Hobart, elimae, The Los Angeles Review, Night Train, The Collagist, Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Flash Fiction, Flash Fiction Forward, Brevity & Echo, Quick Fiction and elsewhere. The screen adaptations of his stories have received numerous honors and showcases as well. At present, he is a writing instructor at Emmanuel College and writer-in-residence at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston.

Gabe Bump is from South Shore, Chicago. His nonfiction and fiction has appeared in SLAM Magazine, Cosmonauts Avenue, Big Big Wednesday, The Huffington Post, Springhouse Journal, whatahowler.com, and Ren Quarterly. He won Summer Literary Seminar's 2015 Flash Fiction Prize and the 2016 Deborah Slosberg Memorial Award in Fiction. Gabe received his MFA in Fiction from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. His first two novels are forthcoming from Algonquin Books.

Camille Cabrera (she/her) is a best-selling American mystery author. Her novel, The Mystery of Mistletoe Motel, previously reached the #1 spot on Amazon's Mystery Romance chart. She specializes in crafting spellbinding cozy mystery novels. Camille believes in the importance of lifelong learning. Perpetually curious, Camille tends to delve into various subjects ranging from finance to literature. Camille has a B.A. in Communication Studies. She recently received a master's degree in management. When Camille isn't writing, you can often find her in the nearest coffee shop with her nose in a book and a black coffee in hand.

Jacquelin Cangro worked at Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster for more than twenty years. Now, as a freelance developmental editor and book coach, she’s reviewed dozens of novel and memoir manuscripts, providing writers with feedback to revise their stories. Jacquelin’s short fiction was selected as the Saturday Evening Post’s Great American Stories, and her other works of fiction have appeared in Stonecrop Review, The Macguffin, Valparaiso Fiction Review, and Cortland Review. You can find out more about Jackie and her work at https://jacquelincangro.com

I'm a freelance journalist, essayist, and critic. I write about gender and feminism, books and culture, sometimes politics, and some other stuff, too. I've been a contributing writer at Slate and a staff writer at The New Republic and National Journal. My work has also appeared at The Point, The New Yorker online, The Washington Post Magazine, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Pacific Standard, Outside, The Atlantic, The Mary Review, and elsewhere. In 2017, I won an inaugural RALLY Award for feature writing on the topic of sexual violence, conferred by the Poynter Institute, for my story "Flight Risk." I have a BA from Yale and an MFA in creative nonfiction from Emerson College, where I taught in the First Year Writing Program.

Marlon Carey is a Poet (published chapbooks:  Giraffe Theory (2000), Prolegomenon (2003) and Lazarus (2007) who has been a member of both the Boston Poetry Slam and Boston Lizard Lounge Poetry Slam Teams. He is also a proud member of the Providence RI-based poetry troupe, Brother’s Keeper. Marlon is also an Educator (teaching Poetry, Hip Hop and Creative Writing in the New England Area and around the country), Actor (The Sunset Limited, Topdog/Underdog, Othello, When Mahalia Sings, Take Me Out, A Few Good Men), Communicator (producer and radio DJ on “Off Tha Top”,  www.BSRlive.com) and Entertainer  (released EPs: There Is No Plan, Be. and Plan M: the un-Mixtape, End of The World Mixtape 2012: OCCUPY Your Mind.)  Carey earned his BFA degree in Creative Writing at St. Andrews College in Laurinburg, NC, and is proud to be a New England Poet, with nuff respect to his Jamaican immigrant roots. PEACE

Mary Carroll Moore’s thirteen published books include the award-winning Your Book Starts Here: Create, Craft and Sell Your First Novel, Memoir or Nonfiction Book, based on her How to Plan, Write and Develop a Book writing workshops; PEN/Faulkner nominated novel Qualities of Light (Bella Books); How to Master Change in Your Life: Sixty-seven Ways to Handle Life’s Toughest Moments (Eckankar Books); Cholesterol Cures (Rodale Press), and the award-winning Healthy Cooking (Ortho Publications). A former nationally syndicated columnist for the Los Angeles Times, over 300 of Mary’s essays, short stories, articles, and poetry have appeared in literary journals, magazines, and newspapers around the U.S. and have won awards with the McKnight Awards for Creative Prose, Glimmer Train Press, the Loft Mentor Series, and other writing competitions. She teaches creative writing in New York, Boston, New Hampshire, and Minnesota and writes a weekly blog for book writers at http://howtoplanwriteanddevelopabook.blogspot.com.

Mark Cecil is an author, journalist and host of The Thoughtful Bro show, where he conducts author interviews with an eclectic roster of award winning and bestselling writers. He has written for The Millions, Reuters and Embark Literary Journal, among other publications. He is Head of Strategy for A Mighty Blaze and a Co-founder of Blaze Writers Project. His debut novel PAUL BUNYAN AND THE BEAUTIFUL DESTINY is forthcoming in spring 2024 from Anchor Books.

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.

Imani Cezanne is a Black writer, speaker, published author and event host currently living in Oakland, CA.  In March of 2020 she became the Woman of the World Poetry Slam Champion for the second time, and in July of the same year was named a finalist for the 2020 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship. As a two time Pushcart Prize Nominee, Imani has work published in established journals such as POETRY Magazine, Nimrod and Palette poetry, among others.

Sam Cha (@antikythera) was born in Korea. He earned an MFA from UMass Boston. A winner of a Pushcart Prize, two Academy of American Poets prizes, and a St. Botolph's Club Emerging Artists Grant, his work has appeared in apt, Better, Best New Poets, Boston Review, decomP, DIAGRAM, Memorious, Missouri Review, Rattle, and RHINO. He lives and writes in Cambridge, MA.

Angie Chatman is a freelance writer, editor, and storyteller. Her essays and short stories have been anthologized in Dine (Hippocampus Books), and have appeared in Literary Landscapes, the Rumpus, Blood Orange Review, Hippocampus Magazine, and fwriction:review. She has performed stories for The Moth Radio Hour, the RISK! Podcast and StoryCollider. Her story "Growing Up Black" appeared on the World Channel television series Stories from the Stage (WGBH) and won a WEBBY award. In 2020 she was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her essay "Ode to Poundcake", which appeared in Pangyrus. Angie is a Fellow of the Kimbilio Center for Black fiction and has received support from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (2020) and Ragdale (2021). An engineer by degree, Angie also holds an SM from MIT, and earned her MFA from Queens University in Charlotte, A Chicago native, she lives in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston with her husband, children, and rescue dog, Lizzie.

Sarah Chaves is a Portuguese-American author and high school educator whose publications include notary literary magazines and anthologies. Her most recent work has appeared in The New York Times, Teen Vogue, Glamour, The Washington Post, and The Lily. Sarah was a 2015-2016 Fulbright Scholar in Portugal and the Luso-American scholar at DISQUIET 2012. She holds a BA in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College and an MA in English from the University of Massachusetts: Boston. She is a GrubStreet Memoir Incubator alum whose memoir was one of the five finalists in the 2019 Restless Books New Immigrant Writing Prize. For a full list of her publications and services, please check out her website or on Instagram @sarita_chaves.

I write and teach short stories as well as novel-length fiction. I specialize in high-concept or character-driven speculative fiction and all types of literary fiction. My interests include cross-cultural narratives, LGBTQ+ characters, voice- and dialogue-driven fiction, and references to real or imagined pop culture. Unusually structured work delights me. I'm available for consultation.

K Chess is the author of FAMOUS MEN WHO NEVER LIVED (Tin House Books, 2019). Her writing has appeared in The Chicago Tribune’s Printer’s Row Journal, PANK, Salon, Tor.com and other outlets. Her short stories have been honored by the Nelson Algren Literary Award and the Pushcart Prize. K earned a BA from Vassar College and an MFA from Southern Illinois University. She was awarded a W.K. Rose Fellowship in the Creative Arts. She reads fiction for Quarterly West and teaches writing at GrubStreet in Boston and Rhode Island. Visit her online at kchesswriter.com.

Rita Zoey Chin is the author of the Let the Tornado Come, a memoir hailed by The Huffington Post, as a “euphoric ode to the human spirt” and by Oprah.com as a “powerful story to pass onto a friend.” Let the Tornado Come was named a Boston Globe, “Summer Reads” pick, one of Kirkus Reviews’ “10 True Stories Perfect for Summer Reading,” an Elle Readers Prize pick, and one of Flavorwire’s “10 Nonfiction Books That Will Make You Smarter.” The recipient of a Katherine Anne Porter Prize, an Academy of American Poets Award, and a Bread Loaf waiter scholarship, Zoey holds an MFA from the University of Maryland. She has taught at Towson University and has been teaching for Grub Street since 2007, as well as at retreats and conferences near and far. Some of her other writings can be found in Guernica, Tin House, and Marie Claire . Her first novel, The Strange Inheritance of Leah Fern, is forthcoming from Melville House in Fall 2022.

A Coloradan and Vermonter at heart, Liza Cochran now lives in Boston where she teaches fiction and nonfiction at Emerson College, and serves as the Education and Outreach Director at Write the World, an online writing community for high school students. During the summers, she returns to the west to teach writing at the Colorado Rocky Mountain School. Her work can be found in the Colorado Review and the Fifth Wednesday Journal.

Sarah Jane Cody's writing has appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Joyland, The Common, Gulf Coast, Washington Square Review, and elsewhere. She's an assistant prose editor for Pigeon Pages, where she was also a reader of submissions for many years. She was a finalist for Pleiades’s 2018 G.B. Crump Prize in Experimental Fiction. She received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and is a twice-alumna of Tin House’s Summer Workshop. She's currently working on her first novel.

Charles Coe is author of two books of poetry: “All Sins Forgiven: Poems for my Parents” and “Picnic on the Moon,” both published by Leapfrog Press. His poetry has appeared in a number of literary reviews and anthologies, including Poesis, The Mom Egg, Solstice Literary Review, and Urban Nature. He is the winner of a fellowship in poetry from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Charles’s poems have been set by a number of composers, including Beth Denisch, Julia Carey and Robert Moran. A short film based on his poem “Fortress” is currently in production by filmmaker Roberto Mighty. He is also author of the novella “Spin Cycles,” published in October 2014 by Gemma Media. He is co-chair of the Boston Chapter of the National Writers Union, a labor union for freelance writers. Charles has been selected by the Associates of the Boston Public Library as a “Boston Literary Light for 2014.”

Nadia Colburn's debut poetry collection The High Shelf was published in 2019. Her poetry and prose have been widely published in more than 80 publications including The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, LA Review of Books, Spirituality and Health, Harvard Review, Yale Review, Slate, and The Boston Globe Magazine and the anthology The Anatomy of Silence: 26 Stories About All The Sh*t That Gets In the Way of Talking About Sexual Violence. Nadia holds a PhD in English from Columbia, a BA from Harvard, is a certified kundalini yoga instructor and a serious student of Thich Nhat Hanh. She is a founding editor at Anchor, a spirituality and social justice magazine, and she's the founder of  Align Your Story, which offers holistic writing coaching and classes both in the Boston area and online. Nadia lives in Cambridge, MA with her husband and two children. For free resources for writers and to see more visit https://nadiacolburn.com

Jessica Cole has an MA in English/Creative Writing from UC Davis, where she wrote a thesis in poetry and indulged her obsession with “place” through an intimacy with the Putah Creek watershed, and PhD from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she wrote a novel for her dissertation that combines physics and botany to reimagine the complex history of Oak Ridge National Labs. She has taught onsite and online, most recently at the BAC, and co-runs the press Bloomsday Literary and the podcast F***ing Shakespeare. She lives in Boston with her adorable son.

Morris Collins’s first novel, Horse Latitudes, was published in 2013 and will be reprinted in a second edition by Dzanc Books later this year. Other fiction and poetry has recently appeared in Pleiades, Gulf Coast, The Chattahoochee Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Nimrod, among others.

Moira Convey Silva is the co-editor of the newly released "Covid Monologues MV: Readings to Nourish, Inspire & Connect." Her work appears in the Boston Globe, Women’s Running, and Taproot. A graduate of Northeastern University's writing and teaching writing program, she teaches workshops on topics ranging from travel writing to querying 101. Moira loves trying new things, like surfing and speaking Spanish, with her two young sons and husband.  Find her at www.moiraconveysilva.com

Nina Li Coomes is a Japanese and American writer. She was born in Nagoya, raised in Chicago, and currently resides in Boston, MA. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, EATER, and Catapult, among other places. She is also an alumna of Young Chicago Authors, a Kundiman Creative Nonfiction Intensive participant, and an Aspen Summer Words Fellow in Memoir. Currently, she is working on a book of loosely linked essays about war, memory, and her biracial heritage.

Maggie Cooper's fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in The Rumpus, Ninth Letter, The Masters Review, Lilith, and elsewhere. Her fiction chapbook, The Theme Park of Women's Bodies, is forthcoming from Bull City Press. A 2016 graduate of the Clarion Writers Workshop, she holds a degree in English from Yale University and earned her MFA in fiction from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she served as an editor for The Greensboro Review. In addition to her writing and teaching, Maggie works as a literary agent with Aevitas Creative Management.

Leela Corman is an illustrator, cartoonist, painter, and educator. She studied painting, printmaking, and illustration at Massachusetts College of Art. She began her career in comics as an undergraduate, and then won a Xeric Grant in Fall 1999 to publish her first graphic novel, Queen’s Day. She has also published numerous shorter pieces in anthologies in the US, France, Germany, Portugal, and Spain. Her most recent graphic novel, Unterzakhn(Schocken/Pantheon, 2012), set in the tenements and vaudeville houses of the Lower East Side at the turn of the last century, was nominated for the L.A. Times Book Award, the Eisner Award and was featured in Best American Comics 2013 (Houghton Mifflin). The French translation, Dessous, was nominated for Le Prix Artemisia and awarded the Prix Millepages in 2013. The Italian translation, Sotto, was awarded the ROMICS prize for best Anglo-American comic. She is an upcoming Yaddo fellow, in their Fall 2019 residency. She is also an illustrator, and has illustrated books on topics that range from urban gardening to sex for the very busy to the history of the skirt, and has worked for a diverse array of editorial clients including the band The Mountain Goats, songwriter Neko Case, PBS, the New York Times, BUST Magazine, UF/Shands Arts In Medicine, and more. Her short comics have run in The Believer, Nautilus Magazine, Re:Form, The Nib, Tablet Magazine, Symbolia, and The OC Weekly, and were collected into the book We All Wish For Deadly Force (Retrofit/Big Planet, 2016). Her short story, “Yahrzeit”, won a Silver Medal from the Society Of Illustrators in 2013. She has created nonfiction comics on subjects as diverse as the neurobiology of PTSD, the life of an expatriate bellydancer in Cairo during the recent political upheavals in Egypt, and the heroic work of Raoul Wallenberg during the Second World War. Her graphic novel Victory Parade will be published in 2021 by Schocken/Pantheon. In the fall of 2018, she co-curated an exhibition of American comics by women from the 1960's through today at Central Connecticut State University with Layet Johnson, which has since traveled to Good Weather Gallery in New Orleans. Leela is the co-founder, along with her husband Tom Hart, of Sequential Artists Workshop in Gainesville, Florida, a school for illustration and graphic storytelling, where she teaches figure drawing and illustration. She is an adjunct professor at the University of Florida's College of Fine Arts, where she teaches illustration. She also travels the world teaching graphic storytelling, most recently in Denmark, Australia, and Hawai'i. In fall of 2018, she was awarded a Sustainable Arts Foundation grant for artists with young children.

Colin Corrigan was born in County Kildare in Ireland and lives in Austin, Texas, from where he teaches writing at Northeastern University. His short fiction has been published by Amazon, the Fiction Desk, and The Stinging Fly, and anthologised in 'Surge: New Writing from Ireland' and 'Stinging Fly Stories'. He's received his MA from University College Dublin, his MFA from the Helen Zell Writers' Program at the University of Michigan, and a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation to complete his first novel.

Nora is a Massachusetts-born fiction writer. She graduated with an MFA from the Helen Zell Writers' Program at the University of Michigan, where she won a Hopwood Award for novel writing. She has taught writing at the University of Michigan, the University of Massachusetts Boston, and served as a facilitator with the Best American Non-required Reading in Ann Arbor. She was a 2019-2020 Fiction Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, and a 2021 recipient of a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation.

The Northeast, coming-of-age fiction, historical fiction, page-turners, memoir, essay, criticism, literary and lyrical work. 

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.

Liz Covart is a historian and writer. As a historian, Liz studies the revolutionary and early republic periods of American history. As a writer, she strives to bridge the gap between academic and popular history in an effort to bring well-written and well-researched history to everyone. Liz loves writing about history and does so through 3 different outlets: 1. UncommonplaceBook.com, Liz's practical blog about writing, writer platform, and plying the historian's craft in the 21st century 2. America's First Gateway, Liz's book manuscript about the American colonists' transition from European nationals to United States citizens 3. Freelance Articles: Liz writes articles about history for mainstream publications. She is also a regular contributor to the Journal of the American Revolution (allthingsliberty.com).

Stefani Cox is a writer and poet based in Los Angeles with an MFA from UC Riverside. Her work has been published to LeVar Burton Reads, The Rumpus, and the anthology Black from the Future, among other outlets. Stefani's poetry chapbook, The Stars With You, was published through Cooper Dillon Books in 2022. She has received fellowships to Hedgebrook, Tin House, and VONA, and served as an editor for Santa Ana River Review, Speculative City, and PodCastle. She is currently working on a California-centered speculative fiction novel.

Backed by a four-piece live band, Martha Graham Cracker, hailed as "The Drag Queen King" by the Philadelphia Inquirer and an icon on the Philadelphia arts and theater scene for over 10 years, performs new arrangements and mashups of songs by artists ranging from Prince and Crowded House to Motley Crue and Nina Simone. Martha Graham Cracker is played by Dito van Reigersberg, co-founding co-artistic director of Philadelphia's Obie-winning Pig Iron Theatre Company, a nearly two-decade old force on Philadelphia's independent theater scene. The Martha Graham Cracker Cabaret regularly sells out Joe's Pub in New York and has been profiled by WHYY, Philadelphia Magazine, Time Out New York, and elsewhere.

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). 

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. Her second memoir, One Tick Stopped the Clock, is forthcoming from Legacy Book Press in September 2024. 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.

Chris Csont is a screenwriter and script consultant. He previously worked for the Ann Arbor Film Festival and currently teaches screenwriting at Boston University.

Kelly is a creator and educator. She received her MFA in creative writing from the University of New Hampshire where she was a teaching fellow and awarded the Young Dawkins III Prize in Creative Writing. She worked with Dawnland Voices 2.0, an online literary magazine for Indigenous writers of New England, and was the Arts Editor for Barnstorm Literary Journal. Kelly has taught at a variety of schools such as the University of New Hampshire, St. Paul’s School, Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth, and Grubstreet. She was recently Head of Faculty at US Performance Academy, an online middle and high school for high-performing athletes, and is now a Guide at Khan World School, where in partnership with Khan Academy and ASU Prep Academy she is designing curriculum and teaching in an online, mastery based model for high school honors students. Her fiction often focuses on working class people with themes of grief, roots, identity, and motherhood. Kelly’s work can be found in Well-Schooled, Flash Fiction Magazine, Litro, and she was a finalist for the Charles Johnson Fiction Award with Crab Orchard Review. She is also interested in memoir, short fiction, novel, novella, story collections, magical realism, international, and cross-cultural work.

