Meet the Faculty

Originally from West Africa and now, over three decades a Harlem resident, Rashidah Ismaili is a writer of plays, poetry, fiction and cultural critiques. She is one of the original faculty of the Creative Writing Low Residence at Wilkes University. She has read at many international arts festivals and as well, her plays have been presented in Zimbabwe for the HIFA, Harare International Festival of Arts, for three years. In addition to her writing Ismaili-AbuBakr is the host of Salon d' Afrique; an international forum for the gathering of artists, cultural workers and prominent activists as well as celebrations of various activities. This is something she has done prior to coming to Harlem, over forty years. She is a founding member of OWWA, Organization of Women Writers of Africa, an active member of African Literature Association, PEN International Writers, Pen&Brush as the Vice President of the Board. Currently she is organizing the archives of the late dancer/choreographer, Eleo Pomare. Ismaili-AbuBakr has a long history in literary and cultural movements and groups; Umbra, a group of visual and literary artists that formed in Lower East Side during the mid 60's along with Black Arts Movement, Calabashe Poets, Afrikan Poetry Theatre and Badenya, a Pan African cultural and arts organization. She considers herself an advocate for human rights, literacy for young people, cultural and intellectual development for women of all ages in Africa and the African Diaspora.

Philip Brady is a poet, essayist and editor. His forthcoming book is The Elsewhere: New & Selected Poems (Broadstone, 2020) His latest book of essays is Phantom Signs: The Muse in Universe City (University of Tennessee Press, 2019). A book-length poem, To Banquet with the Ethiopians: A Memoir of Life Before the Alphabet appeared from Broadstone in 2015. His essay collection, By Heart: Reflections of a Rust-Belt Bard (University of Tennessee Press), was a Gold Medalist at Foreword Magazine in 2008. He has published three collections of poems, Fathom (WordTech Press, 2007), Weal (Ashland, 2000), winner of the Snyder Prize, and Forged Correspondences (New Myths, 1996), which was chosen for Ploughshares “Editor’s Shelf”by Maxine Kumin. He has also published a memoir, To Prove My Blood: A Tale of Emigrations & the Afterlife (Ashland, 2003). He holds a PhD from Binghamton University and has published numerous scholarly articles in journals including: College English, The Arkansas Quarterly, and The Centennial Review. His edited collections include: Critical Essays on James Joyce’s Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man (Twayne, 1998) and Poems and Their Making (Etruscan Press, 2015). He has been awarded the Ohio Governor’s Award in Arts Education, an Ohioana Award in Poetry, six Ohio Arts Council Fellowships, a Thayer Fellowship from New York State, and residencies at Yaddo, Ragdale, the Headlands Center, Fundacion Valparaiso, Hawthornden Castle, and the Virginia Center. Brady has taught at University College Cork in Ireland, as a Peace Corps Volunteer at the National University of Zaire, and in the Semester at Sea Program. Currently, he is a Distinguished Professor of English at Youngstown State University, where he directs the Poetry Center. Brady is also the co-founder and executive director for Etruscan Press.

Bonnie Culver is the Wilkes University creative writing program co-founder and a screenwriter, playwright and novelist. Bonnie’s 20+ plays have been produced from NY to LA by colleges, regional theaters and equity companies. Her professionally produced plays include: Lifelines, Group S.O.S. (male and female versions), Accident, and Sniper. In 2004, Sniper won the New Jersey Arts Council Perry Award for Excellence in the Production of an Original Play and was produced Off-Broadway at Center Stage, NYC, in 2005. In 2006, Sniper was included in the Florida Studio Theatre’s Richard and Betty Burdick National Playwriting Reading series, an annual event that showcases “the best in American contemporary theatre.” Her screenplays Sniper, Group S.O.S., and Watchfires were Sundance Film Development Program finalists. Marlee Matlin’s film company, Solo One Productions optioned her film Rainbow Man. The 2011 Villagers Playhouse production of Sniper was nominated for seven NJ Perry Awards. The original showcase premier in Red Bank, New Jersey, earned the “Best Original Play” Perry Award in 2003. Her short plays “Cell” and “GPS” were produced in a festival of one-acts at The Venue, Norfolk, VA and her play “Auto-mated” was produced on the Virginia Eastern Shore and her essay “The Moon on the River” was included in an anthology of music, poetry, memoir, and essays, Written on Water: Writings About the Alleghany River (Mayapple Press). Group S.O.S., (male and female cast versions) and interviews with the directors who first produced the plays is available at Havescripts.com. Her play GPS directed by faculty member Gregory Fletcher won the Piney Fork Short Play Festival, NYC, as “best play of the festival.” Dr. Culver received her M.A. and PhD from Binghamton University. At Wilkes, she is an associate professor of English, a former college dean, and co-founder/director of the Graduate Creative Writing Program. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, past president of the James Jones Society, and an advisory board member of the Norman Mailer Society and Etruscan Press. Recently, she just completed her second term as the chair of the Board of Trustees of AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs). In 2018, her play Auto-Mated was included in a 10 Minute Play Festival (Can we Talk?) at Carroll College, Montana, of Plays by Women. Her play A Ticket to the Circus, a one-woman show based upon the memoir of Norris Church Mailer is scheduled to open at the Edgemar Center for the Arts in California in 2020, directed and produced by Michelle Danner and starring Anne Archer.

