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 most recent book is The Elsewhere: New & Selected Poems (Broadstone, 2021) 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, was a Gold Medalist at Foreword Magazine in 2008. He has published three collections of poems, Fathom, Weal, winner of the Snyder Prize from Ashland Poetry Press, and Forged Correspondences, 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 Sign & Breath: Voice & The Literary Tradition (co-edited with Shanta Lee), Critical Essays on James Joyce’s Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man (co-edited with James F. Carens) and Poems and Their Making. He has been awarded the Ohio Governor’s Award, 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, the Hambidge Center, the Millay Colony, and the Virginia Center for the Arts. Brady has taught at University College Cork in Ireland, as a Peace Corps Volunteer at the National University of Lubumbashi in the Congo, and in the Semester at Sea Program. He is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Youngstown State University and co-founder and Executive Director Emeritus of Etruscan Press.

R. Alan Brooks wrote his 1st graphic novel in 2017. Now, he teaches graphic novel writing for MFA programs like Regis University & Wilkes University, as well as at Lighthouse Writers Workshop, and more.

He wrote and executive produced the award-winning short-film, Always, Most of The Time, and he’s the author of The Burning Metronome and Anguish Garden - graphic novels featuring insightful social commentary.

His award-winning weekly comic for The Colorado Sun, “What’d I Miss?”, has also been praised for its direct engagement with social issues.

His TED Talk, on the importance of art, reached 1 million views in 2 months. His graphic novel work is featured in the Denver Art Museum, and has been featured in the Museum of Contemporary Art – Denver, as well as the Amon Carter Museum in Texas.

He hosted the Museum of Contemporary Art - Denver's podcast - How Art Is Born, as well as his own Mother F**ker In A Cape comics podcast, and has written comic books for Image Comics, Archie Comics, Sumerian Comics, Zenescope Entertainment, Pop Culture Classroom, and more.

Bonnie Culver is 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’s Association of Community Theatre’s (NJACT) Perry Award for Excellence in the Production of an Original Play and was produced Off-Broadway at Center Stage, NYC, in 2005 to critical acclaim. 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. Most recently, Princeton University’s Intime Theatre produced Sniper in conjunction with The National Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. “Cell,“ “GPS,” and “Auto-Mated” were produced at several festivals of ten-minute plays, including the Piney Fork Short Play Festival, NYC, where “GPS” directed by Gregory Fletcher won “best play of the festival.” The three plays published as Digital Disturbances by Blue Moon Plays. 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). In 2022, her screenplays I Do and Raining Rainbows were finalists in the Southern California Film Festival, the Mystic Film Festival, and a second Rounder in the Austin Film festival. In 2024 her play A Ticket to the Circus, a one-woman show based upon the memoir of the same name by Norris Church Mailer streamed online produced by Michelle Danner and starring Anne Archer. The play has been revised as a multi-character play and is in pre-production to open on Broadway. Dr. Culver received her M.A. and PhD from Binghamton University. At Wilkes, she is professor emerita, having served as 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 a board member of the Norman Mailer Society and Etruscan Press. She served two terms as the chair and board member on the Board of Trustees of AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs). Her plays can be found on Amazon.com and at BlueMoonPlays.com.

Gabrielle D'Amico is a screenwriter who was born and raised in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. A certified yapper (what else would you expect from someone named Gabby) she’s built her life around words as a marketing and comms exec and a writer of film and TV.

Gabrielle’s feature comedy Hot Mess follows Laurel Mack, who implodes on a wildly popular dating show and must do the ultimate walk of shame... back to her small hometown. In the face of the never-ending mockery from those who witnessed her televised meltdown, Laurel sets out to discover real love and renewed connections. Emma Roberts is attached to star. The film marks the feature directorial debut for Katie Locke O’Brien, with Debbie Liebling, Laura Lewis and Maggie Malina producing. Vertical Entertainment secured distribution rights  external website during Cannes 2023.

Now or Never, the comedy script Gabrielle developed as a student in the Maslow creative writing program, is in development with Resonate Entertainment under the guidance of her Wilkes writing mentor, Susan Cartsonis, and Suzanne Farwell and Clément Bauer. The story follows Ellie Owens who experiences an existential spiral when her BFF announces she’s pregnant and her husband admits that he’s ready too. Up against her biological clock, Ellie finds her truth in a surprising way: stand-up comedy. Now or Never was a 2016 CineStory Feature Fellowship semifinalist. You can read more about Gabrielle and Susan’s relationship here  external website.