Simone Dalton is a writer, social change communicator, arts educator, and recipient of the 2020 RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Prize for nonfiction. She holds an MFA from the University of Guelph. Her work is anthologized in Black Writers Matter, winner of the 2020 Saskatchewan Award for Book Publishing and The Unpublished City: Volume I, finalist for the 2018 Toronto Book Awards. In 2019, her play VOWS was produced for RARE Theatre’s Welcome to My Underworld. Born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago, Simone established a foundation to support education for young steelpan artists and creatives. As a memoirist, she explores themes of grief, inherited histories, race, class, and identity. She is currently working on her first book, which contemplates the question: what remains when one loses one’s mother?

Evgeniya Dame grew up in Samara, Russia and moved to the U.S. at 23 to pursue an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of New Hampshire on a Fulbright Scholarship. Her fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Southern Review, Subtropics, Joyland, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her non-fiction has been published in Electric Literature and online in The New England Review. She was a 2020-2022 Stegner Fellow in Fiction at Stanford University where she currently teaches in the Continuing Studies Program. She edits fiction at Joyland magazine.

Ray Daniel is an award-winning author of Boston-based crime fiction. His short story “Give Me a Dollar” won a 2014 Derringer Award for short fiction and “Driving Miss Rachel” was chosen as a 2013 distinguished short story by Otto Penzler, editor of The Best American Mystery Stories 2013. Daniel’s short fiction has been published in the Level Best Books anthologies THIN ICE, BLOOD MOON, STONE COLD, and ROGUE WAVE; as well as in the Anthony-nominated anthology MURDER AT THE BEACH (Down and Out Books). His novels,TERMINATED, CORRUPTED MEMORY, CHILD NOT FOUND, and HACKED have been published by Midnight Ink. HACKED is the fourth novel in the Tucker Mysteries. CHILD NOT FOUND has received starred reviews from Publisher's Weekly and Library Journal.

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.

Karen Day is the award-winning author of three novels for middle school readers, No Cream Puffs, Tall Talesand A Million Miles From Boston, all published by Random House. Her novels have appeared on numerous lists, including Bank Street College Educator's Best Books of the Year and the Texas Library Associations Bluebonnet Master reading list. Karen teaches writing workshops to both children and adults. She has been on the faculty at the Cape Cod Writers Center Conference and will be teaching next summer at the Chautauqua Writers' Center. You can reach Karen at her website: klday.com

Some of the services I offer include: *Pitching help: how to write a pitch, how to target a pitch for a publication, how to identify markets and pitch those markets, feedback on specific pitches *Feedback on writing: whether it's an essay, a piece of reported journalism, or a work of literary non-fiction, I can offer feedback prior to submission and help guide the writing process *Freelance coaching: covers the basic how-to's of freelancing including setting financial goals, publication goals, and pitching goals; how to track income, log hours, and keep deadlines straight; how to establish and maintain relationships with editors *Sensitivity reading and writing tips on issues of gender, addiction, trauma *More: if you can conceive it, we can achieve it. Get in touch and let me know what you're looking for, and I can either find a way to help you myself, or try to refer you to someone who can

Frankie de la Cretaz is a freelance journalist, sports writer, and essayist whose work has been featured in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, espnW, Teen Vogue, Marie Claire, BRIDES Magazine, Parents Magazine, Literary Hub, Narratively, Elle, Vogue, and more. In 2017, they've won the Nellie Bly Award for Investigative Journalism for her work on racism in the Boston sports media scene. They are currently working on a non-fiction book about women and girls in football. Visit britnidlc.com for more.

Jeni De La O is an Afro-Cuban poet and storyteller living in Detroit. She is a 2021 Kresge Arts in Detroit Fellow in Literary Arts and a founding member of The Estuary Collective. She is Managing Editor at Kissing Dynamite Poetry and authors the monthly column, BROWN STUDY, at  The Poetry Question. Her chapbook, SOFIAS is forthcoming from Ethel Press in 2022. Jeni has appeared as a storyteller with The Secret Society of Twisted Storytellers, Lamplight Festival, MouthPiece Stories, and The Moth MainStage. Her poetry has appeared in Poet Lore, Columbia Journal, Sugar House Review, Glass Poetry, and other places. 

Jenn is no longer taking on consults through GrubStreet, but please contact her via her personal website to learn more about her offerings. www.jenniferdeleonauthor.com Consults on novel-length projects, memoirs, and essay collections in addition to short fiction and personal essays, with a particular interest and expertise in cross-cultural and international narratives, immigrant in U.S. narratives, family stories, Young Adult fiction, and themes exploring identity, cultural, race, class, and language, and specializes in helping writers find the ‘real story’ they’re trying to tell.

After a decade teaching in Boston Public Schools and Teach for America, Jenn (she/her/hers) is now an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Framingham State University and a faculty member in the MFA in Creative Nonfiction program at Bay Path University. In addition to teaching and serving on the Board of Directors at GrubStreet, she was also one of the founding instructors of our Young Adult Writers Program (YAWP) and Write Down the Street Program. She is the author of the YA novel Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From (Caitlyn Dlouhy Books/Simon & Schuster, 2020) and the essay collection White Space: Essays on Culture, Race, & Writing (UMass Press, 2021), which won the Juniper Prize. She is also the editor of Wise Latinas: Writers on Higher Education (University of Nebraska Press, 2014), an anthology that won the International Latino Book Award. Her stories and essays have appeared in dozens of literary journals and magazines including Ploughshares, Brevity, Ms., Briar Cliff Review, Poets & Writers, Guernica, The Best Women’s Travel Writing, and elsewhere, and she has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Hedgebrook, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, City of Boston Artist-in-Residence Program, the Associates of the Boston Public Library, and the Macondo Writers’ Workshop which was founded by author Sandra Cisneros. Jenn is currently working on her next two Young Adult novels, a Children’s Picture Book, and a memoir. Connect with her @jdeleonwriter on Instagram and Twitter or via her website: www.jenniferdeleonauthor.com.

Leah DeCesare is the award-winning author of Forks, Knives, and Spoons. Her writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Simply Woman, The International Doula, and The Key, among others. Leah is the cofounder of the nonprofit, Doulas of Rhode Island, and she led the fundraising efforts to build a medical center in Uganda. The mother of three, DeCesare lives with her family in Rhode Island and iearned her Master of Fine Arts at The Newport MFA. For more, visit leahdecesare.com.

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.

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.

JD DEBRIS is the author of THE SCORPION'S QUESTION MARK (Autumn House Press, 2023), winner of the 2022 Donald Justice Prize. He holds an MFA from New York University, where he was a Goldwater Fellow. His work has been chosen for Ploughshares's Emerging Writers' Prize, and he has twice been named to Narrative's 30 Below 30 List. His other releases include the chapbook SPARRING and the music albums BLACK MARKET ORGANS (Simple Truth Records, 2016) and JD Debris Murder Club (forthcoming).

Kayla Degala-Paraíso (she/they) is a Filipinx-American experimental writer with: a B.A. in Creative Writing-Fiction, a B.A. in Political Studies (Pitzer College). She is currently working on: a Masters in Public Policy, a Masters in Social Work (UCLA). She has lived on the traditional lands of: the Lenape (Brooklyn), the Quinnipiac (New Haven), the Tongva (Claremont, CA), the Massachusett (Boston), the Chumash/Tongva (western Los Angeles; current) peoples. Also: Nepal, Italy. She is a teacher of: creative writing, social change, comparative literature. Her writing often: meditates on home, challenges conventions of craft, sucker-punches you in the gut. Her activism focuses on: immigrants' rights, workers' rights, transformative justice. You can read her literary work in: miniskirt magazine (Issue 08), PANK magazine (PANK 16 & 17), Okay Donkey Magazine (May 2nd, 2022); Anomaly (ANMLY #35); Bending Genres (Issue 30); The Lumiere Review (Issue 11); Black Fox Literary Magazine (Issue 24). Her literary work has been: given the Bea Matas Hollfelder Award, nominated for a Pushcart Prize in Creative Nonfiction. She published under: K. Degala-Paraíso. Her current projects focus on: grief, goddesses of the underworld, lists.

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.

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.

Cathie Desjardins has published two books of poetry, With Child and Buddha in the Garden, and has written extensively as a journalist, essayist and food and book reviewer. She is Poet Laureate Emerita of Arlington MA and can be reached at [email protected].

Katie Dieter's fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction have appeared in a variety of literary magazines, including Atticus Review, FIELD, Juked, Phantom Drift, Pleiades, and Prairie Schooner. Her short fiction has been a finalist for Third Coast's 2015 Jaimy Gordon Prize as well as the 2017 Italo Calvino prize. She has taught creative writing at Washington University in St. Louis, for Oberlin College's Winter Term, and in a variety of elementary and secondary education settings. She is currently working on her first novel and lives in Providence with her wife and son.

Elaine Dimopoulos’s debut novel for young adults will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in Spring 2015. Elaine has served as the Boston Public Library Children’s Writer-in-Residence and as a Saint Botolph Club Artist Fellow. A graduate of Yale, Columbia, and Simmons College, she teaches children's literature and writing for children at Boston University and Simmons. Her blog on children’s books, The Picky Reader, is hosted by mommybites.com. Elaine is represented by Edward Necarsulmer IV at Dunow, Carlson, & Lerner. To learn more, visit elainedimopoulos.com or follow @ElaineDimop.

Michael Don is the author of the story collection Partners and Strangers (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2019). His work has appeared in journals such as Vol 1. Brooklyn, SmokeLong Quarterly, Washington Square Review, Southern Humanities Review, Fiction International, and The Southampton Review. He teaches in the English Department at Tufts University and has previously taught creative writing at Penn State University, The University of Illinois, and Saint Paul's University in Kenya. He co-edits Kikwetu: A Journal of East African Literature and has previously edited for Ninth Letter.

I grew up in a little town north of Boston called Amesbury. I knew I wanted to write after reading "The Sun Also Rises" and "Their Eyes Were Watching God" the summer before my junior year in high school, and I knew how important writing could be after reading "Notes of a Native Son" and "Slouching Toward Bethlehem" some time during college. I studied writing and publishing at the University of Glasgow (MLitt, 2010), and I'm currently working as a freelance journalist. I mostly write about food and sport, and I sometimes write about art, photography, and politics. (Still thinking about writing a novel. Some day.) I live in Allston. I eat way too many dumplings.

Over the past few years, Erika Dreifus has assisted authors and publishers in promoting books released by companies large and small: HarperCollins, The Jewish Publication Society, University of Nevada Press, Orison Books, Palgrave Macmillan, Jewish Storyteller Press, Fig Tree Books, and more. She has also publicized her own books, including Quiet Americans: Stories (Last Light Studio) and, most recently, Birthright: Poems (Kelsay Books). Visit Erika online at www.ErikaDreifus.com, and/or follow her on Twitter (@ErikaDreifus), where she tweets on “matters bookish and/or Jewish.”

Anjali Mitter Duva is an Indian American writer raised in France. She is the author of the bestselling historical novel FAINT PROMISE OF RAIN which was shortlisted for a William Saroyan International Prize for Writing and a Chaucer Award for Historical Fiction. She was a 2018 Finalist for a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship. Anjali co-founded and runs the Arlington Author Salon, a quarterly literary series with a twist, and is Fiction Co-Editor at Solstice Literary Magazine. She is also a co-founder of Chhandika, a non-profit organization that teaches and presents India's classical storytelling kathak dance. Anjali was educated at Brown University and MIT. She lives in the Greater Boston area with her husband and two daughters, for whose friends she has run a 9-year book club for kids. Find her at www.anjalimitterduva.com, and @AnjaliMDuva on Twitter and Instagram. 

Literary, speculative, and experimental fictions. Critical, reflective, and political essays. Book-length manuscripts welcome.

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.

Character-driven, high-concept and indie, drama, comedy, historical, and adaptations.

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.

Personal essay, memoir, short story, flash fiction and nonfiction, experimental forms of prose. I'm devoted to teaching craft and helping writers find the best structure for their stories.

Xujun Eberlein is an award-winning fiction and nonfiction writer, as well as a literary translator. Her essay "Ms. Daylily" won the 2021 Iowa Review Award in nonfiction judged by Melissa Febos. She is the author of APOLOGIES FORTHCOMING, a short story collection that won the Tartt First Fiction Award and also a runner-up for the Drake Emerging Writer's Award. Her work has appeared in Agni, American Literary Review, Asia Literary Review, Brevity, Iron Horse, Meridian, Michigan Quarterly Review, New England Review, Night Train, Post Road, Prism International, Stand, StoryQuarterly, Walrus, and elsewhere. In addition to literary magazines, she also wrote for Foreign Policy, LA Review of Books, theAtlantic.com, and the New America Media. Prizes and honors she received for her writing include: winner of the American Literary Review's Creative Nonfiction Contest, notable mention in BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS, Artist’s Grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, fiction scholarship to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, first prize winner of the Ledge Fiction Award, second prize in Literal Latte's Essay Awards, finalist in Narrative Magazine's story contest, special mention in The Pushcart Prize. She holds a Ph.D. in Transportation Science from MIT and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing from Emerson College. Excerpts from the memoir she's currently working on recently appeared in AGNI. Visit < https://agnionline.bu.edu/about/our-people/authors/xujun-eberlein > to read "The Summer before Thirteen" and "In Which No Sex Takes Place."

Tina Egnoski is the author of the novella In the Time of the Feast of Flowers, winner of the Clay Reynolds Award, as well as two chapbooks, This Invisible Beauty and Perishables. Her work, both fiction and poetry, has been published in a number of literary journals, including Cimarron Review, The Masters Review, and Saw Palm Journal. Her novel, Burn Down This World, is forthcoming in March 2020 by Adelaide Books. She received her MFA from Emerson College. She was the director of the Ocean State Writing Conference from 2016 to 2019. Currently, she works in the Liberal Arts Division at the Rhode Island School of Design. Along with writing, she's passionate about papermaking and bookbinding.

I'm interested in literary fiction of any kind, with particular interest in cross-cultural, international, and identity-focused narratives.

Jonathan Escoffery is the author of the linked story collection, If I Survive You, a New York Times and Booklist Editor’s Choice, an IndieNext Pick, and an International Bestseller. If I Survive You was longlisted for the National Book Award, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, the PEN/ Robert W. Bingham Prize For Debut Short Story Collection, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and the Story Prize, and was shortlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, the Southern Book Prize, and the California Independent Booksellers Alliance’s Golden Poppy Award. It was named a ‘best’ book of 2022 by Entertainment Weekly, People, TIME, Oprah Daily, NPR, Literary Hub, The New Yorker, L.A. Times, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Vox, Kirkus, BookPage, Real Simple, and elsewhere. If I Survive You received American Short Fiction‘s 2023 Constellation Award for a Story Collection and was named Miami New Times’ 2023 Best Book by a Local Author. Jonathan is the winner of The Paris Review’s 2020 Plimpton Prize for Fiction and the 2020 ASME Award for Fiction from the American Society of Magazine Editors, and was the recipient of a 2020 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Paris Review, Oprah Daily, Electric Literature, Zyzzyva, American Short Fiction, The Best American Magazine Writing 2020, and elsewhere. Jonathan has taught creative writing and seminars on the writer’s life at Stanford University, the University of Minnesota, Warren Wilson, Randolph College, the Center for Fiction, Tin House, The Work Room, The Porch, and at GrubStreet in Boston, where, as former staff, he founded the Boston Writers of Color Group, which currently has more than 2,000 members. 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, and elsewhere. He is a graduate of the University of Minnesota’s Creative Writing MFA Program (Fiction) and was a 2021-2023 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.

Nausheen Eusuf holds a PhD in English from Boston University and an MA from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins. Her poetry has won a Pushcart Prize, and has appeared in The American Scholar, PN Review, Southwest Review, Salmagundi, World Literature Today, and Best American Poetry 2018 & 2019. Her first full-length collection Not Elegy, But Eros was published by NYQ Books (US) and Bengal Lights Books (Bangladesh). Website: www.nausheeneusuf.com.

A small, selective agency and member of AAR, the Author’s Guild, the Agents Round Table, PEN, and Grub Street’s Literary Advisory Council, Fairbank Literary Representation is happily entering its nineteenth year. Clients range from first-time authors to international best-sellers, prize winning-journalists to professionals at the top of their fields. They can be found with all the major publishers, as well as in the New York Times, The Boston Globe, Harper’s, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Granta, Best American Short Stories, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Glimmertrain, and more. Our tastes tend toward literary and international fiction; the occasional mystery or thriller with a firm sense of place; big memoir that goes beyond the me-moir; topical or narrative non-fiction with a strong interest in women’s voices, global perspectives, and class and race issues; children’s picture Books & Middle Grade from illustrator/artists only; quality lifestyle books (food, wine, and design); pop culture; craft; and gift and humor books. We are most likely to pick up works that are of social or cultural significance, newsworthy, or that cause us to take great delight in the words, images or ideas on the page. Lately we have been doing extremely well in the humor/gift/pop culture category, international fiction, and children’s picture books by illustrator artists, and we’d love to take on more projects in those categories. Above all, we look for a fresh voice, approach, story, or idea.

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.

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.

Anthony Febo is a Puerto Rican poet, teaching artist, and new dad living in Arlington, MA. Febo has been performing and teaching poetry and theatre for 15 in the greater Boston area. In the classroom, Febo treats each workshop as its own celebration. He draws on his experiences in theatre spaces, museums, non-profits, and art centers to provide the participates with the tools they need for their success. On the stage, he's toured the country individually and as half of Adobo-Fish-Sauce: a cooking and poetry collaboration. His work examines what it means to actively choose joy in the face of what is trying to break you. Weaving performance into his writing, he examines issues such as toxic masculinity, family, culture, identity, and the role representation plays into a person’s development. His first full length book of poetry, Becoming an Island, can be purchased at Game Over Books.

Saraciea J. Fennell is a Black Honduran writer and the founder of The Bronx is Reading. She is also a book publicist who has worked with many award-winning and New York Times-bestselling authors. Fennell sits on the board for Latinx in Publishing as well as on the Advisory Board of People of Color in Publishing. She lives in the Bronx with her family and dog, Oreo. Her forthcoming anthology WILD TONGUES CAN’T BE TAMED will be published by Flatiron Books in Fall 2021. Visit thebronxisreading.com and follow her online @sj_fennell & @thebronxisreading.

Megan Fernandes earned her PhD in English at the University of California, Santa Barbara and holds an MFA in poetry from Boston University. She is the poetry editor of the anthology Strangers in Paris (Tightrope Books) and is the author of two poetry chapbooks: Organ Speech (Corrupt Press) and Some Citrus Makes me Blue (Dancing Girl Press). Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Memorious, Guernica, Rattle, the Boston Review, Black Lawrence Press, Redivider, Upstairs at Duroc, the California Journal of Poetics, and Media Fields: Science and Scale. Fernandes is the recent recipient of the "Writers Room of Boston" fellowship in poetry, the Dzanc Books Luso-Descent Writers Award, the Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship in Poetry, and was commended by Don Paterson in the 2012 Edwin Morgan International Poetry Contest. Currently, she is a Visiting Lecturer at MIT.

A Brooklyn-bred, Boston-based writer, Michele Ierardi Ferrari holds a BA in English and Creative Writing from Cornell University and a PhD in American Literature from the University of Virginia. She completed GrubStreet's Novel Generator and Novel Incubator programs and is a contributor for Dead Darlings, a writing-focused website. She participated in the Tin House Summer Workshop and the Sirenland Writers Conference. She is a TedX Beaconstreet speaker and a Moth GrandSlam storyteller. She has been a writing instructor and coach with 826 Boston, the Posse Foundation, and Next Step. She is currently working on a novel set in 1980s New York City. When not working, she will most likely be out running with her husband and her Jack Russell terrier, Zelda.