Gabrielle D’Amico is a screenwriter with a long history with Wilkes University. A first-generation college student, Gabrielle earned a bachelor’s degree in communications from Wilkes and worked in the University’s marketing office for 16 years. During this time, she discovered a love for screenwriting and earned her MFA from the Maslow Creative Writing Program.

Her latest screenplay, Hot Mess, is in pre-production with Emma Roberts (American Horror Story, Madam Web) set to star. Katie Locke-O’Brien (AP Bio, Ghosts) will direct with Laura Lewis (Tell Me Lies), Debbie Liebling (Dodgeball, South Park) and Maggie Malina (Resort to Love, Scream The TV Series) producing. Vertical Entertainment secured distributing rights  external websiteduring Cannes 2023.

Now or Never, the screenplay Gabrielle wrote as a student in the Wilkes program, has been optioned by Resonate Entertainment (Sitting in Bars With Cake, True Spirit), a film company dedicated to the underserved yet highly lucrative female audience where Wilkes advisory board member Susan Cartsonis serves as partner. Now or Never was selected as a semifinalist for the 2017 CineStory Foundation feature-length fellowship competition, earning her a spot at the organization’s annual retreat in Idyllwild, California.

Gabrielle is represented by Gersh. In her self-proclaimed “couch-surfing era,” Gabrielle splits her time between her hometown of Kingston, Pennsylvania, and Denver, Colorado, with frequent stops in Los Angeles. She is married to Nick, a forester, and has a rescue pup named Ruthie. Most people call her Gabby and she tends to live up to the name.

When she’s not writing, you can find Gabby cheering on the Wilkes Colonels, the Penn State Nittany Lions and the Philadelphia Phillies. She’s a storied Raiders fan, but prefers not to discuss it.

Beverly Donofrio, recently dubbed a master memoirist by The Daily Beast, has published three memoirs: the New York Times bestseller, Riding in Cars with Boys, which was made into a popular movie; Looking for Mary, a Barnes and Noble Discover pick; and Astonished, called "astonishing," by more than one reviewer. Her three children's books are much praised; her NPR documentaries are perennially rebroadcast; and her personal essays have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, O, The Oprah Magazine, Cosmopolitan, Mademoiselle, Marie Clair, More, Allure, Spirituality and Health, The Village Voice, Huffington Post, Slate, as well as many anthologies. Her picture book, Mary and the Mouse, the Mouse and Mary, was named by Publishers Weekly one of "10 Children's Books that Never Get Old." Its sequel, Where's Mommy? was chosen by The New York Times as one of the top ten children's book of 2014. Her essays can be found in numerous anthologies, and one appears in How Does That Make You Feel, True Confessions from Both Sides of the Therapy Couch, published by Seal Press in 2016. She teaches memoir-writing workshops around the country and is currently at work on a memoir and a novel. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University.

Gregory Fletcher is a native of Dallas, Texas, a resident of New York, a graduate with three theatre degrees from California State University at Northridge, Columbia University, and Boston University. His plays have had 12 Off-Off Broadway productions plus regionally in Boston, Miami, Moscow (Idaho), and Provincetown. Publishers include Smith & Kraus, Back Stage Books, Dramatic Publishing, Blue Moon Plays, Anco Entertainment in the Netherlands and Belgium, Wilde Magazine, and Northampton House Press for his craft book Shorts and Briefs, a collection of his short plays and brief principles of playwriting. Essays have been published by Univ. of Nebraska-Lincoln in their anthology Being: What Makes a Man, by Zoetic Press in their anthology Dearly Beloved, and by the journals American Writers Review, Diverse Voices Quarterly, and Longridge Review. His short stories Friends of Vera resides in The Night Bazaar anthology, and Ismene in Venice in The Night Bazaar: Venice, both published by Northampton House Press. Other People’s Crazy marks Fletcher’s YA novel debut, published by Overdue Books. Awards include the Mark Twain Prize for Comic Playwriting and the National Ten-Minute Play Award from the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, and, as a first runner-up, the David Mark Cohen National Playwriting Award. He was a playwriting grantee at the Sundance Theatre Lab, a nominee for Outstanding Original Short Script for the New York IT Awards, and a national finalist for the Heideman Award and the Reva Shiner Comedy Award. Fletcher has also taught playwriting at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, Niagara University, and CUNY-Kingsborough. For directing and stage management credits, visit his website external website.

