Read more about NYWW's Faculty
HAL ACKERMAN
​Hal Ackerman’s first novel, Stein, Stoned, won the Lovey Award for best first novel in 2011.  Stein, Stung, his second novel, was published in 2012.  His short stories have appeared in North Dakota Review; New Millennium Writings; Southeast Review (Robert Olen Butler’s pick for World’s Best Short Short Story); Crab Creek Review; The Pinch, and most recently in the current Idaho Review, in the company of Ann Beattie, T.C Boyle, Joyce Carol Oates, Jess Walter, and a few other drop-worthy names. Testosterone: How Prostate Cancer Made a Man of Me won the William Saroyan Centennial Award for Drama, and was named Best Play at the 2011 United Solo Festival in New York. Until his retirement in 2015, he served as co-area head of the UCLA screenwriting program. His students have won every major award. Scores of screenplays written in his classes have been bought or optioned; at most recent count, thirteen have become films. His 2003 (Tallfellow Press) book on craft, Write Screenplays That Sell: The Ackerman Way (despite having the world’s most pretentious title), is the text of choice in a growing number of screenwriting programs around the country.  
​Website: www.halackermanwriting.com.
NISH AMARNATH
Nish Amarnath is an award-winning New York-based author and journalist whose latest book, Victims For Sale, published by HarperCollins, is a bestselling psychological thriller. Nominated for the Bombay Film Festival Word-to-Screen Award, her novel has been critically reviewed as reminiscent of a David Fincher movie and likened to the voice of Megan Abbott.

Ms. Amarnath has conducted writing and storytelling workshops and lectures at multiple U.S. and overseas forums, including U.S. State Department affiliates, and British Council outposts. She has spoken at the United Nations, as well as at Algonkian Writer Conferences. Her articles have appeared in: The Wall Street Journal; The Big Thrill Magazine; MSN Money; Yahoo Finance; TheStreet.com; and International Business Times. She was nominated as an outstanding journalist as part of the Alerian MLP Awards across North America in 2017.
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She majored in Economics with Distinction and holds post-graduate degrees in media sociology and journalism from the London School of Economics, where she was a Margot Naylor Scholar; and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism, where she was a James W. Robins Reporting Fellow.
ROBERT ANASI
​Robert Anasi is the acclaimed author of The Gloves: A Boxing Chronicle and The Last Bohemia: Scenes from the Life of Williamsburg, Brooklyn (FSG). His journalism, interviews and criticism have appeared in the New York Times, Virginia Quarterly Review, New York Observer, Los Angeles Times, LA Review of Books, Salon, among many others. “First Stripe,” a nonfiction story, appears in The Bittersweet Science (University of Chicago Press). He’s a regular reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement. About his work, Anasi says, “I try to tell stories about marginalized people and communities that go beyond headlines and stereotypes, no matter if my subjects are boxers, snitches, bohemians, campesinos in the Peruvian highlands or the now vanished blue-collar Irish Catholic neighborhood in which I was raised. In every case, this work relies on long immersion, both through research and sharing the daily lives of my subjects. I often wish there was a faster path to empathy, understanding and seasoned prose but, as a friend once said, if it was easy, everybody would do it.”
GRAY BASNIGHT
Gray Basnight is the author of the crime novel The Cop with the Pink Pistol and The Civil War historical novel Shadows in the Fire. He worked for almost three decades in New York City in broadcast news at WOR, WINS, ABC, and Bloomberg News. His positions in both radio and television have included producer, newswriter, editor, reporter, and newscaster. He’s also been a freelance feature writer for The New York Daily News.
Website: graybasnight.com
Contact: graybasnight@gmail.com
LAURA GERINGER BASS
As publisher, editor, story advisor and writer, Laura Geringer Bass has collaborated with many celebrated authors and artists in the field of children’s books. She has worked with numerous publishing houses and entertainment studios including HarperCollins, Simon and Schuster, Scholastic, Houghton Mifflin, Hyperion/Disney, Dreamworks, Fox, and CBS. Laura Geringer Books, an award-winning imprint of HarperCollins, sold over fifty million books worldwide, including the If You Give a Mouse a Cookie franchise, and modern day classics by William Joyce, Brian Selznick and others.

