Exceptional workshops led by amazing writers
The Writer’s Center has been sharing the craft of writing for nearly 50 years, and we couldn’t do that without the outstanding writers who lead our workshops.
Our instructors have won awards, published bestsellers, and achieved the highest levels of literary success. They’re ready to share their best tips and tools with you.
Fiction
Aaron Hamburger
Aaron Hamburger is the author of the story collection The View From Stalin's Head winner of the Rome Prize in Literature, and the novels Faith For Beginners (a Lambda Literary Award nominee), Nirvana is Here (winner of a Bronze Medal in the 2019 Foreword Indie Awards), and Hotel Cuba, forthcoming from HarperCollins in July 2023. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, Tin House, Crazyhorse, Boulevard, Poets & Writers, and O, the Oprah Magazine and many others. He teaches writing at the George Washington University and the Stonecoast MFA Program in creative writing.
Poetry
Abdul Ali
Abdul Ali is a poet, teacher, and nonprofit consultant. He is the author of Trouble Sleeping, his debut collection of poems that won the 2014 New Issues Poetry Book Prize and is the current Editor-at-Large of Pleiades. He has published his poems in numerous journals and publications including Copper Nickel, Plume, and Transition. He has taught writing at MICA, Johns Hopkins University, and Howard University. More about him at abdulali.net. Follow him on social media at @abdulalism.
Fiction
Afabwaje Kurian
Afabwaje Kurian is the author of the novel BEFORE THE MANGO RIPENS, which was a finalist for the 2025 Aspen Words Literary Prize and longlisted for the 2025 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. She received her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her short fiction has appeared in Guernica, McSweeney’s, Call
Genre
Al Basile
Poet/playwright, singer/songwriter and cornet player, Al Basile has 20 solo albums (with 8 nominations for Blues Music Awards), four books of poetry, and six verse audio plays (with gold and platinum awards from the HEARnow national audio drama festival). A Powow River poet, he hosts the online show Poems On.
Genre
Allison deFreese
Allison is president of the Oregon Society of Translators and Interpreters (OSTI) and an NEA Literature Translation Fellow. Her translations include María Negroni’s Elegy for Joseph Cornell (Dalkey Archive); astronaut José Moreno Hernández’s Soaring to New Heights (Renuevo), and Verónica González Arredondo’s Green Fires of the Spirits (Libros BUAP, Mexico). Allison has published two books of verse (The Night with James Dean and Other Prose Poems and Nurdles and Other Poems) and several translations. Her work appears in Hunger Mountain, The Comstock Review, and River Heron Review.
Genre
Amanda Shaw
Amanda Shaw is the author of It Will Have Been So Beautiful (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2024). Based in Washington, DC, she is a teacher and editor at The World Bank and other international organizations. Her poems have appeared in LEON Literary Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, The Mid-Atlantic Review, and Lily Poetry Review, which she recently joined as the reviews editor. She has an MAT from The New School and an MFA in poetry from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, and has taught language and literature for over 25 years.
Genre
Amy Freeman
Amy’s bylines include The Washington Post, Parents.com, The Offing, The Advocate, and dozens of other publications and anthologies. She also serves as The Writer's Center's Development Director.
Poetry
Ann Quinn
Ann Quinn’s chapbook, Final Deployment, was published by Finishing Line Press (2018). Her poetry has appeared in journals including Poet Lore, Potomac Review, Little Patuxent Review, and Broadkill Review. Ann holds an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University, and is poetry editor for Yellow Arrow Journal. More about her at annquinn.net.
Genre
Annette Nielsen
Cookbook editor, newspaper and magazine journalist, food systems advisor, cheesemaker, and a catering sous chef, Annette Nielsen has worked in the food space from production to consumption. She recently returned to Washington, DC from New York where she was the Executive Director of the Hunter College NYC Food Policy Center.
Genre
Ariel Katz
Ariel Katz’s short stories have been published in the Sewanee Review, Missouri Review, Threepenny Review, Colorado Review, & elsewhere. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop (MFA), she is a PhD fellow in Literature & Creative Writing at the University of Houston. She’s online at ariel-katz.com.
Genre
Atina Hartunian
Atina Hartunian, a first-generation Armenian-American writer, earned her MFA from Pacific University in 2023. She received a Teaching Fellowship from Anaphora Arts (2024), a Pacific University MFA Merit Scholarship (2021), and residencies from Cambridge Writers’ Workshop and, most recently, from Rockvale Writers’ Colony.
She has led generative workshops using sensory-driven prompts and craft-based constraints, and has delivered craft talks exploring facets of the horror genre. Currently, she’s developing a four-part lecture series on horror. Atina Hartunian writes and lives in Los Angeles.
Fiction
Basil Sylvester
Basil Sylvester is the co-author of 2021 Lambda Finalist The Fabulous Zed Watson! (HarperCollins CA), and the forthcoming Night of the Living Zed (Jan. 2024, HarperCollins CA). They are a bookseller and freelance editor based in Toronto, Canada.
Genre
Beth Kanter and Anna Kahoe
Beth Kanter has been helping writers find, draft, and publish their stories for almost two decades. She is the author of six books about Washington, DC, including No Access Washington, DC and Great Food Finds, Washington DC. Beth’s creative nonfiction, essays, fiction, and poetry have appeared in a dozens of literary journals and magazines. Beth has an MSJ from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and can be found online at bethkanter.com or on Instagram and Bluesky @beekaekae.
Anna Kahoe reads, walks, and writes in her hometown of Washington, D.C. Anna’s creative nonfiction has been published in The Washington Post, PBS Newshour’s In My Humble Opinion, The Writer Magazine, and Furious Gravity.
Genre
Bo Kaprall
Bo Kaprall has been a television show creator, director, writer, producer, executive producer, and actor for over thirty-five years. Currently he has created and is Executive Producing a new television series, “Operation Undercover,” for HBO Max & Discovery ID. Bo got his start in Chicago as an actor in the touring company of Chicago’s Second City. In the seventies he moved to Los Angeles where he started the Comedy Store Players and joined Kentucky Fried Theatre (Kentucky Fried Movie, Airplane, Police Squad). He then went on to write and produce several network series including The Carol Burnett Show, Laverne & Shirley, The Cher Show, Aaron Spelling’s Friends, Norman Lear’s Year at the Top, and Welcome Back Kotter. In addition, he has written over thirty network pilots. Over the years Bo has created and executive produced shows for ABC, CBS, NBC, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, Discovery, TLC, and HGTV. In the nineties Bo moved to Minneapolis, where he started his own creative production company focusing on humorous radio and television commercials and corporate communications. Bo has recorded, written, and produced over 1,000 radio commercials, winning several Cleo and Radio Best Awards. He has appeared as an actor on over 50 television shows, the latest being Law & Order and Third Watch.
Fiction
C Pam Zhang
C Pam Zhang is the author of the bestselling How Much of These Hills Is Gold and Land of Milk and Honey. She is a National Book Award 5 Under 35 Honoree. How Much of These Hills Is Gold was a New York Times, Washington Post, and NPR Notable Book of the Year; one of Barack Obama’s favorite books; and won the Asian/Pacific Award for Literature, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Award, and the California First Fiction Prize. Hills was also nominated for the Booker Prize and a finalist for over half a dozen other prizes, including the PEN/Hemingway Award, the National Book Critics’ John Leonard Prize, and the Center For Fiction First Novel Prize. Zhang’s writing appears in Best American Short Stories, The Cut, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. She is the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, Civitella Ranieri, and the New York Public Library. Her work has been translated into twelve languages.
Genre
Camille Cabrera
Camille Cabrera is a 10-time bestselling mystery author. She has written over 10 short stories and novels. Cabrera enjoys crafting stories ranging from cozy mystery to noir. When she’s not creating another caper, you can likely find her in the nearest coffee shop enjoying a black coffee.
Fiction
Carol Mitchell
Carol Mitchell is the author of the novel What Start Bad a Mornin' (Central Avenue) and nineteen books for children, including three published by HarperCollins UK. She holds an MFA, and is the recipient of a number of fellowships including from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. She teaches writing at George Mason University and is currently working on a short-story collection and a novel.
Fiction
Caroline Bock
Caroline Bock writes micros to novels. Her latest novel, and her first for adults, The Other Beautiful People, is a workplace love story about a movie-loving marketing executive, and it will be published on June 2, 2026, by Regal House Publishing. Her short story collection, Carry Her Home, won the Fiction Award from the Washington Writers' Publishing House. She is also the author of acclaimed young adult novels LIE and Before My Eyes from St. Martin’s Press. Currently, she is the co-president and prose editor at the Washington Writers’ Publishing House. Prior to focusing on her writing/editing, she was a marketing and public relations executive in the cable industry for two decades, most notably at Bravo and IFC. She is a graduate of Syracuse University, earned an MFA in Fiction from the City College of New York, and lives in Maryland with her family.