Ru Freeman is a Sri Lankan born writer and activist whose creative and political work has appeared internationally, including in the UK Guardian external website, The Boston Globe external website and the New York Times. external website She is the author of the short story collection, Sleeping Alone (forthcoming from Graywolf Press external website, Spring 2022), and the novels A Disobedient Girl external website (Atria/Simon & Schuster, 2009), and On Sal Mal Lane external website (Graywolf Press), a NYT Editor’s Choice Book. Both novels have been translated into multiple languages including Italian, French, Turkish, Dutch and Chinese.

She is editor of the anthology, Extraordinary Rendition: (American) Writers on Palestine (OR Books, 2015 and Interlink, 2016), a collection of the voices of 65 American poets and writers speaking about America’s dis/engagement with Palestine, and co-editor of the anthology, Indivisible: Global Leaders on Shared Security (Interlink, 2019).

She holds a graduate degree in labor studies, researching female migrant labor in the countries of Kuwait, the U.A.E, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and has worked at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, in the South Asia office of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL/CIO), and the American Friends Service Committee in their humanitarian and disaster relief programs. She is a contributing editorial board member of the Asian American Literary Review, and a fellow of the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Lannan Foundation. She is the 2014 winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for Fiction by an American Woman. She writes for the Huffington Post on books and politics.

Shanta Lee is a writer across genres, a visual artist and a public intellectual actively participating in the cultural discourse with work that is widely featured. Winner of the National Arts Strategies - New England Creative Community Fellowship external website and the Abel Meeropol Social Justice award external website, Shanta Lee also produced and created Vermont Public’s “Seeing...the Unseen and In-Between within Vermont’s Landscape external website.”Her work has been widely featured in a number of anthologies and in places such as Harper's Magazine external website,The Massachusetts Review external website, ITERANT Literary Magazine external website, Palette Poetry external website, BLAVITY external website, and DAME Magazine external website. Shanta Lee's professional wingspan covers the public health, arts, local government, non-profit and other sectors and she is a regular contributor to Ms. Magazine  external websiteand Art New England external website. Shanta Lee's collections include: GHETTOCLAUSTROPHOBIA: Dreamin of Mama While Trying to Speak Woman in Woke Tongues external website (Diode Editions, 2021), Black Metamorphoses external website (Etruscan Press, 2023), the chapbook, This Is How They Teach You How to Want It...The Slaughter: A Field Guide for the Hunted & the Hunter, The Dead-Alive, The Live-Dead Ones, The...  external website(Harbor Editions, 2024), and a double volume of two chapbooks in one, Close Is... and  external websiteHopscotch Between the Living and the Dead external website (Diode Editions, 2024) . As a visual artist, Shanta Lee’s multimedia exhibitions have included, Dark Goddess: An Exploration of the Sacred Feminine external website – a work that includes her short film, interviews, and photography, and items from the museum's permanent collection – has been on view at the Bennington Museum, the Fleming Museum of Art, and the Southern Vermont Arts Center. Shanta Lee has an MFA in Creative Non-Fiction and Poetry at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, an MBA from the University of Hartford and an undergraduate degree in Women, Gender and Sexuality from Trinity College.

Shanta Lee's Website external website

Christine Gelineau writes poetry and creative nonfiction. Her memoir / meditation ALMANAC: a Murmuration will be published in the spring of 2025 by Excelsior Editions (State University of NY Press). She is also the author of three full-length collections of poetry: Crave (NYQ Books, 2016), Appetite for the Divine (Editor's Choice for the McGovern Publication Prize, Ashland Poetry Press, 2010) and Remorseless Loyalty (Ashland Poetry Press, 2006), which was awarded the Richard Snyder Memorial Prize, and which was subsequently nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Gelineau's other books include two chapbooks of poetry, as well as the anthology French Connections: A Gathering of Franco-American Poets (Louisiana Literature Press, 2007). Gelineau's poetry, essays and reviews have appeared in or been accepted to numerous journals and anthologies, including: Prairie Schooner, The New York Times, New York Quarterly, Connecticut Review, New Letters, The Iron Horse Review, Green Mountains Review, Georgia Review, Paterson Literary Review and others, and have appeared on Verse Daily and Poetry Sunday. Her poem "Sockanosett" won a Pushcart Prize while three of her essays have been cited as "Notable Essays" in Best American Essays. Gelineau holds a PhD in literature with a creative dissertation in poetry and essays from Binghamton University; she lives on a farm in upstate New York where she and her husband raise Morgan horses under the Hartland.

Jessica Goudeau is the author of After the Last Border: Two Families and the Story of Refuge in America (which won the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize) and We Were Illegal: Uncovering a Texas Family’s Mythmaking and Migration (the New York Times named it one of “19 Nonfiction Books to Read This Summer” and an Editors’ Choice book). She’s written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Washington Post, among many other places, and produced short documentaries distributed by Teen Vogue and The New Yorker about young women crossing borders. She has a PhD in literature from the University of Texas and teaches Creative Nonfiction in the Maslow Family Graduate Program of Creative Writing. She co-hosts “The Beautiful and Banned” podcast about banned books, plays, and films now and throughout history with fellow Wilkes faculty, Christine Renee Miller.