A proud first-generation college student, Gabrielle earned her Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts and Master of Fine Arts from Wilkes University. She also spent 16 professional years at Wilkes in the University's marketing communications office. She now splits her time between her Pennsylvania hometown and Denver, Colorado, with frequent stops in Los Angeles. Please don't ask her what time it is.

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 books of 2014. Her essays can be found in numerous anthologies, including The Best of Brevity, and the Best of Oprah Magazine. She teaches memoir-writing workshops around the country and she recently finished her fourth memoir, It Started with Adam, and Ended With a Little Help From Psychedelics. 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, The Boston Globe and the New York Times. Her works include Open Carry: Pomes (forthcoming, 2027 Trio House) Bon Courage: Essays on Citizenship, Inheritance,& A Creative Life (Etruscan, 2023) Sleeping Alone: Stories ( Graywolf Press, Spring 2022), and the novels A Disobedient Girl (Atria/Simon & Schuster, 2009), and On Sal Mal Lane (Graywolf Press, 2013), 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 an MFA in Poetry from Rutgers University, and an MA 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 Honeycutt 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 Honeycutt 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, andDAME Magazine  external website. Shanta Lee Honeycutt's professional wingspan covers the public health, arts, local government, non-profit and other sectors and she is a regular contributor toMs. Magazine  external website and Art New England  external website. Shanta Lee Honeycutt'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 Hopscotch Between the Living and the Dead  external website (Diode Editions, 2024). As a visual artist, Shanta Lee Honeycutt’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 Honeycutt 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 Honeycutt's Website  external website

Christine Gelineau writes poetry and creative nonfiction. Her hybrid memoir / meditation Almanac: A Murmuration was published in 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, Vox Populi, Verse Virtual, Poetry Sunday, and other online venues. 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. She served for many years as Associate Director of the Creative Writing Program at Binghamton University where she taught American Literature, Contemporary American Poetry, the Living Writers course, and directed the English Department's Internship Program. She received the Provost's Award for Excellence in Teaching from Binghamton University. Gelineau lives on a farm along the Susquehanna River in upstate New York where she and her husband raise Morgan horses under the Hartland prefix.

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 latest novel, Veritas,will be published by Akashic Books in June 2027. She has previously published six novels,including A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries, released as a Merchant Ivory Film; CelesteAscending, published by Harper Collins; and The Anger Meridian, published by AkashicBooks. She is also the author of the acclaimed memoir Lies My Mother Never Told Me,published by William Morrow. Kaylie was the editor of the widely reviewed anthology,Long Island Noir of the acclaimed Akashic Noir Series. Her essays and short stories haveappeared in many venues including the Paris Review, The New York Times, HippocampusMagazine, Salon, The Rumpus, Confrontation, Epiphany Magazine, the Los AngelesTimes, and The Washington Post, as well as the anthologies Knitting Yarns, One LastLunch, Cape Cod Noir, and The Night Bazaar, among others. She co-chairs the JamesJones First Novel Fellowship, hosted by Wilkes University, which awards $12,500 yearly to an unpublished first novel. In 2011, Kaylie was honored to receive the NationalCoalition Against Censorship Award, for restoring the unexpurgated version of her father James Jones’ 1951 novel, From Here to Eternity. Kaylie was the publisher of KaylieJones Books under the aegis of Akashic Books, where she published the novels of several Wilkes graduates, including Laurie Loewenstein and Barbara J. Taylor. She was a founding member of the Maslow Family Graduate Creative Writing Program at Wilkes University, and is a full professor in the SUNY Stony Brook Department of Creative Writing, Film and Television.

Traci L. Jones holds a BA from Pomona College. and an MA from the University of Denver.

Her first YA novel, Standing Against the Windem>, was published at Farrar, Straus, and Giroux (FSG), in 2006 and won the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe New Talent Award. Her second novel, Finding My Placeem>, was published in 2010 and the third, Silhouetted by the Blue, in 2011. She is represented by the Metamorphosis Literary Agency. Ransoming the Captive, her fourth was published July 2022 with Black Rose Writing. In 2016, she joined the MFA program at Regis University, the Lighthouse Writing Workshop in 2020, and began teaching at the Honors College at the University of Colorado at Denver in 2022.

