Coaching, Editing, and Independent Study

Andrea Jurjević is an award-winning Croatian poet and literary translator, as well as an experienced and versatile teacher. In addition to private consultation, she is a Senior Lecturer in the English Department at Georgia State University and has mentored and taught creative writing at Agnes Scott College and MTSU Write. Her ear for language, tuned from working across languages and genres, and her bold imagination make her a sensitive teacher committed to nurturing creativity in student writers.

She is the author of poetry collections: In Another Country (2022 Saturnalia Books Prize), Small Crimes (2015 Philip Levine Prize) and Nightcall (2021 ACME Poem Company Surrealist Series selection). Her book-length translations from Croatian include Olja Savičević’s Mamasafari (Diálogos Press, 2018) and Marko Pogačar’s Dead Letter Office (The Word Works, 2020), which was shortlisted for the 2021 National Translation Award in Poetry.

Her poems, short stories, essays, and multigenre translations have appeared in publications such as The Believer, TriQuarterly, The Missouri Review, Crazyhorse, Joyland, The New Republic, Four Way Review, and many others. A co-editor of Josephine Quarterly, Andrea also serves as an advisory board member of International Library of Poetry, a literary exchange project on the Croatian island of Mljet. She is the recipient of a Georgia Author of the Year Award, a Robinson Jeffers Tor Prize, and fellowships from the Hambidge Center and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.

To learn more, visit: https://andreajurjevic.com/

Andrea provides considered feedback on manuscripts in the form of a letter that describes the strengths of the work as well as offers recommendation on the organization of the manuscript and suggestions for revisions. In addition to the letter, Andrea provides detailed line edits and commentary on individual poems. At no additional charge, you may schedule a preliminary Zoom meeting with Andrea prior to sending the manuscript, and after receiving her feedback.

Blaise Allysen Kearsley is a New York-based Black-biracial writer and teacher and the creator/producer/host of How I Learned, a long-running storytelling, comedy, and reading series.

Her writing has appeared in Catapult, Longreads, VICE, The Boston Globe, Midnight Breakfast, Electric Literature's The Nervous Breakdown, Oldster, Elle.com, three creative nonfiction anthologies—Nonwhite and Woman, PEREGRINE (forthcoming, Yellow Arrowing Publishing, November 22, 2022), Cringe (Crown Publishing, 2008), and Mortified: Real Words. Real People. Real Pathetic. (Gallery Books, 2006). She has written for several magazines and online outlets dating back to 2001 that are perhaps not worth mentioning by name and probably don't even exist anymore.

She teaches mostly memoir and personal essay writing at Gotham Writers Workshop, 7 Daughters of Eve Theatre & Performance Co., Writing Workshops, and Blaise Writers Workshop, which she founded in 2017.

She is a contributing editor at Vestal Review, the oldest flash fiction journal on the planet. As a storyteller she has performed at The Moth, Risk, Literary Death Match, Mortified, The Gotham Storytelling Festival, and at various venues that serve booze and sometimes snacks. In another life she took a lot of pictures with actual cameras, and some of those pictures were published in places like New York Magazine, Gawker, Playbill, The Morning News, JPG Magazine, and Nerve.

She lives in Brooklyn but if you need her for something somewhere else, maybe she'll go there.

Brad Wetzler is the author of the new memoir Into the Soul of the World: My Journey to Healing, published by Hachette Go in 2023. A longtime magazine journalist, he has written for The New York Times, Newsweek, Wired, GQ, National Geographic, Outside, and Travel + Leisure, among others. He is a book editor, memoir and nonfiction writing coach, and yoga teacher.

Brad began his writing and publishing career serving as an editor at Outside magazine, where he worked with some of America’s finest nonfiction writers. He later turned in his editor’s pen for a writer’s and traveled the world writing about adventure and exploration, business, politics, the environment, sports, and wellness. In midlife, after recovering from a long, debilitating depression, he became a certified yoga teacher and began exploring and writing about our inner landscape: psychology, spirituality, meditation, and yoga.

Brad holds a masters’ degree in journalism from Northwestern University. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Learn more about Brad here.