1 on 1 and group writing mentorship’s especially in the genres of science fiction, fantasy, speculative, poetry and long form fiction.

Lysz Flo is an AfroCaribbean Latine, polyglot, w safe space curator, and indie author, member of The Estuary Collective, Creatively Exposed podcast host, Voodoonauts Summer 2020 Fellow and Obsidian Black Listening 2022 Fellow . She released her poetry novel Soliloquy of an Ice Queen, March 2020. She is a Grubstreet educator since 2020. Her poems can be found in FIYAH, Hellebore, Skin Coloured Mag, Digging Press and has done various multimedia projects work O’ Miami.

Mystery, suspense, true crime.

Attorney Kate Flora's fourteen books include seven series mysteries, four gritty police procedurals, a suspense thriller and two true crime books. Finding Amy was a 2007 Edgar nominee and has been filmed for TV. Death Dealer,a true crime involving a Canadian serial killer, is a 2015 Agatha and Anthony finalist. Flora's Joe Burgess police procedurals have won the 2013 and 2015 Maine Literary Award for Crime Fiction. Her short stories and essays have appeared in numerous anthologies and literary journals. She spent seven years as editor and publisher at Level Best Books. Flora is former international president of Sisters in Crime, and a founding member of the Maine Crime Wave and New England Crime Bake conferences. She has taught writing at Brown, the Cape Cod Writers Conference, for the Maine Writers and Publishers Association, and at many national conferences. She teaches writing for Grub Street.

Katherine Flynn joined the Kneerim & Williams Literary Agency in 2008. After graduating from Johns Hopkins University, Katherine worked at the literary agency of Nicholas Ellison/Sanford J. Greenburger Associates, Inc. in New York. She then pursued her Ph.D. in History at Brown University, where she is now A.B.D. Prior to joining Kneerim & Williams, Katherine edited history books at the publishing company of Bedford/St. Martin's. She has also taught English literature and composition to high school students and has worked in a rare book shop. She represents both fiction and nonfiction, particularly history, adventure, nature, science, and narrative nonfiction, and crime, historical, and women's fiction.

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.

Tessa Fontaine is the author of The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts, a New York Times Editor's pick, an Amazon Best of 2018 (so far) pick, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick, an Amazon Editors' Best of the Month featured debut, an iBooks favorite, and more. Tessa spent the 2013 season performing with the last American traveling circus sideshow, the World of Wonders. Essays about the sideshow won the 2016 AWP Intro Award in Nonfiction, and have appeared in The Rumpus, Hayden's Ferry Review, Autre, and elsewhere. Other work can be found in Glamour, The Believer, LitHub, FSG's Works in Progress, Creative Nonfiction, The Normal School, Seneca Review, DIAGRAM, New Orleans Review, [PANK], Brevity, and more. ​Raised outside San Francisco, Tessa got her MFA from the University of Alabama and is currently a doctoral student in creative writing at the University of Utah. She is the recipient of the University of Alabama’s 2012 graduate departmental awards in fiction, nonfiction and poetry, and the 2013 awards in fiction and nonfiction. She has won the University of Utah’s Academic Fellowship and the University of Alabama’s National Alumni Fellowship, Boone Fellowship, Truman Capote Award and First-Year Teaching Award, and has recieved awards and fellowships from Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Taft Nicholson Center, Writing by Writers, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and more. She has taught for the New York Times summer journeys, at the Universities of Alabama and Utah, in prisons in Alabama and Utah, and founded a Salt Lake City Writers in the Schools program. ​Around the country, she has performed her one-woman plays in theatres ranging from New York to San Francisco. The scar on her cheek from a 2am whip act is slowly fading.

Kelly J. Ford is the author of Cottonmouths, named one of 2017’s best books of the year by the Los Angeles Review and featured in “52 Books in 52 Weeks” in the Los Angeles Times. Her work has appeared in Post Road Magazine, Black Heart Magazine, Fried Chicken and Coffee, and Knee-Jerk Magazine. She is an instructor for GrubStreet Writing Center and an IT project manager. She also appears on Grepcast, a weekly podcast covering technology and technology adjacent topics from TSP LLC. Kelly is Arkansas bred and Boston based.

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.

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.

I love to work with students on book-length manuscripts, chapbooks, packets of poems for submissions and applications, or individual poems. I also consult with writers who want to learn how to navigate the literary magazine or book submission process or who seek mentorship through the graduate school application process. I have extensive experience mentoring writers through the academic job market process. Such career guidance can include helping applicants navigate the entire process, providing feedback on application materials, and helping applicants prepare for interviews.

Rebecca Morgan Frank is the author of four collections of poems: Oh You Robot Saints! (2021), Sometimes We're All Living in a Foreign Country (2017), and The Spokes of Venus (2016), all from Carnegie Mellon University Press, and Little Murders Everywhere (Salmon 2012), finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Her poems have recently appeared in such places as The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Pleiades, The Southern Review, On the Seawall, and the Academy of America Poets' Poem-a-Day. She is the recipient of the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay di Castagnola Award and fellowships from such places as the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, the Writers' Room of Boston, and the Mississippi Arts Commission. She holds an MFA from Emerson College and a PhD in creative writing and literature from the University of Cincinnati. She has extensive experience teaching graduate and undergraduate students, including as Distinguished Visiting Writer at Bowling Green State University; Jacob Ziskind Poet in Residence at Brandeis University; tenure-track graduate faculty at the University of Southern Mississippi; and at Emerson College. She teaches for the MFA program at Northwestern University's School of Professional Studies. Co-founder and editor of the literary magazine Memorious.org, she is an incoming board member for the National Book Critics Circle.

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 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.

Sara Freeman is a Montreal-born fiction writer based out of Boston. She graduated with an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University, where she was the winner of the Henfield Prize. She has taught writing in Columbia's University Writing Program, at the Fashion Institute of Technology, SUNY, Stanford Continuing Studies, and Emerson College. Her debut novel, Tides (Grove Press) was named one of the 100 Must-Read Books of 2022 by Time Magazine, a Gold Winner for the Foreword Indie Awards, and a 'Must Read' by the Massachusetts Book Awards. Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Granta, The Sewanee Review, The Best American Short Stories, Best Canadian Stories, among others. (US).

Leora Fridman is a writer whose work is concerned with issues of identity, assimilation, care, ability, and embodiment. She's author of My Fault, selected by Eileen Myles for the Cleveland State University Press First Book Prize, in addition to other books of prose, poetry and translation. Her work appears or is forthcoming in the Millions, the New York Times, the Rumpus, Tricycle Magazine, Open Space, Denver Quarterly, jubilat and the Believer, among others. Forthcoming books include Static Palace, a collection of essays about chronic illness and apocalypse (punctum books 2022), Fasci/nation, a book of nonfiction focused on embodied relationships to whiteness and historical oppression, and Vessel, collected poems on shattering and consecration. Leora holds degrees with honors from the University of Massachusetts Amherst MFA Program for Poets and Writers and Brown University. She has taught online and in person in universities, homes and retreat centers, and collaborates widely with artists, writers and community groups. She is a recipient of support, grants and residencies from organizations including Fulbright, Creative Capital / Andy Warhol Foundation, Caldera, the National Endowment for the Arts, Alley Cat Books, Real Time & Space, Vermont Studio Center, the Center for Cultural Innovation, and the Dorot Foundation.

Lev Friedland (they/them/theirs) is GrubStreet’s Operations Associate. They received an MFA in Creative Writing and a graduate certificate in Jewish Studies from the University of Colorado Boulder. Lev is a 2021 Somerville Arts Council Literature Fellow, a finalist for the 2021 Chautauqua Janus Prize, and the winner of Redivider’s 2019 Blurred Genre contest. They consider themself an experimental writer, a performance artist, and a queer science fabulist. When not writing, Lev is thinking about how they probably should be writing.

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.)

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.

Kate holds her B.A. from Vassar College, her M.Ed. from University of Massachusetts Boston, and her M.F.A. in Creative Writing for Young People from Lesley University. She is the recipient of the W.K. Rose Fellowship from Vassar College (2022). After over a decade of teaching English for the Boston Public Schools, Kate now spends her life writing books, delighting her wonderful wife with homemade baked goods, and walking her dramatic dog, Weasley. Her debut middle grade novel, “The Song of Us” was published by Katherine Tegen Books/HarperCollins in Summer 2023.

Margo is a freelance writer, photographer, music lover, churro aficionado and all around life enthusiast behind Margo’s Creative Life. She loves a good gin and tonic. Follow her jaunts around the world on Instagram @margoscreativelife.

Nicole Galland's professional life straddles stage and page. Her debut novel, The Fool's Tale, was a "Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers" pick, and The Rise and Fall of DODO, co-written with Neal Stephenson, was a New York Times bestseller. Her other historical novels include Revenge of the Rose; I, Iago; Godiva; and Crossed: A Tale of the Fourth Crusade. She has also written 2 contemporary novels, Stepdog and On The Same Page, and is grateful that HarperCollins publishes all of her work even as she jumps between genres. Theatrically, she is former Literary Manager of the renowned Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and has worked extensively as a dramaturg, including on the Pulitzer-Prize winning play Disgraced by Ayad Akhtar. She is also co-founder/director of Shakespeare for the Masses at the Martha's Vineyard Playhouse, now in its 11th year. She has lived in many wonderful places, but also in LA, from whence she ran screaming shortly after her first screenplay won an award and was endlessly optioned, but never made. When she has time, she write a tongue-in-cheek advice column, MV Ps & Qs, for the Martha's Vineyard Times.

Ellen Gandt has an MA from Hollins University and an MFA from the University of Alabama. She has taught research, expository, business, and creative writing. Several years ago, after she had a story published in the New Orleans Review, she left teaching and joined a publishing house in Boston. She has spent years producing creative fiction and non-fiction and helping professionals of all kinds to write more effectively.

Vanessa Garcia is a multidisciplinary artist working as a novelist, playwright, and journalist. Her debut novel, White Light, was named one of the Best Books of 2015 by NPR, Al Día, Flavorwire, and NBC Latino. As a journalist, feature writer, and essayist, her pieces have appeared in The LA Times, The Guardian, The Miami Herald, The Washington Post, The Southern Humanities Review, The Art Basel Magazine, and The Rumpus, among numerous other publications. She’s also a Huffington Post blogger. Her plays have been produced in Edinburgh, Miami, Los Angeles, New York, and other cities around the world. These include The Cuban Spring (a full-length Carbonell Award nominee for Best New Play, 2015) and The Crocodile’s Bite (a short included in numerous anthologies such as Smith & Kraus’ Best Ten Minute Plays of 2016; the City Theatre Anthology 2015; and the Writer’s Digest Annual Award Anthology, 2015). Garcia holds a PhD from the University of California Irvine in English (with a focus in Creative Nonfiction), an MFA from the University of Miami (in fiction), and a BA from Barnard College, Columbia University (English and Art History). She's also currently Assistant Editor at The Miami Rail.

James Geary is the Deputy Curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. He is the author of two books about aphorisms, The New York Times bestseller The World in A Phrase: A Brief History of the Aphorism and Geary's Guide to The World's Great Aphorists. His most recent book is I Is an Other: The Secret Life of Metaphor and How It Shapes The Way We See The World.

Annette Gendler is the author of Jumping Over Shadows, the memoir of a German-Jewish love that overcame the burdens of the Holocaust. Her writing and photography have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Tablet Magazine, The Forward, Kveller, Bella Grace and Artful Blogging, among others. She served as the 2014–2015 writer-in-residence at the Hemingway Birthplace Home in Oak Park, Illinois, and has been teaching memoir writing at StoryStudio Chicago since 2006. She also teaches memoir workshops around the country and abroad, such as at the American Writers Museum in Chicago, the Hemingway Foundation in Oak Park, WriteSpace Jerusalem and the Writing Pad in Tel Aviv.

Madhushree Ghosh’s debut food narrative memoir, KHABAAR: An Immigrant Journey of Food, Memory, and Family was published by the University of Iowa Press (@uiowapress) in April 2022. Hailed by Ms Magazine as a ‘Most Anticipated Read for the Rest of Us in 2022’, a Chicago Review of Books: 12 Must-Read Books of April, a Phenomenal Books Must Read Memoir (2022) as well as a Brown Girl Bookshelf and Cold Tea Collective must-read 2022 memoir, KHABAAR focuses on chefs, home cooks, and food stall owners, and the author’s own immigrant journey as the daughter of refugees, questioning what it means to belong and what does belonging in a new place look like in the foods carried over from the old country. Her work has been a Notable Mention in Best American Essays in Food Writing, Pushcart nominated and published in The New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, The Writer, Longreads, Catapult, BOMB, Guernica, LA Review of Books, LitHub and others. She works in oncology diagnostics and can be reached at @writemadhushree and her website (www.writemadhushree.com)

Literary Performer, actor & educator, Regie Gibson, has lectured & performed in the U.S., Cuba & Europe. Representing the U.S. in Italy, Regie competed for & received both the Absolute Poetry Award in Monfalcone & The Europa in Versi Award in LaGuardia di Como. He’s received a Mass Cultural Council Poetry Award, is a Brother Thomas Fellow & has received two Live Arts Boston Grants to develop his first play, The Juke: A Blues Bacchae. He has composed texts for The Boston City Singers, The Mystic Chorale and Boston’s Handel+Haydn Society. He performs regularly with Atlas Soul: a world music ensemble & Shakespeare to Hip-Hop: an education & performance program integrating classical & modern texts into English curriculums. He has served as a think-tank member & consultant for both the National Endowment for the Arts “How Art Works” initiative & for the “Mere Distinction of Color”, an exhibit at Montpelier, the historic home of President James Madison examining the legacy of slavery and the U.S. constitution. He is Poet-in-Residence of the Cary Memorial Library in Lexington & teaches for both Emerson College & Clark University.

Hollis Gillespie is an award-winning humor and travel columnist, and her column appears every month on Atlanta magazine's back page. She is also a best-selling author, NPR commentator, professional speaker, and guest on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Her work has been optioned by Sony Pictures and Paramount, and she has collaborated with Hollywood hard hitters like Mitch Hurwitz, the creator of Arrested Development, Eric and Kim Tannenbaum, producers of Two and a Half Men, and Amy Palladino, creator of Gilmore Girls. (George Clooney has also kissed her twice. Twice!) Hollis herself has been featured on scores of TV shows and runs Shocking Real Life, the largest writing school in Atlanta, which offers workshops on book writing, blogging, and social media. Kirkus Reviews lauded Gillespie's "impeccable comic timing" for her first novel, Unaccompanied Minor Her next novel, We Will Be Crashing Shortly, is due out in 2014.

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. 

A GrubStreet instructor since 2007, Ethan Gilsdorf is a memoirist, essayist, critic, journalist, poet, teacher, performer, and the author of the award-winning memoir 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. Hundreds of his personal essays, articles, reviews, cultural commentaries, profiles, opinion pieces, short stories, and poems have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Esquire, Boston Globe, Wired, Salon, O the Oprah Magazine, National Geographic, Brevity, Electric Literature, Poetry, The Southern Review, North American Review, The Massachusetts Review, among other publications. Twice his work has been named "Notable" by The Best American Essays. At GrubStreet, Gilsdorf is co-founder of GrubStreet's Young Adult Writers Program (YAWP), and served on the Board of Directors for 10 years. He teaches essay, memoir, journalism and other workshops, and leads GrubStreet's 10-month long intensive Essay Incubator program; he also leads writing workshops for non-profit social justice organizations. 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 presented the TEDx talk "Why Dungeons & Dragons is Good for You (In Real Life).” He studied filmmaking and creative writing at Hampshire College, and received an MFA in Creative Writing from Louisiana State University. A former editor for Frank magazine and New Delta Review, Gilsdorf is the winner of the Hobblestock Peace Poetry Competition and the Esme Bradberry Contemporary Poets Prize. He has taught at LSU, Emerson College, and for LitArts RI. A regular presenter, performer, and event moderator, he’s been featured on NPR, The Discovery Channel, PBS, CBC, BBC; and in the documentary Revenge of the Geeks. More info: ethangilsdorf.com, Twitter @ethanfreak.

Ani Gjika is an Albanian-born poet, literary translator, writer, and author of Bread on Running Waters (Fenway Press, 2013), a finalist for the 2011 Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize and 2011 May Sarton New Hampshire Book Prize. She moved to the US when she was 18, earning an MA in English at Simmons College and an MFA in poetry at Boston University. Her translation from the Albanian of Negative Space by Luljeta Lleshanaku was published in 2018 by Bloodaxe Books in the UK where it was Poetry Book Society's Recommended Translation and by New Directions in the US where it was a PEN Award finalist for Poetry in Translation and is currently shortlisted for the international Griffin Poetry Prize. Her honours include awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship, Framingham State University’s Miriam Levine Reader Award, English PEN Translates Award, and the Robert Fitzgerald Translation Prize. Gjika's own poetry appears in Seneca Review, Salamander, Plume, From the Fishouse and elsewhere. Her translations from the Albanian appear in World Literature Today, Ploughshares, AGNI Online, Catamaran Literary Reader, Two Lines Online, From the Fishouse and elsewhere. 

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.

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.

Travon (he/him/his) coached track and field at the DI and DIII levels while simultaneously teaching English Composition 101 and 102 after being named NCAA DIII Scholar Athlete of the Year and a CoSIDA Academic All-American. He has read for The McNeese Review and Persona Literary Journal, and was a panelist for the South Central Modern Language Association Conference in 2018. Travon's writing has appeared in Persona and Five2One magazine, while also earning him a finalist spot for Redivider’s Blurred Genre Contest in 2017. He has facilitated several symposiums regarding cross-cultural conversations and celebrations of race in the English classroom and was a member of the NESCAC Coaches of Color Association while working for Amherst College.   Travon currently serves GrubStreet's community as the Interim Manager of Youth Programs. In this role, the former DIII National Champion has combined his passions for writing, teamwork, and mentorship to make way for young writers by using their feedback to foster community partnerships, plan guest author events, and design programs that better reflect their interests. Travon earned an M.F.A. in Poetry and an M.A. in Literature from McNeese State University, while also holding a B.A. in English with extensive studies done in Secondary Education and Ethnic and Gender Studies from Westfield State University. Travon also holds certificates for BEST Youth Worker Training and Youth Mental Health First Aid, and is a 2023 INP Community Fellow.

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.

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.

Kat Gonso's stories have been published in SmokeLong Quarterly, New Flash Fiction Review, Hobart, Gravel, Corium, Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, and various other journals and anthologies. She was the 2017 winner of the Gover Flash Fiction Prize and is featured in Best New Writing. Her flash piece "A Pinch of Salt" won the Southeast Review's World's Best Short-Short Story Contest. She earned her MFA in fiction at Emerson College. Kat teaches writing at Northeastern University.  

Vero González is a queer femme-inist writer and translator from San Juan, Puerto Rico. She has a MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writer's Workshop, where she was a Dean's Graduate Fellow and a BFA from Pratt Institute, where she won the Thesis Prize in Fiction. She has received support from A Room of Her Own Foundation (Touching Lives Fellow, 2015) as well as Hedgebrook and the Rona Jaffe Foundation (Hedgebrook/Rona Jaffe Inaugural Fellow, 2018). She lives in Boston, where she is working on a hybrid book about intergenerational trauma, colonialism, and healing. Vero is GrubStreet's Neighborhood Programs Fellow for Egleston Square.