Genre
Carolyn Clark
Carolyn Clark, Ph.D. Classics (Johns Hopkins University) is the author of six poetry books, and credits The Writers Center with getting her started as a writing coach, workshop leader and consultant. Mostly she simply enjoys horses, woodlands lyric poetry, any kind of skiing, and finding mythology everywhere.
Genre
Caron Levis
Caron Levis (MFA; LMSW) is the author of the award-winning Feeling-Friends collection with Charles Santoso: Mighty Muddy Us, Feathers Together, This Way, Charlie, and Ida, Always. Other titles include Stop That Yawn! and Mama’s Shoes. Stories and articles for teens and adults have been published in Fence Magazine, Norton Anthology, Modern Loss, and more. Caron is an Assistant Professor and the Chair of the New School University's Writing for Children/YA MFA program. She offers interactive Creative SEL/Literacy workshops for kids/adults. Caron was born, raised, and lives in NYC. www.caronlevis.com
Genre
Chris Gamble
Chris Gamble is a Licensed Professional Counselor and writer based in Washington, D.C. His experiences in the mental health field inspired him to write his debut novel, Tales of a Black Therapist. He strives to use storytelling and education to shift how mental health is understood.
Screenwriting, Mixed Genre
Chris Lilly
Chris helps screenwriters and authors emotionally center themselves whenever they're writing so they can create for their hearts and impact their readers. He lives in Los Angeles and has worked in the entertainment industry for 15+ years.
Fiction, Nonfiction
Christine Koubek Flynn
Christine Koubek Flynn’s stories have appeared in The Washington Post; Poets & Writers; Brain, Child; Washingtonian, Bethesda, Arlington, and more. Her essays and profiles have received awards from the American Society of Journalists and Authors. Her fiction has appeared in Chautauqua and Hypertext and received a 2021 Elizabeth George Foundation grant as well as residencies from the Ragdale Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Fairfield University.
Fiction, Nonfiction
Christopher Linforth
Christopher Linforth's latest book is The Distortions (Orison Books, 2022). Recently, he has been awarded fellowships to the Ragdale Foundation, VCCA, BAU Institute at the Camargo Foundation, Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Kone Foundation, Sitka Center, and Château de Lavigny. He holds an MFA from Virginia Tech. He has published fiction and nonfiction in dozens of literary magazines, including The Millions, Gargoyle, Southern Humanities Review, The Rumpus, Notre Dame Review, Denver Quarterly, and many others. He has been awarded fellowships and scholarships to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Vermont Studio Center, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
Genre
Clarisse Baleja Saidi
Clarisse Baleja Saïdi received her MFA from the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program and was a 2022-2023 fiction fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center. Her work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Fiddlehead, and Poetry magazine, among others. She’s received residencies from MacDowell, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, ART OMI, the Vermont Studio, and more, as well as grants and prizes in support of her fiction and nonfiction. Visit her at www.clarissebalejasaidi.com
Poetry
Claudia Gary
Claudia Gary’s villanelles, sonnets, and other metrical poems appear in journals and anthologies internationally. (For examples online, see: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=
Fiction
Courtney Eldridge
Over the past 20 years, Courtney Eldridge has published two novels, The Generosity of Women and Ghost Signs, and Unkempt, a short story collection. Record à battre, the translation of her first novella, “The Former World Record Holder Settles Down,” received France’s Prix du Marais in 2006 and was profiled in Vogue Paris. Eldridge’s work also appears in BOMB: The Author Interviews and The Better of McSweeney’s, Volume 1.
Poetry
Courtney LeBlanc
Courtney LeBlanc is the author of Her Dark Everything (forthcoming 2025), Her Whole Bright Life, winner of the Jack McCarthy Book Prize, Exquisite Bloody, Beating Heart, and Beautiful & Full of Monsters. She is the founder and editor-in-chief of Riot in Your Throat, an independent poetry press. www.courtneyleblanc.com.
Genre
Courtney Sexton
Dr. Courtney Sexton earned her MFA in nonfiction from Sarah Lawrence College and her PhD from The George Washington University. She is an artist, dog scientist, and the Co-founder/Board Chair of DC-based nonprofit literary arts organization, The Inner Loop. In addition to her leadership role at The Inner Loop, Courtney is a professor in the Medical Humanities at Georgetown University and a postdoctoral fellow at Virginia Tech, where her research explores human-animal relationships and One Health. She is an accomplished writer and curator with more than 15 years of experience in advocacy, outreach, and community building. Courtney works with a diverse cadre of humans, animals, institutions, agencies, and organizations, and has been published widely in both academic journals and outlets such as Science, Smithsonian, The Washington Post, Slate, District Fray, The Bark , Garden & Gun, Juxtaprose, SAGE, and The Fourth River. She is a Virginia Tech Research & Innovation Scholar (2024), Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute Fellow (2022), AAAS Mass Media Fellow (2020), and DCCAH Arts & Humanities Fellow (2018; 2022; 2025).
Poetry
Dan Brady
Dan Brady is the author of the poetry collections Strange Children (2018), Subtexts (2022), and Songs in E——, winner of the Barclay Prize for Poetry, forthcoming from Trnsfr Books (2022), along with two poetry chapbooks. He is the poetry editor of Barrelhouse, a magazine and small press based in Washington, DC. Previously, Brady served as the editor of American Poets, the journal of the Academy of American Poets, and worked in the Literature Division at the National Endowment for the Arts, where he received a Distinguished Service Award for his work on the Big Read, the largest community reading initiative in US history. Learn more at danbrady.org.
Fiction
Dana Cann
Dana Cann is the author of the novel Ghosts of Bergen County (Tin House). His short stories have been published in The Sun, The Massachusetts Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Florida Review, and elsewhere. He’s received awards from the Maryland State Arts Council, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, and The Sewanee Writers Conference. He also teaches in the MA in Writing program at Johns Hopkins.
Genre
Daria-Ann Martineau
Daria-Ann Martineau was born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago and holds an MFA in Poetry from New York University. She is an alumna of several writing conferences including Bread Loaf and the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. Her poems have appeared in Voicemail Poems, Cordella Magazine, Anomaly, Narrative, and The Collagist, among others. She is the founder of PRINT (Poets Reclaiming Immigrant Narratives & Texts) and wants to empower migrants to tell their own stories.
Fiction
Dave Tevelin
Dave Tevelin has written four historical novels about crime in DC, the latest of which is Three Dead In Starbucks. A GW Law School graduate, he was an attorney at the Department of Justice and the Executive Director of the State Justice Institute before becoming an author.
Fiction, Poetry
DeMisty D. Bellinger
DeMisty D. Bellinger is the author of the novel New to Liberty, and the poetry collections Peculiar Heritage and Rubbing Elbows. Her writing can also be found in journals and anthologies, in print and online. DeMisty has an MFA from Southampton College and a PhD from the University of Nebraska.
Fiction
Diane Zinna
Diane Zinna is the author of The All-Night Sun (Random House, 2020), which was longlisted for The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and the Cabell First Novelist Award. She received her MFA from the University of Florida and worked for ten years at AWP, the Association of Writers Writing Programs, which hosts the largest literary conference in North America each year. In 2014, Diane created the Writer to Writer Mentorship Program, helping to match more than six hundred writers over twelve seasons. Her new craft book on the art of telling our hardest stories, Letting Grief Speak, is forthcoming from Columbia University Press and is based on her work teaching a free class, Grief Writing Sundays, for the past five years. Meet her there or online at dianezinna.com.
Genre
Donald Illich
Donald Illich‘s work appears in such journals as Iowa Review, LIT, Nimrod, Passages North, The Southern Review, Rattle, Fourteen Hills, The Louisville Review, Cimarron Review, Map Literary, Spork, Cream City Review, and Sixth Finch. His work has been anthologized in A Face to Meet the Faces: An Anthology of Contemporary Persona Poetry and City of the Big Shoulders: An Anthology of Chicago Poetry. His full-length manuscript, Chance Bodies, was published in 2018 by The Word Works. A full-length poetry collection, Rescue is Elsewhere, was released in 2023 by Red Ogre Review via a Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association grant. A new book, Love Poems on Bar Napkins, was released by Red Ogre Review in 2024. He lives in Maryland.
Genre
Dr. Tonee Mae Moll
Dr. Tonee Mae Moll (she/they) is the author of Out of Step: A Memoir, which won the Lambda Literary Award and You Cannot Save Here, winner of the Jean Feldman Poetry Prize.
Genre
DuEwa Frazier
DuEwa Frazier is a poet, scholar, children’s author, program leader, speaker, consultant, and digital storyteller. She is the author of several volumes of poetry, stories for young readers, and the editor of scholarly volumes, including Introduction to Afrofuturism: A Mixtape in Black Literature & Art (Routledge). Visit her website at www.duewafrazier.com.