Briana Una McGuckin writes Gothic Romance/Romantic Suspense. Her debut novel, On Good Authority, is a Victorian Gothic/Romantic Suspense. Among other places, her short fiction appears in the Stoker-nominated Not All Monsters anthology (Rooster Republic Press), as well as IN SOMNIO (Tenebrous Press) and A Quaint and Curious Volume of Gothic Tales (Brigids Gate Press). Briana has spastic diplegic cerebral palsy, a perhaps concerningly large collection of perfume oils, and a fascination with all things Victorian.

Cara J. Stevens is an author, editor, podcaster and book coach. She has written more than 80 books for young readers based on video games, pop-culture trends, and beloved characters including Pokémon Go, Terraria, and Minecraft and the K-pop groups BTS and BlackPink. Through her weekly column and companion podcast, The Picture Perfect Podcast, she guides aspiring writers on their journey to authorship, helping them develop their craft, find their voice, and share their stories with the world. A native New Yorker, Cara lives in Los Angeles with her husband, two grown-ish children and a loud, fluffy dog named Oliver.

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Ph.D., the 2009-13 Kansas Poet Laureate is the author of 24 books, including How Time Moves: New & Selected Poems; Miriam’s Well, a novel; and The Sky Begins At Your Feet: A Memoir on Cancer, Community, and Coming Home to the Body. Founder of Transformative Language Arts, she offers writing workshops, coaching, and collaborative projects. Her poetry has been widely published in over 100 journals.

She has taught and coached extensively, including shepherding people through creating collections of poetry, memoirs, novels, and mixed-genre works during our 24 years teaching at Goddard College’s Graduate Institute and through individualized coaching for many years.

Her coaching specialties include working with people on poetry, memoir, mixed-genre, and fiction, particularly when it comes to starting, developing, or finishing books. She is passionate about the power of revision and has developed many tools and approaches to help people fall in love with what their book wants to be and say. Her super power is divining the structure as well as the focus of manuscripts-in-progress, including helping people find their best ways to organize and develop their books, whether a collection of poetry or a memoir.

Caryn also offers coaching on how to facilitate and design in-person and online writing workshops and retreats and ways to develop your best livelihood (both your write and right livelihood) in concert with your life. Her website is CarynMirriamGoldberg.com.

Dana De Greff holds a Masters in Fine Arts in fiction from the University of Miami. She has taught Creative Writing classes at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Miami, Miami Arts Charter, Books & Books, The Loft Literary Center, The Writing Barn, and Austin Bat Cave.

She is the author of Alterations (winner of the 2018 Rane Arroyo Chapbook Series published by Seven Kitchens Press), recipient of the 2018 Lillian E. Smith Writer-in-Service Award, and the 2017-2018 Literary Artist-in-Residence at the Deering Estate. She has been accepted or awarded scholarships from Tent: Creative Writing, the Tin House Summer Writers’ Workshop, The Key West Literary Seminar, the Lemon Tree House Residency in Tuscany, and Hedgebrook.

Her work appears in Cosmonauts Avenue, Jabberwock Review, PANK, Origins Journal, Philadelphia Stories, and Gulf Stream Magazine, among others. Most recently, she’s the recipient of a 2021 Pushcart Prize Nomination for her story “Storms,” published in the Winter 2020 Issue of Jabberwock Review and was selected as a finalist for the 2021 Key West Literary Seminar's Marianne Russo Award for her novel-in-progress, EVERYDAY MYSTICISM. She is represented by Writers House.

Denise Santomauro is a writer, editor, author coach, and teaching artist. She has worked with writers across genres and styles of writing, everything from secret society mysteries and sweeping fantasies to thoughtful contemporary stories and heart-wrenching memoirs. As an educator, she has taught fiction, personal essay, poetry, and playwriting, and explored the performing arts with young people as a way to help them tell their stories. In her own writing, she has developed plays and scenes for young people, written middle grade and young adult novels, contributed content to many blogs, been published in the Dear Sister anthology, and performed her own personal essays at live lit events around Chicago. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Donna Levin is the author of Extraordinary Means, California Street, There’s More Than One Way Home, and He Could Be Another Bill Gates. 