The Root online magazine listed Laurie Jean’s memoir, Crave: Sojourn of a Hungry Soul, as one of the best nonfiction books by black authors in 2015. Kirkus Reviews described Crave as a "bold, honest, and courageous memoir." Foreword Reviews listed Crave as an Indiefab Book of the Year 2015 finalist in the autobiography/memoir category. Additionally, Crave was named a finalist for the Library of Virginia People’s Choice Award for Nonfiction. Laurie Jean has published personal essays on poverty, domestic violence, and military sexual trauma in a number of publications, including The Rumpus, Good Housekeeping, and Ink and Letters. She has presented talks, lectures, and workshops at numerous organizations, including the KGB Literary Bar, Girls Write Now, The Women’s Initiative, and West Point Military Academy. Laurie Jean is the Mellon Foundation Endowed Chair of English and Foreign Languages at Hampton University and a member of the creative writing faculty in the Wilkes University MA/MFA low-residency Creative Writing Program. Her memoir-in-progress, Wars We've Lost, Wars We've Won is represented by The Tomasino Agency, Inc. You can find additional information at Laurie Jean’s website, lauriejeancannady.net external website.

Kaylie Jones is a novelist, creative nonfiction writer, and editor. Her most recent work, a collection of CNF essays entitled Bad Mother, have been individually published in venues such as The Rumpus, Hippocampus Magazine, and The Southampton Review. Her memoir, Lies My Mother Never Told Me, was released by Harper Collins in 2009. Her third novel, A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries (Bantam, 1990) was adapted as a Merchant Ivory Film in 1998. Celeste Ascending was published by Harper Collins in 2000 and her novel, Speak Now, was released by Akashic Books in 2003. Her novels have been translated into many languages including: French, Dutch, German, and Japanese. Kaylie taught fiction at The Writer's Voice from 1988 to 1996, before helping to create the MFA Program in Writing of LIU's Southampton campus, now the SUNY Stony Brook Southampton College M.FA. Program in Writing, where she still teaches. Currently, she chairs the James Jones First Novel Fellowship, hosted at Wilkes University, which awards $10,000 annually to an unpublished first novel. Kaylie is also the proud editor of Long Island Noir, an anthology of crime fiction published by Akashic Books in 2012. Kaylie's latest novel, The Anger Meridian, was published by Akashic Books in June, 2015. In November 2011, Kaylie was given an award by the National Coalition Against Censorship for her work in bringing to print an unexpurgated, uncensored edition of her father’s classic novel, From Here to Eternity. Kaylie’s newest endeavor is her imprint, Kaylie Jones Books, under the aegis of Akashic Books. The most recent novels published by Kaylie Jones Books are Laurie Loewenstein’s Death of a Rainmaker, which was chosen as a 2018 Book of the Year by NPR and Library Journal; Laurel Brett’s The Schrodinger Girl (January 2020), reviewed in the New York Sunday Times Book Review; and Lauren Sharkey’s Inconvenient Daughter, The Rumpus’ June 2020 Book Club selection. Her latest short fiction will appear in The Night Bazaar: Venice, edited by Lenore Hart, to be published in October 2020. Her CNF essay, “Fork in the Road,” appears in the anthology One Last Lunch (May 2020), edited by Erica Heller. Kaylie holds an MFA in creative writing from Columbia University and is a founding faculty member of the Maslow Family Graduate Creative Writing Program.

Ross Klavan’s work spans film, television, radio, print, live performance and visual art. His novella Cut Loose All Those Who Drag You Down is due out in 2020 from Down and Out Books which published his novella, I Take Care Of Myself In Dreamland in 2018. Thump Gun Hitched, was published by Down and Out in 2016. His darkly comic novel Schmuck was published by Greenpoint Press in 2014. His original screenplay film Tigerland was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and the film was released by New Regency starring Colin Farrell. He recently finished an adaption of John Bowers's The Colony and has written scripts for Miramax, Intermedia, Walden Media, Paramount and TNT TV among others. The "conversation about writing" he moderated with Kurt Vonnegut and Lee Stringer was televised and published as Like Shaking Hands with God and his short stories have appeared in magazines and been produced by the BBC. An earlier novel, Trax, was published under a pseudonym. His play How I Met My (Black) Wife (Again), co-written with Ray Iannicelli, has been produced in New York City, and he has performed his work in numerous theaters and clubs. He has acted and done voice work in TV and radio commercials and has lent his voice to feature films including: Casino, You Can Count on Me, Revolutionary Road, Awake and the new Amazon web series Alpha House, written by Gary Trudeau. He has worked as a newspaper and radio journalist in New York City and London. He lives in New York City with his wife, the painter, Mary Jones.

