Peter
Bricklebank has published fiction in The Alaska Quarterly Review, The American
Voice, Carolina Quarterly, Mid-American Review, Kansas Quarterly, Confrontation,
Fiction, Florida Review, Global City Review, and elsewhere. His nonfiction
has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, the American Book Review,
The Chicago Tribune, The Minnesota Review, ACM (Another Chicago Magazine),
and others. His work has been anthologized in The Breast and Short Story
Criticism, and he contributed the chapter on the essay and memoir in The
Portable MFA (Writers Digest, Cincinnati, 2006). He has been nominated for
a Pushcart Prize, received a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in fiction,
and held residencies at the Fundacion Valparaiso (Spain) and the MacDowell Colony.
He's taught writing workshops in Oaxaca and Morelia (Mexico). He's also taught
at New York University, Hunter College, the Mercantile Library, the Open Center,
privately, and elsewhere. In 2007, he completed a year as Nonfiction writer-in-residence
at Central Connecticut State University.
Kurt
Brown, the author of five chapbooks and four full-length poetry collections,
is founding director of the Aspen Writers Conference, now in its 30th year, and
the editor of three annuals which gather outstanding lectures from writers conferences
and festivals. He served for years on the board of Sarabande Books and is currently
on the board of Poets House. He teaches in the MFA Program at Sarah Lawrence College
and at writers’ conferences, retreats and other venues across the U. S.
Suzanne
Cleary has an MA in Writing from Washington University and a Ph.D. in Literature
and Criticism from Indiana University in Pennsylvania. She is Associate Professor
of English at SUNY Rockland. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Georgia
Review, and other journals, and she recently won a Pushcart Prize. Her first
book, Keeping Time, hailed by Billy Collins, is now in its second printing,
and her second collection, Trick Pear, was published last year by Carnegie
Mellon.
Brenda
Connor-Bey, the 2002 recipient of the Outstanding Arts Educator award from
the Westchester Fund for Women and Girls, has long been active in writer-residency
programs throughout the region, often through the Westchester Arts Council. She
is the recipient of many grants and awards (including four PEN awards), and in
2006 was named the first poet laureate of the town of Greenburgh, New York. She
has had her work published and performed widely, and has just completed a collection
of poetry and a young adult novel and is working on a novel. www.brendaconnorbey.com
M.
Doretta Cornell taught writing and literature at Pace University, Pleasantville,
for many years, and she is a member of the Poetry Caravan. Her poetry has appeared
in Earth's Daughters, Inkwell, Commonweal, among others,
and in the anthologies (en)compass and Literature 5th Edition (McGraw-Hill).
Joanne
Dobson is the author of the Professor Karen Pelletier mystery series from
Doubleday and Poisoned Pen Press. In 2001 she was named Noted Author of the Year
by the RAAS section of the New York Library Association. Until recently she taught
literature and creative writing at Fordham University and she has taught at Amherst
College and at Tufts University. Joanne now writes full time. www.joannedobson.com
Karen
Finley is an Arts Professor at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts
in the department of Art and Public Policy. Her raw and transgressive performances
have long provoked controversy and debate. She has appeared and exhibited internationally
her visual art, performances and plays. Her performances have been presented at
Lincoln Center, New York City, The Guthrie, Minneapolis, American Repertory Theatre,
The ICA in London, Harvard, The Steppenwolf in Chicago, and The Bobino in Paris.
Her artworks are in numerous collections and museums including the Pompidou in
Paris and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Finley attended the San Francisco
Art Institute receiving an MFA and honorary PHD. She has received numerous awards
and fellowships including a Guggenheim, 2 Obies, 2 Bessies, MS. Magazine Woman
Of The Year, NARAL Person of the Year (which she shared with Anna Quindlen and
Walter Cronkite), The Edwin Booth Award, The Lee Reynolds Award, NYSCA and NEA
Fellowships. She has appeared in independent films and in the film Philadelphia.
Finley has authored and or edited seven books including Shock Treatment
(City Lights 1990), Enough is Enough (Poseidon, Simon and Schuster 1993),
Living It Up (Doubleday 1996), Pooh Unplugged (Smart Art Books 1999),
A Different Kind Of Intimacy: The Collected Writings of Karen Finley (Thunders
Mouth Press 2000), and edited and contributed to Aroused, A Collection of Erotic
Writings (Thunders Mouth Press 2001) and George and Martha (Verso 2006).
She written essays and commentary for The Los Angeles Times, The Village Voice,
Huffingtonpost.com and other journals.
B.
K. Fischer is a poet, critic, and teacher. Her first poetry manuscript, The
Anatomy Archives, was a finalist for the 2009 National Poetry Series, as well
as the high finalist for the 2008 and 2009 FIELD Prizes, and she was nominated
for Best New Poets 2009. Her poems were published this year in The Hopkins
Review, FIELD, Literary Mama, and Westchester Magazine, and her work
has also appeared previously in The Paris Review, Boston Review, Ekphrasis,
Southwest Review, Western Humanities Review, and other journals. A monologue
from The Anatomy Archives was performed as a play at the Hudson Valley
Center for Contemporary Art in Peekskill, New York, in January 2008. Her second
manuscript, Mutiny Gallery, was a finalist for the 2009 ABZ Prize. She
is the author of a critical study, Museum Mediations: Reframing Ekphrasis in
Contemporary American Poetry (Routledge, 2006), and a frequent contributor
of review essays to Boston Review. She holds an M.F.A. in poetry from Columbia
University and a Ph.D. in English and American Literature from New York University,
and has taught writing and literature at Columbia, NYU, and Marymount College.
