Coaching, Editing, and Independent Study

Amy Bonnaffons is the author of the story collection The Wrong Heaven and the novel The Regrets, both published by Little, Brown.

Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Kenyon Review, The Sun, and elsewhere, and has been read on NPR's This American Life.  She holds a BA in Literature from Yale, an MFA in Creative Writing from NYU, and a PhD in English and Women's Studies from the University of Georgia.

Amy is a founding editor of 7x7.la, a literary journal devoted to collaborations between writers and visual artists. Born in New York City, she now lives in Athens, GA.

Amy is interested in creativity and spirituality, multimedia experimentation, and the intersection of art and social justice.  She has taught writing in universities, elementary schools, hospitals, and a women's prison, and has led workshops combining writing and shamanic journeying practices for several years.

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 began his writing and publishing career serving as an editor at Outside magazine. He later turned in his editor's pen for a writer's. He traveled the world writing for major national magazines about adventure and exploration, business, politics, the environment, sports, yoga, 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 is a book editor and writing coach. His forthcoming memoir Into the Soul of the World will be published by Hachette Book Group in March, 2023. He lives in Austin, Texas. Learn more about Brad here.

Briana Una McGuckin writes Gothic Romance/Romantic Suspense. Her debut novel, a below-stairs Victorian Gothic called On Good Authority, is forthcoming from Thomas & Mercer on October 11, 2022. 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.

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 in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Derek’s teaching approach is grounded in the development of a writing practice that is structured around process and extensive revision.

Derek JG Williams is an American poet and essayist. He is the author of Poetry Is a Disease (Greying Ghost, 2022). Derek holds a doctorate in English and Creative Writing from Ohio University, and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Boston, where he won the Brian Rattigan and Mary Doyle Curran Creative Scholarships. He is a Blacksmith House Emerging Writer. His poem, “These Kingdoms of Ours” was a finalist for RHINO Magazine’s Editors Prize. Brenda Shaughnessy selected his poem “Ode to the Tongue” for inclusion in the Best New Poets anthology. His writing has appeared on Boston’s MBTA trains as a part of the city’s Poetry on the T program, while his work is published or forthcoming in in Pleiades, Salamander, Adroit Journal, DIAGRAM, The Rumpus, Cortland Review, Prairie Schooner, Bear Review, and Plume, among others. He lives in Germany with his wife and dog. Learn more about him at https://www.derekjgwilliams.com/.

Donna Levin is the author of Extraordinary Means (William Morrow), California Street (Simon & Schuster) and the recent best-seller, There’s More Than One Way Home (Chickadee Prince Books 2017). Her new novel, He Could Be Another Bill Gates, was published by Chickadee Prince Books in October 2018.

In addition to novels, Donna has published two books about writing, Get that Novel Started and Get that Novel Written, both with Writer’s Digest Books.

Donna has taught fiction writing for two 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.

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.

Gloria Kempton is the author of seven nonfiction self-help books and two young adult novels, as well as hundreds of short stories, essays, personal experiences, personality profiles, how-to's, and feature articles for a number of national magazines including Writer's Digest. For three years she wrote a column for single parents in a parenting magazine. Her book, Dialogue, was published by Writer’s Digest Books in 2004 and is still selling well.

She is the former Managing Editor of Parents of Teenagers magazine and was a freelance book editor for nine major publishers including Harper Collins. She is a former contributing editor for Writer’s Digest magazine. She continues to critique and edit both fiction and nonfiction for individuals, as well as coaching writers one-on-one on any aspect of fiction, nonfiction, marketing, or the writing life.

Gloria teaches at writers conferences and has served on several writer's conference boards and program committees, including the Pacific Northwest Writer's Conference, and chaired their midwinter conference for two years.

She has most recently published a correspondence course, The Outlaw’s Journey; A Mythological Approach to Storytelling for Writers Behind Bars, which she is now taking into correctional institutions around the country. She’s currently writing a book based on the material in this course.

Read more about Gloria on her web site: http://gloriakempton.com/

Gretchen Clark has been a freelancer for an online naming company and a creative arts mentor for abused children in the Phoenix area. Her essay Pink Chrysanthemum was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.  Her work has been published in 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 and Hippocampus, among others.

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.

Lisa C. Taylor is the author of five poetry collections, including the just published collection Interrogation of Morning, and two short story collections, most recently Impossibly Small Spaces. She publishes in Ireland and the US. Her honors include Best of the Net nominations, the Hugo House New Works Fiction Award, and Pushcart nominations in fiction and poetry. Lisa offers private manuscript consultations and workshops.  She was awarded a Colorado Creative Industries/National Endowment for the Arts Grant to run a youth art and writing program in 2022. Lisa formerly taught writing at a university and an arts high school in the Northeast. Lisa holds an MFA in Creative Writing. She is the fiction editor for an online magazine and a frequent book reviewer. She has been awarded residencies at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland, Vermont Studio Center, and Willowtail Springs in Colorado.

Learn more about Lisa here.

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, AZ. Her work was named Notable in Best American Essays 2021 and has appeared in The Sun, Brevity, The New York Times (Modern Love), the forthcoming anthology Letter to a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us, and elsewhere. She is the author of the memoir BRUTALITIES, forthcoming from W.W. Norton.

Margo’s author photo is by Aidan Avery @aidanaveryphoto

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.

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.

This 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. The Orchid Folios (Ethos Books, 2020) is her first book. Her work has appeared in Witness Magazine, The Rumpus and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among others. Zining is a recent graduate of the MFA program at the University of Minnesota, where she taught creative writing. She has received a number of awards, including the College of Liberal Arts Fellowship from the University of Minnesota, the Helen G. Scott Prize for Best Critical Essay on American Literature, and an honorable mention from the Academy of American Poets’ James Wright Prize. Zining lives in Singapore, where she is working on a book about sand. She spends most of her free time dancing.