J. Michael Lennon is a writer, editor, archivist, and teacher. In 2004, he co-founded (with Bonnie Culver) the Maslow Family Graduate Creative Writing Program at Wilkes University, where he teaches a course in creative nonfiction. He has written or edited more than 15 books, including, most recently a memoir, Mailer’s Last Days: New and Selected Remembrances of a Life in Literature (Etruscan, 2021); an edition of Norman Mailer’s writings about America’s democracy (with John Buffalo Mailer), A Mysterious Country: The Grace and Fragility of Democracy (Skyhorse, 2023); and also in 2023, the Library of America edition, The Naked and the Dead and Selected Letters, 1945-46. In 2007, he co-authored with Mailer, On God: An Uncommon Conversation (Random House). Mailer selected him to write the authorized biography, Norman Mailer: A Double Life (Simon and Schuster, 2013), which was a New York Times “Editor’s Choice” selection, followed the next year by his edition, Selected Letters of Norman Mailer (Random House). Forthcoming from Skyhorse Publishing in spring 2024 is Lipton’s: A Marijuana Journal, 1954-55, an edition of Mailer’s unpublished journal, co-edited with G. R Lucas and Susan Mailer. He is the co-editor, with his wife Donna Pedro and G.R. Lucas, of the revised and expanded edition of Norman Mailer: Works and Days (Mailer Society, 2018). The first edition of this compilation was published in 2000 and was the recipient of a Choice Magazine award for “outstanding scholarly title”. Other edited books include Critical Essays on Norman Mailer (1986), Conversations with Norman Mailer (1988), The James Jones Reader (1991), The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing (2003) and Norman Mailer’s Letters on An American Dream, 1963-69 (2004). He is the past president of both The Norman Mailer Society external website and The James Jones Literary Society external website and serves on the boards of both organizations. He is also the Chair of the Editorial Board of The Mailer Review external website. His work has appeared in the Mailer Review, New York, New Yorker, New York Review of Books, Paris Review, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Creative Nonfiction,Ocean State Review, Hippocampus, New York, Modern Fiction Studies, Modern Language Studies, and Journal of Modern Literature. He has also edited three of Mailer’s works for Taschen Books: The Fight (2022), Mailer/Bert Stern: Marilyn Monroe (2011); and Moonfire: The Epic Journey of Apollo 11 (2009). Lennon’s documentary, James Jones: From Reveille to Taps, premiered on PBS in 1984; The Lincolns of Springfield, Illinois was shown in 1990. He was a faculty member and founding Executive Director of the Institute of Public Affairs at the University of Illinois-Springfield from 1972-1992, where he also co-founded (with Sen. Paul Simon), the graduate program in Public Affairs Reporting. He is Emeritus Vice President for Academic Affairs and Emeritus Professor of English at Wilkes University. He served from 2005-2007 as a literary consultant at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas-Austin, where he assisted in the cataloging of Mailer’s papers, and was a Fellow there in 2009. Lennon received the A.B. from Stonehill College and the M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Rhode Island. He is married to the former Donna Pedro; they are the parents of three sons and four grandchildren and live in Bryn Mawr, PA.

Ken Liu is an American author of speculative fiction. He has won the Nebula, Hugo and World Fantasy awards, as well as top genre honors in Japan, Spain and France, among other countries.

Liu’s debut novel, The Grace of Kings, is the first volume in a silk punk epic fantasy series, The Dandelion Dynasty, in which engineers play the role of wizards. His debut collection, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, has been published in more than a dozen languages. A second collection, The Hidden Girl and Other Stories, followed. He also wrote the Star Wars novel, The Legends of Luke Skywalker.

He has been involved in multiple media adaptations of his work. The most recent projects include “The Message,” under development by 21 Laps and FilmNation Entertainment; “Good Hunting,” adapted as an episode in season one of Netflix’s breakout adult animated series Love, Death + Robots; and AMC’s Pantheon, with Craig Silverstein as executive producer, adapted from an interconnected series of short stories by Liu.

Prior to becoming a full-time writer, Liu worked as a software engineer, corporate lawyer, and litigation consultant. He frequently speaks at conferences and universities on a variety of topics, including futurism, crypto currency, history of technology, bookmaking, narrative futures and the mathematics of origami.

Liu lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.

Ken Liu's Website external website

Jennifer Mayer is a screenwriter, a playwright and a native New Yorker. She has written several screenplays, including features for Summit Entertainment (Step Up: Revolution) and Arnold Kopelson’s Equus Media, the latter for which she adapted Eric Garcia’s novel, The Girls’ Guide to Revenge. Her latest screenplay,The Long View, was recently selected for the Writers Guild of America East Summer Reading Series. Jennifer has worked with director Moisés Kaufman and the Tectonic Theater Project; Kaufman directed readings of her play, The Wedding Guest. Jennifer is Black and Jewish, and her writing often explores race, gender, and social justice. In 2016, she cofounded Creatives In Action, a collective of artists, creative professionals, and activists who work to promote activism in the creative community. (Partner organizations include the National Writers Union, the Center for Popular Democracy and PEN America.) Jennifer has partnered with local and national nonprofits to write and produce educational web videos which explore topics including the United States Constitution, corporate monopolies and political corruption. Jennifer has served on the screenplay jury for Urbanworld Film Festival and as a member of the selection team for New York Women in Film & Television’s The Writers Lab. She is a member of the Dramatist Guild of America and of the Writers Guild of America East, where she serves on the Committee for Inclusion and Equity. Jennifer graduated from Yale. She lives and works in New York City.