She currently teaches at the Neuberger Museum of Art and the Hudson Valley Writers'
Center in Sleepy Hollow, New York, where she lives with her husband and three
children.
Kate
Gallagher, a poet and former children's book editor, has taught at venues
which include the Scarsdale schools, the Kids' Short Story Connection in Greenburgh,
the Northern Westchester Center for the Arts. In addition to teaching children
and young adults, she also works with the developmentally disabled and women with
eating disorders. She has studied with Jorie Graham and Marvin Bell at the University
of Iowa and is a member of the Poetry Caravan.
Douglas
Goetsch is the author of seven collections of poetry and the recipient of
numerous awards, including fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts,
the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Donald Murray Prize for non-fiction
about the teaching of writing. He has taught for over twenty years in the New
York City school system, in workshops and conferences throughout the U.S., and
currently instructs in the MFA program at the University of Central Oklahoma,
where he is Poet in Residence. He is Founding Editor of Jane Street Press, and
Executive Editor of the New Plains Review. www.janestreet.org.
Eamon
Grennan was
born in Dublin in 1941 and educated at UCD, where he studied English and Italian,
and Harvard, where he received his PhD in English. His volumes of poetry include
Matter of Fact (2008), What Light There Is & Other Poems, (North
Point Press, 1989); Wildly for Days (1983); What Light There Is
(1987); As If It Matters (1991); So It Goes (1995); Selected
and New Poems (2000); Still Life with Waterfall (2001) and The Quick
of It (2005). His books of poetry are published in the United States by Graywolf
Press, and in Ireland by Gallery Press. Other publications include Leopardi:
Selected Poems (Princeton 1997), and Facing the Music: Irish Poetry in
the 20th Century, a collection of essays on modern Irish poetry. His poems,
reviews, and essays have appeared in many magazines both in Ireland and the US.
Grennan has given lectures
and workshops in colleges and universities in the US, including courses for the
graduate programs at Columbia and NYU. During 2002 he was the Heimbold Professor
of Irish Studies at Villanova University. His grants and prizes in the United
States include awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment
for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Leopardi: Selected Poems
received the 1997 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, and Still Life with
Waterfall was the recipient of the 2003 Lenore Marshall Award for Poetry from
the American Academy of Poets. His poems have been awarded a number of Pushcart
prizes. Grennan taught at Vassar College for thirty years where he was the Dexter
M. Ferry Jr. Professor of English. Grennan
divides his time between the US and the west of Ireland. He writes in both the
ancient tradition of mournful remembrance in attention to the natural world and
the modern impulse to seize and preserve the moment. He returns to Ireland yearly
from his current home in New York State for "voice transfusions." He attributes
his "amphibian" sensibility to this dual life. "I have a double sense of things,
but I tend to write about what's under my nose. I write about here when I'm here
and when I go back to Ireland I write about what's there. I regard myself not
as in exile, but as a migrant. That's what attracted me, in some of my early poems,
to birds. My becoming a poet--in this particular incarnation anyway--was not unconnected
to someone giving me the present of a pair of binoculars."
Herbert
Hadad’s work has appeared in numerous publications, including The New York
Times, Poets & Writers, Reader’s Digest, Parenting, and Yankee. They
are also collected in several books, including The Random House Guide to Writing
and Sephardic American Voices: Two Hundred Years of a Literary Legacy.
He has received several awards for magazine writing and the New York Press Club
award for feature writing. One of his essays was included as a “notable essay”
in The Best American Essays 2003. A collection of his essays, Finding
Immortality: The Making of One American Family, will be out soon. Most recently,
his writing has appeared in The International Herald Tribune and The
Journal News.
Susan
Hodara has been
writing memoir for over 15 years. Her work has been published in literary journals
and anthologies including Illness & Grace, Terror & Transformation; The
Westchester Review; I Wanna Be Sedated: 30 Writers on Parenting Teenagers;
salon.com; Cesium; and others. She has taught a private weekly memoir
workshop since 2003. She is also a freelance journalist and editor whose work
has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Communication
Arts, Harvard Magazine, Wesleyan Magazine, and others. With
a Bachelor's degree from Harvard University and a Master's from Columbia University,
she is Consulting Editor for Davler Media, the publisher of eight local parenting
newspapers. www.susanhodara.com
Amy
Holman is the author of An Insider’s Guide to Creative Writing Programs:
Choosing the Right MFA or MA Program, Colony, Residency, Grant or Fellowship,
and is a literary consultant to writers and literary groups. Her essays on the
writing business can be found in the anthologies, Making the Perfect Pitch
and The Practical Writer, and on the New York Foundation for the Arts web
site. She is the associate editor of Get Your First Book Published, and
its earlier edition, First Book Market. Her poetry has won the 2004 Dream
Horse Press National Poetry Chapbook Competition and been selected for The
Best American Poetry 1999. Poetry and nonfiction have been nominated for Pushcart
prizes and published in numerous anthologies and magazines. www.amyholman.com
Marthe
Jocelyn says she reads everything she can get her hands on in children’s literature
“where some of the best writing being published today is found—and should be found.”