Laura Geringer Bass is the author of twenty books for children including the bestselling A Three Hat Day, an ALA Notable Book illustrated by Arnold Lobel, a Top Ten featured selection on LeVar Burton’s Reading Rainbow. Her YA fantasy, Sign of the Qin, an ALA Best Book, was shortlisted for the Printz award. Myth Men, her popular series of graphic novels, was adapted by CBS as an animated TV show. Her love of story informs her service on the board of First Book, a non-profit organization that has delivered over one hundred million books into the hands of children in need. Her new novel, The Girl With More Than One Heart is due out from Abrams in Spring 2018. Visit Laura at : http://www.laurageringerbass.com/.
AALIYAH BILAL
Aaliyah Bilal is a fiction/non-fiction writer. Previously she was a recipient of the Shansi Memorial Fellowship at Yunnan University where for two years she conducted research among Hui Zu Muslims. Her work has been published with the Asian American Literary Review, The Michigan Quarterly, The Rumpus and the forthcoming New Moons: An Anthology of Muslim American Writing. A graduate of The School of Oriental and African Studies at The University of London, she lives between Shanghai and the U.S.
SUSAN BREEN
​Susan Breen is the author of the novel The Fiction Class, published in February 2008 by Plume, a division of Penguin, and Headline Review (UK). MORE Magazine named TFC a ”Don’t Miss Book,” IN TOWN Magazine featured it as its ”Mother’s Day choice,” and dearreader.com chose it as its novel of the week. In addition, Susan holds the distinction of being one of the first people to sell her work through the New York Pitch and Shop Conference. Her articles have been published by The Writer and Writer’s Digest; her short stories have been published by more than a dozen literary magazines, among them anderbo.com, The Chattahoochee Review and American Literary Review and she has taught fiction classes for the last six years. She has also worked as a reporter for FORTUNE Magazine and an editor at the Foreign Policy Association.
YVONNE CASSIDY
Yvonne Cassidy was born and raised in Dublin, Ireland and moved to New York in 2011. Yvonne is the author of three novels published by Hachette: The Other Boy, What Might Have Been Me and How Many Letters Are In Goodbye? Her first novel, The Other Boy was also published as a French translation under the title L’Autre Frère. In 2011, Yvonne was profiled by leading UK newspaper The Sunday Independent as one of eight young Irish writers to watch as part of their “A New Wild Wave of Irish Writing” feature.

In addition to fiction, Yvonne has written for leading Irish magazine and newspaper titles as well as writing for television. She has taught creative writing extensively and currently heads up the creative writing program at Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen–the largest emergency food program in New York City–where she works with homeless and other marginalized writers.
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Yvonne is a member of the Honorary Committee of writing non-profit Narrative 4. She regularly participates in literary events both in Ireland and the US. She lives in Manhattan with her wife and is currently working on her fourth novel.
Visit her website at www.yvonnecassidy.com.
CHRISTINA CHIU
​Christina Chiu is the winner of the James Alan McPherson Award for her novel Beauty, which was also selected as a Kirkus Best Books of 2020. She is also author of Troublemaker and Other Saints, published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons.  Troublemaker was a nominee for the Stephen Crane First Fiction Award and winner of the Asian American Literary Award. Chiu has published in Tin House, The New Guard, Washington Square, The MacGuffin, Charlie Chan is Dead 2, Not the Only One, Washington Square, and has won literary prizes from Playboy, New Stone Circle, El Dorado Writers’ Guild, World Wide Writers. Chiu hosts the virtual Let’s Talk Books Author Series and curates and co-hosts the Pen Parentis Literary Salon in New York City. She is a founding member of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. She received her MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. Chiu is a shoe designer.
JUNE RIFKIN CLARK
June Rifkin Clark is a New York-based writer and playwright and the author of The Everything Baby Name Book. She is also the co-author of Signature For Success: How Handwriting Can Influence Your Career, Your Relationships, and Your Life, The Complete Book of Astrology, and The Essential Tarot. June also edited several books, including Rebirth: The Journey of Pregnancy After a Loss by Joey Miller, MSW, Healing Your Child’s Brain by Matthew and Carol Newell, and Churrasco: Grilling the Brazilian Way by Evandro Caregnato. Her play, Separation Anxiety, premiered at the Brimmer Street Theatre in Boston and is published and licensed by New Stage Press. A monologue from the play is featured in the book One on One: The Best Women’s Monologues of the 21st Century.
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Before becoming a published author, June worked in cable TV marketing and promotion, receiving a Cable ACE (Emmy Award), among other industry merits. After receiving a Master’s Degree in Writing and Publishing from Emerson College, she became a literary agent. For over a decade, she represented hundreds of writers and books, including the NYWW guide The Portable MFA in Creative Writing. June currently heads Get There Media, a company that provides editorial and platform building services to authors and experts.
LISA COCHRAN, intern (emeritus)
Lisa Cochran is interning for New York Writers Workshop this spring. She is a junior at New York University, studying politics within the Global Liberal Studies program with minors in creative writing and French. Before moving to New York City to attend NYU, she grew up in Ames, Iowa to a Russian mother and American father, meaning she is sympathetic to both sides of the Cold War. Cochran enjoys reading, writing fiction, wandering around aimlessly, and making different variations of oatmeal. Some of her favorite writers include: Milan Kundera, Leo Tolstoy, Alexander Pushkin, and Sylvia Plath. After her time at NYU, she hopes to attend graduate school (hopefully somewhere abroad) and then ultimately become a writer. Previously, she has worked for the Washington Square News and NYU Florence’s La Pietra Dialogues. She is currently a prose editor for NYU’s undergraduate literary magazine — West 10th.
ANN MARIE CUNNINGHAM
Ann Marie Cunningham, veteran journalist and winner of a 2020 Lipman Fellowship in Human and Civil Rights Reporting from Columbia Journalism School, is spending her fellowship at the Mississippi Center for Investigative Journalism (MCIR) in Jackson, Mississippi, where she is reporting on domestic violence during the pandemic and supervising students from Millsaps College who are interested in journalism. She says Jackson is indeed 'hotter than a pepper sprout,' with stories everywhere. She trained to lead writing workshops in which members can produce new writing for any genre, using a method developed by poet Pat Schneider, author of Writing Alone and with Others. Since 2013, she has led writing workshops for teens and adults at the New York Public Library. She is co-author of the best-selling Ryan White: My Own Story, about the Indiana teen with HIV who sued to go back to school and won. 
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PATTY DANN
Patty Dann has published four novels, The Wright Sister, Mermaids, Starfish and Sweet & Crazy. Her work has been translated into French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Chinese, Korean and Japanese. Mermaids was made into a movie, starring Cher, Winona Ryder and Christina Ricci.