Erin is a frequent Spanish<>English translator for The New York Times Opinion Section, and lead translator at OnCuba Travel magazine. She is Editor of the newly-launched Writers Program for StartupCuba.tv, an online platform promoting the arts and entrepreneurship in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and beyond. With over 15 years of freelance translation experience with a focus on international relations, entrepreneurship, and the arts, Erin established a travel and translation company in 2018. Projects have included memoirs and nonfiction; short- and full-length documentary film subtitling; translating the lyrics for an underground Cuban hiphop album; and academic case studies about Latin America. Most of all, Erin is passionate about translating poetry and short fiction.  Previously, Erin worked at Harvard University’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies for over a decade, most recently as Associate Director of Academic Programs, until 2018. Erin earned a Certificate in English–Spanish translation from the University of Massachusetts–Boston, an EdM in International Education Policy from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and a BA in International Relations from Wellesley College. 

(she/her/hers) As the Program Manager of the Boston Writers of Color Group, she oversees programming, engage with members through media outlets and monthly BWOC newsletter, and provide opportunities and guidance to self-identifying writers of color. Prior to joining the team in 2018, she has held administrative, marketing and retail positions---beginning in the literary space as the Poetry Editor Intern at Salamander Magazine. As a poet, she has performed at Boston Poetry Marathon, HUBWeek, and Literary Death Match. Serina holds a BA in English, with a concentration in Creative Writing and minor in Black Studies from Suffolk University. When she's not writing poetry, she's either writing on her blog, The Rina Collective, or creating artwork with her calligraphy. 

An Irish native, Aine Greaney has lived in the U.S. for 26 years, currently on the North Shore of Boston. As well as her four published books, she has placed personal essays in Salon.com, The Boston Globe Magazine, Forbes, The Daily Muse, Writers Digest and Books by Women. Her how-to writing book, Writer with a Day Job, was released by Writers Digest Books in 2011. As well as writing, she is the communications director for a local non-profit, and she teaches and presents on creative writing at schools, universities and arts centers. Her author website: www.ainegreaney.com.

torrin a. greathouse (she/her or they/them) is a genderqueer trans womxn & cripple-punk from Southern California. They are the author of two chapbooks, boy/girl/ghost (TAR Chapbook Series, 2018) & Therǝ is a Case That I Ɐm (Damaged Goods, 2017). Their work is published/forthcoming in POETRY, The New York Times, Muzzle, Poets.org, Redivider, BOAAT , Waxwing , & The Rumpus. She is the winner of the Peseroff Poetry Prize, F(r)iction Poetry Prize, & the Sundog Lit Collaboration Contest with Linette Reeman. When they are not writing, their hobbies include awkwardly drinking coffee at parties & trying to find some goddamn size 13 heels.

Dominic Green is the author of several books of non-fiction, including The Double Life of Dr. Lopez (2003) and Three Empires on the Nile (2007). He holds an MA from Oxford, an MA from Harvard, and a PhD from Brandeis, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society of Arts. He has taught world history and non-fiction writing at Brandeis and Boston College. His current projects are a study on the origins of modern spirituality (forthcoming, Farrar, Strauss & Giroux), and a biography set in London during the years of the American Revolution.

Alyssa Claire Greene's work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Southeast Review, Passages North, Gone Lawn, North American Review, Monkeybicycle, Hotel Amerika, and elsewhere. She is a fiction editor for Quarterly West and an editorial assistant for the Lambda Literary Review; she also created and runs Lambda's "Spotlight on New Queer Literature" interview series. She received her MFA from the University of Utah.

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. 

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.

Cynthia Gunadi’s fiction appears in Hayden's Ferry Review and New South Journal, and has received honorable mentions from Glimmer Train and The Masters Review. She has been awarded fellowships and grants from Vermont Studio Center, Kundiman, The Writers Room of Boston, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She is currently at work on a collection of short stories. Cynthia has an MFA from Warren Wilson College, and an M.Arch from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. When she’s not writing, she’s designing as principal of GLD Architecture.

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.

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).

Mandy Gutmann-Gonzalez holds an MFA in Poetry from Cornell University. Their novel in Spanish, La Pava (Ediciones Inubicalistas, 2016), follows three children who indirectly experience the trauma of the Pinochet military dictatorship in Chile. Their poetry has appeared in West Branch, The Malahat Review, Boulevard, BLOOM, Hobart, and other literary journals. They won the 2018 Boulevard Emerging Poets Prize and have received fellowships from the Lambda Writing Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices, The Center for Book Arts, and the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets. Originally from Vilches, Chile, they now live in Worcester, Massachusetts, where they teach creative writing at Clark University.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Tracy Hahn-Burkett is a writer and public policy advocate. She co-writes a column on civics in Concord, N.H.’s newspaper of record, The Concord Monitor, contributes to the fiction-writing blog, Writer Unboxed, and has published dozens of essays, stories, articles and reviews in places like The Drum, WBUR’s Cognoscenti, The Washington Post’s On Parenting, and Adoptive Families magazine. She also founded and wrote for more than 11 years the adoption and parenting blog, Uncharted Parent. In the policy world, in early 2018, Tracy founded the Gun Violence Prevention Working Group as part of the all-volunteer, grassroots Kent Street Coalition, based in Concord, N.H., and is a leader within the overall group on democracy-related issues. Earlier in her career, Tracy served as a congressional staffer, a U.S. Department of Justice Attorney-Adviser under the auspices of the Departmental Attorney General’s Honors Program, and was Deputy and Acting Director of Public Policy for the civil rights and civil liberties nonprofit, People for the American Way. She also worked in post-Communist Czechoslovakia, teaching English and coordinating Western assistance programs for the Federal Assembly and the Czech National Council. She is a recipient of a grant from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, and is perpetually revising her first novel.

Hanna Halperin is the author of the novels Something Wild (Viking, 2021) and I Could Live Here Forever (forthcoming Spring 2023). She is a graduate of the MFA program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her stories have been published in The Kenyon Review, n+1, New Ohio Review, Joyland, and others. She works as a domestic violence counselor.

Paul Haney is an essayist, journalist, poet, songwriter, and cat guy. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing: Nonfiction from Emerson College ('17) and an MA in Literature from Florida State University ('12). Currently, he's working on two different books: a queer Bob Dylan memoir, and a travel memoir recalling a summer spent bumbling around the U.S. via Amtrak. His work has appeared in Slate, Fourth Genre, The Rumpus, Hobart, Cincinnati Review, Sweet, Potomac Review, Essay Daily, the Boston Globe Magazine, the Tallahassee Democrat, and elsewhere, and has also received both a Pushcart Prize nomination and a notable selection in the Best American Essays, 2020. He and his husband live in Salem, Massachusetts, where he enjoys coffee-shop hopping. His wallet bulges with punch cards--nothing like getting that tenth one free.

Greg Harris is founding editor of Pangyrus LitMag and founder and co-director of Harvard LITfest. Faculty at Harvard University since 2003, Greg has been recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Oregon’s Regional Arts and Culture Council. He is on the board of Green Cambridge and a contributor to the New Voices Project: Contemporary Writers Confronting the Holocaust. His short stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in the Boston Globe, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Harvard Review, Jewish Fiction, Earth Island Journal, and elsewhere. His audiorecording “Champion of Hot Peppers” won a 2001 National Parenting Publications Association Gold Medal for storytelling. His translation of Seno Gumira Ajidarma’s novel Jazz, Perfume, and the Incident was published as part of the Modern Library of Indonesia (2012).

Matthew Harrison’s writing can be found in West Branch, The Cincinnati Review, At Length, Hotel Amerika, The Common, Gargoyle, Sixth Finch, and The Carolina Quarterly, among others. He earned his MFA from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and his PhD from the University of California-Irvine. He has worked for Small Beer Press and Fiction Collective Two, and he has taught writing at multiple schools, including the University of Washington, UC-Irvine, UMass-Amherst, the University of Minnesota, and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He is currently on the editorial panel of New England Review.

Tom Hart is a cartoonist and the Executive Director of The Sequential Artists Workshop (SAW), a school and arts organization in Gainesville, Florida. He is the author of the New York Times #1 Bestseller, Rosalie Lightning, a book about the loss of his daughter. Rosalie Lightning has been translated into French, Italian, Portuguese and Chinese, and was featured on many best of 2016 lists, and nominated for two Eisner Awards. Hart is the creator of the Hutch Owen series of graphic novels and books. The Collected Hutch Owen was nominated for best graphic novel in 2000. He was an early recipient of a Xeric Grant for self-publishing cartoonists, and has been on many best-of lists in The Comics Journal and other comix publications. He has been called “One of the great underrated cartoonists of our time” by Eddie Campbell and “One of my favorite cartoonists of the decade” by Scott McCloud. His daily “Hutch Owen” comic strip ran for 2 years in newspapers in New York and Boston, and his “Ali’s House”, co-created with Margo Dabaie was picked up by King Features Syndicate. He was a core instructor at New York City’s School of Visual Arts for 10 years, teaching cartooning to undergraduates, work- ing adults and teens alike.Among his students were Dash Shaw, Sarah Glidden Box Brown and other published cartoonists like Leslie Stein, Jessica Fink, Josh Bayer, Brendan Leach and many others. He taught comix and sequential art at schools and institutions all around New York City for more than 10 years, and has conducted week-long workshops from Maine to Hawaii. He also teaches sequential art in the School of Art and Art History at UF.

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.

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

Mike Harvkey is the author of the novel, In the Course of Human Events, and a graduate Bingham Fellow of the Columbia University MFA program in fiction. His writing has appeared in Esquire, Salon, The Believer, Poets & Writers, Nylon, Zoetrope All-Story Magazine, Mississippi Review and other publications and journals. A former Deputy Reviews Editor of Publishers Weekly, Mike teaches creative writing in Boston and New York City.

LYNNE HEINZMANN is a writer/book coach/editor from North Kingstown, Rhode Island. So far, she has authored two books: a historical novel Frozen Voices (Winner of the Fairfield Book Prize; New Rivers Press, 2016) and The Curious Childhood of Wanton Chase (Woodhall Press, 2019), a work of historical fiction for middle-grade readers (ages 8 to 12). Lynne loves teaching writing courses and has taught at the University of Rhode Island, the Community College of Rhode Island, and for various creative writing groups and seminars. For more about her, please visit LynneHeinzmann.com.

Nidia Hernández was born in Venezuela and has been living in the US since 2018. She is a poet and translator of Portuguese poetry, an editor, broadcaster, and radio producer, and a poetry curator. Nidia directs the editorial project lamajadesnuda.com, which won the 2011 WSA prize for Cultural Heritage. She curates Poesiaudio (Arrowsmith Press). Sundara Ramaswamy Prize 2021 for her editorial work on the recent publication: "The Land of Mild Light" by Rafael Cadenas. and is a contributor for Mercurius Magazine. She has presented works drawn from the 32 years of her radio program (also called La maja desnuda) which has more than 1,664 broadcasts. Currently, she is broadcasting the program through UPV Radio 102.5 FM in Valencia, Spain.

Judith Hertog is an essayist, journalist, memoirist, teacher, and storyteller. She grew up in Amsterdam but after some wandering around the world, ended up living in Vermont with her family. Her work has appeared in publications such as the New York Times, Longreads, The Sun, Hotel Amerika, Crab Orchard Review, Tablet, Tricycle and many others. She has published journalistic articles on topics ranging from Buddhist politics to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Currently she is working on a non-fiction book that combines investigative journalism with a personal travel narrative. Her teaching career started as an English-as-a-Foreign-Language teacher in Taiwan, where her favorite course was a creative writing course for non-native English writers. She has many years of experience teaching creative and academic college writing, creative writing for teenagers, and memoir writing for adults. She also teaches writing and story telling in prisons in New Hampshire and Vermont. Although Judith has terrible stage fright, she performs as a storyteller to life audiences and can be found as a storyteller on the Risk! podcast. She finds that writing can be a lonely activity and that oral story telling is a great way to establish a direct connection with an audience. Judith completed her high school diploma in Amsterdam, her BA at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, MA degrees in Journalism and in TESOL at Indiana University, and an MFA in Creative Writing at Bennington College. She loves studying, but decided she now has enough degrees for one lifetime.

Nakia Hill is a writer, educator, and journalist. She was the co-writer and lead interviewer for Double Elvis' Here Comes the Break, a hip-hop inspired audio drama podcast. Nakia is a founding board member of Boston Art Review. In 2018, Nakia was named a Boston Artist-in-Residence by Mayor Marty Walsh. During her residency, she published two books: Water Carrier and I Still Did It. Nakia also explored how art influences government policy and launched the Boston Women in the Workplace survey where she gathered narratives from women about navigating the work sector in Boston. Nakia's work focuses on archiving Black women's and girls' stories through print publications and empowering them to use writing as a tool for healing, advocacy, and resistance.

Julie Lekstrom Himes' short fiction has been published in Shenandoah, The Florida Review (Editor's Choice Award 2008), Fourteen Hills (nominated for Best American Mysteries 2011), Mid-American Review, Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. Her debut novel, Mikhail and Margarita, was published in 2017 by Europa Editions and received the Center For Fiction First Novel Prize of 2017. A Grubbie for years, she credits GrubStreet with helping her to take herself seriously as a writer.

Silk Jazmyne is a reading, writing, drinking student of life who loves narrative in all its forms. She was born in New York and grew up all over as a Navy brat. She received her B.S. in Communications at Florida International University and her M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the University of Tampa. Her work has appeared both online and in print at Black Girl Nerds, Midnight & Indigo, African Writer Magazine, and in Ekphrastic Exhibition in Tandem: Back | Forth . She’s an Account Coordinator at a boutique advertising agency by day and a speculative fiction author by night who loves the artistically strange. She currently lives and works in Florida.

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.

Allison Pottern Hoch is a writer and event coach with over 15 years 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's 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, Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, and the Metrowest Writers Guild. For more information on her workshops and coaching services, visit http://www.pottern.com

Anna Hogeland is a fiction writer from the Berkshires. She is a graduate of the MFA program at University of California, Irvine, where she taught undergraduate workshops in both fiction and literary journalism. She holds a Master's in Social Work from Smith College, and she is a practicing psychotherapist with a specialization in treating eating disorders. Anna loves to read all genres of writing, though she has a particular interest in autofiction and hybrid forms. Her debut novel, THE LONG ANSWER, is forthcoming from Riverhead Books (Penguin Random House) in June 2022.

Kate Hollander is a poet, historian, critic, and drama scholar. She holds a terminal MA in creative writing and a PhD in history, both from Boston University. Her first collection of poems, My German Dictionary (Waywiser Press), won the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize in 2019. Her poetry, criticism, and scholarship have been published in Literary Imagination, Hunger Mountain, New German Critique, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. She is a reader for Sugar House Review and the editor of a new edition of Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage and Her Children, forthcoming from Bloomsbury/Methuen. Teaching and learning together is at the heart of Kate's practice as a writer, scholar, thinker, and human being. She especially loves working with students on poetry, criticism and literary journalism, and historical creative writing.

Ann Hood is the author of the bestselling novels The Knitting Circle, The Red Thread, and Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine; the short story collection, An Ornithologist's Guide to Life; and the memoir Comfort: A Journey Through Grief, which was a New York Times Editor's Choice and was named one of the top ten non-fiction books of 2008 by Entertainment Weekly. She recently edited the anthology, Knitting Yarns: Writers Writing About Knitting. She has won Best American Spiritual, Food, and Travel Writing Awards and two Pushcart Prizes. Her most recent novel, The Obituary Writer, was an Oprah Pick, the November Book Club book for The Ladies Home Journal, and named as one of the top ten books of 2013 by Amazon.com. She lives in Providence, RI.

Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mystery, Horror/Suspense, Travel Writing, Personal Essay/Creative Nonfiction/Memoir. I've worked with and enjoy all themes, though rural stories, or stories of big landscapes and strong voices, stories where characters might get a little muddy, are often my favorite. Still, the quick-witted urbanite with philosophical leanings can trip my trigger too. It's all about the writing for me.

Michelle Hoover is the Fannie Hurst Writer-in-Residence at Brandeis University and teaches at GrubStreet, where she leads the Novel Incubator program. She is a 2014 NEA Fellow and has been a Writer-in-Residence at Bucknell University, a MacDowell Fellow, and a winner of the PEN/New England Discovery Award. Her debut novel, The Quickening, was shortlisted for the Center for Fiction's Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, was a Finalist for the Indies Choice Debut of 2010 and Forward Magazine's Best Literary Book of 2010, and is a 2010 Massachusetts Book Award "Must Read" pick.  Her second novel, Bottomland, is the 2017 All Iowa Reads selection and a 2016 Mass Book "Must Read." For more, go to www.michelle-hoover.com.

Tim Horvath is the author of Understories, (Bellevue Literary Press), which won the New Hampshire Literary Award for Outstanding Work of Fiction, and Circulation (sunnyoutside), and in collaboration with composer/cellist Rafaele Andrade, Un-bow. His stories have appeared in journals such as Conjunctions, AGNI, Harvard Review, and elsewhere. His story “The Understory” was selected by Bill Henderson, founder and president of the Pushcart Press, as the winner of the Raymond Carver Short Story Award. He has taught creative writing at the Institute of Art and Design at New England College in Manchester, New Hampshire, formerly the New Hampshire Institute of Art, and been Associate Professor at New England College. Previously, he worked as a counselor in a psychiatric hospital, primarily with adolescents, as well as children and young adults with autism spectrum condition. He received his MFA from the University of New Hampshire, where he won the Thomas Williams Prize. He is the recipient of a Yaddo Fellowship and one of the founders of One Book, One Manchester, a citywide reading initiative.

Enjoys a good book.

Molly Howes is a graduate of both the first Memoir Incubator and the only Nonfiction Career Lab, two of GrubStreet’s yearlong, intensive programs.Her work has appeared in the New York Times “Modern Love” column, Boston Globe Magazine, WBUR “Cognoscenti” column, NPR Morning Edition, Bellingham Review, The Tampa Review, Pangyrus, Passages North, the Brevity blog and other publications. In addition to earning a Notable Essay listing in Best American Essays 2015, she is the grateful recipient of fellowships from the Ragdale Foundation, VCCA and the MacDowell Colony.Her upcoming nonfiction book, A Good Apology: Four Steps to Make Things Right, is a thoughtful examination of making amends. She teaches why it’s so hard to make a good apology, why it's so important to do it anyway, and how to heal relationships by making wrongs right. A Good Apology will be released by Grand Central Publishing in June, 2020.She completed a memoir called The Temporary Orphan: A Tale of Invisible Wounds and Unexpected Grace, which is as yet unpublished.In addition to her writing life, Molly Howes has practiced as a clinical psychologist in the Boston area for decades. She’s personally dedicated to working for greater racial justice.

Naomi Huan is a poet from mainland China. She thinks and writes about comedy, violence, and the humor in trauma in general. She is attending BU for her MFA degree. Her work has been published in literary magazines such as Berfrois. In her free time, she does Brazilian Jiu-jitsu.

Jenny Hudson, founder and CEO of Merrimack Media, has a background in web and graphic design. A writer herself, she expanded her services to print-on-demand publishing in 2008 after publishing three of her own books and is dedicated to helping other authors succeed. Merrimack Media offers concierge book preparation as well as DIY services, book promotion, and most recently, crowdfunding, as an official partner of Pubslush. Merrimack Media published 25 new titles in the last year.

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.

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.

Jillian Jackson is a graduate of the MFA program in Fiction at Boston University and the recipient of a St. Botolph Club Foundation’s Emerging Artist Grant. Her work appears or is forthcoming in the Iowa Review, Smokelong Quarterly, Monkeybicycle, and others. Her story “A Leo, Like Jackie O” was cited as a distinguished story in The Best American Short Stories 2019. She lives in Boston, MA, where she teaches writing at Grub Street and Emmanuel College and is at work on a novel.