In April 2024, Skyhorse published her latest novel, The Talking Stick. 

In addition to novels, Donna has published two books about writing, Get that Novel Started and Get that Novel Written.

Donna has taught fiction writing for three decades, most notably at the University of California Extension at Berkeley, where she led the Novel-Writing Workshop. She has also been a frequent guest at writers’ conferences, including the San Francisco Writers’ Conference and the Squaw Valley Community of Writers.

Donna’s work is included in Boston University’s 20th Century Archives and in the California State Library’s collection of California novels. She lives in San Francisco. More at donnalevin.com.

Elisa A. Bonnin was born and raised in the Philippines, after which she moved to the United States to study chemistry and later oceanography. After completing her doctorate, she moved to Germany to work as a postdoctoral scientist. A lifelong learner, Elisa is always convinced that she should “maybe take a class in something” and as a result, has amassed an eclectic collection of hobbies. But writing will always be her true love. Publishing a book has been her dream since she was eight years old, and she is thrilled to finally be able to share her stories. She is the author of Dauntless and Stolen City.

Elizabeth Winder is the author of three non fiction books, Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York (Haper Collins 2013),  Marilyn in Manhattan (Flatiron 2017), and recently released Parachute Women: Marianne Faithfull, Marsha Hunt, Bianca Jagger, Anita Pallenberg and the Women Behind the Rolling  Stones (Hachette 2023).
She has a BA in English from the College of William and Mary and an MFA in Creative Writing from George Mason University. Prior to turning to nonfiction, she wrote and was published in the genre of Poetry.  Her work has appeared in the Chicago Review, Antioch Review, Lana Turner, American Letters and Commentary among others. She has been the recipient of The Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center fellowship and a Pushcart  nomination. She has also appeared as a guest author in the CNN original series, Reframed, Marilyn Monroe.

Freesia McKee (she/her) writes and teaches about place, gender, and genre through poetry, creative prose, book reviews, and literary criticism. Recent work appears in Fugue, About Place Journal, and Porter House Review. She has an MFA from Florida International University and is the author of How Distant the City.

Philosophy and approach:

My approach to coaching and teaching is collaborative, dynamic, and supportive. I seek to foster a nourishing space into which your project can expand. I want to help you tell your story in a way that affirms your life, experiences, identities, goals, and vision.

Giulietta “Julie” Nardone has been writing witty essays, speeches and plays since she was a teen. In college, she gained a reputation for writing “the funniest speeches on campus” and was called “Nutty Nardone” in high school. Giulietta’s stories have appeared in magazines such as Psychology Today and Spirituality & Health as well as anthologies like Chicken Soup for the Soul and Let Go, Let Miracles Happen: The Art of Spiritual Surrender. Her insightful essays and stories have appeared in The Boston Globe Magazine, Psychology Today, Spirituality & Health, The Christian Science Monitor, The Sun Magazine, Purple Clover, Skirt! Magazine, Underwired Magazine, The Art of Spiritual Surrender, Flashquake, Rollins Magazine, Friday Flash Fiction, 101 Words, 50-Word Stories, Nail Polish Stories, The MetroWest Daily News, The Delta Optimist, Common Ties, Little Old Lady Comedy, and on NPR. Her award-winning part memoir, part art gallery and part feel better guide, Feel More Alive! 30 Brilliant Ways To Reignite Your Inner Spark, was released by Citrine Publishing in October 2020.

When she isn’t writing, Giulietta’s painting with acrylics, designing cool logos, hiking in state parks, acting in local theater productions, and singing at karaoke nights. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband, Alfred Hitchcock movie collection, and two comedic cats.

Gretchen Clark has been a freelancer for an online naming company and a creative arts mentor for at-risk teens. Her essay Pink Chrysanthemum was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.  Her work has been published in The Boston Globe, Fairfield Scribes, Hamilton Stone Review, 94 Creations, Writer Advice, Literary Mama, Hip Mama, Flashquake, Blood Lotus, Foliate Oak, Skirt!, Word Riot, Quiet Mountain Essays, 34th Parallel, New York Family Magazine, Pithead Chapel, Switchback, Underwired, Toasted Cheese, Celia’s Roundtrip, Brevity, River Teeth, Flashquake, Tiny Lights, Ray's Road Review, Cleaver Magazine, Hippocampus, The MacGuffin, Awakenings Review, Nailpolish Stories, Groundwork, and Five Minute Lit, among others.