She is the author-illustrator of several picture books and the author of three
chapter books (The Invisible Day, The Invisible Harry, and The Invisible
Enemy) and two works of historical fiction, Earthly Astonishments,
and Mable Riley: A Reliable Record of Humdrum, Peril and Adventure. She
also wrote a non-fiction book, A Home for Foundlings, about the Foundling
Hospital in London, England, and edited an anthology of short stories for middle
grade readers called Secrets. In 2005, she was winner of the first annual
TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award for Mable Riley. www.marthejocelyn.com
Mindy
Lewis is the author of Life Inside: A Memoir (Atria Books 2002,
Washington Square Press 2003). Her essays have been published in Newsweek,
Lilith, Body & Soul, and Poets & Writers magazines, and in
anthologies. She is also editor of DIRT: The Quirks, Habits and Passions of
Keeping House (Seal Press 2009). A finalist in The Writer's Voice 1999 New
Voice Creative Non-Fiction Awards, she has been a resident at Vermont Studio Center,
Palenville Interarts, Byrdcliffe Colony, and Banff Center for the Arts. She teaches
writing workshops at The Writer’s Voice of the Westside YMCA and at Brooklyn
College. www.mindylewis.com
Rebecca
McClanahan has published five volumes of poetry, three books about writing,
and a collection of personal essays, The Riddle Song and Other Rememberings,
which recently won the Glasgow Prize from Shenandoah. Her work has appeared
in The Best American Essays, The Best American Poetry, Georgia
Review, Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. McClanahan,
who received a Pushcart Prize in Fiction, the Wood prize from Poetry, the
Carter prize for the Essay from Shenandoah, and a 2003 New York Foundation
for the Arts fellowship, lives with her husband in New York City and can be reached
at www.mcclanmuse.com.
Mara
Mills has been a professional storyteller, stage director, producer and arts
educator for more than twenty years. She is the author of Rites of Passage,
an integrated curriculum on script writing (National Middle School's Association
Journal, February 1990), and a chapter on children as storytellers in the text
Integrating Curriculum through the Arts, as well as a book of poetry, Ashes
and Tea. Recently, she worked with Domestic Abuse Survivors to create a choral
script. Mara created Drama Departments for The Mead School in Greenwich and The
Learning Community in Westport and was the Artistic Director of the successful
Herbert Mark Newman Theatre from 1991 - 2004. She received the 1996 award for
outstanding service to theatre from the national theatre association and the 2007
Cab Calloway award for her work in theatre in Westchester.
Mary
Carroll Moore's novel, Qualities of Light, was just published by Spinsters
Ink and has been nominated for a PEN/Faulkner Award. She has also published twelve
nonfiction books (including How to Master Change in Your Life: Sixty-Seven
Ways to Handle Life’s Toughest Moments, now in its third printing, and Healthy
Cooking, winner of a Julia Child award). Your Book Starts Here: Create,
Craft, and Sell Your First Novel, Memoir, or Nonfiction Book, based on her
“How to Plan, Write, and Develop a Book” writing workshops, will be released in
2010. A chapter from her second novel, Breathing Room, was a top-ten finalist
in the 2004 Loft Mentor Series in fiction, judged by Amy Bloom. She also won an
honorable mention in the 2005 McKnight Awards for Creative Prose. For twelve years
she was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist, and over 500 of her articles,
essays, poems, and short stories have appeared in publications such as the Boston
Globe, Quay: Journal of the Arts, American Artist, and American Health.
She has been featured in USA Today, the New York Times, and other
publications. As an editor and book doctor for major publishing houses since 1986,
she knows what it takes to write a successful book. She teaches writing at The
Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and other locations around the United States,
Canada, and Europe. www.marycarrollmoore.com
Vijai
Nathan is a writer, actor, comedienne and former journalist. She tours nationally
with her one-woman show, “Good Girls Don’t, But Indian Girls Do” and this July
was featured at the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal. She was nominated best
comedian of ‘05 by South Asian Media Awards, was chosen one of the top ten comics
in the nation for the ‘04 NBC Stand-Up for Diversity Showcase in L. A., and was
named by Back Stage Magazine as one of the top ten stand-up comics in ‘03.
TV appearances include: ABC’s 20/20, PBS, The Oxygen Network, the BBC and
UK Comedy Central.
Joan
Potter’s nonfiction writing has been published in numerous magazines and newspapers.
Her personal essays appear in the anthologies Rooted in Rock, Living
North Country, and Illness & Grace, Terror & Transformation, and in
the upcoming journal, Stone Canoe. She is the author of three books, including
African American Firsts: Famous, Little-Known and Unsung Triumphs of Blacks
in America. She has edited, among other books, Growing Up Strong: Four
North Country Women Recall Their Lives, a collection of memoirs produced in
a writing workshop she led in the Adirondacks. She has also led workshops in a
New York State prison. The revised, updated edition of African American Firsts
will be published in December. She is working with four other writers on a collection
of memoirs about mothers.