Genre
Edgar Gomez
Edgar Gomez is a queer NicaRican writer born and raised in Florida. He is the author of the memoir High-Risk Homosexual, winner of the American Book Award, a Stonewall Israel-Fishman Nonfiction Book Honor Award, and the Lambda Literary Award. Their sophomore book, Alligator Tears, was released in February 2025 and was called "triumphant, dazzling, and unfailingly stylish" by Publisher's Weekly. A graduate of the University of California’s MFA program, Gomez has written for The LA Times, Poets & Writers, Lithub, New York Magazine, The Rumpus, and beyond. He has received fellowships from The New York Foundation for the Arts, The National Endowment for the Arts, and The Black Mountain Institute.
Fiction
Elizabeth Poliner
Elizabeth Poliner’s books include the novel, As Close to Us as Breathing (Little, Brown), winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize in Fiction and an Amazon Best Book, and Mutual Life & Casualty, linked stories. She’s published fiction in Kenyon Review, TriQuarterly, Story, Michigan Quarterly Review, and many other journals.
Genre
Emily Barrosse
Emily Barrosse is founder and CEO of Bold Story Press, a publishing house for women authors who want to share their stories with the world. Emily spent the first 32 years of her career in the publishing industry, including as Vice President and Editor in Chief at McGraw Hill.
Genre
Emily DeDakis
Dr Emily DeDakis (Ireland/USA) is a writer & dramaturg. She’s developed dozens of scripts and performances on both sides of the Atlantic, and taught playwriting at Queen’s University Belfast, Ulster University, the Lyric Theatre, Grand Opera House, and Fighting Words NI’s Young Playwrights programme. Her writing has been broadcast on BBC television and radio.
Poetry
Emily Holland
Emily Holland (she/they) is a genderqueer lesbian writer. Their poems appear in publications including HAD, Shenandoah, Black Warrior Review, and the chapbook Lineage. They are the recipient of multiple fellowships from DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. She is the editor of Poet Lore and an adjunct instructor at GWU.
Genre
Emily Jon Tobias
Emily Jon Tobias is an American author and poet with her debut story collection, MONARCH, forthcoming by Black Lawrence Press in May, 2024. She is an award-winning writer whose work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, along with other honorable mentions, and has been featured in literary journals such as Santa Clara Review, Talking River Review, Flying South Literary Journal, Furrow Literary Journal, The Opiate Magazine, The Ocotillo Review, Jerry Jazz Musician, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Tahoma Literary Review, Big Muddy, Spoon Knife, Peauxdunque Review, and elsewhere. Midwestern-raised, she now lives and writes on the coast of Southern California. She holds an MFA in Writing from Pacific University Oregon.
Nonfiction
Eric Lichtblau
Eric Lichtblau is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and best-selling author of The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler's Men; as well as Bush’s Law: The Remaking of American Justice; and Return to the Reich: A Holocaust Refugee's Secret Mission to Defeat the Nazis. He is currently working on a book on the alarming surge in hate crimes and white supremacy in America. He was a Washington reporter for the New York Times for 15 years and has also written for The New Yorker and other publications.
Fiction
Eva Langston
Eva Langston received her MFA from the University of New Orleans and is represented by Ali Lake of O’Connor Literary for her YA and adult novels. Her short stories have won prizes (such as The Playboy Fiction Contest) and been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She is cohost of the podcast This Mama is Lit! from Literary Mama, and creator/host of the podcast The Long Road to Publishing. Her writing-resources newsletter has over 6,000 followers. Find her at evalangston.com or evalangs
Nonfiction, Mixed Genre
GG Renee Hill
GG Renee Hill is an author and workshop facilitator who helps others discover and express their truths through writing. She brings her experience as a memoirist and creative coach to the books, courses, and workshops she offers on her website, allthemanylayers.com. Through her offerings, she advocates for self-discovery and creative expansion through writing, as she provides safe spaces for others to own their voices and tell their stories. GG has hosted workshops for a diverse variety of organizations including The Writer's Center, The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, The Recording Academy, BAE Systems, Inc., Maryland Citizens for the Arts, REWRITE London, and Scottish BAME Writers’ Network.
Nonfiction
Ginny Barnes
Ginny Barnes is an artist and environmental advocate. She has published several articles on trees and nature. In particular for the magazine Plenty which sings the praises of Montgomery County's 93,000 acre agricultural reserve. She also serves as Vice-chair of Conservation Montgomery and has written several pieces on nature for their website: conservationmontgomery.org
Fiction
Hananah Zaheer
Hananah Zaheer is the author of Lovebirds (Bull City Press, 2021), a professor and a freelance developmental editor. She received her MFA from the University of Maryland and has taught writing for over twelve years in the Middle East and the United States. She is a fiction editor for Los Angeles Review, a senior editor for SAAG: A dissident literary anthology and currently, a guest editor for SmokeLong Quarterly. She is the founder of Dubai Literary Salon, a reading series, which also offers lectures and workshops. You can find her at hananahzaheer.com or on Twitter @hananahzaheer.
Mixed Genre
Hank Wallace
Hank Wallace, a Columbia Law School graduate, was a government reporter for New Jersey's Middletown Courier and Red Bank Daily Register, and the assistant director of law-school publishing for Matthew Bender. He wrote the FCC's plain-language newsletter and newswriting tips for the Radio Television Digital News Association. For more information about Hank Wallace, visit his website at: hankwallace.com.
Fiction, Nonfiction
Hannah Grieco
Hannah Grieco is the author of First Kicking, Then Not, released by Stanchion in August 2025. She writes a literary column for Washington City Paper, edits prose at a variety of small presses and literary journals, and teaches literature at Marymount University. She also works 1:1 with writers as an editor and book coach, helping with manuscript development, agent and publishing house searches, essay and short story placement, and more. Read her work in The Washington Post, The Independent, Al Jazeera, Huffington Post, Brevity, Craft Literary, Poet Lore, Shenandoah, Fairy Tale Review, and more. Find her online at hgrieco.com and on most social media @writesloud.
Fiction
Hildie Block
Hildie S. Block's work has appeared in Gargoyle, Cortland Review, Washington Post, Salon, Literary Taxidermy, Porcupine Literary, Queer Sci Fi, Haunted MTL, 0-Dark-30, and in many anthologies.
Poetry
Indran Amirthanayagam
Indran is a poet with a global reach, writing and publishing in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Haitian Creole as well as English. He edits Beltway Poetry Quarterly; publishes at Beltway Editions; and hosts youtube.com/user/indranam. He has published 23 books. Indran has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He writes poems weekly for Haiti en Marche and El Acento. He has fellowships from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, NY Foundation for the Arts, US/Mexico Fund for Culture, the MacDowell Colony.
Nonfiction
James Alexander
James Alexander has more than 30 years experience writing professionally, including stints as a political speechwriter at the Cabinet level. After earning a B.A. in Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he worked as a bylined newspaper reporter at The Charlotte Observer and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and also interned at The Washington Post. He later served on Capitol Hill as a U.S. Congressional Fellow and then worked as a Hill press secretary which involved writing lots of speeches and op-eds. As a ghostwriter, James penned dozens of op-eds for political figures with publications in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post, among others. He works full-time in media relations and still writes.
Fiction
Javed Jahangir
Javed Jahangir’s fiction has been published in LUMINA Literary Journal (Sarah Lawrence College), HIMAL Magazine, Smokelong Journal, LOST Magazine, Bengal Lights Journal, Six Seasons Review, Daily Star, Bangladesh, and others. He was on the 2011 panel of judges for the RISCA (Rhode Island State Council Arts) Fiction Fellowship award. He was part of Jenna Blum’s Master Class at Grub Street. He has contributed to, and been editor-in-chief for The Grub Street Writers’ 10 year Anthology, and has been a reader for the Harvard Review. His novel, Ghost Alley, was published by Bengal Foundation Publishing, and debuted at the Hay Festival in 2014. Ghost Alley was reviewed in Wasafiri Journal. He is currently working on a second novel, and a collection of short stories.
Genre
Jen Buxton
Jennifer Buxton has an MFA from the University of Virginia. Her stories have appeared in Epoch, Puerto del Sol, Blue Penny Quarterly, and Dr. TJ Eckleberg Review. She has taught at the University of Virginia and the Young Writers Workshop, and coaches high school seniors on the college application essay.
Genre
Jenn Koiter
Jenn Koiter’s debut poetry collection, So Much of Everything, was published by Day Eight. She recently wrote and produced the award-winning short film “Birds of the Air.” Her poems and essays have appeared in Barrelhouse, Copper Nickel, Smartish Pace, and other journals. You can find her on Instagram as @jennkoiter.