Dann is the author of  three non-fiction books: The Butterfly Hours, which was chosen as one of the “Best Books for Writers” by Poets & Writers Magazine.  Dann also wrote The Goldfish Went on Vacation: A Memoir of Loss, which received a Foreword Indie Gold Award for Family & Relationships, and The Baby Boat: A Memoir of Adoption. 
 
Dann’s articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Science Monitor, O Magazine, The Oregon Quarterly, Redbook, More, Forbes Woman, Poets & Writers Magazine, The Writers’ Handbook,  Dirt: The Quirks, Habits and Passions of Keeping House, and  This I Believe: On Motherhood.”

New York Magazine named Dann one of the “Great Teachers of NYC.” She earned an MFA in writing from Columbia University and a B.A. from the University of Oregon. She has taught at the Fairfield County Writers’ Studio, Sarah Lawrence Writing Institute and the West Side YMCA in NYC. Visit Patty Dann’s website:  http://pattydann.com
RUTH DANON
Ruth Danon's most recent book, WORD HAS IT, was published by Nirala Series in March, 2018. She is also the author of LIMITLESS TINY BOAT (2015, BlazeVOX), and much earlier, TRIANGULATION FROM A KNOWN POINT and LIVING WITH THE FIREMAN (a chapbook). Her poetry and prose have appeared in many publications in the US and abroad, including Rain Taxi, Largehearted Boy, Fence, BOMB, The Paris Review, Barrow Street, Crayon, Tupelo Quarterly, and many others. Her work has been anthologized in Best American Poetry 2002 (selected by Robert Creeley), Eternal Snow (2018), and Resist Much, Obey Little (2018.) She graduated from Bard College and received her Ph.D from the University of Connecticut. For 23 years she taught in the Creative Writing Program she designed and directed for NYU’s McGhee Division, the (then) undergraduate college for adult students. That program was dissolved in May 2017 and now Ruth Danon teaches in the Hudson Valley, where she lives, and in New York City. She is founder of Live Writing, a project devoted to teaching, performance, and curating of poetry and is a member of New York Writers Workshop and the Urban Range Poetry Collective.
SUSAN MUADDI DARRAJ
​Susan Muaddi Darraj is a fiction writer and English professor. She teaches creative writing in the graduate programs at Johns Hopkins University and Fairfield University. Her short story collection, A Curious Land: Stories from Home, was named the winner of the AWP Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction.   It also won the 2016 Arab American Book Award, a 2016 American Book Award, and was shortlisted for a Palestine Book Award. 

Her previous short story collection, The Inheritance of Exile, was published in 2007 by University of Notre Dame Press. In 2018, she was named a Ford Fellow by USA Artists. Susan also is a two-time recipient of an Individual Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council. She has also been awarded a Ruby’s Artist Grant from the Greater Baltimore Cultural
Alliance and a grant from the Sustainable Arts Foundation.

​In January 2020, Capstone Books launched her debut children’s chapter book series, Farah Rocks, about a smart, brave Palestinian American girl named Farah Hajjar. The series is written for 8-12 year olds. 