Staton
Rabin has a BFA in Film from New York University (NYU), and has been a story
analyst to the film industry for 25 years. She lectures about guerilla screenplay
marketing for NYU and is a Senior Writer for scr(i)pt. She has taught screenwriting
aboard the Queen Mary 2 and for the HVWC. She also has three novels from Simon
& Schuster: Betsy and the Emperor (to be made into a movie starring Al
Pacino as Emperor Napoleon), Black Powder, and The Curse of the Romanovs.
Elizabeth
Sachs is the author of ten books for young adults and middle grade readers,
including The Boy Who Ate Dog Biscuits and Just Like Always. She
has served as editor of Kidspace, the children’s section of the paper,
The News Times, and has written book reviews for The New York Times
and Kirkus and articles for School Library Journal. Her extensive
career as a teacher and librarian includes children’s librarian at Tuckahoe and
the head of technical services at Eastchester Public Library.
Natalie
Safir is the author of four collections of poetry: Moving into Seasons,
To Face the Inscription, Made Visible, and A Clear Burning: Poems
(2004). Her work has been widely published in literary journals and anthologies.
She has been an editor, lecturer and leader of writing groups for over twenty-five
years, teaches Memoir Writing at Neighborhood House in Tarrytown, and runs private
groups in her home. See her website at www.nsafircreativepassages.com.
Liana
Scalettar's fiction and poetry have appeared in American Short Fiction,
Arts & Letters, Drunken Boat, Failbetter, Gutcult, LIT, Nidus, Sentence and
Washington Square. Awards include a Pushcart Prize nomination, a Glimmer
Train prize, and the Amanda Davis scholarship given by the Wesleyan Writers' Conference,
as well as residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Santa Fe Art Institute, and Vermont
Studio Center. She teaches at Queens College.
Mimi
Schwartz is the author of two memoirs, Thoughts from a Queen-sized Bed
(a JCC pick as one of the four best nonfiction books in 2002) and Good Neighbors,
Bad Times - Echoes of My Father's German Village (2008). She has also published
three books on writing, most recently, Writing True: the Art and Craft of Creative
Nonfiction, co-authored with Sondra Perl for Houghton Mifflin. Her short work
has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York
Times, Fourth Genre, Calyx, Tikkun, Brevity, Jewish Week, Puerto del Sol,
and Florida Review, among others. Six essays have been Notables in Best
American Essays; several have won prizes in creative nonfiction and been widely
anthologized. Schwartz was born in Forest Hills, Queens, and attended the University
of Michigan and N.Y.U. for a BA degree. She married at 21, headed west, and finished
her MA degree at U.C.L.A.. Seventeen years later, with her two children in high
school, she received a doctorate at Rutgers University and joined the writing
faculty of Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, where she taught nonfiction
and creative nonfiction for 24 years. www.mimischwartz.net
Peter
Selgin's first book of short stories, Drowning Lessons, won the Flannery
O'Connor Award for fiction and was published by the University of Georgia Press
in 2008. His novel, Life Goes to the Movies, was runner up for AWP Award,
twice a finalist for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship, and is forthcoming
in April from Dzanc Books. His book on fiction writing, By Cunning & Craft:
Sound Advice and Practical Wisdom for Fiction Writers, published by Writer's
Digest Books, 2007, has been called “a masterpiece of writing about writing.”
A second book on the craft of fiction is due out from the same publisher in 2010.
Selgin’s stories and essays have appeared in dozens of publications, including
Ploughshares, Salon.com, The Sun, Glimmer Train Stories, Missouri Review, Boulevard,
Poets & Writers, and the Colorado Review, as well as in the anthologies
Our Roots Are Deep With Passion (Other Books, 2006), Writing Fiction
(Bloomsbury, 2003), and Best American Essays 2006. He edits the journal
Alimentum: The Literature of Food and leads an annual writing workshop
in Italy. www.peterselgin.com
David
Surface was awarded a 2005 Fellowship in Non Fiction Literature from the New
York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), and was also nominated for the NYFA Prize.
He has also twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in fiction. His essays
and stories have been published in a wide variety of print and on-line journals,
including DoubleTake, North American Review, Crazyhorse,
Fiction and Slow Trains. He is a founder of WriteMind, a creative
language arts program for teachers and students of grades 4 - 12, and is leader
of The F*E*G*S Writing Project which conducts writing workshops in mental health
facilities throughout New York City. http://www.davidsurface.net
Susan
Tiberghien, an American writer living in Switzerland, has published three
memoirs-Looking for Gold; Circling to the Center; and Footsteps,
A European Album--along with numerous narrative essays in journals and anthologies.
Her new book, One Year to A Writing Life, Twelve Lessons to Deepen Every Writer's
Art and Craft, published by Da Capo Press (Perseus Books), is "an inspiring
window into the world of writing." She teaches at graduate programs, C.G. Jung
Centers, writers' conferences in the USA and in Europe. She directs the Geneva
Writers' Group and the biennial Geneva Writers' Conferences. www.susantiberghien.com
Charlotte
Walsh has taught poetry workshops at the Lakeland Schools Children’s Center,
in New York City schools in cooperation with the Lehman College Art Gallery, The
Scarsdale Young Writers’ Conference and the Armonk Library. Her works have been
published in “Into the Teeth of the Wind” and by other small presses.