Sharona Jacobs, a commercial and fine art portrait photographer from in Arlington, MA, received her BFA in Communication Design and Photography from Carnegie Mellon University and started her career at the George Eastman House, a photography and film museum in Rochester, NY. Mid-career, she received her MA in Counseling Psychology from Boston College, going on to work as a psychotherapist in at Tufts University and MIT before starting her photography business in 2010. Sharona creates psychologically-driven portraits of authors, educators, and artists. 

Instructor Tilia Klebenov Jacobs is the bestselling author of two crime novels, one middle-grade fantasy book, and numerous short stories. She is a judge in San Francisco’s Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition, and a board member of Mystery Writers of America-New England. HarperCollins describes her as one of  “crime fiction’s top authors.” Tilia has taught middle school, high school, and college; she also teaches writing classes for prison inmates. 

Elizabeth Gonzalez James is the author of the novels MONA AT SEA (SFWP, 2021) and THE BULLET SWALLOWER (forthcoming, Simon & Schuster, 2023), and the chapbook FIVE CONVERSATIONS ABOUT PETER SELLERS, (forthcoming, Texas Review Press, 2023). She is the Interviews Editor at The Rumpus. Originally from South Texas, she now lives with her family in Massachusetts.

Gina James is a die-hard story teller and can be found managing development and operations at the Public Radio Exchange in Cambridge, MA. She is both a MOTH Story Slam winner and producer as well as a self-published author. Gina is an oral-history-gatherer, mom, friend, coach, sister, daughter, aunt, long-time Grub Street fan, and a genuine lover of the spoken word.

Drew Jameson is a teacher and writer, originally from Concord, MA. He has been working with teens at Grub Street since 2009. His teaching experience includes reading fundamentals, creative writing, literature, special education, and English as a second language at the elementary, middle, and high school levels. He earned his BA in English from Reed College, and his M.Ed from the University of Massachusetts Boston. In 2003 he won the fiction contest of the IdeaFestival at the University of Kentucky. His short story “Drown” appeared in the April 2011 installment of The Drum. Currently, he is working on a dark fantasy novel for young readers. He lives with his wife and daughter in central Massachusetts.

Brionne Janae is a poet and teaching artist living in Brooklyn. They are the author of Blessed are the Peacemakers (2021) which won the 2020 Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize, and After Jubilee (2017) published by Boat Press. Brionne has received fellowships to Cave Canem, Sewanee Writers Conference, Vermont Studio Center and Hedgebrook. Their poetry has been published in Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review, The Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, The Sun Magazine, jubilat, and Waxwing among others. Off the page they go by Breezy. 

Susan X Jane’s mission is to help people understand the ways that media affects how they see themselves and the world, especially around concepts of race, class and gender. She has been a speaker and trainer for educators and community activists, providing tools and strategies for using media education to combat racism and sexism. She worked for 18 years with youth in the community, supporting youth empowerment through organizing and youth media where she developed curriculum to teach critical media literacy and racial justice to middle and high school students before building a unique communications major at Wheelock College. As the director of the Communications and Media Literacy program at Wheelock, she has taught undergraduate courses in critical media analysis, media literacy and production, blogging, and using media for social change. Susan currently blogs at smntks.com (pronounced semantics) and offers diversity and inclusion services to organizations seeking to create a more equitable workplace and world

Mila Jaroniec is the author of Plastic Vodka Bottle Sleepover and the editor of Black Lipstick Magazine. She earned her MFA from The New School and teaches creative writing. Find her at www.milajaroniec.com.

Jennifer Jean is a poet, educator, editor, activist, and consummate "literary citizen." She is the author of a poetry collection, The Fool, and the author of two poetry chapbooks: The Archivist and In the War. Her awards include: a 2018 Disquiet FLAD Fellowship to study and write in Lisbon, Portugal; a 2017 “Her Story Is” residency—where she worked with Iraqi women artists in Dubai; a 2016 Good Bones Prize; and, a 2013 Ambassador for Peace Award for her activism in the arts. Her poetry manuscript OBJECT was a finalist for the Green Mountains Review Book Prize. Jennifer’s work has appeared in: POETRY Magazine, Rattle Magazine, Waxwing Journal, Crab Creek Review, Solstice: a Magazine of Diverse Voices, Warscapes, Pangyrus, and more. Her co-translations—of contemporary poetry by women writing in Arabic—are forthcoming in: The Common and Consequence Magazine. Jennifer’s work has been anthologized in: Inheriting the War: Poetry by Descendants of Vietnam Veterans and Refugees; Veils, Halos & Shackles: International Poetry on the Oppression and Empowerment of Women; and The Anatomy of Silence. She’s the founder and director of Free2Write Poetry Workshops for Trauma Survivors (with a special emphasis on sex-trafficking survivors), a member of the board of directors for Fort Point Theater Channel, and she's the managing editor of Talking Writing Magazine. Jennifer teaches writing in Boston-area universities and libraries, and lives in Peabody MA with her husband and children.

A. Tony Jerome (they/them) is a black autistic lesbian writer, editor, and teacher. They are a 2016 LAMBDA Literary Emerging Young Adult Fiction Fellow, 2020-21 Afro Urban Arts Lit From The Black! Fellow, and a former staff writer for Autostraddle. Their work has been published in Shade Literary Arts, Freezeray Poetry, and Glass: Poetry among others. You can find more of their work at youhavethewritetoremember.net. 

After receiving a BA in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College, Kaitlyn refused to leave the concept of nightly homework behind. A literary agent for Belcastro Literary Agency, she is also a freelance editor at her own company, K. Johnson Editorial. Kaitlyn started her literary journey as a copyeditor for academic publisher codeMantra, a YA editor for Accent Press, a Conference Assistant for GrubStreet, Boston, and a former agent with Corvisiero Literary Agency. She has written various articles for Writer's Digest and has had a flash fiction story published in the anthology A Box of Stars Beneath the Bed.

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.

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.

Bret Anthony Johnston is the author of internationally acclaimed Corpus Christi: Stories and the editor of Naming the World: And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer. Named a best book of the year by The Independent of London and The Irish Times, Corpus Christi has received numerous awards. Johnston’s work appears in magazines such as The Paris Review, The New York Times Magazine,Esquire, The Oxford American, and Tin House, and in anthologies such as New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best for 2003, 2004, and 2005. He is a graduate of Miami University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the recipient of the Glasgow Prize for Emerging Writers and a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship. He has written essays for Slate.com and is a regular contributor to NPR’s All Things Considered. In 2006, the National Book Foundation honored him with a new National Book Award for writers under thirty-five. A skateboarder for almost twenty years, Johnston is currently the director of the Creative Writing Program at Harvard University.

Nadine Kenney Johnstone is the author of the memoir, Of This Much I'm Sure, which was named Book of the Year by the Chicago Writers Association. Her infertility story has appeared in Cosmopolitan, Today’s Parent, MindBodyGreen, Metro, and Chicago Health Magazine, among others. She teaches at Loyola University and received her MFA from Columbia College in Chicago. Her other work has been featured in various magazines and anthologies, including Chicago Magazine, PANK, and The Magic of Memoir. Nadine is a writing coach who presents at conferences internationally. She lives near Chicago with her family.

Ben writes darkly funny stories about good people doing bad things, and modern riffs on classic tales. Fragile Thing Cracks was developed in readings at Argos Productions (MA), as well at Panndora Productions (CA), who presented the world premiere in April of 2014. Acadiana Rep commissioned and produced Carol: A Broken Chain, and produced the regional premiere of Fragile Thing Cracks and a developmental production of Medea of the Big Box Store; the Delta Grand Theatre commissioned and debuted Something-Summer Might-Have-Been. Communion and Cain + Abel were both developed by The Wilbury Group; Haunted was a finalist for Sanguine Theatre’s Project Playwright (NYC), and was developed there in a workshop this spring. His one-act plays have appeared at Little Fish Theatre (CA), the Boston Theatre Marathon (MA), and elsewhere. The Resurrectionists won the judges’ award for best script at the 2014 Silver Spring Stage Company’s one act play festival (MD). Cold was developed in readings and workshops at The Wilbury Group, Ivy Theatre Trellis Project, Newburyport Actor's Theatre, and Hollins Plawrights lab, and it is been named a semi-finalist for the Princess Grace Award, a finalist for the Woodward and Newman Award, and winner of the David L. Shelton award. Ben earned a B.A. in Writing from SNHU and studied at the 2012 Stony Brook Playwrights Conference, and is currently an MFA candidate at Hollins Playwright's Lab. He was winner of a 2013 Massachusetts Cultural Council Dramatic Writing Fellowship, and has held residences with The Wilbury Theatre Group and Acadiana Rep.

Baylea Jones is a queer writer, teacher, and Southerner. She holds a BA in English from Louisiana State University and an MFA in fiction from Western New England University. Her short story "Dad & I" was named an honorable mention in Glimmer Train and her story "The Girl From Montana" was selected as a finalist for the New Letters Prize in Fiction. She appeared on the Writing Class Radio podcast, served as managing editor of Common Ground Review, and has contributed to HuffPost, Electric Literature, BuzzFeed, Medium, Eater Houston, and more. Currently, she lives in Houston with her wife where she teaches at the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, Houston Community College, Writers in the Schools, and GrubStreet. She is represented by Annie DeWitt at The Shipman Agency and is working on a memoir.

Daphne Kalotay is the author, most recently, of the novel Sight Reading (HarperCollins 2013)—a Boston Globe bestseller also available or forthcoming in multiple foreign editions. Her fiction collection, Calamity and Other Stories (Doubleday) was short-listed for the Story Prize and includes work first published in Agni, Missouri Review, Prairie Schooner, and Good Housekeeping, among others. Her award-winning debut novel, Russian Winter (Harper 2010), an international bestseller, has been translated into twenty languages. Her nonfiction has appeared in Poets & Writers magazine and Tottenville Review. Daphne holds a PhD in Modern and Contemporary Literary and an MFA in Creative Writing and has received fellowships from the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Bogliasco Foundation. She has taught at Boston University, Skidmore College, Middlebury College, and the Harvard Extension School and is available for one-on-one consultation through Grub Street. More information at www.daphnekalotay.com or www.facebook.com/DaphneKalotay

Marjan Kamali is the award-winning author of The Stationery Shop (Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster), a national bestseller, and Together Tea (EccoBooks/HarperCollins), a Massachusetts Book Award finalist. She is a 2022 recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship. Kamali’s novels are published in translation in more than 20 languages and The Stationery Shop was awarded the Prix Attitude in France. Her essays have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Literary Hub, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. The Stationery Shop is being adapted into a TV series at HBO. Kamali holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature from the University of California, Berkeley, an MBA from Columbia University, and a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from New York University.

Carrie Kei Heim Binas is a writer, mother, former actress, and recovering attorney. In college she studied poetry, literature, creative writing, translation, and education, graduating with a degree in French from Vassar College and a second degree in English from Hunter College. Her work has been published in Boston Literary Magazine, Thaumatrope, and PicFic. When not working on her novel or building Lego pirate ships with her husband and daughter, she blogs about writing, Grub Street, the path to publication, and whatever else is on her mind at HeimBinasFiction.blogspot.com.

Madelyn Kelly is a TV journalist, author, and professor who has witnessed the transformational power of the narrative. Her career as a writer, reporter, and producer has spanned three decades at CNN, CBS News (where she won an Emmy Award in the National News and Documentary category), and Dan Rather's independent production company. In her television work, Madelyn covered six U.S. presidential campaigns, five continents, four prisons, three natural disasters, two wars, and one memorable season hanging out with Pete Rose's bookie. Madelyn, whose nickname is Max, is also a published author: she wrote a self-help book, A Parent's Guide to Raising Grieving Children (Oxford Univ. Press), based on the research of her co-author; she also co-edited a collection of her late husband's writings, Things Worth Fighting For ( Penguin). She is an adjunct professor of journalism at Emerson College, with courses on feature writing and political reporting across media: print, TV, radio, podcast, and social media. She has worked as a freelance book doctor for more than a decade, helping dozens of aspiring authors structure, research, and write novels, memoirs, YA, and historical fiction. Madelyn is a dedicated volunteer at the Crisis Text Hotline, where every conversation reveals the power of owning your story.

Pagan Kennedy is the author of ten books and has won numerous literary prizes. Her publishers include Viking Press, Simon & Schuster, and Bloomsbury. Pagan has been a contributor to The New York Times Magazine, The NYT Book Review, The Village Voice, Dwell, Details, Ms., Playboy, The Nation,Boston Magazine, and The Boston Globe Magazine. In 2009, Pagan was Dartmouth College’s visiting writer of nonfiction. She has also taught writing — both fiction and nonfiction — at the Warren Wilson MFA program, Boston College, Johns Hopkins, and many conferences and residencies.

I am a widely published freelance journalist and writer who focuses mainly on creative nonfiction--personal essays, memoir and literary journalism; however, I also write and publish poetry as well. The topics that interest me most and that I have carved out a niche in covering--are living with illness, class issues and poverty, dealing with the death of a loved one (or loved ones), trauma, childhood abuse, dysfunctions families, addiction in the family, nature and the environment and more. My personal essays, articles and op-eds have been featured in a variety of publications and media outlets, including The Atlantic, The Guardian, Salon, the Washington Post and Vice. I enjoy teaching and offering one-on-one instruction and mentoring, and take a strengths-based approach with those I work with while creating a supportive environment where we can mutually learn from each other.

Laura Kiesel is a freelance writer whose feature articles, op-eds, and essays have appeared in many media outlets including The Atlantic, The Guardian, Salon, the Washington Post, the New York Daily News, Self and Narratively. She currently blogs about having chronic pain for Harvard Health Publications. In 2016, she founded the nonprofit project Writing for Survival, which offers writing workshops and one-on-one mentoring for at-risk youth. She lives in Arlington.

Areas of Interest: My tastes are broad--everything from the classics to sci-fi. Some of my favorite authors include Sherman Alexie, Tan Twan Eng, Khaled Hosseini, Cheryl Strayed, George Saunders, Lois Lowry, Malcolm Gladwell, Oliver Sacks, Eowyn Ivey, Benjamin Alire Saenz, Barry Lopez, Roxane Gay, Clint Smith, and many more! (It's cruel to make me choose, and even this list seems terribly short to do justice to all the great writers out there.) I'm a greedy reader who wants to read anything and everything, and I love surprises. So surprise me.

Eson Kim (she/her) serves as the Director of Community Engagement at GrubStreet, and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. Her stories have appeared in Calyx Journal, Denver Quarterly, The Massachusetts Review, among others. She received a Writing Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and earned the David B. Saunders Award for creative nonfiction. She was also named to the Notable list of Best American Essays. She's appeared on Radio Boston's Summer Reads series and Stories from the Stage (WGBH). She loves any opportunity to talk about books for all ages, preferably while sipping on a tall glass of bubble tea.

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

Shelby Kinney-Lang is a writer and educator who earned an MFA in fiction from the University of California, Irvine. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in ZYZZYVA, Bellevue Literary Review, Green Mountains Review, Joyland, and elsewhere. In 2018, he graduated with an MFA from the University of California, Irvine. Born and raised in Laramie, Wyoming, he currently lives with his wife and baby daughter in New England.

Jane Kohuth graduated from Brandeis University with a degree in English and Creative Writing and from Harvard Divinity School with a Master's Degree in Theological Studies. She has worked as a Jewish educator, a children's room library assistant, a writing teacher, and a children's bookseller and organizer of author events. Jane's first book, Ducks Go Vroom, was one of Parents Magazine’s 20 Best Books of 2011 and her book Estie the Mensch is a PJ Library selection. Her newest picture book, Duck Sock Hop published by Dial in May 2012, was a Kirkus Critic's Pick and was declared, "charming," by the New York Times Book Review. Her picture book manuscript, Something at the Hill was top pick in the picture book category for the 2010 Katherine Paterson Prize, awarded by Hunger Mountain, the journal of Vermont College of Fine Arts. To find out more about Jane, please visit her website, www.janekohuth.com.

Douglas Koziol is a writer and teacher living in Boston. He received his MFA in fiction from Emerson College, where he currently teaches in the Writing, Literature, and Publishing department. His writing has appeared in The Millions, Lunch Ticket, CounterPunch, Crack the Spine, Driftwood Press, and theEEEL, among other venues. He is at work on his first novel.

Nick Krieger is the author of the memoir, Nina Here Nor There: My Journey Beyond Gender (Beacon Press, 2011), recipient of a Stonewall Honor Book Award and an Independent Literary Award. His writing has also earned several travel-writing awards and has been published in multiple travel guides. He’s spoken about his writing at over dozen universities around the country, including Harvard, Dartmouth, and UC Berkeley. He recently received a nomination for the Rasmuson Foundation Artist Residency Program, and he previously completed a residency at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program. Krieger holds an MFA from the University of San Francisco. He enjoys working one-on-one with individuals as a writing coach.

Ying-Ju grew up in Taipei, Taiwan, and graduated from Wesleyan University with degrees in German Literature and Psychology. She also completed her MFA in creative writing at Boston University. She previously taught at BU and Northeastern University. Her fiction and non-fiction have appeared in Ploughshares, Literay Hub, and Threshold Journal. She is a recipient of fellowships from Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts and Wesleyan Writer's Conference.

Jeremy Lakaszcyck holds an MFA in creative writing in fiction from the University of Massachusetts in Boston, where he teaches creative writing. His fiction has won awards from Playboy Magazine and the Jack Kerouac Estate. An essay he wrote on teaching appears in the anthology Dispatches from the Classroom:  Graduate Students on Creative Writing Pedagogy published by Bloomsbury.

Meghan Lamb is the author of Failure to Thrive (Apocalypse Party, 2021), All of Your Most Private Places (Spork Press, 2019) and Silk Flowers (Birds of Lace, 2017). She has taught writing courses at Eötvös Loránd University, the University of Chicago, Interlochen Center for the Arts, and Washington University in St. Louis, and she served as the 2018 Philip Roth Writer in Residence at Bucknell University. Her work has appeared in Quarterly West, DIAGRAM, Redivider, Passages North, The Rumpus, and The Collagist, among other publications. She is currently the Nonfiction Editor of Nat. Brut, a journal of art and literature dedicated to advancing inclusivity in all creative fields.

Courtney is a creative writer and writing instructor from the Hudson Valley. While working in book publishing in New York City, she took classes at Gotham Writers Workshop which inspired her to fully pursue her own creative path. She received her Master of Fine Arts in Writing from the University of New Hampshire and is revising a collection of elliptical vignettes on heritage, identity, and home. She currently resides in Greater Boston and serves as a fiction reader for the Middlebury College quarterly literary magazine New England Review (NER), as well as a publicity volunteer for the annual Newburyport Literary Festival.

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.

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.

Leslie Lawrence is a recipient of fellowships from the Massachusetts Artists Foundation and The National Endowment for the Arts. She has published fiction, nonfiction and poetry in a variety of venues including The Boston Globe Magazine, Prairie Schooner, Literary Mama, Cognoscenti, and The Massachusetts Review. Her essay, "At The Donkey Hotel," was a finalist in Solstice's Nonfiction contest. Her collection, The Death of Fred Astaire--And Other Essays From a Life Outside the Lines, came out from SUNYPress in 2016 and was a finalist in the Foreward Indie Book Award for Memoir. To read about her experience debuting late in life, go to https://www.awpwriter.org/magazine_media/writers_notebook_view/281 Leslie has been teaching in the Boston area for more than 30 years. She lives in Cambridge and does improvisational dancing several times a week.