Jack Smith’s MA is in creative writing, his PhD in English. He has published six novels and four nonfiction books. His novels include: If Winter Comes (2020), RUN (2020), Miss Manners for War Criminals (2017), Being (2016), Icon (2014), and Hog to Hog, which won the 2007 George Garrett Fiction Prize and was published by Texas Review Press in 2008. His seventh novel, Madness, the first in his series FATE, is scheduled to be published soon by Pierian Springs Press. Amor Fati is to be published on Valentine’s Day, and Mayhem, the second in the series FATE, is to be published later in 2025. He is currently at work on the third in the series, entitled Chaos.  He has published stories in a number of literary magazines, including Southern Review, North American Review, Texas Review, Xconnect, In Posse Review, and Night Train. His reviews have appeared widely in such publications as California Review of Books, Ploughshares, Georgia Review, American Book Review, Prairie Schooner, Mid-American Review, Pleiades, the Missouri Review, Xconnect, and Environment magazine. He has published several dozen articles in both Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market and The Writer magazine.  His creative writing book, Write and Revise for Publication: A 6-Month Plan for Crafting an Exceptional Novel and Other Works of Fiction, was published in 2013 by Writer’s Digest Books. A collection of his articles—Inventing the World: The Fiction Writer’s Guidebook to Craft and Process—was published by Serving House Books in 2018. His latest nonfiction book is Contributions to Literature: A Tribute to Small Press Books. His coauthored nonfiction environmental book entitled Killing Me Softly was published by Monthly Review Press in 2002. Besides his writing, Smith was fiction editor of The Green Hills Literary Lantern, an online literary magazine published by Truman State University, for 25 years.

Jeanne De Vita, creator and founder of Romance Writing Academy, is a professional developmental editor, writing instructor, and widely-published romance author.

Drawing from her experience editing tens of millions of words written by NYT, USA Today, and bestselling indie authors, Jeanne teaches everything from the technical aspects of writing—such as the structure of the romance novel, where/when the first kiss should happen, and how to pace subplot and balance internal and external conflict—to the really fun stuff, like how to write intimacy and chemistry that keeps readers engaged and characters satisfied. Jeanne teaches all aspects of romance writing at her fully online Romance Writing Academy and editing, story structure, and other craft intensives at UCLA Extension.

Jeanne lives in Los Angeles and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Notre Dame and a BA from Iowa State University.

Jennifer Billock is the author of two cookbooks and five history books. She is an award-winning writer, bestselling author, and editor. Her work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, Playboy, mental_floss, Lucky Peach, National Geographic Traveler, and Conde Nast Traveler. She has taught writing courses for local colleges and mentors young writers on a regular basis. Jennifer also co-hosts the podcast Macabre Traveler and edits the Kitchen Witch Newsletter.

Jessie Roy is a fiction writer, teacher, and editor whose work has appeared in American Literary Review, The Journal, and Cream City Review. She holds two advanced degrees in creative writing: an MFA from Syracuse University and a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Among many other awards and honors, Jessie has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and her novel Brides took second place in the 2020 James Jones First Novel Fellowship. In between teaching and studying creative writing, she has also worked in libraries, archaeological museums, fashion retail, and various parts of the bridal industry. Jessie grew up in Kentucky and now lives in New York City with her spouse. You can find her online at https://jessie-roy.com/.

Jonathan “J.G.” McClure holds an MFA from the University of California – Irvine. His poetry and prose appear widely, including in Best New Poets, Gettysburg Review, Green Mountains Review, and The Pinch, among others. He is the author of the poetry collection The Fire Lit & Nearing (Indolent Books 2018) and the translator of Swimming (Valparaíso Edicciones 2019). His work has been nominated for awards and honors including the Pushcart Prize, Best American Essays, and Best of the Net. He is a book reviewer for several journals including Colorado Review and Rain Taxi, and the former Craft Essay Editor and Assistant Poetry Editor of Cleaver Magazine.