Robin McCrary is author (as Micah McCrary) of Teaching Cultural Dexterity in Creative Writing (Bloomsbury) and Island in the City (University of Nebraska). His work also appears in the Journal of Creative Writing Studies, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, and Essay Daily, among other publications. A contributing editor at Assay, Dr. McCrary lives on Haudenosaunee homelands, where he teaches in the writing studies and health humanities programs at Syracuse University and researches public health humanities.

Robin's Website external website

Nancy McKinley is a fiction and creative nonfiction writer, founding faculty member, and recipient of the 2024 Faculty Adjunct Award. St. Christopher on Pluto, a novel-in-stories (West Virginia University Press 2020) was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award 2021 and featured on NPR Fresh Air with Maureen Corrigan. Fiction appears in The Timberline Review, To Unsnare Time's Warp Anthology, Porches Anthology, Tattoos Anthology, Commutability Anthology (Pushcart Prize nomination), Coming Home Anthology, Big Water Anthology, Winter Anthology, Blue Penny Quarterly, Blue Lake Review, The Cortland Review and others. Creative nonfiction, “Title IX & Me” appears in On Becoming Anthology. Eco pieces, published widely, include The Physician and Sportsmedicine. As Scholar-in-Residence for the Pennsylvania Mechanicsburg Museum Association, Nancy developed the interactive online narrative If You Lived at the Stationmaster's House. Her narrative for the Cumberland County Historical Society Virtual Tour won the Pennsylvania Museum Director's Award. Nancy has served as a finalist judge for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship. Presentations include numerous Associated Writing Conferences, “Orchestration for Writers 101,” “International Women's Day Reading,” “Online Mentoring for Writers and Interns,” “Unsung Litany of Late Blooming Writers,” and for The Puerto Vallarta Mexico Writer's Conference, “Unforgettable Characters,” and The Gathering, PA, “Time, Place & Story”. Nancy received the John Gardner Newhouse Award, and her novel, Travels with a Nuclear Whore, won the creative writing component of the Thayer Fellowship in the Arts. Nancy earned her Ph.D. from Binghamton University, M.A. from Colorado State University, and as one of the first women students, B.A. from College of the Holy Cross. For more information, visit her website external website.

Christine Renee Miller is an actor, writer, director and teacher. Her first acting role was as a guest star playing a mean girl on Sister, Sister - one of America's most popular TV shows in the late '90s. She was soon starring on other hit shows including Party of Five, Moesha and Hangin' with Mr. Cooper, and even experienced the fast-paced world of soap operas on General Hospital. During the early 2000s, she began directing and dove headfirst into a production of Fiddler on the Roof in the small college town of Hamilton, New York. (Her time there deserves its own bio).

After her first experience directing, she caught that bug and moved to New York City. NYC is where she wrote and performed her first solo show, Baby Cow, at FringeNYC. This led her to carve out a niche in the solo world, not only as a performer, but as the go-to director for solo shows. She has personally fostered over 60 shows as a teacher of the craft. Her second solo show, NYIT nominated Such Nice Shoes, has had several runs at the beautiful and prestigious white box space of TheaterLab, Off Off Broadway. She has also written two full-length plays Foursome and Post Master.

In addition to the stage, she can be seen on the small and large screen - Power Book II: Ghost (Starz), BULL (CBS), recurring as the snarky M.E. on Blue Bloods (CBS), recurring on For Life (ABC) and Spoiler Alert directed by Michael Showalter (Focus Features release, 2022).

Christine Miller's Website external website

Watch Such Nice Shoes external website

Robert Mooney is a novelist, editor and professor. Mooney's most recent publication is a short story that appeared in an anthology titled How To Be a Man collected by Esquire Magazine and published by Picador in 2013. His novel, Father of the Man, was published by Pantheon Books of Random House. He has published numerous short stories in magazines, including the Paterson Literary Review, Artful Dodge, MSS, Timbuktu, Esquire, and others. Mooney earned a BA from Boston College and an M.A. and PhD from Binghamton University. He later went on to serve as Director of the Creative Writing Program at Binghamton University from 1987 to 1997, where he also served as senior editor of MSS, the literary magazine founded by the American novelist John Gardner, and later founded and served as Executive Editor of New Myths Press, publishing the work of some of the finest poets and writers in the country. He is co-founder and Executive Editor at Etruscan Press, recently named "one of the five best small presses in the country" by Associated Writing Programs (AWP), and holds the position of Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Washington College, where he directed the O'Neill Literary House and creative writing program from 1997 to 2005. In 2013, Mooney joined the Honorary Board of Writers at Narrative 4, a global writing initiative begun by National Book Award winning novelist Colum McCann, the mission of which involves the incitement of "radical empathy" among people of all cultures.