She and her husband have four children and live in Denver.

Ross Klavan’s work spans film, television, radio, print, live performance and visual art. His original screenplay for the film Tigerland was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award and the film was released by New Regency starring Colin Farrell. He’s written scripts for Miramax, Intermedia, Walden Media, Paramount and TNT TV among others. His novella Cut Loose All Those Who Drag You Down was published in 2020 by 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. Klavan’s short stories have been published in 2025 in Metapsychosis Magazine, Aesterion, the BBC and elsewhere. A “conversation about writing” that he moderated with Kurt Vonnegut and Lee Stringer was televised and published as Like Shaking Hands with God. An earlier novel, Trax, was published under a pseudonym. His play How I Met My (Black) Wife (Again), co-written with Ray Iannicelli, was produced in New York City, and he’s performed his work in numerous theaters and clubs. Klavan 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. Earlier, he worked as a newspaper and radio journalist in New York City and London and is a member of the Writers Guild, SAG-AFTRA and the playwright’s unit of The Actors Studio. 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.

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 Micah McCrary, PhD, MPH, MFA, is author (as Micah McCrary) most recently of Teaching Cultural Dexterity in Creative Writing (Bloomsbury). His work also appears or is forthcoming through Reclaiming Creative Critical Ancestors, The Cimarron Review, College English, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, and the Journal of Creative Writing Studies, among other venues. 2026 Fulbright Canada-Maple Leaf Foundation Community Action Program grantee and 2024–2025 Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Anti-Racism and BIPOC Communities and Visiting Scholar in Health Humanities at the University of Waterloo, Dr. McCrary lives on Haudenosaunee homelands—where he is associate teaching professor in the Writing Studies and Health Humanities programs at Syracuse University. He also serves as volunteer within the SUNY Upstate Center for International Health Community Clinic Partnership (CCP); community partner in the School of Public Health Sciences at the University of Waterloo; mentor-teacher and low-residency faculty in Wilkes University’s Maslow Family Graduate Program in Creative Writing; and on the CHCI Health and Medical Humanities Network Steering Committee.

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

Jen McLaughlin is a New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author who also writes under the pen name Diane Alberts. As a firm believer in chasing your dreams, she went back to school for her MFA after publishing fifty books, and also has a Doctorate of Education (an Ed.D). She mentors fiction; particularly romance, fantasy and YA/NA. She also works as the assistant director in the Wilkes University Honors Program, where she teaches undergraduate creative writing courses. Jen is represented by Louise Fury at The Bent Agency. You can find her online at https://jenmclaughlin-dianealberts.com  external website and on Instagram as mclaughlin.jen  Instagram link.

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.

Alice O’Neill is a New York-based screenwriter. She was a writer Billions on Showtime for three seasons, and has created and developed series for Paramount Television, ABC Signature, Freeform, and Conde Nast Entertainment. Her original script Buttercup is slated for production in Fall 2026, and original screenplay The Stevedore, is in development at Miramax and LBI Entertainment. Recent film projects include the romantic comedy Matter of Time for Sony Pictures, and Shoot Like a Girl for Sony/Tristar (based on memoir by MJ Hegar about women in combat). As a playwright, her work has been produced at theaters in New York City and elsewhere.

Alice teaches in the graduate film program at Columbia University, and the MFA Creative Writing Program at Wilkes University.

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, Kindergarten Teacher, and Spoken Word instructor at Wilkes University. She was awarded a Pride Poetry Fellowship from the Arts Club of Washington and will serve as Fairfax County Poet Laureate until 2027. 

Angelique is a 2025 Best of the Net nominee, and a 2015 Women of the World Poetry Slam finalist. For more than 10 years she's hosted the Third Mondays Open Mic and now curates the poetry slams at Busboys and Poets, Shirlington. 

Her first full-length book, The Chambermaid’s Style Guide, debuted on Sargent Press in 2016. Her second book from Etruscan Press is 2021's Also Dark. 

The New Orleans native and Florida State University Creative Writing graduate has called Fairfax County home since 2017. Just like her life she prefers her poetry to be vibrant, vociferous and vehement, and in conclusion: ice cream.