Jane
Willis has written plays (her one-act Slam! has been performed all
over the U.S. and, most recently, in India), screenplays (including The It
Girl for Martin Poll Productions), and for daytime dramas (garnering an Emmy
Nomination along with her writing team for As the World Turns). She taught
play-writing for eight years at Sarah Lawrence College and now focuses her teaching
efforts almost exclusively on middle school students.
Peter
Bricklebank has published fiction in The Alaska Quarterly Review, The American
Voice, Carolina Quarterly, Mid-American Review, Kansas Quarterly, Confrontation,
Fiction, Florida Review, Global City Review, and elsewhere. His nonfiction
has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, the American Book Review,
The Chicago Tribune, The Minnesota Review, ACM (Another Chicago Magazine),
and others. His work has been anthologized in The Breast and Short Story
Criticism, and he contributed the chapter on the essay and memoir in The
Portable MFA (Writers Digest, Cincinnati, 2006). He has been nominated for
a Pushcart Prize, received a New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in fiction,
and held residencies at the Fundacion Valparaiso (Spain) and the MacDowell Colony.
He's taught writing workshops in Oaxaca and Morelia (Mexico). He's also taught
at New York University, Hunter College, the Mercantile Library, the Open Center,
privately, and elsewhere. In 2007, he completed a year as Nonfiction writer-in-residence
at Central Connecticut State University.
Kurt
Brown, the author of five chapbooks and four full-length poetry collections,
is founding director of the Aspen Writers Conference, now in its 30th year, and
the editor of three annuals which gather outstanding lectures from writers conferences
and festivals. He served for years on the board of Sarabande Books and is currently
on the board of Poets House. He teaches in the MFA Program at Sarah Lawrence College
and at writers’ conferences, retreats and other venues across the U. S.
Suzanne
Cleary has an MA in Writing from Washington University and a Ph.D. in Literature
and Criticism from Indiana University in Pennsylvania. She is Associate Professor
of English at SUNY Rockland. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Georgia
Review, and other journals, and she recently won a Pushcart Prize. Her first
book, Keeping Time, hailed by Billy Collins, is now in its second printing,
and her second collection, Trick Pear, was published last year by Carnegie
Mellon.
Brenda
Connor-Bey, the 2002 recipient of the Outstanding Arts Educator award from
the Westchester Fund for Women and Girls, has long been active in writer-residency
programs throughout the region, often through the Westchester Arts Council. She
is the recipient of many grants and awards (including four PEN awards), and in
2006 was named the first poet laureate of the town of Greenburgh, New York. She
has had her work published and performed widely, and has just completed a collection
of poetry and a young adult novel and is working on a novel. 
M.
Doretta Cornell taught writing and literature at Pace University, Pleasantville,
for many years, and she is a member of the Poetry Caravan. Her poetry has appeared
in Earth's Daughters, Inkwell, Commonweal, among others,
and in the anthologies (en)compass and Literature 5th Edition (McGraw-Hill).
Joanne
Dobson is the author of the Professor Karen Pelletier mystery series from
Doubleday and Poisoned Pen Press. In 2001 she was named Noted Author of the Year
by the RAAS section of the New York Library Association. Until recently she taught
literature and creative writing at Fordham University and she has taught at Amherst
College and at Tufts University. Joanne now writes full time. 
Karen
Finley is an Arts Professor at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts
in the department of Art and Public Policy. Her raw and transgressive performances
have long provoked controversy and debate. She has appeared and exhibited internationally
her visual art, performances and plays. Her performances have been presented at
Lincoln Center, New York City, The Guthrie, Minneapolis, American Repertory Theatre,
The ICA in London, Harvard, The Steppenwolf in Chicago, and The Bobino in Paris.
Her artworks are in numerous collections and museums including the Pompidou in
Paris and Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Finley attended the San Francisco
Art Institute receiving an MFA and honorary PHD. She has received numerous awards
and fellowships including a Guggenheim, 2 Obies, 2 Bessies, MS. Magazine Woman
Of The Year, NARAL Person of the Year (which she shared with Anna Quindlen and
Walter Cronkite), The Edwin Booth Award, The Lee Reynolds Award, NYSCA and NEA
Fellowships. She has appeared in independent films and in the film Philadelphia.
Finley has authored and or edited seven books including Shock Treatment
(City Lights 1990), Enough is Enough (Poseidon, Simon and Schuster 1993),
Living It Up (Doubleday 1996), Pooh Unplugged (Smart Art Books 1999),
A Different Kind Of Intimacy: The Collected Writings of Karen Finley (Thunders
Mouth Press 2000), and edited and contributed to Aroused, A Collection of Erotic
Writings (Thunders Mouth Press 2001) and George and Martha (Verso 2006).
She written essays and commentary for The Los Angeles Times, The Village Voice,
Huffingtonpost.com and other journals.
B.