Follow Susan on Twitter and Insta (@SusanDarraj), where she tweets about writing, parenting, and social justice. 
ALLISON ESTES
Allison Estes grew up playing on Faulkner’s grave, which is about as steeped in literary heritage as you can get. She is an author, freelance editor and book doctor, and has taught writing to all ages, both privately and through the New York Writers Workshop in New York, the Yoknapatawpha Arts Council in Oxford, Mississippi, and various other venues for about a million years. Besides books, she loves horses, dogs and kids, so she has some of each. When she isn’t busy writing, editing, teaching and soccer-momming, if the grave of a famous author is not available, she plays softball as much as possible.
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Allison Estes has written fifteen middle grade and young adult novels, including the Short Stirrup Club series (Simon and Schuster.) Her most recent book (adult non-fiction) is Paw & Order: Dramatic Investigations by an Animal Cop on the Beat (Bowtie Press.) Her picture book, Izzy & Oscar (Sourcebooks), was released in April 2015.
Visit Allison’s website at http://www.allisonestes.com/.
LUIS H. FRANCIA
​Manila-born Luis H. Francia is a poet, nonfiction writer, and playwright. His latest volume of poetry is Tattered Boat, released in 2014. Previous collections include The Arctic Archipelago and Other Poems, Museum of Absences, and The Beauty of Ghosts. His poems have been translated into several languages. He has read at numerous literary festivals and most recently at the XI International Festival of Poetry (2015) held annually in Granada, Nicaragua. A collection of his most recent nonfiction, RE: Recollections, Reviews, Reflections, was released the summer of 2015. In 2002, he won both the PEN Open Book and the Asian American Writers literary awards. He is in the Library of America’s Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing. His full-length play, The Strange Case of Citizen de la Cruz, had its world premiere in San Francisco in 2012. He teaches at New York University and Hunter College. He has also taught at the City University of Hong Kong and has conducted workshops at, among other places, the St. Marks Poetry Project, the Asian American Writers Workshop, Curare in Mexico City, and St. Louis University in Baguio City. 
​LAURA ZINN FROMM
Laura Zinn Fromm is the author of Sweet Survival: Tales of Cooking & Coping, available from Amazon and BN.com and published by Greenpoint Press. Fromm holds an MFA in fiction writing from Columbia University and teaches fiction and creative non-fiction through New York Writers Workshop. She has taught at Columbia and Montclair State University. A former editor at Business Week magazine, she is a winner of the Clarion Award and the Newspaper Guild’s Page One Award for Labor Reporting. Visit her at Laurazinnfromm.com and flawedmom.com.
JULIANN GAREY
​Juliann Garey is a journalist, novelist, film critic, who has also sold screenplays and original TV pilots to to Sony Pictures, NBC, CBS, Columbia TriStar Television and Lifetime TV. Her first novel, Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See (Soho Press), won the American Library Association 2014 Notable Books Award for Outstanding Fiction, was long-listed for the 2014 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and was one of NPR’s Best Books of 2013. She has been awarded fellowships in creative writing at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Vermont Studio Center. As a Journalist and film critic she has been on staff or contributed to over a dozen publications including The New York Times, Marie Claire, Glamour, More, Redbook, Entertainment Weekly, Elle, NY Magazine, The L.A. Times and appeared regularly on CNN She is a graduate of Yale University and The Columbia University School of Journalism. She lives in New York City.
DOUG GARR
Doug Garr has nearly four decades of experience as a journalist, author, and editor.  