Nicole Pandolfo received a 2026 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. She is currently in development with director Christopher Eadicicco on a film adaptation of her play Canadian Tuxedo. She has published opinion pieces in the Philadelphia Inquirer and American Theater Magazine and developed several original television projects alongside renowned showrunners and directors. She 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 earned her M.F.A. at Hunter College and is a member of The Actors Studio in the Playwright/Director Unit and 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 a writer, educator, and producer. Her play The Quilt Keepers was co-commissioned by Montclair State University, NJ Play Lab, and Vanguard Theater Company. Her other stage plays have been produced or developed by Luna Stage, Writers Theatre of New Jersey, Speranza Theatre Company, Vivid Stage, Repertorio Español, and Teatro Vivo. She is the creator and head writer of the audio drama series Timestorm (Cocotazo Media), named a “Top Trendsetting Podcast” by School Library Journal. Her works have been recognized by the Webby Awards, the Anthem Awards, the Nuestras Voces National Playwriting Competition, the Henley Rose Playwright Competition, the International Latino Book Awards, the Sakura Medal, NJ WebFest, and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. She’s the author of the middle-grade novels Who’s Ju? (Overdue Books/NHP, 2015) and Ignacio in the Dark (Overdue Books, 2019). She’s a graduate of the Maslow Family Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Wilkes University and a member 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).

Allison Saft is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Wings of Starlight, A Dark and Drowning Tide, and other romantic fantasy novels. Her work has won a Scribe Award and been translated into over ten languages. In her free time, she practices aerial circus arts. She lives in West Virginia with her partner and an Italian greyhound named Marzipan.

Marisa de los Santos is the New York Times bestselling author of ten books. While she is now primarily a novelist, Marisa began her writing career as a poet, and her first book was a collection of poems titled From the Bones Out, published in 2000. In the twenty-five years following this publication, Marisa has published seven novels for adults and two, co-authored with her husband David Teague, for middle grade readers. Her novels include Love Walked In, Belong to Me, I’ll Be Your Blue Sky, and, most recently, Watch Us Shine. Marisa holds a BA from the University of Virginia, an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, and a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston. Before she paused her teaching job to write full time, Marisa was an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Delaware. Born in Baltimore and raised in Virginia, Marisa has spent much of her adult life in the Philadelphia area, including over twenty years in her current home of Wilmington, Delaware, where she and her husband raised their two kids, Charlie and Annabel. Marisa first detective novel, The Trusted, set in a fictional Pennsylvania town and featuring Filipina-American detective Lina Cordova, is forthcoming in fall of 2026.

Nisha Sharma, J.D., M.F.A., is an award winning writer, scholar and former corporate culture executive with over ten published books for teens and adults and over ten years of experience in diversity, equity and inclusion work. Her novels have been praised by The New York Times, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, Cosmopolitan, The Washington Post, Time Magazine and more. When she’s not championing narratives about radical joy or working towards her PhD in literature and social justice, Nisha likes to spend time with her husband, baby daughter and pets named after characters in her favorite books. She lives in the Philadelphia suburbs and you can find her online at www.Nisha-Sharma.com  external website or on TikTok and Instagram @nishawrites.

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 wrote, produced and directed 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. His coming-of-age novel, Centerville, will be published by Meadowlark Press in 2027.

Rachel Weaver is the author of the novel Point of Direction, which Oprah Magazine named a Top Ten Book to Pick Up Now. Point of Direction was chosen by the American Booksellers Association as a Top Ten Debut for Spring 2014, by IndieBound as an Indie Next List Pick, by Yoga Journal as one of their Top Five Suggested Summer Reads and won the 2015 Willa Cather Award for Fiction. Prior to earning her MFA in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University, Rachel worked for the Forest Service in Alaska studying bears, raptors and songbirds. She is on faculty at Regis University’s low-residency MFA program, and at Lighthouse Writers Workshop where she won the Beacon Award for Teaching Excellence in 2018. She is the owner of Sandstone Editing where she works with authors one on one to help them get their books ready for publication. Rachel’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Sun, Gettysburg Review, Blue Mesa Review, River Teeth, Alaska Women Speak and Fly Fishing New England.

Rachel Weaver's Website  external website