A former instructor at UC-Irvine, Jonathan has taught a variety of courses in poetry and prose and edited literary magazines for four years. Today, he works as a writing consultant in Washington, D.C., where he is an active member of the city’s literary community.

Joy Roulier Sawyer is the author of two poetry collections, Lifeguards (Conundrum Press) and Tongues of Men and Angels (White Violet Press), as well as several nonfiction books. Her poetry, essays, fiction, and articles appear in 50+ publications, among them Books & Culture, LIGHT Quarterly, Lilliput Review, Mars Hill Review, New York Quarterly, Ruminate, St. Petersburg Review, and Theology Today. She holds an MA from New York University, where she was the recipient of the Herbert Rubin Award for Outstanding Creative Writing.

A trained clinical writing therapist, Joy taught both transformative writing and poetry for more than a decade at the University of Denver, as well as taught in the Transformative Language Arts MA program at Goddard College. While in private practice, she revised and updated the third edition of Biblio/Poetry Therapy: The Interactive Process, one of the seminal textbooks in the writing and healing field. For her longtime writing therapy work, she was honored with the   Distinguished Service Award from the National Association for Poetry Therapy.

Since 2009, Joy’s been an instructor at Denver’s Lighthouse Writers Workshop, where she’s taught dozens of different workshops on writing, poetry, and transformative writing. In 2019, she was the recipient of Lighthouse’s Beacon Award for Teaching Excellence. Visit her website at: www.joyrouliersawyer.com   

Kelly Bingham is the author of two award-winning poetry novels: Shark Girl and Formerly Shark Girl, both published by Candlewick Press. Kelly is also the author of two award-winning picture books: Z Is For Moose and the sequel, Circle, Square, Moose, published by HarperCollins/Greenwillow. Both are illustrated by Caldecott Award-winning artist Paul O. Zelinsky.

Kelly’s YA poetry novel, Shark Girl, was chosen for Oprah’s Book Club for Kids, and was nominated by the American Library Association for Best Book for Young Adults. It won the Iowa Teen Choice Award, and was nominated for the Truman Award, The Schneider Family Book Award, and the Rebecca Caudill Award.

Shark Girl was also nominated for the Golden Sower Award, the Black-Eyed Susan Award, the South Dakota Teen Book Award, and the Florida Book Award. Shark Girl was chosen by School Library Journal as a “quick pick for reluctant readers.”

Formerly Shark Girl, the sequel to Shark Girl, was published in 2013, after years of requests by readers for more of Jane’s story. It earned a starred review in Kirkus and was chosen for Bank Street’s Best Book for Children.

Both of Kelly’s “Moose” picture books have been featured in the New York Times. Z Is For Moose received six starred reviews, was the winner of the Delaware Blue Hen Award, an ALA Notable Book, a Booklist Editor’s Choice for Best Books, winner of a special award from The Horn Book, a Best Book by Shelf Awareness, and winner of the Oppenheim Award. Circle, Square, Moose was named a Best Book by Kirkus, a Bank Street Best Book of the Year, and was nominated for the UKLA Award in Australia.

Kelly holds a master’s degree in writing for children from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Before becoming an author, she spent twelve years as a storyboard artist in the story department at Walt Disney Feature Animation, working on films that include Hercules, Atlantis, The Emperor’s New Groove, Gnomeo and Juliet, and Tarzan.  She lives in Georgia.

Marc Olmsted has five books of poetry and has appeared in New Directions in Prose & Poetry, City Lights Journal, New York Quarterly, Outlaw Bible of American Poetry and a large international variety of small presses. Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Olmsted received the San Francisco Acker Award for Poetry in 2014 along with David Meltzer and Ishmael Reed.

Marc began mindfulness meditation in 1974. Olmsted went on to become a student of Lama Tharchin Rinpoche in 1991 and completed a three-year retreat supervised by this great teacher. Afterwards, as a senior student, he was encouraged by Tharchin Rinpoche to teach at the San Francisco chapter of the Vajrayana Foundation, Last Chance Gompa. In time, Olmsted incorporated simple mindfulness meditation instructions into his poetry classes.