K. Fischer is a poet, critic, and teacher. Her first poetry manuscript, The
Anatomy Archives, was a finalist for the 2009 National Poetry Series, as well
as the high finalist for the 2008 and 2009 FIELD Prizes, and she was nominated
for Best New Poets 2009. Her poems were published this year in The Hopkins
Review, FIELD, Literary Mama, and Westchester Magazine, and her work
has also appeared previously in The Paris Review, Boston Review, Ekphrasis,
Southwest Review, Western Humanities Review, and other journals. A monologue
from The Anatomy Archives was performed as a play at the Hudson Valley
Center for Contemporary Art in Peekskill, New York, in January 2008. Her second
manuscript, Mutiny Gallery, was a finalist for the 2009 ABZ Prize. She
is the author of a critical study, Museum Mediations: Reframing Ekphrasis in
Contemporary American Poetry (Routledge, 2006), and a frequent contributor
of review essays to Boston Review. She holds an M.F.A. in poetry from Columbia
University and a Ph.D. in English and American Literature from New York University,
and has taught writing and literature at Columbia, NYU, and Marymount College.
She currently teaches at the Neuberger Museum of Art and the Hudson Valley Writers'
Center in Sleepy Hollow, New York, where she lives with her husband and three
children.
Kate
Gallagher, a poet and former children's book editor, has taught at venues
which include the Scarsdale schools, the Kids' Short Story Connection in Greenburgh,
the Northern Westchester Center for the Arts. In addition to teaching children
and young adults, she also works with the developmentally disabled and women with
eating disorders. She has studied with Jorie Graham and Marvin Bell at the University
of Iowa and is a member of the Poetry Caravan. 
Eamon
Grennan was
born in Dublin in 1941 and educated at UCD, where he studied English and Italian,
and Harvard, where he received his PhD in English. His volumes of poetry include
Matter of Fact (2008), What Light There Is & Other Poems, (North
Point Press, 1989); Wildly for Days (1983); What Light There Is
(1987); As If It Matters (1991); So It Goes (1995); Selected
and New Poems (2000); Still Life with Waterfall (2001) and The Quick
of It (2005). His books of poetry are published in the United States by Graywolf
Press, and in Ireland by Gallery Press. Other publications include Leopardi:
Selected Poems (Princeton 1997), and Facing the Music: Irish Poetry in
the 20th Century, a collection of essays on modern Irish poetry. His poems,
reviews, and essays have appeared in many magazines both in Ireland and the US.
Grennan has given lectures
and workshops in colleges and universities in the US, including courses for the
graduate programs at Columbia and NYU. During 2002 he was the Heimbold Professor
of Irish Studies at Villanova University. His grants and prizes in the United
States include awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment
for the Humanities, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Leopardi: Selected Poems
received the 1997 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, and Still Life with
Waterfall was the recipient of the 2003 Lenore Marshall Award for Poetry from
the American Academy of Poets. His poems have been awarded a number of Pushcart
prizes. Grennan taught at Vassar College for thirty years where he was the Dexter
M. Ferry Jr. Professor of English. Grennan
divides his time between the US and the west of Ireland. He writes in both the
ancient tradition of mournful remembrance in attention to the natural world and
the modern impulse to seize and preserve the moment. He returns to Ireland yearly
from his current home in New York State for "voice transfusions." He attributes
his "amphibian" sensibility to this dual life. "I have a double sense of things,
but I tend to write about what's under my nose. I write about here when I'm here
and when I go back to Ireland I write about what's there. I regard myself not
as in exile, but as a migrant. That's what attracted me, in some of my early poems,
to birds. My becoming a poet--in this particular incarnation anyway--was not unconnected
to someone giving me the present of a pair of binoculars."
Herbert
Hadad’s work has appeared in numerous publications, including The New York
Times, Poets & Writers, Reader’s Digest, Parenting, and Yankee. They
are also collected in several books, including The Random House Guide to Writing
and Sephardic American Voices: Two Hundred Years of a Literary Legacy.
He has received several awards for magazine writing and the New York Press Club
award for feature writing. One of his essays was included as a “notable essay”
in The Best American Essays 2003. A collection of his essays, Finding
Immortality: The Making of One American Family, will be out soon. Most recently,
his writing has appeared in The International Herald Tribune and The
Journal News. 
Susan
Hodara has been
writing memoir for over 15 years. Her work has been published in literary journals
and anthologies including Illness & Grace, Terror & Transformation; The
Westchester Review; I Wanna Be Sedated: 30 Writers on Parenting Teenagers;
salon.com; Cesium; and others. She has taught a private weekly memoir
workshop since 2003. She is also a freelance journalist and editor whose work
has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Communication
Arts, Harvard Magazine, Wesleyan Magazine, and others. With
a Bachelor's degree from Harvard University and a Master's from Columbia University,
she is Consulting Editor for Davler Media, the publisher of eight local parenting
newspapers. 
Amy
Holman is the author of An Insider’s Guide to Creative Writing Programs:
Choosing the Right MFA or MA Program, Colony, Residency, Grant or Fellowship,
and is a literary consultant to writers and literary groups. Her essays on the
writing business can be found in the anthologies, Making the Perfect Pitch
and The Practical Writer, and on the New York Foundation for the Arts web
site. She is the associate editor of Get Your First Book Published, and
its earlier edition, First Book Market. Her poetry has won the 2004 Dream
Horse Press National Poetry Chapbook Competition and been selected for The
Best American Poetry 1999. Poetry and nonfiction have been nominated for Pushcart
prizes and published in numerous anthologies and magazines. 
Marthe
Jocelyn says she reads everything she can get her hands on in children’s literature
“where some of the best writing being published today is found—and should be found.”