Public Speaking, Performance
Jennifer Hamady
Jennifer Hamady is a voice coach and therapist specializing in technical and emotional issues that interfere with self-expression, and the author of three books on musical and personal performance. Jennifer writes regularly for Psychology Today on matters of creative expression and frequently presents workshops and master classes on the same. More about her at FindingYourVoice.com.
Poetry, Nonfiction
Jenny Sadre-Orafai
Jenny Sadre-Orafai is a poet and essayist and the author of Dear Outsiders and three other poetry collections. Her poetry has appeared in Puerto del Sol, Cream City Review, Ninth Letter, and The Cortland Review. Her prose has appeared in The Rumpus, Fourteen Hills, and The Los Angeles Review. She co-founded and co-edits Josephine Quarterly and teaches creative writing at Kennesaw State University.
Genre
Jessica Berg
Jessica Berg is a literary agent and author passionate about nurturing unique voices in publishing. As the founding agent of Rosecliff Literary, she focuses on character-driven stories and high-stakes narratives while helping authors navigate the industry. A multi-nominated writer with an MFA from Spalding University, Berg is a member of the AALA and EFA. She also provides developmental feedback for Writer’s Digest. She is represented by Amy Collins of Talcott Notch. Connect with her on all the platforms @jesssica__berg.
Genre
Joan Waites
Joan Waites has illustrated more than 40 children’s books and most recently has written and illustrated A Colorful Tail: Finding Monet at Giverny, A Purr-fect Painting: Matisse’s Other Great Cat, and An Artist’s Night Before Christmas. She teaches arts classes for children at her private studio and speaks frequently at schools and conferences.
Poetry
Jodie Hollander
Jodie Hollander, originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was raised in a family of classical musicians. She studied poetry in England, and her poems have appeared in journals such as The Poetry Review, The Yale Review, PN Review, The Dark Horse, The New Criterion, The Rialto, Verse Daily, The Best Australian Poems of 2011, and The Best Australian Poems of 2015. Her debut full-length collection, My Dark Horses, is published with Liverpool University Press (Pavilion Poetry) in the UK and Oxford University Press in the US.
Fiction
John DeDakis
John DeDakis (pronounced dee-DAY-kiss) is a former editor on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer." DeDakis is the author of six novels in the Lark Chadwick mystery-suspense-thriller series. In Enemies Domestic, Lark is a pregnant White House press secretary forced to make an abort-or-not-to-abort decision in a highly toxic and polarized fishbowl while dealing with an attack on the presidency. DeDakis, a former White House correspondent, is also a writing coach, manuscript editor, and podcaster. www.johndedakis.com
Poetry
John-Michael Bloomquist
John-Michael Bloomquist lives in DC with his wife, son, and their needy black cat. He is the author of Rocket Celestial (White Stag, 2023). His poetry has been published in Heavy Feather Review, The Michigan Quarterly Review, and Third Coast, among others.
Genre
Jonathan Roth
Jonathan Roth writes and illustrates the graphic novel series Rover and Speck (Kids Can Press, 2022+), the chapter book series Beep and Bob (Aladdin/S&S, 2018+) and the upcoming non-fiction picture book Almost Underwear (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2024). He lives in Rockville and teaches elementary art.
Poetry
Jose Hernandez Diaz
Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020) Bad Mexican, Bad American (Acre Books, 2024) The Parachutist (Sundress Publications, 2025) and Portrait of the Artist as a Brown Man (Red Hen Press, 2025). He has been published in The American Poetry Review, The Yale Review, The London Magazine, Poetry Wales, The Iowa Review, Huizache, Círculo de Poesía, Periódico de Poesía, The Missouri Review, Epoch Magazine, The Nation, Poetry, The Progressive, Poets.org, The Southern Review, and in The Best American Nonrequired Reading. He teaches at the University of California at Riverside and for Hugo House, Lighthouse Writers Workshops, and The Writer's Center. Additionally, he serves as a Poetry Mentor in The Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program.
Genre
Joyce Winslow
Joyce Winslow’s fiction is included n The Best American Short Stories and several college textbooks. She has won the Phoebe Fiction prize, The F. Scott Fitzgerald Award,
a P.E.N. Syndicated Fiction Award, The Raymond Carver Award, and had stories translated and broadcast over Voice of America. She served as Fiction Editor of AARP’s magazine,
taught fiction writing as Assoc. Prof. of English Lit at U of Pittsburgh, served as a judge of fiction for the D.C. Commission on the Arts and won four Fellowships from them.
An NEA Fellowship winner, she has created and teaches writing techniques in ways unlike other teachers and edits National Book Award winners.
Genre
Jubi Arriola-Headley
Jubi Arriola-Headley (he/him) is a Black queer poet, storyteller, first-generation United Statesian and author of the poetry collections original kink (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2020), recipient of the 2021 Housatonic Book Award, and Bound (Persea Books, 2024). He’s currently at work on a collection of essays, an excerpt of which won the 2023 First Pages Prize. Jubi lives with his husband in South Florida, on ancestral Tequesta, Miccosukee, and Seminole lands.
Poetry
Judith Harris
Judith Harris is the author of three poetry books, Atonement, The Bad Secret, and Night Garden (LSU and Tiger Bark) and two critical books on poetry and psychoanalysis Signifying Pain: Constructing and Healing the Self through Writing and The Poetry of Loss: Romantic and Contemporary Elegies (SUNY Press, Routledge Press) Her poems have appeared in The Nation, The Atlantic, The New Republic, The Hudson Review, Ploughshares, North American Review, Image, Alaska Quarterly Review, Literary Matters, Poetry East, Terrain, “American Life in Poetry,” American Academy of Poets Poem-a-day, Poetry Foundation’s Poem of the Day, NPR and Verse Daily. Her articles have appeared in AWP Chronicle, The British Journal of Psychoanalysis, the American Journal of Psychoanalysis, The Washingtonian, The Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis, Midwest Quarterly, and Green Mountains Review.
Genre
Julia Phillips
Julia Phillips is the author of the bestselling novels Bear and Disappearing Earth, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and one of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year. A 2024 Guggenheim fellow, she lives with her family in Brooklyn.
Julia's work has been translated into twenty-six languages. She has written for The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Paris Review and teaches at the Randolph College MFA program. She is also on the board of the Crime Victims Treatment Center, a nonprofit that helps people heal from violence.
Genre
Julia Tagliere
Julia Tagliere’s work has appeared in The Writer, Potomac Review, Gargoyle Magazine, and numerous anthologies. She completed her MA in Writing at Johns Hopkins University, and in 2017, won The Writer’s Center’s Undiscovered Voices Fellowship. She serves as an editor with The Baltimore Review. More about her at justscribbling.com.
Publishing
Katherine Pickett
Katherine Pickett is the owner of POP Editorial Services LLC (popediting.net), where she provides copy editing, proofreading, and developmental editing to authors and publishers across the country. She is also the author of the award-winning book Perfect Bound: How to Navigate the Book Publishing Process Like a Pro, the booklet Freelancing as a Business: 7 Steps to Take Before Launch Day, and several ebooks. Her personal essay “Dented” was published by Lowestoft Chronicle and selected for the 2011 Lowestoft Chronicle print anthology. Her articles have appeared on Publishing Perspectives, JaneFriedman.com, Writer Beware, IBPA Independent, and elsewhere in print and around the web. She lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with her husband, Chris, and their two awe-inspiring daughters.
Fiction
Kathryn Johnson
Kathryn Johnson's 40+ popular novels (nominated for the Agatha Award, winner of the Heart of Excellence and Bookseller's Best Awards), include historical fiction (e.g., The Gentleman Poet, wherein Shakespeare escapes to the New World aboard a ship bound for disaster) and contemporary suspense. The Extreme Novelist (nonfiction) is the text based on her courses at The Smithsonian Associates and The Writer's Center. More about her at KathrynJohnsonLLC.com.
Kid Lit
Kathy MacMillan
Kathy MacMillan (she/her) is the author of nearly two dozen traditionally-published books for children, teens, and adults, including the Little Hands Signing series, The Runaway Shirt, She Spoke: 14 Women Who Raised Their Voices and Changed the World, and Compton Crook Award finalist Sword and Verse. More about her at kathymacmillan.com.
Genre
Kelly Sather
Kelly Sather is the author of Small in Real Life (Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 2023), her debut story collection and winner of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize. A former entertainment lawyer and screenwriter, she received an MFA from Bennington, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Santa Monica Review, Literary Hub, J Journal, Pembroke Magazine, PANK, and elsewhere. She writes about books and art-making, fame and desire for her Substack, Small in Real Life. She grew up in Los Angeles and lives in Washington, D.C.
Nonfiction
Kenneth D. Ackerman
Kenneth D. Ackerman has authored five commercially-published books of Americana (including his most recent, Trotsky in New York, 1917) plus dozens of articles, posts, and a recent screenplay. He has practiced law in DC since the 1970s, including senior posts on Capitol Hill and in two Administrations. He lives in Falls Church with his wife Karen.