Alexis Paige (she/ her) is the author of two award-winning memoirs: Work Hard, Not Smart: How to Make a Messy Literary Life and Not a Place on Any Map. Both are published by Vine Leaves, where Paige is the Nonfiction Acquisitions Editor. Her work appears in many journals, including Longform, Hippocampus, Fourth Genre, The Rumpus, and Brevity, where she was an Assistant Editor. Winner of the New Millennium Nonfiction Prize, Paige has also received two “Notable” mentions in Best American Essays and four Pushcart Prize nominations. Assistant Professor of Writing at Vermont State University, she holds an MA in poetry and an MFA in nonfiction. Paige lives in Vermont with her husband and a rotating cast of rescue animals.

Angelique Palmer is a performance poet, a finalist in the 2015 Women of the World Poetry Slam and a member of the 2017 Busboys and Poets/Beltway Poetry Slam Team.

She has penned 10 self-published chapbooks. Her first full-length book, The Chambermaid's Style Guide, debuted in 2016 on Sargent Press. Her second book is the 2021 follow-up, Also Dark, on Etruscan Press.

Her publications include Drunk in A Midnight Choir, Wus Good?: A POC Magazine, Borderline and The Mud Review. A New Orleans native, she’s a Florida State University Creative Writing graduate who now calls Northern Virginia home. She makes her own ice cream and yogurt.

Nicole has published opinion pieces in the Philadelphia Inquirer and American Theater Magazine. She received a 2023 Finalist award from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and was recently selected for a commission with the Writers Theatre of NJ as part of their New Jersey Women Playwrights Program. She received a commission as part of the NJPAC Stage Exchange with Premiere Stages at Kean University. She is a member of the Dramatist Guild Fellows and her work has been developed as a Jerome Foundation Fellow at Tofte Lake Center, at The Actors Studio, the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, the Lark Play Development Center, and NJ REP, among others. She was a finalist for the Stanley Drama Award, the Edward F. Albee Foundation Fellowship, the Leah Ryan Fund for Emerging Women Writers, and SPACE on Ryder Farm. Her plays appear in numerous publications and have been produced on four continents. She completed her M.F.A. at Hunter College and is a member of The Actors Studio in the Playwright/Director Unit and is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild.

Nicole's Website external website

Taylor M. Polites is a Rhode Island-based writer, educator, and researcher. His first novel, The Rebel Wife, was published by Simon & Schuster in February 2012. His work has appeared in the anthologies Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting (W.W. Norton, November 2013) and Providence Noir (Akashic Books) as well as in arts and news publications. In Providence, he has formed Goat Hill with Ann Hood and Hester Kaplan to offer workshops and talks with writers, editors, and agents. He also works with local organizations including the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities to build historical narratives that enlighten and offer ideas from the past to shape the present. He was a 2018 Community Practitioner in Residence at the Swearer Center at Brown University and is the recipient of the 2018 award for Public Humanities Scholarship from the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities. He is a graduate of the Maslow Family Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Wilkes University where he was awarded the Norris Church Mailer Fellowship. He teaches in the Maslow Family Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Wilkes University and at the Rhode Island School of Design. For more information, visit his website at his website external website.

Dania Ramos is the creator and head writer of the audio drama series Timestorm (Cocotazo Media/TRAX), named one of the “Top Trendsetting Podcasts from 2020” by School Library Journal and selected as a 2020 Webby Awards Family and Kids Podcast honoree. Her stage plays have been produced or developed by Luna Stage, Writers Theatre of New Jersey, Speranza Theatre Company, Dreamcatcher Rep, Repertorio Español/Nuestras Voces National Playwriting Competition, and Teatro Vivo/Austin Latino New Play Festival. She’s the author of the middle-grade novels Who’s Ju? (Overdue Books, 2015; International Latino Book Award - 2015 Best YA eBook) and Ignacio in the Dark (Overdue Books, 2019). She’s a former New Jersey State Council on the Arts playwriting fellowship recipient. She’s a graduate of the Maslow Family Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Wilkes University. She’s a member and New Jersey regional ambassador of the Dramatists Guild of America.