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.”

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"

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.

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.

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. 

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.

Lisa Levy is a writer, editor, essayist, and critic. Her work has appeared in many publications, including the New Republic, the LARB, the Believer, TLS, the CBC, and Lit Hub, where she is  a contributing editor. She is also a columnist and contributing editor to Crime Reads, which she helped found. She is currently finishing her MFA at Goucher College where she is working on collection of essays called The Impatient an account of her transformation from literary critic to desperate patient (or, more specifically, migraineur) to defiant impatient. Using her critical skills and the writings of fellow migraineurs like Sigmund Freud, Susan Sontag, Edgar Allan Poe, and Virginia Woolf, she creates an idiosyncratic history of migraine within the context of chronic illness. As an impatient she becomes a literary and diagnostic detective determined to crack the case of her 20-year migraine.

Vanessa Lewis is a Boston area digital content creator and novelist. In addition to her own writing projects, Vanessa has been providing writing, coaching and editing services to aspiring writers for over four years. Vanessa especially enjoys helping writers to develop an online platform and social media presence to promote new work and engage with their fans. You may learn more about her services at www.byvanessalewis.com

Yara Liceaga-Rojas is a Puerto Rican poet/performer, cultural administrator and educator. She is a 2018 Cambridge Arts grantee for curating/coordinating the multi-disciplinary artists performance series Poetry Is Busy: Visible Caribe Series, and NEFAs' Creative City program grantee for her literary project Acentos espesos/Thick Accents. Recently, her work has been published in the anthologies Puerto Rico en mi corazón (Anomalous Press, 2018) and Isla Escrita: Antología de la Poesía de Cuba, Puerto Rico y República Dominicana (Amargord Ediciones, 2018).  Former Buscapié columnist at El Nuevo Día newspaper, she has three poetry books: Cielo Riel (Ediciones Alayubia, 2017), Época Opaca (Atarraya Cartonera, 2015), and El Mundo No Es Otra Cosa (La Secta de los Perros Editores, 2014). She has given creative writing, perforpoetry, and visual poetry workshops at The City School, Dorchester, MA; The Puerto Rican Museum of Contemporary Art, Santurce, PR; and the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture, San Juan and Ponce, PR, among others.

Hunter Liguore (she/her) is the award-winning author of Whole World Inside Nan’s Soup (Paterson Prize for Books for Young Readers Winner, Every Child a Reader Honor Book); Recipe for Helping Fallen Stars; and Where Are You Going, Butterfly? which explores youth homelessness and inspired by personal experience. Most notably, “Equanimity: Life Lessons from the Checkout Line,” was selected for production by London director Hana Walker-Brown, in partnership with Sony Entertainment. Her short work appears in Mystery Magazine, Writer's Digest, Spirituality & Health Magazine, Irish Pages, Science Fiction Writers of America and many more. She teaches social justice writing at Lesley University’s MFA program. www.hunterliguore.org @skytale_writer.

Mariona Lloreta (she/her) is GrubStreet's Associate Director for Individual Giving. In this role, Mariona helps to make sure that GrubStreet has the resources to keep providing exciting classes and programs that meet the needs of writers and readers at all levels, while supporting writers’ development and helping them share that work locally and with the world. As an interdisciplinary artist and producer, Mariona has dedicated her career to empowering fellow artists and cultivating equity through her work. For over a decade, she has collaborated with community members, local businesses, arts leaders and institutions in countries including the United States, Brazil, Italy, Nigeria and Spain, in order to gather the necessary resources to bring an array of narrative, documentary and experimental films to life. Through her work as an instructor at GrubStreet and Emerson College, Mariona has raised funds to provide scholarships to motivated, under-resourced students to help close the gap in the entertainment sector. Whether it is by teaching screenwriting to adults and teens or leading award-winning productions that battle the danger of a single story, Mariona is committed to honoring historically underrepresented communities in any project she is involved in. Born and raised in Barcelona, she holds an MBA from National University and a Bachelors in Advertising and Public Relations from the University of Barcelona, Spain.

A multidisciplinary award-winning writer of fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry, Rolando-André López is currently pursuing a Creative Writing MFA at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, CA. In 2020, he was a 1st Place Voices of Color Fellow at Martha's Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing, and his essay, "ya tú sa'e," was a finalist for the Ray Ventre nonfiction prize at Passages North Literary Journal. A performer as well, he read for the Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture in Boston, after his poem, "wealth," was selected by Porsha Olayiwola for its representation of Afrofuturism. In 2021, he was awarded a Winter/Spring 2022 Fellowship at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. His work has been featured in Orca Literary Journal, America Magazine, Sacred Trespasses, The Coffin Bell Journal, and Bellow Literary Journal. 

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.

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.

Quentin Lucas is a Germany-born, Boston-raised bookworm. After meandering through college on his way to a degree in Business Management, he then adventured his way through the US Army and discovered a need to follow his passion for writing. As a freelancer, copywriter, and essayist, Quentin has worked on projects with MIT and Vistaprint, and has written for publications like the Huffington Post, The Good Men Project, Blerds Online, and Fourth River Literary Magazine. While awaiting the fall of 2019, when he will begin his MFA in Creative Writing at Emerson College, Quentin is crafting the second novel of his fantasy trilogy and is considering a memoir about his military days.

Julia Mallory is committed to being a good steward of, and vessel for her ancestors' stories. As a storyteller, whose first creative love language is poetry and working with a range of medium from text to textiles, the latest manifestations of Julia's creative work include mixed media collage, sonic collage, and short stories. In 2022, Julia's short story "Lottie" received the CUSP Prize for Fiction. Julia’s written work can be found in Barrelhouse, the Black Speculative Arts Movement’s “Curating the End of the World: RED SPRING IV – Wildseeds & Black Futures”, The Offing, Stellium Literary Magazine, Sugarcane Magazine, Torch Literary Arts, 68 to 05, petrichor, and elsewhere. Most recently, Julia's Deep Spaces series of abstract watercolor collages was featured in the “Art in the Stacks” solo exhibition at the New Cumberland Public Library in collaboration with the New Cumberland Collective and selected works from the My Cape is Hanging Somewhere in a Museum series were included in the "Partage" group exhibition in Philadelphia. Julia is the author of six books, including two children’s books, the founder of the creative container, Black Mermaids and the newly launched Harrisburg Youth Arts Incubator, serves as the Senior Poetry Editor for Raising Mothers, and a Poetry Editor for The Loveliest Review. Julia’s short, experimental film, Grief is the Glitch, debuted in 2022 and has screened at seven film festivals, including the Women of African Descent Film Festival, the DC Black Film Festival, and the Black Experimental Film Festival in Toronto. Julia is also a 2022 Black Art in America Foundation “The Next Big Idea” grantee, a Spring 2022 Reclamation Ventures Impact Grantee (healing practices for grief), and a 2023 Diaspora Solidarities Lab Community Fellow. Julia is the mother of three children and is from the Southside of Harrisburg.

Nina MacLaughlin has written for the Paris Review Daily, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Believer, Bookslut, the Daily Beast, the Rumpus, Boston Magazine, and elsewhere. She writes a weekly column on New England literary news for the Boston Globe, and her book, HAMMER HEAD: THE MAKING OF A CARPENTER, about leaving her journalism job to learn the carpentry trade, came out in 2015 from W.W. Norton, has been translated into four languages, and was a finalist for the New England Book Award. She lives in Cambridge.

Literary, mystery, and particularly experimental fictions, loosely defined. 

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.

Steve Macone studied journalism at Boston University and has worked as a contributor at The Onion. His essays, humor writing and reporting have also appeared in the New York Times, American Scholar, Atlantic, New Yorker, Boston Globe, Boston Globe Magazine, Morning News, VICE, and Salon. His writing has been featured on NPR, Comedy Central, Longreads, and received four notable essay mentions in The Best American Essays series. He's received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the Somerville Arts Council and was named one of the Top 100 Comics in the country on NBC's Last Comic Standing.

JR Mahung (She/They) is a Garifuna poet from the South Side of Chicago. She has received grants and Fellowships from The Poetry Foundation, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst where they received their MFA in Creative Writing. JR is now based in Boston where she has served on the organizing team for the Louder than a Bomb MA youth poetry slam festival, co organized The Plantain Collection, a poetry reading and conversation series for writers of diaspora, and co-coached the Northeastern University Poetry Slam Team. JR has facilitated creative writing workshops and classes to writers of all ages for organizations and programs such as the Amherst College Creative Writing Department, City Year Boston, Andover Breadloaf, and the Crisis Text Line. She was the 2017 Individual World Poetry Slam Representative for the Boston Poetry Slam. Their poetry is published or forthcoming in Moko Literary Magazine, Maps for Teeth, WusGood,  Cosmonauts Avenue, Winter Tangerine, Freezeray Literary Journal, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, Cantab Anthology, When Language Broke Open: An Anthology of Queer and Trans Black Writers of Latin American Descent, and elsewhere. JR’s second chapbook “Since When He Have Wings” is available on Pizza Pi Press.

Pooja is the editor of Under Her Skin: How Girls Experience Race in America (Seal Press), an anthology of essays by women that explores the complex ways in which race shapes American lives and families. She is also the author of Mama’s Saris (Little Brown Books for Young Readers), a picture book.Her bylines have appeared in The New York Times, The Village Voice, The Washington Post, NPR, Real Simple, The Atlantic, WSJ.com, Teen Vogue, VICE, Pacific Standard, Bon Appétit, Saveur, BuzzFeed, CityLab, and espnW among others.

Jess Mann is a writer and an overthinker from a long line of storytellers. At an early age, she remembers wanting to tell stories of her own, but teachers didn't like her talking all through class, and her friends sighed and rolled their eyes a lot, when she was yelling tales at them, so she began to write them down to keep from forgetting them. Jess now writes a lot of stories down. She has a BFA from the University of Maine, and is currently at work on her MFA at Goddard College. She has also managed to publish some of her tales in publications like The Sandy River Review, Paige Leaves, and contributed to the book Baking By Hand. She is excited to meet all members of the storytelling tribe, and will never roll her eyes and sigh at anyone.

Andrew Martin is the author the novel Early Work (FSG, July 2018) and a forthcoming collection of short stories. His fiction has been published in The Paris Review, Zyzzyva, and Tin House online, and his essays and criticism have been published by the New York Times Book Review, the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, and elsewhere. He received his MFA from the University of Montana.

Tara L. Masih is author of Where the Dog Star Never Glows: Stories (a National Best Books Award finalist), and is editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction (a ForeWord Book of the Year) andThe Chalk Circle: Intercultural Prizewinning Essays (a Skipping Stones Honor Book). She has published fiction, poetry, and essays in numerous anthologies and literary magazines (such as Confrontation, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Natural Bridge, New Millennium Writings, The Los Angeles Review, Night Train, and The Caribbean Writer), and her essays have been reprinted in college textbooks and read on NPR. Awards for her work include first place in The Ledge Magazine’s fiction contest, a finalist fiction grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and Pushcart Prize, Best New American Voices, and Best of the Web nominations. She judges the intercultural essay prize for the annual Soul-Making Keats Literary Contest, and has taught flash at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and at Grub Street. She received her MA in Writing and Publishing from Emerson College, and is the founder of and managing editor for The Best Small Fictions series. For more information, visit www.taramasih.com.

Anneli Matheson holds an MFA in Creative Writing from City University in Hong Kong. Her work has been published in literary journals based in North America, Asia, and the Middle East: Hawaii Pacific Review, The Ilanot Review, Sweet Literary, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 5x5 Literary Magazine, and Lowestoft Chronicle, among others. In 2020 her essay "A Wander Down Dried Seafood Street" was a runner-up in Sweet Lit's Flash Essay contest; in 2021 her story "Heartwork" was nominated by for Best Microfiction 2021. One of her favorite projects of all time was co-editing a poetry cookbook titled "Feast: Poetry and Recipes for a Full Seating at Dinner" (Black Lawrence Press, 2015). Anneli has taught creative writing workshops for empowerHER (Boston), Grub Street’s YAWP Program (Boston), and at The Chattery (Chattanooga). Connect with her on Twitter: @AnneliMatheson

Stacy Mattingly is coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Unlikely Angel, an Atlanta hostage story now a feature film, Captive, starring David Oyelowo (Selma) and Kate Mara (House of Cards). Stacy’s work has appeared in Literary Hub, Oxford American, Off Assignment, EuropeNow, and elsewhere. In 2012, she launched the Sarajevo Writers' Workshop in Bosnia and Herzegovina and later helped lead the first Narrative Witness exchange (Caracas-Sarajevo) for the University of Iowa's International Writing Program. An Atlanta native, Stacy teaches creative writing at Boston University, where she received an MFA in fiction, and at GrubStreet, and she is assistant professor at Berklee College of Music. Her recently completed first novel is set in the present-day Balkans.

Courtney Maum is the author of the novels Costalegre (a GOOP book club pick and one of Glamour Magazine’s top books of the decade), I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You and Touch (a New York Times Editor’s Choice and NPR Best Book of the Year selection), and the handbook Before and After the Book Deal: A writer’s guide to finishing, publishing, promoting, and surviving your first book, from Catapult. Her writing has been widely published in such outlets as  the New York Times, O, the Oprah Magazine, and Poets & Writers. She is the founder of the collaborative retreat program, The Cabins (currently accepting applications), and she also has a writing-advice newsletter, “Get Published, Stay Published,” that you can sign up for at CourtneyMaum.com

Abi Maxwell is the author of the novels Lake People and The Den. Her short fiction has also been published in McSweeney's. She studied fiction writing at the University of Montana and now lives in New Hampshire with her family.

Author of over thirty travel guides, Carolyn McCarthy has been writing about the Americas since 1998. Interested in remote cultures and wilderness, she has explored the Amazon Basin via dugout canoe and solo hiked Patagonia to write Lonely Planet's Trekking in the Patagonian Andes. Her work has also appeared in National Geographic, the Boston Globe, the Daily Telegraph, Outside and other publications. A graduate of Emerson College’s graduate program in Writing, Literature & Publishing, Carolyn also received a Fulbright fellowship to write on rural life in Chile and a Banff Mountain Culture Grant.

Jill McDonough is the author of Habeas Corpus (Salt, 2008), Oh, James! (Seven Kitchens, 2012), Where You Live (Salt, 2012), and Reaper (Alice James, 2017). The recipient of three Pushcart prizes and fellowships from the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center, the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress, and Stanford’s Stegner program, she taught incarcerated college students through Boston University’s Prison Education Program for thirteen years.  Her work has appeared in Poetry, Slate, The Nation, The Threepenny Review, and Best American Poetry.  She teaches in the MFA program at UMass-Boston. Her fifth poetry collection, Here All Night, is forthcoming from Alice James Books.

As a dedicated music journalist and educator, Candace McDuffie has been freelancing for over a decade. Her work has appeared for Glamour, Forbes, Teen Vogue, Vibe, and several other publications. She received her M.A. from the University of Massachusetts at Boston, where she specialized in Critical and Creative Thinking. Candace enjoys working with youth and previously taught at the nonprofit teen literacy program, Books of Hope. For more information on Candace, you can visit her website at candacemcduffie.com.  

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.

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.

Robin McLean was a lawyer and then a potter in the woods of Alaska before turning to writing. Her first short fiction collection Reptile House won the BOA Fiction Prize, was twice a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Prize, and was named a best book of 2015 in Paris Review. She’s taught writing for a decade, at Clark University as well as at community literary centers across the US and world. Her debut novel Pity the Beast, published in November of 2021 from And Other Stories, was called "a work of crazy brilliance" and a best book of fiction in 2021 in The Guardian, "stunning debut novel" in New York Review of Books, as well as a best book of the year in the Wall Street Journal. Her second collection of short fiction Get' em Young, Treat' em Tough, Tell 'em Nothing is forthcoming from And Other Stories on October 18, 2022.  She currently lives in the remote, high plains desert of central Nevada with the wild horses, lizards, cactus, et al.

I am interested in working with writers who are attentive to language and character, who are serious about the craft of writing, and who are willing to work hard to improve their work. That said, I am also interested in students at all levels-- beginning to advanced. I appreciate work that has something to say, and says it vividly, from coming-of-age stories to philosophical novels. No genre fiction, please.

Thomas McNeely's debut book, Ghost Horse, was winner of the Gival Press Novel Award. A recipient of a 2008 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, and many other awards, his short fiction has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares, and other publications, and has been anthologized in The Best of the South and What If?: Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers. Client James William Brown recently sold his book, My Last Lament, to Berkley Books, an imprint of Penguin/Random House. McNeely has taught fiction writing at Stanford University, Emerson College, and many other institutions, including the early GrubStreet Writers Workshops. He lives with his wife and daughter in Cambridge.

Christine Meade is the author of the novel "The Way You Burn" (She Writes Press, 2020), and her personal essays and articles have appeared in the Boston Globe, Chicago Literati, HuffPost, the Manifest-Station, and Writer’s Digest. She has taught for Gotham Writers Workshop, 826 Boston, Lasell College, Endicott College, and Curry College. She holds a BA from Northeastern University and an MFA in Creative Writing from California College of the Arts. She lives with her husband and kids in Somerville, MA.

Peter Medeiros teaches writing and Kung Fu--though never at the same time. His teaching in and around Boston remains a major inspiration for much of his fiction. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. He been publishing fiction since 2013, and was most recently featured in Giganotosaurus Magazine. He has a particular passion for weird fiction, horror, SciFi, fantasy, and everything uncanny. He loves cats, dogs, and kaiju. Peter is represented by Susan Velazquez of JABerwocky Literary.

Pablo Medina is the author of 14 books of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and translation, most recently the novel Cubop City Blues and, with photographer Carlos Ordoñez, the poetry collection Calle Habana. Medina’s work has appeared in several languages, among them Spanish, French, German, and Arabic, and in periodicals and magazines throughout the world. He was a member of the AWP board of directors from 2002-2007, serving as president from 2005 – 2006. Winner of numerous awards, among them grants from the Rockefeller and Guggenheim foundations, the Oscar B. Cintas Foundation, the NEA, and others, Medina is currently professor in the Department of Writing, Literature and Publishing at Emerson College in Boston.

Tom Meek is a longtime contributing film critic at The Boston Phoenix, Cambridge Day, WBUR’s ARTery, the Charleston City Paper and New England Cable News, and the president of the Boston Society of Film Critics. His short stories have appeared in SLAB, Open Windows, Web Del Sol, Slow Trains and Thieves Jargon. Tom rides his bike everywhere.

Andrea Meyer's first novel, Room for Love (St. Martin's Press) is a romantic comedy based on an article she wrote for the New York Post, for which she pretended to look for a roommate as a way to meet men. The book was included in Cosmo's "Lit We Love." She completed her second novel in the Novel Incubator program at GrubStreet. A long-time film and entertainment journalist, Andrea wrote a horror screenplay for MGM, and her articles and essays have appeared in such publications as Elle, Glamour, Variety, Modern Loss, and the Boston Globe. She teaches fiction and non-fiction writing at GrubStreet and is currently writing a literary romp about a Cambridge manny and the women who throw his life into chaos.

My writing consultation interests include; 1. Help for structuring novels, including coaching on: * Steps for moving from the first idea to an outline. * Tools for building your book. * Techniques for improved and more sophisticated fiction. 2. Revision, including: *Editorial critique *Revision tools. *Making a step-by-step revision plan 3. Help in writing query letters to literary agents. I enjoy character-driven fiction, domestic drama, edgy rom-com, mysteries & thrillers, along with historical fiction and futuristic tales. Before working with clients, I offer a 30 minute-meet, by phone or in-person (in Boston) and/or my response to your five-page sample to ensure we're a good match. Please contact for availability and rate structure.