Genre
Khadijah Z. Ali-Coleman
Dr. Khadijah Z. Ali-Coleman is an award-winning performance artist, multi-genre writer, playwright, and filmmaker. She is the current Poet Laureate of Prince George's County, Maryland. Learn more at KhadijahAli-Coleman.com.
Screenwriting
Khris Baxter
Khris Baxter is a screenwriter and producer and the co-founder of Lost Mountain Entertainment. Baxter co-produced Above the Shadows (2019), starring Olivia Thirlby, Alan Ritchson, Jim Gaffigan, and Megan Fox, and is currently co-producing Out of Darkness, written and directed by Claudia Myers and starring Mary-Louise Parker and Emile Hirsch. As a writer-producer, Baxter is currently developing a slate of TV projects targeting streaming networks and premium cable. Baxter has been a screenwriter and script consultant for more than two decades. He teaches screenwriting at Dickinson College and The MFA in Creative Writing at Queens University of Charlotte. He’s been a judge for the annual Virginia Screenwriting Competition since 2004.
Genre
Kristen Arnett
Kristen Arnett is the queer Floridian author of the novels STOP ME IF YOU’VE HEARD THIS ONE (Riverhead Books, 2025) which was longlisted for the Comedy Women in Print Prize, With Teeth (Riverhead Books, 2021) which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction, and the New York Times bestselling debut Mostly Dead Things (Tin House, 2019) which was also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction and was shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. She was awarded a Shearing Fellowship at Black Mountain Institute, has held residencies at Ragdale Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, the Millay Colony, and the Studios of Key West, and was longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. She runs the substack “Dad Lessons.” Her work has appeared at The New York Times, TIME, Vogue, The Cut, Oprah Magazine, PBS Newshour, The Guardian, Salon, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. Her upcoming short fiction collection, Party at the End of the World, will be published by Riverhead Books. She has a Masters in Library and Information Science from Florida State University and lives in Orlando, Florida. kristenarnettwriter.com
Fiction
Lacey N. Dunham
Lacey N. Dunham's novel The Belles is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster / Atria in fall 2025. She has received support from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the Sewanee Writers Conference as a Tennessee Williams scholar, and Catapult as a merit scholar. Her writing has been nominated to the Best American Short Stories and appears in Ploughshares, Witness, The Normal School, Southwest Review, and McSweeney's Internet Tendency, among others, and she currently serves an editor for Necessary Fiction and Story. Visit her at laceyndunham.com.
Fiction, Nonfiction, Memoir
Laura J. Oliver
Laura J. Oliver, MFA, is a story development editor, newspaper columnist, NPR contributor, and writing mentor who has taught at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. The author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House), Oliver teaches others to write successful short stories, novels, memoirs, and personal essays. Oliver's work appears in national publications such as The Washington Post, Country Living Magazine, The Writer Magazine, The Sun Magazine. Her editing clients have landed book contracts with publishers such as Simon and Schuster. Oliver won a Maryland Arts Council Award in Fiction, is an Anne Arundel County Literary Arts Award winner, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Poetry
Laura Lannan
Laura Lannan is a recent graduate of the MFA program at American University where she received the Myra Sklarew Award for outstanding poetry thesis. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in THAT Literary Review, Burnt Pine Magazine, The Blood Pudding, and Prometheus Dreaming. A lover of horror movies, libraries, and heavy metal music, she lives in Washington DC with her partner.
Genre
Laura Villareal
Laura Villareal is a poet and book critic. Her debut poetry collection, Girl’s Guide to Leaving (University of Wisconsin Press 2022), was awarded Texas Institute of Letters' John A. Robert Johnson Award for a First Book of Poetry and the Writers' League of Texas Book Award for Poetry.
Genre
Lauren Francis-Sharma
Lauren Francis-Sharma is the author of Casualties of Truth, which was inspired by her attendance at South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Amnesty Hearings in 1996. She is also the author of Book of the Little Axe, a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Award in Fiction, and 'Til the Well Runs Dry, winner of the Honor Fiction Prize by the Black Caucus of the ALA. Lauren is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan Law School, and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She serves as Chair of the Awards Committee for the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and is the Assistant Director of Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.
Nonfiction
Lindsey Van Wagner
Lindsey Van Wagner is a writer, speaker, teacher, and lifestyle guide known for empowering clients to live with more intention and higher creativity. She is the author of Spirit Vigilante: Sharing My Truth to Help You Live Yours. She has written for American University and Pathways Magazine and is passionate about health and wellness and she incorporates her personal story to help others transform.
Mixed Genre
Lisa Jan Sherman
Lisa Jan Sherman is an actor and improvisational acting and cognitive skills coach and team-builder. She has been a member of AFTRA and SAG for over 35 years and has performed, on stage, television, film and radio. Lisa received a B.A. in Theatre and Speech from University of Maryland. She is a founding member of NOW THIS! the totally improvised, musical comedy troupe which had a 27-year run. Facilitating communication skills groups with children since 1995, and finding that the improvisational 'piece' created a natural basis for social skill development, Lisa co-developed the 'Act As If' program and with Laura McAlpine co-wrote 'ACT AS IF' (improvisational activities for better social communication).
Nonfiction
Liz Tracy
Liz Tracy is a culture and health journalist. She started her career as a nightlife and arts blogger. She’s since contributed to The New York Times, The Atlantic, Glamour, No Depression, and many other publications. Liz was a music editor at an alt weekly and managing editor at Tom Tom, a magazine about female and nonbinary drummers. Liz taught essay writing at Boston’s Grub Street, ghost wrote two books, and writes for major arts and social justice organizations.
Genre
Lorin Drexler
Lorin Drexler is an American poet, fiction writer, musician, songwriter, and music producer. Currently residing in Phoenix, Arizona, and originally from Chicago, he graduated from Columbia College with a bachelor's degree in creative writing. His work has appeared in Vine Leaves Literary Journal, Apocrypha and Abstractions, Maudlin House, and others.
Genre
Louise Arnheim
Louise Arnheim is a Washington, DC public affairs and executive communications professional recognized for creating high-impact speeches that promote executive brand and advance policy. Renowned for capturing leadership voice, she has directed strategic communications for federal policymakers, corporate executives, and non-profit leaders.
Fiction, Nonfiction
Lynn Auld Schwartz
Lynn Auld Schwartz is a writer, story development editor for fiction and nonfiction works, and has ghostwritten three books. Her plays and staged readings have been performed in Atlanta and NYC, including Lincoln Center. She founded the Temple Bar Literary Reading Series in NYC, has received two Individual Artist Awards in Fiction from the Maryland State Arts Council, and an Annie Literary Arts Award from the Arts Council of Anne Arundel County. Her stories have appeared in literary journals and she produces and directs a Page To Stage series, which offers teen and adult regional writers the opportunity to perform their life stories on stage. A graduate of The City College of New York, Columbia University, and The Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theater, Schwartz has taught fiction, flash fiction, and memoir at St. John’s College, The Writer’s Center, and is a Writing Guest Artist for Anne Arundel County’s Performing and Visual Arts Magnet program. More about her at writerswordhouse.com.
Genre
Lyzette Wanzer
Lyzette’s work appears in over thirty literary journals, magazines, and books. Her book, TRAUMA, TRESSES, & TRUTH (Chicago Review Press) was a Library Journal Top 10 Best Book. She’s received multiple grants from California Arts Council, California Humanities, Center for Cultural Innovation, San Francisco Arts Commission, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and others.
Genre
Margaret Coan
Margaret is the author of two published books. Writing is Margaret’s life raft, a safe place for discovery. She loves to share this gift with others and encourage them to write their stories and discover its power and joy. As an instructor Margaret’s focus is on process and exploration. More about her at: sacredlisteninghealing.com.
Genre
María Fernanda
María Fernanda (she/her) is a poet whose work explores, “the breaking and making of family,” (OkayAfrica). Awarded the The Norma Elia Cantú Award in Creative Writing, María Fernanda has performed at Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, The Phoenix Art Museum, and more. Read her latest work in The Hill Rag.
Genre
Marija Stajic
Marija Stajic is a Public Affairs Officer currently working for the Federal Government. Her short stories have been published in many literary journals (Prairie Schooner, Dr. T.J. Eckleburg Review, Gargoyle, South 85, Barely South Review etc.), awarded, anthologized and nominated for Pushcart Prize. She has published three books of poetry and she used to work for The New Yorker as a fact-checker, translator and consultant. She was the Writers Center’s Undiscovered Voices Fellow in 2013. She has a B.A. in Literature and Slavic Studies and M.A. in International Journalism. She’s represented by the Tobias Literary Agency and her second novel AMERICAN SORCERESS is currently on submission.