Allen Ginsberg said of Olmsted "...one of the few practitioners post-Kerouac that had picked up on the loose and lucid form that Kerouac had developed." Olmsted's 25 year relationship with Ginsberg is chronicled in his memoir Don't Hesitate: Knowing Allen Ginsberg 1972-1997 - Letters and Recollections. For more on Marc and his work, visit his website.

Margo Steines is a native New Yorker, a journeyman ironworker, and serves as mom to a wildly spirited small person.

Margo holds an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Arizona and lives and writes in Tucson. Her work was named Notable in Best American Essays and has appeared in The Sun, Brevity, Off Assignment, The New York Times (Modern Love), the anthology Letter to a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us, and elsewhere. She is the author of the memoir-in-essays Brutalities: A Love Story.

Margo is faculty at the University of Arizona Writing Program and is also a private creative coach and creative writing class facilitator. You can read more about her practices at margosteines.com.

Miho Kinnas, a 2019 & 2023 Pushcart Prize nominee, is a Japanese poet, author, and translator. In 2023, a poetry collaboration with E. Ethelbert Miller, We Eclipse into The Other Side, was published by Pinyon Publishing, Best American Poetry 2023 selected her poem, Three Shrimp Boats On The Horizon, initially published in Wet Cement Magazine. Her translation appeared in Tokyo Poetry Journal Vol. 12. She is the author of two poetry collections: Today, Fish Only and Move Over, Bird (Math Paper Press). Kinnas serves as Artist in Residence or conducts various haiku/poetry workshops at, including Pat Conroy Literary Center, Life-Long Learning, Heritage Library, Richland Library, Island Writers Network, Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University, local schools, and Shanghai Literary Festival. She teaches translation at Tender Leaf Translation (https://courses.tenderleavestranslation.com.) She holds an MFA in creative writing (poetry) from the City University of Hong Kong.

Ollie Schminkey is a non-binary transgender poet/musician/artist based in St. Paul, MN. They have professionally coached poetry for six years, and they facilitate, direct, and host many organizations.  The number of workshops they have facilitated over the past ten years totals over 500.  They have also represented the Twin Cities in numerous national poetry competitions, and they are the author of three chapbooks and their full-length poetry collection, Dead Dad Jokes (Button Poetry), which was shortlisted for both the Midwest Independent Publishers Association and the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize. They believe deeply in the power of sharing terrible first drafts, writing in community, and having fun while we grow.  If they had a motto, it would be “Don’t be afraid to be bad!” and they’ll remind you every chance they get.

Paz Pardo’s writing has been featured in The New York Times Modern Love column, LitHub, The Brooklyn Review, The I Scream Social Anthology: Volume 1, and Howlround Theater Commons, among other venues. Her novel The Shamshine Blind was selected as one of the best scifi/fantasy novels of 2023 by Library Journal and one of the best debuts by Crimereads. She received her MFA from the Michener Center for Writers in 2018.

Rosemary Bensko—writing as Tantra Bensko—has hundreds of flashes, short stories, novelettes, and a novella in journals such as Mad Hatters Review, The Journal of Experimental Fiction, Fiction International, The Fabulist and anthologies such as Women Writing the Weird I and II, Surreal South, Holdfast, Up, Do, Not Somewhere Else But Here, Looking Back, Writing Disorder 2, Redacted Stories, Quantum Genre on the Planet of the Arts, Cellar Door 111, No Site for the Saved, Cadavre Exquis, Ironic Fantastic 3, and Triangulation: Parch. She also has a over a hundred poems in journals and anthologies, such as Chatahoochie Review, Carolina Quarterly, Florida Review, Hawaii Review, and North of Wakulla.

She has several chapbooks, such as The Cabinet of What You Don’t See (ISMs Press) and short story collections, such as Lucid Membrane (Night Publishing). She has published other people’s work as well through a magazine and LucidPlay Publishing.

She has won awards for both her poetry and fiction, including Carolina Quarterly — the Academy of American Poets Award, Punkpen, The Iowa Journal of Literary Studies award, and the Oblongata Award from Medulla Review and two awards from Cezanne’s Carrot, and many more.