She is the author-illustrator of several picture books and the author of three
chapter books (The Invisible Day, The Invisible Harry, and The Invisible
Enemy) and two works of historical fiction, Earthly Astonishments,
and Mable Riley: A Reliable Record of Humdrum, Peril and Adventure. She
also wrote a non-fiction book, A Home for Foundlings, about the Foundling
Hospital in London, England, and edited an anthology of short stories for middle
grade readers called Secrets. In 2005, she was winner of the first annual
TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award for Mable Riley. 
Mindy
Lewis is the author of Life Inside: A Memoir (Atria Books 2002,
Washington Square Press 2003). Her essays have been published in Newsweek,
Lilith, Body & Soul, and Poets & Writers magazines, and in
anthologies. She is also editor of DIRT: The Quirks, Habits and Passions of
Keeping House (Seal Press 2009). A finalist in The Writer's Voice 1999 New
Voice Creative Non-Fiction Awards, she has been a resident at Vermont Studio Center,
Palenville Interarts, Byrdcliffe Colony, and Banff Center for the Arts. She teaches
writing workshops at The Writer’s Voice of the Westside YMCA and at Brooklyn
College. 
Rebecca
McClanahan has published five volumes of poetry, three books about writing,
and a collection of personal essays, The Riddle Song and Other Rememberings,
which recently won the Glasgow Prize from Shenandoah. Her work has appeared
in The Best American Essays, The Best American Poetry, Georgia
Review, Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. McClanahan,
who received a Pushcart Prize in Fiction, the Wood prize from Poetry, the
Carter prize for the Essay from Shenandoah, and a 2003 New York Foundation
for the Arts fellowship, lives with her husband in New York City and can be reached
at 
Mara
Mills has been a professional storyteller, stage director, producer and arts
educator for more than twenty years. She is the author of Rites of Passage,
an integrated curriculum on script writing (National Middle School's Association
Journal, February 1990), and a chapter on children as storytellers in the text
Integrating Curriculum through the Arts, as well as a book of poetry, Ashes
and Tea. Recently, she worked with Domestic Abuse Survivors to create a choral
script. Mara created Drama Departments for The Mead School in Greenwich and The
Learning Community in Westport and was the Artistic Director of the successful
Herbert Mark Newman Theatre from 1991 - 2004. She received the 1996 award for
outstanding service to theatre from the national theatre association and the 2007
Cab Calloway award for her work in theatre in Westchester. 
Mary
Carroll Moore's novel, Qualities of Light, was just published by Spinsters
Ink and has been nominated for a PEN/Faulkner Award. She has also published twelve
nonfiction books (including How to Master Change in Your Life: Sixty-Seven
Ways to Handle Life’s Toughest Moments, now in its third printing, and Healthy
Cooking, winner of a Julia Child award). Your Book Starts Here: Create,
Craft, and Sell Your First Novel, Memoir, or Nonfiction Book, based on her
“How to Plan, Write, and Develop a Book” writing workshops, will be released in
2010. A chapter from her second novel, Breathing Room, was a top-ten finalist
in the 2004 Loft Mentor Series in fiction, judged by Amy Bloom. She also won an
honorable mention in the 2005 McKnight Awards for Creative Prose. For twelve years
she was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist, and over 500 of her articles,
essays, poems, and short stories have appeared in publications such as the Boston
Globe, Quay: Journal of the Arts, American Artist, and American Health.
She has been featured in USA Today, the New York Times, and other
publications. As an editor and book doctor for major publishing houses since 1986,
she knows what it takes to write a successful book. She teaches writing at The
Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and other locations around the United States,
Canada, and Europe. 
Vijai
Nathan is a writer, actor, comedienne and former journalist. She tours nationally
with her one-woman show, “Good Girls Don’t, But Indian Girls Do” and this July
was featured at the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal. She was nominated best
comedian of ‘05 by South Asian Media Awards, was chosen one of the top ten comics
in the nation for the ‘04 NBC Stand-Up for Diversity Showcase in L. A., and was
named by Back Stage Magazine as one of the top ten stand-up comics in ‘03.
TV appearances include: ABC’s 20/20, PBS, The Oxygen Network, the BBC and
UK Comedy Central. 
Joan
Potter’s nonfiction writing has been published in numerous magazines and newspapers.
Her personal essays appear in the anthologies Rooted in Rock, Living
North Country, and Illness & Grace, Terror & Transformation, and in
the upcoming journal, Stone Canoe. She is the author of three books, including
African American Firsts: Famous, Little-Known and Unsung Triumphs of Blacks
in America. She has edited, among other books, Growing Up Strong: Four
North Country Women Recall Their Lives, a collection of memoirs produced in
a writing workshop she led in the Adirondacks. She has also led workshops in a
New York State prison. The revised, updated edition of African American Firsts
will be published in December. She is working with four other writers on a collection
of memoirs about mothers.
Staton
Rabin has a BFA in Film from New York University (NYU), and has been a story
analyst to the film industry for 25 years. She lectures about guerilla screenplay
marketing for NYU and is a Senior Writer for scr(i)pt. She has taught screenwriting
aboard the Queen Mary 2 and for the HVWC. She also has three novels from Simon
& Schuster: Betsy and the Emperor (to be made into a movie starring Al
Pacino as Emperor Napoleon), Black Powder, and The Curse of the Romanovs.