Randy Susan Meyers' internationally bestselling novels are informed by years working with families impacted by violence— and a long journey from idolizing bad boys to loving a good man. Her novels have three times been chosen by the Massachusetts Center for the Book, as "Must Read Fiction,” writing, “The clear and distinctive voice of Randy Susan Meyers will have you enraptured and wanting more.” Kirkus Reviews said about her fifth novel, Waisted, “Meyers spins a compelling tale, raising critical questions about familial, social, and cultural messages about body image. ”
Publishers Weekly described her fourth novel, The Widow of Wall Street, as “An engaging and sharp reflection of the rapid changes in marital dynamics over the course of the twentieth century, as well as a cautionary tale about the dangers and allure of ambition in the heyday of Wall Street.” Accidents of Marriage, her previous novel, was a People Magazine Pick. Her debut, The Murderer’s Daughters, was the Target National Book Club Pick. Meyers teaches writing at Grub Street in Boston and Writers in Progress in Western MA.

I love working on all poetry, with a special interest in poetry that searches for the emotional resonance under daily events and family interactions. I am happy to work with both beginning and more advanced poets, on a small group of poems or a larger collection that they are readying for publication.

Wendy Mnookin's most recent book of poems is Dinner with Emerson (TIger Bark Press, 2016.) Her other books are The Moon Makes Its Own Plea, What He Took, To Get Here, and Guenever Speaks. Widely published in journals and anthologies, Wendy has taught poetry at Emerson College, Boston College, and at workshops around the country. She is the recipient of an NEA Fellowship in Poetry. You can find out more about her work at wendymnookin.com.

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.

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.

Jessica Moreland is a ghostwriter, editor, and book developer. Her clients have been published by every major publishing group, including Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, Hachette, and Macmillan. She has edited over five hundred books, articles, and stories for publishing houses, magazines, and individual authors across the globe. Her editorial specialties include literary fiction, science fiction, fantasy, creative nonfiction, memoir, general nonfiction, health and fitness, and business.

Alix Morris is a Boston-based science writer and the Director of Communications at Earthwatch Institute. As a freelance writer, Alix has contributed to Smithsonian Magazine, Sierra Magazine, MIT Technology Review, National Geographic Voices, WBUR’s CommonHealth, MIT News, and more, as well as a variety of technical, policy, and medical outlets. She has also authored a book on cutting-edge medical advances for young adults called "Medical Research and Technology." In her role at Earthwatch, Alix works across digital platforms to produce photo essays, videos, podcasts, and virtual reality – breaking down complex environmental research through multimedia storytelling. Before becoming a science writer, Alix worked as a global health researcher in East Africa, where she conducted field studies to improve access to malaria diagnosis and treatment. She has a Masters in Science Writing from MIT and a Masters in Health Science from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

I'm interested in consulting on 10 Minute, One Act and Full Length plays of all genres including comedy, tragedy, historical fiction, one-person shows, musical theatre book writing and everything in between.

Nina Louise Morrison is a Boston-based playwright, director and teacher with an MFA from Columbia University. She is a 2017 Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellow, Huntington Theatre Company Playwriting Fellow, winner of the 2016 Boston Project commission at Speakeasy Stage Company, a Company One Affiliate Playwright, a core member of the devising company Project: Project, and a member of Rhombus writers. Her plays have been workshopped, read, and produced by Company One, Fresh Ink Theatre, Huntington Theatre Company, 20% Theatre Company, Kitchen Theatre Company, Saltbox Theatre, Open Theatre Project, Our Voices, WOW Café, SLAM Boston, Wax Wings, Bostonia Bohemia, and the Boston One Minute Play Festival.  She was a semi-finalist for the 2014 National Playwrights Conference and she is the recipient of a Richard Rodgers Fellowship and a Shubert Foundation grant. Before moving to Boston, Nina was the Senior Program Associate at The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage's Philadelphia Theater Initiative. She also trained as an actor at the National Theatre Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, the New Actors Workshop, and received her BA from Oberlin College.  She currently teaches playwriting and screenwriting at Grub Street and the University of New Hampshire. www.ninalouisemorrison.com

Nihal Mubarak is a Sudanese poet, fiction and nonfiction writer whose work centers around themes of home and family relationships. Her work has been published in Solidago, The Gordian Review, Copper Nickel, Mizna, and elsewhere. She is inspired by writers such as Jhumpa Lahiri, Yaa Gyasi, Meena Alexander, and Leslie Nneka Arimah. Nihal teaches college English and creative writing workshops and holds an MFA in creative writing from Emerson College.

Literary Interests: Asian fiction and nonfiction; Poetry, especially in translation; Literary fiction written by women; Healing and Memoir; Travel Writing.

Dipika Mukherjee is a writer and sociolinguist. Her second novel, Shambala Junction, won the UK Virginia Prize for Fiction (Aurora Metro, 2016). Her debut novel was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize and republished as Ode to Broken Things (Repeater, 2016). Her short story collection is Rules of Desire (Fixi, 2015) and edited collections include Champion Fellas (Word Works, 2016), Silverfish New Writing 6 (Silverfish, 2006) and The Merlion and Hibiscus (Penguin, 2002). She has two poetry collections: The Third Glass of Wine (Writer’s Workshop, 2015), and The Palimpsest of Exile (Rubicon Press, 2009). She is a Juror on the The Neustadt International Prize for Literature 2017 and holds a doctorate in English (Sociolinguistics) from Texas A&M University.

Maria Murriel is a journalist, essayist and audio producer. She likes stories about family history and defiance, and she is all about empowering underheard people to tell their own stories. She's reported on immigration, extremist politics, culture and the arts in Miami and Boston for the better part of a decade. She was born and raised in Lima, Peru, until her family moved to Miami, "the capital of Latin America." Her writing is informed by this experience of growing up bicultural in the United States, which also colors the podcast she co-hosts, Las Cafecitas. Maria co-founded SMASH Boston, a group for women and non-binary audio producers smashing the patriarchy. SMASH hosts skillshares with the PRX Podcast Garage in Allston. Aside from teaching non-fiction, audio storytelling and narrative structures at GrubStreet, Maria teaches writing and reporting in Spanish at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, and podcasting at Emerson College. She firmly rejects the fallacy that prestige equals worth or competence. She's a proud public school grad who prefers hidden gems to institutional favorites. But for context, she'll tell you her work has won Edward R. Murrow awards for broadcast journalism and Sunshine State awards from the Society of Professional Journalists. Her audio work has aired nationwide on NPR stations, internationally on the BBC World Service, and at the local level in Florida and New England. Her written work has been published on NPR.org, the Miami Herald, PRI.org and more. Maria lives in Jamaica Plain, where she marvels constantly at how three Cuban restaurants could exist within walking distance of each other, so far north of Miami. Drop her a line if you like cafecito.

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.

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.

Vanessa Mártir is a NYC based writer, educator and mama. She is the creator of the #52essays2017 challenge, and founder of the Writing Our Lives Workshop, which she teaches in NYC. Vanessa is currently completing her memoir, A Dim Capacity for Wings, and chronicles the journey in her blog: vanessamartir.blog. A five-time VONA/Voices and two-time Tin House fellow, Vanessa's essays and fiction have appeared in The Butter, Poets & Writers Magazine, Kweli Journal, As/Us Journal, SmokeLong Quarterly, and the VONA/Voices Anthology, Dismantle, among others. Vanessa has penned a novel, Woman's Cry (Augustus Publishing, 2007), and has served as guest editor of Aster(ix) Journal and The James Franco Review. When she's not writing, you can find her either on a dance floor, in a gym punching a bag or in the woods hugging a tree.

Heather Nelson is a poet, teacher, mother and recovering attorney based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She studied writing under the poet C.D. Wright as an undergraduate at Brown University. Most recently she studied poetry with Tom Daley and Barbara Helfgott Hyett. Heather is also a member of Poemworks, the workshop for publishing poets. Her work has been published in Main Street Rag, The Somerville Times, Constellations, Ekphrastic and The Compassion Anthology.

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.

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.

Gabe Novoa is a Latinx nonbinary trans guy author who writes speculative fiction featuring marginalized characters grappling with identity. Now leveled up with an MFA in Writing for Children, when he isn't working on his next book, completing freelance editorial work, or buried under his TBR pile, you’ll likely find him making heart-eyes at the latest snazzy outfit he wants to add to his wardrobe. He is the author of the Beyond the Red trilogy, written under his former pseudonym, Ava Jae, and runs a popular writing-focused YouTube channel, bookishpixie, which currently nearly 30,000 subscribers.

Lindsey O’Neill is a poet, teacher, and performance artist. She is founder of Lindsey O’Neill Yoga & Writing, teaches creative writing at Boston’s GrubStreet, and tutors in the writing center at Berklee College of Music. Lindsey infuses her writing classes with contemplative practices to foster compassionate awareness, distill our authentic voice, and enhance sustainable creativity. She believes both awareness-building practices and the creative arts are capable of inspiring community connection leading to social change. Lindsey holds an RYT certification with Yoga Alliance, a City of Boston Artist Certification, and an MFA in Poetry from Lesley University. Lindsey has had poems published in FUSION magazine, Hare’s Paw Literary Journal, and Mass Poetry’s “Poem of the Moment.” She is currently at work on her first poetry collection.

Science, brain science, education, music, medicine, health, parenting, politics.

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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Theresa Okokon is a Wisconsinite living in New England. She's a nonprofit professional, storyteller, and co-host of "Stories From The Stage"  -- a national public TV show. An alum of both the Memoir and Essay Incubator programs at GrubStreet, she's writing a memoir about memory, family stories, and the death of her father. Theresa's essays (and bathroom selfies!) have appeared in midnight & indigo, ELLE, WBUR's Cognoscenti, Boston.com, and her recent essay in Hippocampus Magazine was named among the Top Essays of the Week by Longreads and The Rumpus. She Instagrams gorgeous cocktails, food porn, and pics about Blackness and fatness at @ohh.jeezzz.    

Porsha Olayiwola is the 2014 Individual World Poetry Slam Champion and 2015 National Poetry Slam Champion. Black, poet, queer-dyke, hip-hop feminist, womanist: Porsha is a native of Chicago who now resides in Boston where she organizes, writes and teaches. Porsha co-founded The House Slam, Boston’s first poetry slam venue and coaches their award winning poetry slam team. In 2018, Porsha was named by GK100 as one of Boston’s Most Influential People of Color. She is the Artistic Director at MassLEAP, a literary non-profit organization in Massachusetts serving youth artists. A Create Well grantee, Olayiwola is releasing a choreopoem and theatrical production entitled Black & Ugly as Ever in the fall of 2018. She is an MFA Candidate at Emerson College. As an artist, Porsha writes infra-politically to tell the stories that are silenced, erased, or difficult to release from the tip of the tongue. She has a book forthcoming in 2019 with Button Poetry. Her goal is to maintain a cipher of self that is uncontrollable, undocumented and just plain ole dope.

Emmanuel Oppong-Yeboah is a Ghanaian American poet living out the diaspora in Boston (Massachusetts). He is both Black & alive. Emmanuel is the current Walltalk teaching artist at the Institute of Contemporary, Boston. He is an associate editor at Pizza Pi Press, and the reviews editor at Winter Tangerine. Emmanuel has had work published in The Hartford Courant, Narrative Northeast, and Bird's Thumb. While writing this personal biography, Emmanuel realized he was referring to himself in the third person. This upset him. He chose to write a list of some things that make him happy instead: hot carbs, brightly colored chapbooks, the long sigh at the end of a good book.

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.

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.

Jennifer Ifè Oshun Goddard is a multimedia content veteran and author with over 20 years of experience. The Rhode Island School of Design graduate also studied English and Theater Arts at Brown University before working as a content strategist at MIT and advertising agencies for clients such as Sprint, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, and more. As a writer, she has worked for decades under the shortened name Ifè Oshun as a celebrity music journalist and editor/content strategist for online operations such as About.com and HiphopRnbSoul.com--two sites which went on to generate weekly and monthly traffic in the millions. She has also done television production, screenwriting and marketing for studios such as MGM, FOX, Paramount and Tyler Perry Studios, shows such as Star Trek (Voyager), and her own indie company Oshun55 Productions. She is author of the young adult series of books called the Angelica Brown Series. www.IfeOshun.com. www.PapaGrace.com. Twitter @IfeOshun

Nico Pang is a queer and nonbinary Asian American poet, youth worker, and teaching artist based in Boston. Born in the year of the dog like their grandmother, Nico's writing explores family histories, diaspora, queerness, gender, and belonging. Nico is a Pink Door Fellow, 2017 FEM Slam finalist, and founding member of Disrupt Slam at Tufts University. Nico previously coached youth slam teams for A-WAY (Allies Working with Asian Youth) for Louder Than A Bomb Massachusetts and Tufts University for CUPSI, the national college poetry slam. Nico's work is published in Winter Tangerine and Crab Fat Magazine: Best of Year Three print anthology. Nico is passionate about youth power and poetry as a tool for resistance and healing. Nico coordinates leadership development programs at BAGLY (Boston Alliance of GLBTQ+ Youth), the longest running LGBTQ+ youth organization in the country. Find Nico on Instagram @nico__pang

Patricia Park is the author of the debut novel Re Jane (Viking), a modern-day interpretation of Jane Eyre, named Editors’ Choice by the New York Times Book Review. She graduated from Swarthmore College and received her MFA from Boston University. She has appeared on MSNBC, NPR, and WNYC, and has written for the New York Times, Guardian, Salon, Daily Beast, and others. A former Fulbright research scholar, she has taught writing at Boston University and Queens College.

Eric Parkison received his MA in English from the University of Rochester, and his MFA in poetry from Boston University. He has taught creative writing, literature, and college composition at community colleges in Rochester, New York, Pittsburg, California and, here at Bunker Hill Community College. He is wholly interested in community education and creative writing. His work has appeared in American Chordata, The Columbia Review, Midwest Quarterly, and Zyzzyva among others. He lives in Roslindale, where he reads books, drinks coffee, and walks his dog.

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.

Kristen was the first graduate of both the Memoir and Essay Incubators and kicked off GrubStreet's Book Club. She instructs adults in the micro-flash form; the memoir proposal; the hermit crab essay; flash and other essays, and youth in nonfiction, being a writer; and flash. Kristen's memoir was a Summer 2023 Graphic Lit Editor's Pick in Solstice Magazine. Her story "Neighbors" was a 2020 winner of micro-flash contest Boston in 100 Words. Kristen's 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; The Keepthings; Solstice and the Publish Her Anthology Better Together: A Collection of Essays on Women Gathering. 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. Kristen is earning her licensure to teach middle-school English at Lesley University. She seeks representation for her memoir.

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.

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. 

A transmasculine gender-queer poet from Texas, Binx R. Perino is pursuing their MFA at Emerson College in Boston. They lead workshops with GrubStreet and organize within the Boston chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. Their work has appeared in Variant Literature, Cold Mountain Review, Mixed Magazine, GASHER, and elsewhere.

Dharani Persaud is GrubStreet's Youth and Community Programs Manager. She holds a BA in International Relations with a concentration in Political Science and a minor in Italian Studies from Wellesley College. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hobart, 2040 Review, Kajal Magazine, Brown Girl Magazine, and others. When Dharani is not writing you can find her sitting in secluded corners of bookstores, petting other people's dogs, or both.

Heather Wells Peterson has her MFA in Fiction from the University of Florida. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in Subtropics, American Short Fiction, Lit Hub, Lucky Peach, Bellevue Literary Review, and The Collagist, among others. She and her agent are currently submitting her first novel to publishers, and she has just finished writing her second. She has taught various kinds of writing--including fiction, creative nonfiction, and screenwriting--at the college level since 2011.

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.

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. 

Gray (he/him/his) is currently an MFA student at Emerson College, where he also received his BFA in Creative Writing. He has previous experience in higher education, social work and, of course, slinging coffee. When he’s not working, it’s safe to bet that Gray is either purchasing more plants than he can handle, buying more books for his to-be-read pile, planning out a new cosplay, or figuring out his next story. If you ever see him, feel free to offer some reading recommendations!

Deborah L. Plummer, PhD is a psychologist, university professor, diversity thought leader, author, and speaker on topics central to racial equality, inclusion, and mutual respect.   Her groundbreaking and timely book, Some of My Friends Are…The Daunting Challenges and Untapped Benefits of Cross Racial Friendships (Beacon Press) examines contemporary race relations through the lens of cross-racial friendships, noting how they work and fail within American society.  She is editor of the Handbook of Diversity Management (Rowman and Littlefield) and author of Advancing Inclusion: A Guide for Effective Diversity Council and Employee Resource Group Membership (Half Dozen Publications), and award-winning Racing Across the Lines: Changing Race Relations through Friendships (Pilgrim Press).   She has written for Diversity Executive, Boston Globe Magazine, authored several book chapters and published numerous journal articles for the professional academic community. Her essay “The Girl from the Ghetto” is published in the anthology All of the Women in My Family Sing: Women Write the World, Essays on Equality, Justice and Freedom (NBTT Press). Her work has been featured in several media outlets and she served for many years as an expert commentator on television and radio. Debbie was named by Becker’s Hospital Review as one of the Top 15 Chief Diversity Officers to Know.    Debbie is most passionate about creating inclusive organizations and building peaceful communities. Her blog, Getting to We, facilitates forward-thinking and enlightened conversations on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

I help people write stories that matter.

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.

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.

Caroline Preston Bio Caroline Preston is the author of three novels (including NYT Notable Book Jackie By Josie) and two graphic novels-- The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt and The War Bride’s Scrapbook (Ecco). Preston’s innovative “scrapbook” novels are created from her extensive collections of vintage letters, documents and images. Frankie Pratt won a 2012 Alex Award. Her book reviews have appeared in the Washington Post. She has taught fiction at the University of Virginia and workshops on the graphic novel at George Mason and other colleges. She has received fellowships from Yaddo and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and is a distinguished artist at the Ragdale Foundation. She lives in Charlottesville, Va. with her husband, the writer Christopher Tilghman.

Gabriele enjoys trying (and failing) to predict the future, trying (and failing) to visit places for the first time without consulting a map, and also learning (but then forgetting) rarely used regionally-specific idioms. When not writing, you will most often find them either in a kitchen at the stove or sat near a bookcase with a pile of markers at their feet. They are a pessimist if they're not careful. Some things that Gabriele has written have been performed/workshopped on stages in Boston, New York, Winston-Salem, Berlin, and Philadelphia: if you're curious, feel free to ask them about it.

Marika Preziuso is a Professor of World Literature at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She teaches literature from the Caribbean and its diasporas, postcolonial literature and gender studies. She also has experience training faculty and students on issues of intercultural understanding. Topics of interest are geographical and emotional displacement, moments of intercultural tension and connection, personal narratives of embodied pain and growth, and the alchemy of the creative process itself. In her non-academic life, Marika writes poetry and hybrid pieces. She has had a few poems published, in Italian and recently in English, in the Journal of Critical Thought and Praxis.

Women's and commercial fiction, memoir, voice-driven narratives, inspirational stories, race/cultural explorations, pop culture, anything that will make me laugh...or cry.

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?