Genre
Marita Golden
Marita Golden is the award-winning author of over twenty works of fiction and nonfiction. She has taught creative Writing at George Mason University and Virginia Commonwealth University and works with authors on book and manuscript development. She has led workshops on writing and self-care practices for diverse audiences. She is co-founder of the Hurston/Wright Foundation.
Nonfiction
Mary Collins
Mary Collins taught nonfiction part-time at the Johns Hopkins' MA in Writing Program in DC for 12 years, where she won the teaching award. Currently she is the Program Coordinator for the Writing Minors and a full professor at Central CT State University. For the last six years, she has also taught the nonfiction workshop for the Yale Summer Writing Program. The focus of her new book, A Play Book: Creating Writers, Creating Citizens, forms the core of the content of her workshop.
Kid Lit
Mary Quattlebaum
Mary Quattlebaum is the author of 30 award-winning children’s books (Pirate vs. Pirate, Jo MacDonald Hiked in the Woods, Hero Dogs) and of stories and poems in anthologies and children’s magazines (Cricket, Spider, Ladybug, Highlights). She teaches in the MFA program in writing for children at the Vermont College of Fine Arts and is a popular school and conference speaker.
Kid Lit
Mary Quattlebaum & Joan Waites
Mary Quattlebaum is the author of 30 award-winning children’s books (Pirate vs. Pirate, Jo MacDonald Hiked in the Woods, Hero Dogs) and of stories and poems in anthologies and children’s magazines (Cricket, Spider, Ladybug, Highlights). She teaches in the MFA program in writing for children at the Vermont College of Fine Arts and is a popular school and conference speaker.
Joan Waites has illustrated more than 40 children’s books and most recently has written and illustrated A Colorful Tail: Finding Monet at Giverny, A Purr-fect Painting: Matisse’s Other Great Cat, and An Artist’s Night Before Christmas. She teaches arts classes for children at her private studio and speaks frequently at schools and conferences.
Fiction
Mathangi Subramanian
Mathangi Subramanian, Ed.D., is an Indian American writer and educator. Her novel A People’s History of Heaven was longlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and is a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Her middle grades book Dear Mrs. Naidu won the South Asia Book Award. Her personal essays and nonfiction have appeared in The Washington Post, Ms. Magazine, Zora Magazine, and Al Jazeera America, among others. She holds a doctorate in education from Columbia Teachers College and lives on the west coast with her husband and daughter.
Poetry, Kid Lit
Meg Eden Kuyatt
Meg Eden is a 2020 Pitch Wars mentee, and teaches creative writing at Anne Arundel Community College. She is the author of the 2021 Towson Prize for Literature winning poetry collection Drowning in the Floating World (Press 53, 2020) and children’s novels, most recently Good Different (Scholastic, 2023). Find her online at megedenbooks.com or on Twitter at @ConfusedNarwhal.
Genre
Megan Kamalei Kakimoto
Megan Kamalei Kakimoto is the Japanese and Kanaka Maoli author of the story collection Every Drop Is a Man’s Nightmare (Bloomsbury 2023), a USA Today national bestseller. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, Granta, Joyland, and elsewhere. Named a Fall 2023 “Writer to Watch” by Publisher’s Weekly, she has received the “Author Under 35” Award by the HONOLULU Book Awards and has been a finalist for the Keene Prize for Literature. Her work has been supported by the Rona Jaffe Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Tin House Winter Workshop. She received her MFA from the Michener Center for Writers and is an Affiliate Faculty in Fiction at Antioch University Los Angeles and a Lecturer in English at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. A Fiction Editor for No Tokens journal, she lives in Honolulu.
Genre
Mel Barrett
Mel Barrett is a writer, director, editor, producer, and script consultant. As a seasoned coverage editor for production companies like Circle of Confusion, Mel is responsible for identifying the production-viability of a screenplay. Mel's screenplays have also won numerous awards and have been produced for the big and small screen.
Poetry
Melanie Figg
Melanie Figg, author of the award-winning poetry collection, Trace, has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and others. As a certified professional coach, she offers women’s writing retreats and helps writers to finish projects, tame their inner critics, and add more ease and productivity to their creative lives. More about her at melaniefigg.net.
Genre
Melissa Webster
Melissa Webster earned her masters in creative writing at Johns Hopkins Krieger School in 2011, and trained to facilitate workshops with Amherst Writers and Artists in 2022. Over the years her short-form writing has appeared in various publications, journals and anthologies in South Africa, Zimbabwe and the USA. Her (unpublished) debut novel Who We Were, Where We Are was recently longlisted for both the McKitterick Prize and the 2024 Cinnamon Press Literature Award. Her short story Space To Fall, and feature film script, Grey Ghosts, were optioned in 2018 and 2025. Melissa is usually Cape Town based, but is currently enjoying a season in the DC area, with her husband and youngest daughter.
Poetry
Michele Wolf
Michele Wolf is the author of Peacocks on the Streets, Immersion, Conversations During Sleep (Anhinga Prize for Poetry), and the chapbook The Keeper of Light. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Hudson Review, North American Review, The Southern Review, and numerous other literary journals and anthologies. Her honors include a literary arts Independent Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council. Wolf has served as a contributing editor for Poet Lore. More about her at michelewolf.com and broadstonebooks.com.
Poetry
Nancy Naomi Carlson
Nancy Naomi Carlson, an NEA grant recipient, is a poet, translator, essayist, and editor, and has authored 10 titles. Her work has appeared in APR, The Georgia Review, The Paris Review, and Poetry, and An Infusion of Violets was named “new & noteworthy” by The New York Times. More about her at nancynaomicarlson.com.
Fiction, Nonfiction
Nani Power
Nani Power is the award winning author of three novels and three memoirs, to include Crawling at Night (Grove/Atlantic Monthly, 2001), a New York Times Notable Book of The Year and a finalist for The Los Angeles Times Book Award as well as the British Orange Award.
Poetry
Naomi Ayala
Naomi Ayala is the author of three books of poetry: Wild Animals on the Moon, This Side of Early (both published by Curbstone Press), and Calling Home: Praise Songs & Incantations (Editorial Bilingüe/Bilingual Press). She is also the translator of Luis Alberto Ambroggio’s La arqueología del viento/The Wind’s Archeology. Her most recent poems appear in Gargoyle, Little Patuxent Review, and Where We Stand: Poems of Black Resilience.
Genre
Natasha Oladokun
Natasha Oladokun is a Black, queer poet and essayist from Virginia. She holds fellowships from Cave Canem, The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the Jackson Center for Creative Writing, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she was the inaugural First Wave Poetry fellow. Her work has appeared in the American Poetry Review, The Academy of American Poets, Kenyon Review Online, Harper’s Bazaar, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Madison, WI, and is working on her first collection of poems.
Genre
Natasha Sajé
Natasha Sajé is the author of five books of poems, including The Future Will Call You Something Else (Tupelo, 2023). Her prose books are Windows and Doors: A Poet Reads Literary Theory (Michigan, 2014) and a memoir-in-essays, Terroir: Love, Out of Place (Trinity, 2020). Her honors include the Robert Winner and the Alice Fay di Castagnola Awards from the Poetry Society of America; a Pushcart prize; a Fulbright Scholarship to Slovenia; a Camargo Fellowship in France; Lambda, IPPY, Foreword, and Pen Finalist prizes. Sajé is Professor Emerita of English at Westminster University in Salt Lake City, and has been teaching in the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing Program since 1996. She lives in Washington, DC.
Genre
Nevin Martell
Nevin Martell is the author of eight books and a veteran freelancer with over two decades experience whose work has been published by The Washington Post, USA Today, National Geographic, Fortune, and Washingtonian.
Fiction, Poetry
Nick Gardner
Nick Gardner holds an MFA from BGSU and has received support from The Elizabeth George Foundation, VSC, and The DeGroot Foundation. His writing has been widely published, including one book of poetry, So Marvelously Far, and a forthcoming novella, Hurricane Trinity. An Ohio native, he resides in Washington DC.
Genre
Nicole Chung
Nicole Chung’s A Living Remedy was named a Notable Book of 2023 by The New York Times, landed on over a dozen Best Book of the Year lists, and won the Tillie Olsen Award for Creative Writing and the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association Nonfiction Book of the Year Award. Her 2018 bestseller All You Can Ever Know was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, a semifinalist for the PEN Open Book Award, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick, and an Indies Choice Honor Book. Chung has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Time, The Atlantic, Esquire, Slate, Vulture, and many other publications. Previously, she was the digital editorial director at Catapult, the managing editor of The Toast, and an editor for Hyphen magazine. She has taught writing workshops for Tin House, Catapult, Kundiman, and Kweli International Literary Festival, among others, and volunteers as a mentor and 2025 secretary for Periplus, a mentorship collective serving early-career writers of color.