Dania's Website external website

Juanita Rockwell is a playwright, librettist, lyricist, songwriter and director with over one hundred works of theatre, opera, radio, multimedia, puppetry, music theater, dance theater and site-specific projects presented on five continents. During the pandemic, she has co-created 3 socially-distanced multimedia performance events, each of which took into account different mandated restrictions. In the before-times, her produced writing includes: Backwards from Winter (opera libretto, Blue Moon Plays; CD/libretto, Ablaze Records - composer Douglas Knehans); Between Trains (play with songs, Blue Moon Plays; Mobtown Studios CD - composer Chas Marsh); The World is Round (opera libretto, Company One Publications; CD/sheet music, Hog River Music - composer James Sellars); Playing Dead (trans. from Bros. Presnyakov, digital publication, Center for International Theatre Development); and The Circle (audio play) external website. For six years she was artistic director of Hartford’s Company One Theater, directing professional premieres of work by America’s leading experimental playwrights; and was founding director of Towson University’s MFA in Theatre, a rigorous laboratory environment training the total theater maker. Awards and grants include: Marion Fellowship in the Visual and Performing Arts, Rubys Artist Project Grant, Fulbright Fellow, and funding from the National Endowment for the Arts and National Public Radio. Writing residencies include: Ucross (WY), The Studios at Key West (FL), VCCA (VA), Playa (OR), Wildacres (NC) and a Djerassi Scientific Delirium Madness residency (CA).

Nisha Sharma is the author of the critically acclaimed YA novel My So-Called Bollywood Life. She also writes adult contemporary romances including The Singh Family Trilogy and the If Shakespeare was an Aunty trilogy (launching November 2021). Her writing has been praised by NPR, Cosmopolitan Magazine, Teen Vogue, Buzzfeed, Hypable and more.

Nisha credits her father for her multiple graduate degrees, and her mother for her love of Shah Rukh Khan and Jane Austen. She lives in New Jersey with her Alaskan husband, her cat Lizzie Bennett and her dog Nancey Drew. You can find her online at Nisha-sharma.com external website or on Twitter and Instagram @nishawrites external website.

Donna Talarico is an independent writer and content strategist and founder of Hippocampus Magazine & Books and its annual conference HippoCamp. She previously served as a communications director at Elizabethtown College, and a marketing manager for a leading e commerce firm. Donna also had careers in radio promotions, print journalism, and higher ed admissions. She speaks regularly on marketing related topics at higher ed and publishing conferences. Donna has bylines in The LA Review, The Superstition Review, Wanderlust Journal, mental_floss, The Writer, the Brevity blog, Games Magazine, The Content Strategist, The Guardian Higher Education and more. She has an MFA in creative writing from Wilkes and an MBA from Elizabethtown College. She also teaches business and marketing courses in the MA in publishing program at Rosemont College. Donna lives in Lancaster, PA, and you can follow her on Twitter at @donnatalarico external website.

Jeff Talarigo, a novelist, is the author of two novels: The Pearl Diver and The Ginseng Hunter. Talarigo was born in Pennsylvania in 1961 and graduated from Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania in 1983. Over the next seven years, Talarigo worked as a racquetball pro, magazine publisher, in a wood shop, and as a journalist. In 1990, Talarigo embarked on a three-month journey by land from the Gaza Strip to Khartoum, Sudan and back. This was Talarigo's first stay in Jabaliya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, a place where he would return to live in 1993. From 1991 to 2006 Talarigo lived in Kyushu, Japan where he taught English and began writing fiction. The Pearl Diver was published in 2004 (Nan Talese/Doubleday) and was awarded the American Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Award and was a Kiriyama Prize notable book. Talarigo, along with his wife and son, moved back to the United States in 2006. He was awarded a fellowship at the New York Public Library's Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. The Ginseng Hunter (published April, 2008, Nan Talese/Doubleday) is his second novel and was placed on the American Library Association's Notable Book List of 2009. His short fiction has been published in many journals, including AGNI and Puerto del Sol, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2013. Talarigo's work has been translated into German, Spanish, Hebrew, Thai, and Korean. Currently living in Oakland, CA, his third novel, In the Cemetery of the Orange Trees, was published by Etruscan Press external website in February, 2018.

Richard Uhlig is a screenwriter, producer, and young adult novelist. He co-wrote and co-produced the feature comedy Dead Simple, starring James Caan, Daniel Stern, and Patricia Richardson. He also wrote the feature thriller Kept, starring Ice T. In addition to feature films, Richard has written and directed documentaries for PBS. Richard is also the author of two Knopf-publish young adult novels, Last Dance at the Frosty Queen and Boy Minus Girl. Richard holds a BA from NYU and an MFA in Screenwriting from the American Film Institute. In the spring of 2011, Richard received a grant to produce and direct his original short screenplay, Can't Dance. It stars Saturday Night Fever's Karen Lynn Gorney and Law and Order's Catherine Wolf. Can't Dance won Founder's Choice Award at the Queens World Film Festival, Best Fiction at the Short Sweet FilmFest, and was a Selected Finalist at the Feel Good Film Festival. It aired on PBS. Richard wrote and co-directed My Kansas, a memoir/documentary for PBS which won Best Documentary, Best Director, and New York Filmmaker Award at the 2013 NYC Chain Film Festival. Richard's latest novel, Mystery at Snake River Bridge, was e-published by Wild Child Publishing and earned a four-star review in the Portland Book Review. In October of 2019, UpStage Theater, in Napa Valley, California, performed a staged reading of Richard's first play, Doctor’s Residence.