Elizabeth
Sachs is the author of ten books for young adults and middle grade readers,
including The Boy Who Ate Dog Biscuits and Just Like Always. She
has served as editor of Kidspace, the children’s section of the paper,
The News Times, and has written book reviews for The New York Times
and Kirkus and articles for School Library Journal. Her extensive
career as a teacher and librarian includes children’s librarian at Tuckahoe and
the head of technical services at Eastchester Public Library. 
Natalie
Safir is the author of four collections of poetry: Moving into Seasons,
To Face the Inscription, Made Visible, and A Clear Burning: Poems
(2004). Her work has been widely published in literary journals and anthologies.
She has been an editor, lecturer and leader of writing groups for over twenty-five
years, teaches Memoir Writing at Neighborhood House in Tarrytown, and runs private
groups in her home. See her website at 
Liana
Scalettar's fiction and poetry have appeared in American Short Fiction,
Arts & Letters, Drunken Boat, Failbetter, Gutcult, LIT, Nidus, Sentence and
Washington Square. Awards include a Pushcart Prize nomination, a Glimmer
Train prize, and the Amanda Davis scholarship given by the Wesleyan Writers' Conference,
as well as residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Santa Fe Art Institute, and Vermont
Studio Center. She teaches at Queens College.
Mimi
Schwartz is the author of two memoirs, Thoughts from a Queen-sized Bed
(a JCC pick as one of the four best nonfiction books in 2002) and Good Neighbors,
Bad Times - Echoes of My Father's German Village (2008). She has also published
three books on writing, most recently, Writing True: the Art and Craft of Creative
Nonfiction, co-authored with Sondra Perl for Houghton Mifflin. Her short work
has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York
Times, Fourth Genre, Calyx, Tikkun, Brevity, Jewish Week, Puerto del Sol,
and Florida Review, among others. Six essays have been Notables in Best
American Essays; several have won prizes in creative nonfiction and been widely
anthologized. Schwartz was born in Forest Hills, Queens, and attended the University
of Michigan and N.Y.U. for a BA degree. She married at 21, headed west, and finished
her MA degree at U.C.L.A.. Seventeen years later, with her two children in high
school, she received a doctorate at Rutgers University and joined the writing
faculty of Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, where she taught nonfiction
and creative nonfiction for 24 years. 
Peter
Selgin's first book of short stories, Drowning Lessons, won the Flannery
O'Connor Award for fiction and was published by the University of Georgia Press
in 2008. His novel, Life Goes to the Movies, was runner up for AWP Award,
twice a finalist for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship, and is forthcoming
in April from Dzanc Books. His book on fiction writing, By Cunning & Craft:
Sound Advice and Practical Wisdom for Fiction Writers, published by Writer's
Digest Books, 2007, has been called “a masterpiece of writing about writing.”
A second book on the craft of fiction is due out from the same publisher in 2010.
Selgin’s stories and essays have appeared in dozens of publications, including
Ploughshares, Salon.com, The Sun, Glimmer Train Stories, Missouri Review, Boulevard,
Poets & Writers, and the Colorado Review, as well as in the anthologies
Our Roots Are Deep With Passion (Other Books, 2006), Writing Fiction
(Bloomsbury, 2003), and Best American Essays 2006. He edits the journal
Alimentum: The Literature of Food and leads an annual writing workshop
in Italy. 
David
Surface was awarded a 2005 Fellowship in Non Fiction Literature from the New
York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), and was also nominated for the NYFA Prize.
He has also twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in fiction. His essays
and stories have been published in a wide variety of print and on-line journals,
including DoubleTake, North American Review, Crazyhorse,
Fiction and Slow Trains. He is a founder of WriteMind, a creative
language arts program for teachers and students of grades 4 - 12, and is leader
of The F*E*G*S Writing Project which conducts writing workshops in mental health
facilities throughout New York City. 
Susan
Tiberghien, an American writer living in Switzerland, has published three
memoirs-Looking for Gold; Circling to the Center; and Footsteps,
A European Album--along with numerous narrative essays in journals and anthologies.
Her new book, One Year to A Writing Life, Twelve Lessons to Deepen Every Writer's
Art and Craft, published by Da Capo Press (Perseus Books), is "an inspiring
window into the world of writing." She teaches at graduate programs, C.G. Jung
Centers, writers' conferences in the USA and in Europe. She directs the Geneva
Writers' Group and the biennial Geneva Writers' Conferences. 
Charlotte
Walsh has taught poetry workshops at the Lakeland Schools Children’s Center,
in New York City schools in cooperation with the Lehman College Art Gallery, The
Scarsdale Young Writers’ Conference and the Armonk Library. Her works have been
published in “Into the Teeth of the Wind” and by other small presses.
Jane
Willis has written plays (her one-act Slam! has been performed all
over the U.S. and, most recently, in India), screenplays (including The It
Girl for Martin Poll Productions), and for daytime dramas (garnering an Emmy
Nomination along with her writing team for As the World Turns). She taught
play-writing for eight years at Sarah Lawrence College and now focuses her teaching
efforts almost exclusively on middle school students.