Mixed Genre, Comedy
Nikki Frias
Nikki Frias has contributed to Forbes, The Daily Beast, and Boardroom. She is an author, writing coach, and teacher specializing in comedy writing, and facilitating improv in the corporate world. After noticing the struggles with finishing her book, she started "Book on a Budget" coaching to help writers achieve their goals with an affordable a la carte style to help at any stage of the writing process. She is the author of Damn, You Still Single? and Does this Divorce Make Me Look Fat? and currently teaches sketch and comedy writing at The Writer's Center.
Fiction
Ofelia Montelongo
Ofelia Montelongo is a bilingual writer from Mexico. She has an MBA in Strategic Leadership & an MA in Latin American Literature. Her work has been published in The Rumpus, Latino Book Review, Los Acentos Review, and elsewhere. She was the editor of the Latine Monsters issue at Barrelhouse. She is a PEN/Faulkner writer in residence; a Macondista and a PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow; and a Tin House, VONA, and Key West Seminar alumna.
Nonfiction
Pat McNees
Pat McNees is a writer and editor who for 25 years has helped individuals tell their life story. A former editor in book publishing (at Harper & Row and at Fawcett), she is also past president of the Association of Personal Historians, and manager-scribe of the local Washington Biography Group. She received training in Guided Autobiography and has taught life writing at The Writer’s Center for several years. More about her at writersandeditors.com.
Fiction
Patricia Gray
Patricia Gray, author of Rupture from Red Hen Press, formerly headed the Library of Congress’s Poetry and Literature Center. Her work appeared recently in Oberon and in Endlessly Rocking. She has published short fiction, judged the national Poetry Out Loud recitation contest, and directed a Dylan Thomas play with 18 actors playing 60 parts. She has received a 2023 Artist Fellowship in poetry from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.
Fiction
Paz Pardo
Paz Pardo is a playwright and a novelist. Her debut, The Shamshine Blind, was a most anticipated book of Winter 2023 at Bustle, Lithub, and Crimereads, and was described as “appealingly strange… a novel that’s both topical and entertaining” by the San Francisco Chronicle. Her plays include Movimiento Perpetuo/Perpetual Motion, which she has performed in eleven cities in three countries, YOU/EMMA (most recently at the Pear Ave Theater in Mountain View, CA), CIERTAS ASTILLAS/CERTAIN SHARDS (Two Rivers Theater Crossing Borders Festival 2021), Milton, MI (LTC Carnaval reading 2018, Bay Area Playwrights Festival Finalist 2016, NPC semifinalist 2019), Duct Tape Girl and Fetish Chick Conquer the World (BootStrap Theater Foundation, NYC), and RubberMatch (RED CARAVAN, NYC; NPC semifinalist 2015). Her writing has appeared in The Brooklyn Review, Encountering Ensemble, Howlround, and Volume 1 of the I Scream Social Anthology. Djerassi fellow 2019. MFA, UT Austin Michener Center for Writers, 2018. BA, Stanford, 2009. Fulbright Award, Buenos Aires, 2012.
Genre
Peter Mandel
Peter Mandel is the author of eleven books for children including Jackhammer Sam (Macmillan), Zoo Ah-Choooo (Holiday House), Bun, Onion, Burger (Simon & Schuster), Planes at the Airport (Scholastic), and Say Hey! A Song of Willie Mays (Hyperion). He’s a regular contributor to the travel sections of The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and The Huffington Post. Learn more about him at petermandel.net.
Genre
R. O. Kwon
R. O. Kwon is the nationally bestselling author of Exhibit, a novel, which published in May 2024 with Riverhead (US) and will be out in July 2024 with Virago/Little Brown (UK). Kwon’s first novel, The Incendiaries, has been translated into seven languages and was named a best book of the year by over forty publications. The Incendiaries was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Award. Kwon and Garth Greenwell co-edited Kink, a New York Times Notable Book and recipient of the inaugural Joy Award.
Kwon’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Guardian, and elsewhere. She has received fellowships and awards from MacDowell, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Yaddo. Kwon was the 2024 Stein Visiting Writer at Stanford University. Born in Seoul, Kwon has lived most of her life in the United States.
Nonfiction
Rachel Coonce
Rachel Coonce is a graduate of the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College, specializing in creative nonfiction writing. She has been awarded the Conger Beasley Jr. Award for Nonfiction by New Letters magazine, an Independent Artist Award by the Maryland State Arts Council, and she received an honorable mention in The Missouri Review’s Miller Audio Prize for her investigation into memory. She is cofounder of The Inner Loop, a literary arts nonprofit in Washington DC that has been praised by The Washington Post, Ploughshares, The Writer’s Center, and several others, and which received multiple Amazon Literary Partnerships and DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities grants for its projects. She is also creator, executive producer, and cohost of The Inner Loop Radio, a creative writing podcast that explores literary craft and celebrates local authors. Follow Rachel on instagram @rachel_coonce.
Memoir
Raquel Gutiérrez
Raquel Gutiérrez is a critic, essayist, poet and educator. Gutiérrez is a 2021 recipient of the Rabkin Prize in Arts Journalism, as well as a 2017 recipient of the The Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. Gutiérrez teaches in the Oregon State University-Cascades Low Residency Creative Writing MFA Program. Gutiérrez's first book Brown Neon (Coffee House Press) was named as one of the best books of 2022 by The New Yorker.
Playwriting
Richard Washer
Richard Washer is a playwright and director, and serves as Associate Artistic Director and First Draft Resident Playwright at The Rose Theatre Company. He holds a BA (University of Virginia) and an MFA (American University). His work has been produced at venues including Charter Theatre, Earl Hamner Jr. Theatre, Source Theatre, The National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts, New Works Theatre among many others. More about him at richardwasher.com.
Genre
Rob Jolles
A 30-year professional speaker and four-time bestselling author, Rob Jolles has traveled over 2.5 million miles delivering keynotes and workshops all over the world. He trains authors to promote their books and speak for some of the largest publishers in the country. More about him at jolles.com.
Poetry
Ryland Shengzhi Li
Ryland Shengzhi Li is a poet living in Northern Virginia. Over 150 of his haiku, tanka, and related works have been published in the leading journals for these forms, including Frogpond, Ribbons,
Genre
Saaret E. Yoseph
Saaret E. Yoseph is a multidisciplinary writer, producer and artist from Washington, DC. She tells stories about art, culture & intersectionality, connecting personal questions to broader themes concerning Black women across the African diaspora. Her work has been featured by Voice of America, HuffPost, The Rumpus, The Root and The Ethiopian Reporter. Saaret made her directorial debut with RED LINE DC (2014), a documentary on gentrification and graffiti, which earned distinction as her master’s thesis at Georgetown University. She went on to launch various multimedia projects, in collaboration with the NEA, Poetry Foundation, HumanitiesDC, and Google Arts & Culture, among others. Her latest project, JOURNEY(S), combines oral history with original poetry, animation and archival imagery to honor the migration experiences of Ethiopian women in DC. She’s also pursuing other narrative experiments and creative inquiries, including a poetry chapbook titled, A Beginner’s Guide to Endings.
Kid Lit
Sam Cameron
Sam Cameron (she/her) is a high school history teacher, YA author, and Author Accelerator certified book coach, specializing in Kid Lit. She believes all children deserve to see themselves represented in great books. They deserve a chance to read your story....and you deserve a chance to tell it! You can learn more about Sam’s private coaching offerings, and subscribe to her newsletter by visiting truantpen.com.
Fiction, Nonfiction
Sam Nelson
Sam Nelson is a teacher, writer, and naturalist. He's especially interested in using ecology to inform creative literature for both adults and children. He’s published work in The Washington Post, Two Hawks Quarterly, DCist, and other places. You can read more about his work here: samnelson.xyz
Poetry
Sandra Beasley
Sandra Beasley is the author of Made to Explode; Count the Waves; I Was the Jukebox, winner of the Barnard Women Poets Prize; Theories of Falling, winner of the New Issues Poetry Prize; and Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life, a disability memoir. She also edited Vinegar and Char: Verse from the Southern Foodways Alliance. She lives in Washington DC.
Poetry
Saúl Hernández
Saúl Hernández is a queer writer from San Antonio, TX who was raised by undocumented parents. Saúl has an MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Texas at El Paso. He's the winner of the 2021 Two Sylvias Press Chapbook Prize chosen by Victoria Chang. His poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of The Net. Saúl’s work is forthcoming/featured in Frontier Poetry, Poet Lore, Foglifter Journal, Oyster River Pages, Cherry Tree, and elsewhere.
Poetry
Sayan Ray
Sayan Ray is a writer and freelance editor, whose work has appeared in a Dedalus Press anthology and several literary magazines. As an editor, he assisted clients in successfully publishing their debut works. His poetry has also featured in UNESCO’s World Poetry Day and the curriculum of Swarthmore College.