With Stuffed: An Insider’s Look at Who’s (Really) Making America Fat (Ecco, 2009), Garr was co-author with Henry J. Cardello. Garr is the author of IBM Redux: Lou Gerstner and the Business Turnaround of the Decade, (HarperBusiness, 1999). He is also the author of Woz: The Prodigal Son of Silicon Valley, a biography of the cofounder of Apple Computer, and the co-author (with Mike Edelhart) of The Complete Computer Compendium (Avon), and Mr. Mint’s Guide to Investing in Baseball Cards and Collectibles (Warner, with Alan Rosen). Garr’s most personal work is a memoir, Between Heaven and Earth: An Adventure in Free Fall (Greenpoint Press, 2009). His ghostwriting work includes Declaring Independence: The Beginning of the End of the Two Party System, (Random House, 2008) andWhat Makes You Tick? How Successful People Do It — And What You Can Learn from Them (HarperCollins, 2009).
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Other credits include Business Week, Fortune’s Technology Review, GQ, Popular Science, Worth, New York, Strategy & Business, and MIT’s Technology Review. Essays have appeared in Newsweek, The East Hampton Star and the Op-Ed Page of The New York Times.
CLAIRE GARTNER, intern
Claire Gartner is working with the New York Writers Workshop as a Social Media Intern. She is from Baltimore, Maryland, land of crabs and Edgar Allen Poe. She is a rising sophomore at New York University in the liberal studies program. She plans to major in psychology with a minor in history. Claire is a member of the West 4th Street Review staff, the liberal studies literary arts magazine. At the moment she is also employed as a dog walker to affluent pups in lower Manhattan. In her free time she enjoys reading historical fiction and poetry, spending time in parks, and visiting (free) museums in the area. Some of her favorite authors at the moment are Ann Patchett, Celeste Ng, and Adrienne Rich.
MARK GOLDBLATT
Mark Goldblatt is a novelist, journalist and theologian as well as a professor at Fashion Institute of Technology of the State University of New York. His first novel, Africa Speaks, a satire of black urban culture, was published in 2002 by Permanent Press. Sloth, a comedic take on postmodernism, was published in 2010 by Greenpoint Press. A book of political commentary, Bumper Sticker Liberalism, followed in 2012 from HarperCollins. The Unrequited, a literary mystery from Five Star/Cengage, was published in 2013 — the same year that Random House released Twerp, a novel for young (and old) readers. Finding The Worm, a sequel to Twerp, was published by Random House in 2015. His most recent book was a collection of comic essays, Right Tool for the Job: A Memoir of Manly Concerns, by Liberty Island Press in 2017. Website: markgoldblatt.com
Samuel Haecker, intern
Samuel Haecker is a rising senior attending New York University majoring in English with honors, along with a minor in Creative Writing. Born in New Hampshire to a Colombian mother and German father, he lived in North Carolina and Frankfurt, Germany before moving to New York to attend NYU. He writes visual and experimental poetry and prose, and some of his favorite authors include Jorge Luis Borges, Franz Kafka, Italo Calvino, and Donald Barthelme. Other than reading and writing, he also enjoys folding origami and playing bass
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JUDITH HANNAN
Judith Hannan is the author of The Write Prescription: Telling Your Story to Live with and Beyond Illness and the memoir Motherhood Exaggerated. Her essays have appeared in The Washington Post, AARP: The Girlfriend, Narratively, Opera News, among other publications. She leads workshops for those affected by physical and/or mental illness, healthcare workers, the homeless, and those within the criminal justice system. She is a member of New York Writers Workshop, a writing mentor at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and serves on the Board of the Children’s Museum of Manhattan where she is also Writer-in-Residence.
BRONWEN HRUSKA
Before becoming Publisher of Soho Press, Bronwen Hruska worked as a journalist and screenwriter for 20 years. In addition to selling original movie and television scripts to Columbia Pictures, NBC and CBS, her writing has appeared in numerous publications including The New York Times, More, Entertainment Weekly, Cosmopolitan, and Good Housekeeping. Her first novel, Accelerated, was published in 2012 by Pegasus Books.
HELEN KAPLAN
​Helen Kaplan‘s short film Return to Sender has screened at over 20 festivals and received many awards. She has taught screenwriting and filmmaking at Barnard’s Pre-College Program, Hunter College, MediaBistro, The 92nd St Y/Makor, The New York Film Academy, and the International Film and Video Workshops in Maine. Helen also contributed a chapter on subplots for the screenwriting book Writing Movies. She has worked as a film editor and was an associate producer on the PBS documentary New York. Helen received an MFA in film from Columbia University.
LAURENCE KLAVAN