Black (they/them) is a renaissance, drawing inspiration from artists like Josephine Baker and Ntozake Shange, who were unapologetic and unbound in their creative expression. They are a Black, genderqueer creator and community organizer currently based in the land of Bulbancha, or so-called New Orleans. Through anti/interdisciplinary creative practice, Black transcends the boundaries between art and form to create space for healing, discovery and transformation. They create within the realm of Afrofuturism and spirituality, conjuring worlds through the imagination, facilitating deep connection, and cultivating a sense of collectivity, wholeness and embodied wisdom. It is through this work that Black strives towards liberation.

Virginia Pye’s collection, Shelf Life of Happiness, was awarded the 2019 IPPY Gold Medal in short fiction. Her two historical novels, Dreams of the Red Phoenix (2015) and River of Dust (2013) also received literary honors. Her essays and stories have appeared in Literary Hub, The New York Times, The Rumpus, Huffington Post, Tampa Review, North American Review, Baltimore Review, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence and has taught writing at conferences and universities, in high schools and at GrubStreet. Visit her at: www.virginiapye.com.

Leidy V. Quiceno was born in Colombia and raised in Boston, MA. She is passionate about civil, racial, and educational rights. She has a BA in Criminal Justice (magna cum laude); is a member of the National Criminal Justice Honor Society (Alpha Phi Sigma); and has earned a Graduate Certificate in Gender, Leadership, and Public Policy from the University of Massachusetts, Boston. As a former teacher turned Student Advocate, turned community organizer. She currently strives to racially, politically and academically empower “at-promise” urban youth and communities of color. She also worked as a Research Assistant for UMass Boston’s Latino Student Success Initiative (LSSI) and the Latinx Leadership Opportunity Program (LLOP). Her 2016 LSSI research project shed light on the personal, academic, and professional experiences of Latinx transfer students from Bunker Hill Community College, whom expressed the many barriers (language, racial, cultural, and financial) they face on a day-to-day basis as non-traditional first generation students. Her presentation at the Annual Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) conference, sought to communicate how educators and higher educational institutions can listen to the voices and narratives of vulnerable and marginalized populations in order to best support such students to achieve academic success. As a graduate student, Leidy Quiceno focused on the School-to-prison pipeline and educational reform through the use of Transnational, Cultural, and Community Studies (TCCS, MS 18’). She aspires to continue working with Black and Latinx communities as an educator, leader, youth mentor, and advocate.

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.

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.

Benjamin Rachlin studied English at Bowdoin College, where he won the Sinkinson Prize, and writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where he won Schwartz and Brauer fellowships. His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in the New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Virginia Quarterly Review, TIME, Orion, Pacific Standard, Lithub, and Five Dials. His first book, GHOST OF THE INNOCENT MAN, is available now from Little, Brown & Company.

Book projects: I have extensive professional experience as an editor & coach. I consult on novels & memoir. Novel-length manuscripts for developmental editing. I offer coaching for book ideas or drafts-in-progress. Also, personal writing coaching that is supportive with a minimum of 3 sessions to ensure accountability and generative writing. Focus for coaching can be to support writers in identifying your own personal rhythm to obtain a more consistent writing practice. Coaching focus can also be centered on craft, writing blocks, setting a timeline for writing goals/projects, and/or ultimately identifying your voice in the writing. I offer writing seminars for writing groups, retreats, and community organizations that can be craft-centered or centered on cultivating a writing practice. Contact Asata: [email protected]

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. A former reviewer for Kirkus, she currently enjoys teaching Creative Writing at GrubStreet and working as a skilled Developmental Editor & Writing Coach for Atmosphere Press where she supports authors who write in fiction, nonfiction (memoir), and sci-fi/fantasy.

Ida Rahimi (she/her) is the Youth Programs Coordinator. At age 6 she wrote, “My favorat part of sekendgrad is readersworksho. Becus I like too read so much that Iread at night. And I want to be an author and illustrateder too.” Not much has changed since. Ida has a wide range of experience in the literary world, from the independent bookstore and local library, to experimental poetry research, small press publishing, and youth literacy education. Despite eternally groaning at long winter months and a general suspicion of the Northeast, she’s spent her entire life in the Greater Boston area and earned her B.A. in English from Boston University. She’s a firm advocate for the restorative power of the arts in its capacity to heal ourselves and communities, confront institutional oppression, and imagine radical futures. She loves to play in the sun.

Sara Rauch is the author of WHAT SHINES FROM IT: STORIES and the book-length essay XO. Her writing has appeared in Revolute, Paranoid Tree, Paper Darts, So to Speak, Hobart, Split Lip, and more. She covers books and authors for the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Lives of Writers podcast, Newcity Lit, WBUR, Curve Magazine, Lambda Literary, and elsewhere. She teaches at Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop and GrubStreet, and also works as a freelance independent editor.

Born and raised in Memphis, TN, Allen J. Redwing is a writer, producer, and director. While in high school, Allen interned at the Playhouse on the Square in Memphis, TN and developed a passion for writing. Allen graduated from Endicott College with a degree in Business Administration, attended Boston University, and New York Film Academy for Filmmaking, and founded, Mtown Films, a small, boston based film production company which focuses on producing short and long form film projects.

Justin Reed received his M.F.A. from Florida State University, and he is currently an assistant editor for Consequence Magazine and a senior reader for Harvard Review.  His work has been published in The Iowa Review, Epoch, Consequence, Post Road, Flash and elsewhere. His fiction received a special mention in the 2019 Pushcart Prize, and his stories have been runners-up for the Lex Allen Prize and the George Harmon Coxe Award. He is a recipient of a 2020 artist fellowship through Somerville Arts Council.

Karina Renee is a writer and educator with a passion for stories that focus on social justice, cultural identity, and intercultural realities. This drive stems from her experiences growing up between Caracas and Detroit, teaching in Peru, Japan, and the US, as well as instructing Ukrainian, Russian, and Syrian students online. Her work has been published in El Nacional’s digital edition and produced in Yokohama, Japan as a series of bilingual skits. She writes in English, Spanish, and Japanese and is working on Ukrainian.

I am available for manuscript evaluations, developmental edits, and book coaching. I am an Author Accelerator certified book coach, and worked for them as the Director of Coach Development for three years. I specialize in mystery, eco-fiction, and children's fiction (middle grade and YA). I'm happy to edit or review essays or essay collections as well. I am a compassionate editor and coach who meets people where they are in their manuscripts and helps them to take their work to the next level. I'm happy to help at any stage of the writing process, from planning a book's foundation, to figuring out a plan for revision, to polishing up a manuscript and navigating paths to publication. For more information on how I might help you, and to access my intake form (which includes a free phone call to see if we're a good fit), please visit the coaching / editing section of my website: https://dianarennbooks.com/coaching-editing/about-me/

Diana Renn’s middle grade mystery, TROUBLE AT TURTLE POND (Fitzroy Books / Regal House) was long listed for the Massachusetts Book Award and named a Nature Generation / Green Earth Book Awards Honor Book in 2023. The sequel, THE OWL PROWL MYSTERY, releases in August 2024. Diana is also the author of three young adult mysteries published by Viking / Penguin Random House (TOKYO HEIST, LATITUDE ZERO and BLUE VOYAGE), and a collaboratively written, serialized thriller for adults (FALSE IDOLS) published by Realm / Adaptive Books. She writes creative nonfiction as well; her essays have appeared in Pangyrus, WBUR's Cognoscenti, Flyway Journal of Writing and Environment, Publisher's Weekly, The Huffington Post, The Writer, Writer's Digest, and elsewhere. She received a Massachusetts Cultural Council grant for a collection of essays she is writing about neighborhood naturalists and community science. Diana enjoys teaching writers of all ages and is an instructor in Grub Street’s Young Adult Writers Program (YAWP). Visit her online at www.dianarennbooks.com.

Paulina Reso is a writer and educator pursuing an MFA at Columbia University. Her nonfiction has appeared in the Philadelphia City Paper, The New Yorker, the Village Voice, and "Around the World: An Anthology of Travel Writing." Currently, she is writing a short story collection, which includes a piece published in Meridian: The Semiannual from the University of Virginia.

Hillary Rettig is a writer, teacher, and coach who helps writers, students, academics, activists, and others achieve joyful and effective productivity. Her latest book, Productivity is Power: Five Liberating Practices for College Students was published in April, 2022. Her earlier books, The 7 Secrets of the Prolific and The Lifelong Activist have been translated into several languages. Hillary has taught at Grub Street Writers since 2006, and has also taught at The Mark Twain House and Museum, Cape Cod Writers Center, and numerous other venues. She is a vegan, a living kidney donor, a lover of dogs and all other animals, and a lover of social justice in all its forms. For more on Hillary and her work, including free articles and ebooks, visit www.hillaryrettig.com and email hillary at [email protected].

Hillary Rettig is an author, workshop leader and coach who specializes in helping people overcome procrastination and use their time better. Her latest book is The Seven Secrets of the Prolific: The Definitive Guide to Overcoming Procrastination, Perfectionism and Writer's Block (Infinite Art, 2011). Of her prior book, The Lifelong Activist: How to Change the World Without Losing Your Way (Lantern Books, 2006), the leading liberal blog, DailyKos.com, said, "If I had but one book to spend hard-earned cash on this year, The Lifelong Activist would be it, hands down." Hillary is a Bronx native who currently enjoys living in East Boston. She has published numerous nonfiction articles, and also short fiction. Some of the acclaimed science fiction writers she has studied with are Ursula K. LeGuin, Samuel R. Delaney and the late Octavia Butler. Hillary is also a kidney donor, foster parent, lover of dogs and other animals, and vegan. Download free ebooks and other information on productivity and related fields at www.hillaryrettig.com, and Hillary welcomes your emails at [email protected].

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. Coaching aspiring writers. 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.” 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.

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. 

Chalene is a Young Adult author currently working on her debut novel. Finishing school at the height of the pandemic, Chalene graduated with a double Masters in Children's Literature (MA) and Writing for Children (MFA) at Simmons University. She has worked as a creative writing teacher, literary agent assistant, content editor and curator, and writing tutor. When her nose isn't buried in a book, she's either walking her Goldendoodle, Maverick, playing board games with her partner, or watching Korean dramas. Chalene loves every stage of the writing process--from world building and character development, all the way to revisions. Most of all, she loves making space for individuals to share their stories.

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.

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.

Supporting other playwrights in their artistic journey and careers, is one of my greatest joys. My expertise as a coach is in character development, dramatic structure, cultivating theatricality, and sharply reflecting back areas of great potential. You will be met with a nurturing approach that balances encouragement, professionalism, strategy, humor and passion. I'm a huge nerd when it comes to the theatre so I'll probably curate a reading list of plays just for you as well as share a plethora of professional resources for playwrights, from submission deadlines to podcasts. My feedback is rooted in Liz Lerman's Critical Response Process, which means to say, my feedback is intentionally structured to leave the writer eager and motivated to get back to work. My previous clients have gone on to win fellowships, receive readings, and fully realized productions of their work. Most importantly, my clients have continued forward more confident in articulating their truest and bravest selves on the page and stage.

Kira Rockwell (she/her) is a neurodivergent playwright from the heart of Texas, presently based in Atlanta. Her critically acclaimed, award winning play, OH TO BE PURE AGAIN, premiered this year at Actor's Express. She is an Artist Fellow in Dramatic Writing with Mass Cultural Council, a recipient of the Judith Royer Excellence in Playwriting Award, as well as a two time finalist for the Princess Grace Award, among others. Her plays have been supported by The Kennedy Center, National New Play Network, Boston Playwrights' Theatre, Last Frontier Theatre Conference, Great Plains Theatre Conference, and Third Culture Theatre in partnership with HBO and Arts for Incarcerated Youth Network, among others. She is currently under commission with Ensemble Studio Theatre. Her autistic love story, WITH MY EYES SHUT, is now available through Original Works Publishing. Rockwell has a BFA in Theatre Performance and an MFA in Playwriting from Boston University. As an educator, Rockwell has taught at Brandeis University, Wheaton College, Boston University, and Hyde Square Task Force. When she's not writing or teaching, she's probably at the park with her dog trying to talk to caterpillars. Find out more on her website: www.kirarockwell.com

A.J. is available for a wide range of consultations, from intensive line edits and manuscript feedback letters to general advice about the writing life (agent querying, MFA applications, publication etc.). He is experienced in editing all genres and lengths of fiction and has a particular interest in stories that deal with themes of race, cultural belonging, and family heritage. He also enjoys working with narrative nonfiction, which includes essays and memoir.

A.J. Rodriguez is a Chicano writer born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He is a graduate of the University of Oregon’s MFA program and the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell and Yaddo. His stories have won CRAFT’s Flash Fiction Contest, the Crazyhorse Fiction Prize, second place in Salamander’s Fiction Contest, and the Kinder/Crump Award for Short Fiction from Pleiades, judged by Jonathan Escoffery. His fiction also appears or is forthcoming in Passages North, New Ohio Review, Fractured Lit, and The Common. He is represented by Alexa Stark at Writers House.

Mathew Rodriguez is an award-winning queer Afro-Latinx essayist, journalist and editor. He began his career in journalism at The Body, the internet's premiere HIV/AIDS news site. He has worked as a staff writer at Mic, INTO and Out Magazine, as well as an editor at The Atlantic, The Body and Them. For his work, he has garnered several awards, including a New York Society of Professional Journalists Deadline Award, an NLGJA Award, two GLAAD Media Awards and three Web Health Awards. His writing has been featured in Slate, The Village Voice, Teen Vogue, POZ and more. He is also an instructor in the undergraduate journalism program at New York University. He is currently working on a young adult graphic novel forthcoming from Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.

Jane Roper is the author of a memoir, Double Time: How I Survived–and Mostly Thrived–Through the First Three Years of Mothering Twins (St. Martin's) and a novel, Eden Lake (Last Light Studio). She was also a contributor to the anthology Labor Day: Birth Stories by Today’s Best Women Writers (FSG). Her essays, humor and short fiction have appeared in publications including The Millions, Salon, Cognoscenti, The Rumpus, Poets & Writers, Writer’s Digest, Post Road and Salt Hill. Jane received her MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has been a proud Grubbie since 2001.  She lives outside of Boston with her husband and daughters. 

Ashley-Rose is an award winning Haitian-American educator, organizer, actress and award-winning poet from Boston, MA. She was honored by Mayor Marty Walsh with the OneIn3 Impact Award for being one of the most influential people under age 35 in Boston and in 2016 she was awarded  Boston’s Extraordinary Woman Award for her work with within arts, education and community development in Boston. Most recently she was awarded 2017 National Poetry Award by the City Works Journal in San Diego, California. Her writing has been featured  alongside collections and anthologies including, The Anthology of Liberation Poetry with greats such as Professor Hoagland and Black Arts Movement Co-Founder Askia Toure. This led to her delivering one of the first TEDx Talks in Boston based on her poem, “The Other Side of Ruggles”. Her poem, “Dark Skin Representative” was highlighted and featured by the American Repertory Theatre for their sold out play, The Black Clown, inspired by Langston Hughes. After attending Northeastern, Ashley-Rose found success both on the page, and on the stage with acting. Her past  storytelling and acting experience has led to her being featured on PBS Stories From the Stage and in productions such as  Urban Fresh’s remake of Ntozake Shange’s “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide when the Rainbow is Enuf, Having, where she played the lead role of Lady in Red. Wearing multiple hats, Ashley-Rose was also the lead organizer for the 2008 RoxVote Campaign when Barack Obama won his first presidency, and in 2015 she was hired as the Boston Organizer and Facilitator for the first Youth Lead the Change- Participatory Budgeting process in the United States. She currently works teaching Restorative Justice through the lens of arts and science for middle school students in BPS.

Wesley Rothman has earned degrees from the University of San Diego and Emerson College and is now pursuing his doctorate. His poems and criticism have appeared or are forthcoming in 32 Poems, Asheville Poetry Review, Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, Crab Orchard Review, Drunken Boat, Four Way Review, H_NGM_N, Harpur Palate, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Inter|rupture, PANK, Phantom Limb, Rattle, The Rumpus, Similar:Peaks::, Thrush, Tupelo Quarterly, Vinyl, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. He has worked with Copper Canyon Press, Ploughshares, Narrative, and Salamander, and teaches writing and cultural literatures at Emerson College, Suffolk University, and Berklee College of Music. Recent honors include a Pushcart Prize nomination and finalist standing for the Emory Poetry Fellowship, 49th Parallel Poetry Prize, and Tupelo Quarterly Contest. He is currently completing his first poetry manuscript, Ricochet, and launching into a second, Subwoofer.

Moriel Rothman-Zecher is an award-winning novelist and poet. His first novel, Sadness Is a White Bird, received the National Book Foundation's '5 Under 35' Honor, and was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the winner of the Ohioana Book Award, a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, and long-listed for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize. His second novel is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. His writing has been published in The New York Times, The Paris Review's Daily, Zyzzyva Magazine, Runner's World, The Tel Aviv Review of Books, The Common Magazine, and in the anthology, Fight of the Century: Writers Reflect on 100 Years of Landmark ACLU Cases. He has taught writing at the Miami Writers Institute, online through Catapult, the Miami Book Fair, the Ohioana Library, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of two MacDowell Fellowships for Literature. Moriel lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio, with his family.

Helen Betya Rubinstein's essays and fiction appear in The Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, Literary Hub, and elsewhere, and her opinions in Jewish Currents, LA Review of Books, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and The New York Times. She holds M.F.A. degrees in fiction and nonfiction, from Brooklyn College and the University of Iowa, respectively, and her work has been honored with fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Marble House Project, Willapa Bay AiR, and others. She has been teaching writing since 2001, including at The New School (where she currently teaches), Bard High School Early College Queens, Mississippi's Camp Dream Street, and Yale. She also works one-on-one with literary writers and scholars as a coach.

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.

Hank Phillippi Ryan is the investigative reporter for Boston's NBC affiliate. A television journalist since 1975, she has won 27 Emmys and ten Edward R. Murrow awards for her work. A best-selling author of four mystery novels, Ryan has won the Agatha, Anthony and Macavity awards for her crime fiction. She’s on the national board of directors of Mystery Writers of America (and an instructor at MWA-U) and vice president of National Sisters in Crime. Her newest suspense thriller,The Other Woman, is the first in a new series beginning in 2012 from Forge Books.

Flash fiction, historical fiction, realism, magical realism, fabulism, experimental writing, column writing, social commentary, personal essay, lyric essay

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.

Benjamin Samuel is the co-editor of Electric Literature, an independent digital publisher based in Brooklyn, and its weekly fiction magazine, Recommended Reading. Electric Literature was the recipient of the National Book Foundation’s 2011 Innovations in Reading Prize; has been recognized by Best American Short Stories, the Pen/O’Henry Prize, and Best American Non-Required Reading; and was called a "refreshingly bold act of optimism" by The Washington Post. Benjamin's writing has appeared in McSweeney's Internet Tendency, The Huffington Post, The New York Daily News, and Paper Dreams: Writers and Editors on the American Literary Magazine, a forthcoming anthology from Atticus Books, and he's been featured in The LA Times, The Rumpus, Storyboard, Poets & Writers, and Huffington. He has an MFA from Brooklyn College.

Joseph Santaella Vidal is a Puerto Rican writer who graduated with an MFA from Emerson College in Boston, with a concentration in Fiction Writing. He is a reader for the acclaimed literary magazine Ploughshares. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Puerto del Sol, Barely South Review, The Acentos Review, Queen Mob's Teahouse, and Flash Fiction Magazine among others. His screenwriting has been featured on National Television and in 2015, his screenplay, The Guest, was selected as the "Best Short Screenplay," in the Puerto Rico Horror Film Fest's Screenplay competition. His short story collection, Experiments With Sunflowers is forthcoming from Mariana Editores. Currently, he is working on his first novel.

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. 

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.