Her four psychological suspense novels have garnered many industry awards, all in large categories. The first, Glossolalia: Psychological Suspense, won the gold medal from Readers Favorite in Intrigue and also the gold award from Literary Titan. Floating on Secrets won a Silver medal from eLit for Romance for all major or small press. And Encore: A Contemporary Love Story of Hypnotic Abduction won the Bronze medal from eLit for Mystery/Thrillers/Suspense, and was listed as one of the dozen best thrillers of the year by BestThrillers, beating competitors Stephen King, John Grisham, and Dean Koontz.

Rosemary earned her MA from FSU and MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop, teaching both places and at Memphis State. She has taught for years through UCLA X Writing Program and her own academy online, and maintains a resource site about experimental writing. She lives in Berkeley.

Rudri Patel is a lawyer turned freelance writer, essayist, and editor. On staff at Literary Mama and the co-founder and co-editor of the literary journal, The Sunlight Press, her essays and reported work have appeared in The Washington Post, Business Insider, The Lily, Saveur, Civil Eats, ESPN, Parents and elsewhere. Rudri is currently at work on a memoir on grief and culture and how it provides perspective on life’s ordinary graces.

Sandra Novack earned acclaim with her short stories, which were published in The Iowa Review, The Chattahoochee Review, The Mississippi Review, The Gettysburg, Gulf Coast, and over thirty other literary venues. Her work has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, and her story “Memphis” was named by Stephen King as a notable story of the year in Best American Short Stories. Shifting gears, she wrote the start of a novel, landed her agent on a partial for the work (85 pages) and had that partial and her collection put out to auction in New York City. Her first novel Precious (Random House, 2009) was heralded as a top 10 debut of 2009. It received starred, positive reviews, was called “haunting,” “lyrical and finely crafted,” and showed “a new writer already in full command of her gifts.” Her short story collection, Everyone But You (Random House, 2011) was called “gutsy,” “raw,” and “honest,” with “artfully crafted characters.”

She has taught at The University of Cincinnati, Duke University, North Carolina State, and West Georgia College, as well as on-line, and she is the recipient of numerous grants for her work. Her third novel manuscript, THE PEACOCK ANGELS, received two offers of publication but ultimately remains unpublished. She is at work on a new novel manuscript, as well as a children's story.

In spring 2022, she also started teaching at Drexel University's MFA program.

Troy Wilderson is a New Orleans–born, Midwest-based writer, senior prose feedback editor for Typehouse Literary Magazine, educator, and freelance copyeditor. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and appeared in Roanoke Review, the Tishman Review, Crack the Spine Anthology XVII, the Louisville Review, Notre Dame Review, F(r)iction, Still: The Journal, and Cobalt Weekly, among others. Her teaching approach is hands-on, and she strives for inclusivity. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Spalding University and is a 2019 McKnight Foundation Writing Fellow.

Wendy Call has worked with authors whose award-winning books are published by trade, university, and independent publishers as a developmental and substantive editor. See examples of the books she has edited. Wendy has more than two decades of editing experience, from founding a literary journal, Goddard College’s Duende, to editing a bimonthly magazine, to teaching all levels of editing at the university level. She is co-editor of two anthologies: the widely used craft anthology Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers’ Guide (Plume/Penguin, 2007) and the new annual Best Literary Translations, (Deep Vellum, 2024). She is author of No Word for Welcome (University of Nebraska Press, 2011), winner of both national and international book prizes, and translator (from Spanish) of three books of poetry. You can read her nonfiction writing at Guernica, LitHub, Orion, Witness, and Yes! Magazine. Wendy has worked with more than one thousand writers, aged 14 to 84, to improve their writing and she would be delighted to work with you on all forms of nonfiction or literary translation (from Spanish).

Zining Mok is obsessed with random things: orchids, arabesques, sand. Her first book, The Orchid Folios (Ethos Books, 2020), was shortlisted for the 2022 Singapore Literature Prize in English Poetry. Her words can be found on Witness Magazine, The LARB, and The Cincinnati Review, among other magazines. She lives in Singapore, where she is at work on an essay collection, The Earthmovers.