​Laurence Klavan wrote the novels, The Cutting Room and The Shooting Script, published by Ballantine Books. His novel, Mrs. White, co-written under a pseudonym, won the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. His graphic novels, City of Spies and Brain Camp, co-written with Susan Kim, were published by First Second Books at Macmillan, and their Young Adult fiction series, Wasteland, is currently being published by Harper Collins. His short work has been published in such print and online journals as The Alaska Quarterly, The Literary Review, Conjunctions, Natural Bridge, Gargoyle, Failbetter, Pank, Stickman Review, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, among many others, and a collection, ‘The Family Unit’ and Other Fantasies, has been published by Chizine Publications. He received two Drama Desk nominations for the book and lyrics to Bed and Sofa, the musical produced by the Vineyard Theater in New York and the Finborough Theatre in London. His one-act, The Summer Sublet, produced in the EST Marathon in New York, was published in Applause Books’ Best American Short Plays 2000-2001. His web site is LaurenceKlavan.com.
ROSS KLAVAN
Ross Klavan’s novella “Thump Gun Hitched” was published in 2016 in the compilation Triple Shot (along with Charles Salzberg and Tim O’Mara) by Down and Out Press. His darkly comic novel Schmuck was published by Greenpoint Press in 2014. His original screenplay for the film Tigerland starring Colin Farrell was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award.
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Klavan recently finished an adaption of John Bowers’ The Colony and has written scripts for Miramax, Intermedia, Walden Media, Paramount and TNT TV, among others. He moderated a conversation between Kurt Vonnegut and Lee Stringer which was later published as Like Shaking Hands with God; and his short stories have appeared in magazines and been produced by the BBC. An earlier novel, Trax, was published under a pseudonym. His play How I Met My (Black) Wife (Again), co-written with Ray Iannicelli, has been produced in New York City. He has worked as a newspaper and radio journalist in London and New York City, where he lives with his wife, the painter, Mary Jones.
ROBERT LASCARO
​Robert Lascaro is the design director of Greenpoint Press, where some of his book designs include: The House on Crash Corner, We’re Not Leaving (featured on 60 Minutes) and Starfish. He has worked as an art director at Scholastic, Ziff Davis, Thompson Reuters, and the Wall Street Journal. Before his career in publishing he worked as a financial analyst on Wall Street, a newspaper reporter and the manager of The Center for Public Cinema, which operated the repertory Bleecker Street and Carnegie Hall Cinemas. He has also worked as a lifeguard on the Jersey Shore, a Fuller Brush salesman and a street magician on 42nd Street. He is an Eagle Scout. 
VASILIS MANOUSAKIS
Vasilis Manousakis is a short-story writer, poet and translator, whose work has appeared in New American Writing, Hayden's Ferry Review, Barcelona Ink, Parentheses and Drunken Boat among others. He writes reviews and translates poetry and short stories for literary magazines and e-zines. He has been one of the founding members of Bonsai Stories, the blog directly linked to Planodion literary magazine. The blog is dedicated to Flash Fiction and work from many well-known writers from Greece, the United States and other countries has appeared there. These flash stories have been collected in two printed volumes so far and a special tribute to 9/11 stories has appeared in a third volume, in which Vasilis was in the editorial committee. He holds a Ph.D. in Contemporary American Poetry and currently teaches Creative Writing, Modern Poetry, Short Fiction and Literary Translation at the Hellenic American College, Athens, Greece. His focus on the human thought and behavior in his writings has led him to a Master's Program in Mental Health Counselling and he holds individual and group sessions with clients, specialising in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.  
SOFIA MARTINEZ, intern (emeritus)
Sofia Martinez Rivera is a Junior at New York University double majoring in Global Liberal Studies and Art History. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, she moved to the United States after Hurricane Maria in 2017, and has lived in Italy and presently, New York. She has been an opinion staff writer for the Washington Square News, having published three articles that cover a range of interests: her home country’s social and political dilemmas; intersectionality between history and contemporary issues; and current pop-cultural matters concerning political correctness and social consciousness. Her passions for art, history and community outreach initiatives have led her to organize non-profit projects like an Art Summer Camp located in a marginalized community in San Juan, PR; volunteer and intern at a home museum in Florence, Italy; and liaison for a digital platform dedicated to connect artists with other artists and document their work and story.
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HERMINE MEINHARD
Hermine Meinhard‘s book Bright Turquoise Umbrella, published by Tupelo Press, was a finalist for the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award. Her poems have appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Barrow Street, Drunken Boat, How2, La Petite Zine and Verse Daily among other journals; and have aired on WSUI Iowa City and KSFR Sante Fe. Other honors include being named a finalist for PSA’s Robert H. Winner Memorial Award, the grand prize for the Sue Saniel Elkind Poetry Award, a Pushcart Prize nomination and fellowships at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Blue Mountain Center and the Ragdale Foundation.