Genre
Shannon Sanders
Shannon Sanders is the author of the linked short story collection Company, which won the 2024 Los Angeles Times Book Prize's Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, was named a Publishers Weekly and Debutiful Best Book of 2023, and was shortlisted for the 2024 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Her short fiction has appeared in One Story, Sewanee Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Electric Literature, and elsewhere, and received a PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. She lives in Silver Spring with her husband and three sons.
Nonfiction
Shanon Lee
Shanon Lee is a contributor for Forbes and The Lily, published by The Washington Post. Her byline appears in publications including Cosmopolitan, ELLE, Marie Claire, Playboy, Redbook, Women’s Health and Parents Magazine. Her opinion essays on misogyny and racism are widely circulated, and have been shared by notables including bestselling author J.K. Rowling, rap legend MC Lyte and political activist Kevin Powell. Shanon is an alumna of the 2019 Women’s Media Center Progressive Women’s Voices program and a mentor-editor for The OpEd Project. She was named to The Tempest’s 40 Women To Watch 2019 list for advancing the dialogue around gender-based violence. She is represented by Agnes Carlowicz of the Carol Mann Agency and is currently working on a book about misogynoir in pop culture. mylove4writing.com.
Comedy
Sheila Wenz
Sheila Wenz is a writer and comedian who has worked on a variety of television series and films at CBS, ABC, Columbia Pictures, MGM, Warner Bros., Disney and on the writing staff at NBC’s Stage One on “The Tonight Show.” She is founder of Stand-Up Studios comedy school and coaching and is also a part time writing instructor at colleges on the east coast. More about her at standupstudios.com.
Fiction
Solveig Eggerz
Solveig Eggerz, a native of Iceland, is the author of two novels, Seal Woman and Sigga of Reykjavik. She teaches for Heard, an Alexandria, VA non-profit that brings the arts to under-served populations.
Poetry
Sue Ellen Thompson
Sue Ellen Thompson is author of six books of poetry, most recently Sea Nettles: New & Selected Poems (2022). She is also the editor of The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry. Her work has been included in the Best American Poetry series, read on NPR by Garrison Keillor, and featured in U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser’s nationally-syndicated newspaper column. She taught at Wesleyan University, Middlebury College, Binghamton University, and Central Connecticut State University before moving to the Eastern Shore in 2006. She was awarded the 2010 Maryland Author Prize from the Maryland Library Association. More about her at: sueellenthompson.com.
Nonfiction, Memoir
Sufiya Abdur-Rahman
Sufiya Abdur-Rahman is author of the memoir Heir to the Crescent Moon, winner of the Iowa Prize for Literary Nonfiction. She is creative nonfiction editor for Cherry Tree, a national literary journal, at Washington College, where she teaches creative writing and journalism. Find her at sufiya.net and on Twitter @MrsAbolitionist.
Fiction
Susan Coll
Susan Coll is the author of six novels, most recently Bookish People. Her novel, The Stager, was a New York Times and Chicago Tribune Editor’s Choice. Her other books include Acceptance — which was made into a television movie starring Joan Cusack — Beach Week, Rockville Pike, and karlmarx.com. Her work has appeared in publications including the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR.org, atlantic.com, and The Millions.
Fiction
Talia Lakshmi Kolluri
Talia Lakshmi Kolluri is a mixed South Asian American writer from Northern California. Her debut collection, What We Fed to the Manticore (Tin House 2022), was a finalist for the 2023 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, among other honors. To learn more about Talia, visit taliakolluri.com.
Fiction
Tammy Greenwood
T. Greenwood is the author of fifteen novels. She has received grants from the Sherwood Anderson Foundation, the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Maryland State Arts Council. She has won four San Diego Book Awards. Five of her novels have been Indie Next picks. Bodies of Water was a finalist for a Lambda Foundation award, and Keeping Lucy was a 2021 Target Book Club selection. Her next novel, The Still Point, will be published on 2/20/24. She and her family split their time between San Diego, CA, and Vermont.
Fiction, Poetry, Mixed Genre
Tara Campbell
Tara Campbell is a writer, teacher, Kimbilio Fellow, and fiction editor at Barrelhouse. Prior publication credits include SmokeLong Quarterly, Masters Review, Jellyfish Review, Booth, and Strange Horizons. She's the author of a novel, TreeVolution, a hybrid fiction/poetry collection, Circe's Bicycle, and a short story collection, Midnight at the Organporium. She received her M.F.A. from American University in 2019. More about her at: taracampbell.com.
Poetry
Thibault Raoult
Thibault Raoult holds an MFA from Brown University and PhD from University of Georgia. He has published three books: Person Hour, Disposable Epics, and Pro(m)bois(e). A former editor at The Georgia Review, TR currently directs RealPoetik and makes letterpress and music (as Historic Sunsets) in and near Mount Rainier, Maryland.
Screenwriting
Timothy Tau
Timothy Tau is an award-winning writer, director and producer. He was named by Mic Magazine as one of "6 Young Asian-American Filmmakers Who Are Shattering America's Asian Film Bias."
Tau's short film Nathan Jung v. Bruce Lee (2016) won Best Original Script and Best Comedy Short awards from the Asians on Film Festival and screened at a number of film festivals in 2018-2019. Tau is also known for Keye Luke (2012), a short film biopic he directed, produced and co-wrote with Ed Moy. He received a Visual Communications "Armed with a Camera" Fellowship for Emerging Media Artists to make the film, and it has screened at over a dozen film festivals worldwide and has additionally won awards from the HollyShorts Film Festival (Audience Award) and the Asians on Film Festival (Best Original Score). Tau has also directed and written the black-and-white Film Noir/Sci-Fi/Horror genre-bender, The Case (2010).
Tau won Grand Prize in the Hyphen Asian American Short Story Contest for his short story "The Understudy," which is published in the Winter 2011 Issue of Hyphen Magazine. His short story "Land of Origin" also won Second Place in the 2010 Playboy College Fiction Contest and Second Place in the 2016 ScreenCraft Short Story Contest, judged by Academy Award winning screenwriter Diana Ossana (Brokeback Mountain). He is developing both stories and other scripts into feature films.
He is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Los Angeles or UCLA, University of California Hastings College of the Law, and the University of California Berkeley School of Law. He has also graduated from the Professional Programs in Screenwriting and TV Writing from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television.
Fiction, Flash Fiction
Tommy Dean
Tommy Dean is the author of two flash fiction chapbooks Special Like the People on TV (Redbird Chapbooks, 2014) and Covenants (ELJ Editions, 2021), and a full flash collection, Hollows (Alternating Current Press 2022). He lives in Indiana where he currently is the Editor at Fractured Lit and Uncharted Magazine. A recipient of the 2019 Lascaux Prize in Short Fiction, his writing can be found in Best Microfiction 2019 and 2020, Best Small Fiction 2019 and 2022, Monkeybicycle, and numerous litmags. Find him at tommydeanwriter.com and on Twitter @TommyDeanWriter.
Nonfiction, Fiction
Tracy Hahn-Burkett
Tracy Hahn-Burkett is a writer and public policy advocate. Her work has appeared in Pangyrus, Experience Magazine, The Drum, The Washington Post’s On Parenting, WBUR’s Cognoscenti, Adoptive Families, and others. Her policy and politics background includes work at both the national and state levels. Tracy is revising her first novel.
Fiction
Virginia Hartman
Virginia Hartman’s novel The Marsh Queen was published by Gallery/Simon & Schuster in May 2022. Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in many publications, including the Hudson Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and the Washingtonian, and her work has been anthologized in Gravity Dancers: Even More Fiction by Washington Area Women (Paycock Press). Her writing has been supported by the Sewanee Writer’s Conference and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She holds an MFA from American University and teaches creative writing at George Washington University as well as here at The Writer’s Center.
Nonfiction
William O’Sullivan
William O'Sullivan is an essayist and editor whose writing has appeared in Washingtonian, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The North American Review, 100 Word Story, and others. His work has been cited three times among the notable essays of the year in The Best American Essays.
Genre
Yvette Neisser
Yvette Neisser is an award-winning poet, Spanish translator, and founder of the DC-Area Literary Translators Network. Her co-translation of María Teresa Ogliastri’s “From the Diary of Madame Mao” won the Carnegie Mellon University Press Translation Award and is forthcoming in 2026. She has taught creative writing at various institutions.
Genre
Zach Powers
Zach Powers is the author of the forthcoming novel The Migraine Diaries (JackLeg 2026), the novel First Cosmic Velocity (Putnam 2019), and the story collection Gravity Changes (BOA Editions 2017). His writing has been featured by American Short Fiction, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. He serves as Artistic Director for The Writer’s Center and Marketing Director for Poet Lore, America's oldest poetry magazine. Originally from Savannah, Georgia, he now lives in Arlington, Virginia. Get to know him at ZachPowers.com.