She has read her work widely in venues such as Live at Prairie Lights Bookstore, Hudson Valley Writers Center, the Kitchen, KGB Bar, Bowery Poetry Club and the Inspired Word, and has been interviewed and profiled by the online journals Margin and Chicago Post Modern Poetry. Former poetry editor of the literary journal 3rd bed, she is currently Adjunct Associate Professor of Humanities at New York University, and has been guest instructor at the Il Chiostro Workshops in Italy. She has an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College.

To learn more about her life and teaching, and to find links to an interview and poems, visit this site: http://www.theurbanrange.com/poet.php?id=7
KAROL NIELSEN
​Karol Nielsen is the author of the memoir, Black Elephants, selected as a New and Noteworthy Book by Poets & Writers and shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing in 2012. Excerpts were honored as Notable Essays in The Best American Essays in 2010 and 2005. Her poetry chapbook, This Woman I Thought I’d Be, includes poems from her collection, selected as a finalist for the Colorado Prize for Poetry in 2007. Her memoir and poetry have appeared in The Moment anthology and many publications. As a journalist, she contributed to Jane’s and Thomson Reuters’ magazines as a staff writer and editor, New York Newsday and the Stamford Advocate op-ed page as a freelance writer, the New York Times as a stringer, and others. She has served as senior, non-fiction, and contributing editor of Epiphany. She has taught at New York Writers Workshop and New York University.
VICKY OLIVER
​Vicky Oliver is the author of six “how-to” books for the stressed-out white-collar professional, including Bad Bosses, Crazy Coworkers & Other Office Idiots (Sourcebooks, 2008), 301 Smart Answers to Tough Interview Questions (Sourcebooks, 2005), and How to Live like a Millionaire (Without Having to be One) (Skyhorse, 2015). Her personal essays were published in Streetlight Magazine, Rubbertop Review, Griffel, and The Write Launch among others. Her historical novel, published under a pen name at an Indie press in 2017, won twenty awards. She teaches lively seminars on job-hunting, networking, and etiquette to college students and workers in transition. An active Brown University alumna, she received her MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from the New School in May 2022.
DAWN RAFFEL
Dawn Raffel’s newest book is The Strange case of Dr. Couney: How a Mysterious European Showman Saved Thousands of American Babies. Her illustrated memoir, The Secret Life of Objects was a Wall Street Journal bestseller. Previous books include a critically acclaimed novel, Carrying the Body and two story collections, Further Adventures in the Restless Universe and In the Year of Long Division. A longtime magazine editor, she helped launch O, The Oprah Magazine, where she was executive articles editor. She has also taught creative writing in the MFA program at Columbia University; at summer literary seminars in St. Petersburg, Russia; Montreal; and Vilnius, Lithuania; and at the Center for Fiction in New York. She now works as an independent editor and book reviewer.
THADDEUS RUTKOWSKI
Thaddeus Rutkowski grew up in central Pennsylvania and is a graduate of Cornell University and the Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of the books Tricks of Light, Border Crossings, Guess and Check, Violent Outbursts, Haywire, Tetched, and Roughhouse. Guess and Check received an Electronic Literature award for multicultural fiction. Haywire won the Members’ Choice Award, given by the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. His stories have appeared in Copper Nickel, Cosmonauts Avenue, Fiction, Fiction International, FRiGG, Hayden's Ferry Review, Identity Theory, The International Herald Tribune, The New York Times, Posit, Potomac Review, Sou'wester and many other journals. He teaches at Medgar Evers College and the Writer's Voice of the West Side YMCA and works as a staff copy editor for Artforum magazine. He received a fiction writing fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. He has been a resident writer at Yaddo, MacDowell and other colonies, and has been a sponsored reader in Berlin, Hong Kong and Singapore, as well as in a number of other cities. He lives with his wife, Randi Hoffman, in Manhattan. His website is www.thaddeusrutkowski.com.
CHARLES SALZBERG
Charles Salzberg is a magazine journalist and novelist. He’s the author of the Shamus Award nominated Swann’s Last Song, Swann Dives In, and Swann’s Lake of Despair, Swann’s Way Out and Swann’s Down, as well as Devil in the Hole, named one of the best crime novels of 2014 by Suspense magazine. His novel, Second Story Man, winner of the Beverly Hills Book Award, was also nominated for a Shamus Award, and a David Award. His short stories have appeared in Mystery Tribune, Down to the River, Long Island Noir, and Grand Central Noir, and his crime novellas have appeared in Triple Shot, Third Degree, and Three Strikes. As a former magazine journalist his work has appeared in Esquire, New York magazine, Elle, Redbook, Good Housekeeping, The New York Times Arts and Leisure, The New York Times Book Review, and other periodicals. He is also the author of more than 25 non-fiction books, including From Set Shot to Slam Dunk: An Oral History of the NBA, On a Clear Day They Could See Seventh Place, Baseball’s 10 Worst Teams of the Century (with George Robinson), and Soupy Sez: My Zany Life and Times, with Soupy Sales. He has been a Visiting Professor of Magazine at the S.I. School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, and has taught writing at Sarah Lawrence College, the Writer’s Voice, Hunter College and the New York Writers Workshop, where he is a Founding Member. He’s also on the Board of Mystery Writers of America-NY, and PrisonWrites.
CRAIG SERLING
An award-winning producer, director and editor, Craig has worked with nearly every major network (CBS, NBC, FOX) and cable outlet (Discovery Channel, Animal Planet). He has been nominated for three-primetime Emmy awards and helped launch some of television’s most successful series of the last two decades.
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A former American Film Institute directing fellow, Serling wrote and directed the Showtime Networks feature film JAM starring Jefferey Dean Morgan, Gina Torres and Jonathan Silverman.  Other notable writing and editing credits include the PBS documentary American Heroes and Amazing Race. A member of Directors Guild of America, he is currently at work on a new feature film.
 RAVI SHANKAR
​Ravi Shankar is the founding editor of Drunken Boat, one of the world’s oldest electronic journals of the arts. He has written or edited ten books and chapbooks of poetry, including translations of the 9th century Tamil poet/saint, Andal, entitled The Autobiography of a Goddess, a collection of collaborative poems, What Else Could it Be, the 2010 National Poetry Review Prize winner, Deepening Groove, and the 2005 finalist for the Connecticut Book Awards, Instrumentality. Along with Tina Chang and Nathalie Handal, he edited W.W. Norton’s Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from Asia, the Middle East & Beyond, called “a beautiful achievement for world literature” by Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer. He has won a Pushcart Prize, been featured in The New York Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education, appeared as a commentator on the BBC, the PBS Newshour and NPR, received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Corporation of Yaddo, and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, and has performed his work around the world. He is currently chairman of the Connecticut Young Writers Trust and on the faculty of the first international MFA program at City University of Hong Kong. Visit Ravi at https://www.poetravishankar.com/ 
DANIEL STERN
Daniel Stern has written for several of the nation’s top publications, including The New York Times, U.S. News & World Report, The Washington Post, and Salon. He has covered a wide range of topics from science to pop culture, in feature articles, book reviews, essays, short stories, and news reports.
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Most recently he has taught creative writing, literature, poetry, and publishing courses at various institutions, including Hunter College and the 92 Street Y in New York City and the University of Colorado in Boulder. He was selected for the summer residency program for artists at the esteemed Vermont Studio Center. In addition, he runs a premier private tutoring and college prep company in Manhattan, Metro Academic Prep, an internationally-acclaimed website that improves college essay writing, College Essay Organizer. 
SARAH STERN
Sarah Stern is the author of three poetry collections--We Have Been Lucky in the Midst of Misfortune (Kelsay Press, Aldrich Press, 2018), But Today Is Different (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2014), and Another Word For Love (Finishing Line Press, 2011). She is a recipient of a 2018 Pushcart Prize nomination, a Poets and Writers’ Readings & Workshops Grant, and a five-time winner of the Bronx Council on the Arts BRIO Poetry Award.

Stern has taught poetry workshops at CSAIR Adult Learning Institute, Hostos Community College, the Bronx Zoo, Edgar Allan Poe Visitor Center, and privately. She graduated from Barnard College and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Stern is also a communications specialist and consultant and has worked at universities, cultural centers, and think tanks. Learn more at https://sarahstern.me/, on Twitter @sarahstern3, and Instagram @sarahstern3.
TIM TOMLINSON
Tim Tomlinson is co-founder of New York Writers Workshop, and co-author of its popular text, The Portable MFA in Creative Writing. He has also published the books This Is Not Happening to You (short fiction), Yolanda: An Oral History in Verse (oral history/poetry), and Requiem for the Tree Fort I Set on Fire (poetry). His work has been collected in Brooklyn Poets Anthology, A Feast of Narrative: Stories by Italian-American Writers, Long Island Noir, Poet Sounds: Poems Inspired by the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, Surviving Suicide: A Collection of Poems That May Save a Life, and elsewhere. He has been published in Australia, China, India, Singapore, the Philippines, and in numerous venues in the US, including, most recently, About Place Journal, Another Chicago Magazine, ChillFiltr Review, Columbia Journal, Good Life Review, Litro, and the Passengers Journal. He's on the Advisory Board of Asia Pacific Writers & Translators. He teaches in New York University's Global Liberal Studies program. Visit Tim online at http://timtomlinson.org/.
GINI KOPECKY WALLACE
Gini Kopecky Wallace has been an editor at Ladies’ Home Journal, Viva, Redbook, Life and Family Circle, among other publications. She has co-authored two nonfiction books, Masculinity Reconstructed and Do They Hear You When You Cry, and has edited or book-doctored a number of others. She has been a contributing editor at Ladies’ Home Journal and Redbook, and her articles and essays have appeared in more than 35 other publications, including Life, Family Circle, Glamour, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, NYT Sunday Arts & Leisure, Ms., The Village Voice, American Health, Shape and American Forests.
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She helped launch and manage a website on preventing and controlling type 2 diabetes for Prevention.com, was managing editor of a West Village newspaper for a spell, and has been running her own website on nature-related topics, Gini’s Nature News (ginisnaturenews.com), for almost five years. She has been involved in the creation and/or editorial direction of six special-interest publications covering subjects including women’s and family health, college life, and the planet’s water resources, and she has a long-standing special interest in dolphins and whales. She has taught magazine- and essay-writing at Fordham University, Lincoln Center, has been a frequent panelist and guest speaker at writing conferences and courses, and has made regular guest appearances on TV.
FRANCES KAI-HWA WANG
​Frances Kai-Hwa Wang is a journalist, essayist, and poet focused on issues of race, culture, justice, and the arts. Her writing has appeared at NBC News Asian America, PRI Global Nation, Detroit Journalism Cooperative, Women’s Media Center, Angry Asian Man, Cha Asian Literary Journal, Kartika Review, Drunken Boat, and several anthologies, journals, and art exhibitions. She has written three chapbooks. She teaches Asian/Pacific Islander American media and civil rights at University of Michigan, and creative writing at University of Hawaii Hilo and Washtenaw Community College. She co-created a multimedia artwork on the H-1B visa for the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center Indian American Heritage Project online and travelling art exhibition. She is a 2019 Knight Arts Challenge Detroit artist, Marguerite Casey Foundation Equal Voice Journalism Fellow on Poverty, and Keith Center for Civil Rights Detroit Equity Action Lab Race and Justice Reporting Fellow on Arts and Culture. franceskaihwawang.com @fkwang
LAURA WEISS
Laura Weiss is a food writer, author and journalist. Laura is a freelance contributor to NPR’s Kitchen Window. She’s also the Senior New York Correspondent for American Food Roots, and a contributor to Interior Design, where she writes about hotel design and architecture. Her food, travel and lifestyle writing has appeared in numerous national and regional publications, including The New York Times, Saveur, Travel + Leisure, Interior Design, The New York Daily News, FoodNetwork.com, AOL Travel, Fineliving.com, Edible Brooklyn, The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink, and Nation’s Restaurant News.

She is the author of Ice Cream: A Global History (Reaktion Books/University of Chicago Press 2011). Ice Cream has been translated into Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Laura was an editor of the Zagat Long Island Restaurant Guide 2009-2011. She served as and an adjunct professor of journalism at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at NYU.

Earlier in her career, Laura was a reporter for CQ Weekly, where she covered Congress and national politics. She was a writer for TIME’s school edition, both online and in print. At AOL, where she was a director, she negotiated and directed content partnerships with major news and entertainment brands, such as Teen People, PBS, and Cartoon Network.

Find Laura at: Laura B. Weiss, Twitter: @foodandthings, Facebook: Ice Cream: A Global History, Instagram: LauraBweissWrites, Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/laurawrites/