Faculty

Permanent Faculty

John P. Briggs, PhD., joined the faculty at WCSU in 1987. He is the author and co-author of several books, including Fire in the Crucible, on creativity (St. Martin's Press); three books on chaos: Turbulent Mirror (HarperCollins); Fractals, the Patterns of Chaos (Simon and Schuster); and Seven Life Lessons of Chaos (HarperCollins), and a collection of short stories, Trickster Tales (Fine Tooth Press, 2005). He is one of three distinguished Connecticut State University professors from WCSU. He served as senior editor of Connecticut Review from 2004-2007 and is the journal's associate editor. His website is http://people.wcsu.edu/briggsj.

Brian Clements is the MFA Coordinator, and Professor of Writing, Linguistics, and Creative Writing.  He is author of over half a dozen books of and about poetry, including the anthology An Introduction to the Prose Poem, and prose poems And How to End It (Quale Press), and Disappointed Psalms (Meritage Press).  Editor of Sentence: a Journal of Prose Poetics and of the small press Firewheel Editions, Prof. Clements also has worked professionally in technical communications, marketing, corporate communications, grant-writing, and non-profit administration.

Oscar de los Santos is Professor and Chair of the Department of Writing, Linguistics, and Creative Process.  Professor de los Santos is the author of Hard Boiled Egg (Fine Tooth Press, 2004) and Infinite Wonderlands (Fine Tooth Press, 2006.) 

Edward Hagan is a professor in the Department of Writing, Linguistics, and Creative Process. His teaching grows out of his primary scholarly focuses on Irish Studies and on war literature. He teaches all levels of writing courses. His latest book is Goodbye Yeats and O’Neill: Farce in Contemporary Irish and Irish-American Narratives (Editions Rodopi, 2010).

Shouhua Qi is Professor in the Department of English. Qi has published extensively both in the United States and in China.  He is the author of When the Purple Mountain Burns (San Francisco: The Long River Press; Shanghai People's Press; Hong Kong Joint Press; 2005), a novel about the rape of Nanjing (1937-38). His screenplay, based on the novel, has been optioned for production. Qi's other works include Pearl Jacket and Other Stories: Flash Fiction from Contemporary China (Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 2008), and Red Guard Fantasies and Other Stories (Long River Press, 2007).  Currently Qi is working on a novel about an American-Korean War POW in China, tentatively titled Twin-Sun River.  A play he wrote based on the novel was staged by Shanghai Theater Academy in spring 2009.

James R. Scrimgeour is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Writing, Linguistics, and Creative Process. He has published a critical biography of Sean O'Casey, seven books of poetry, and over 200 poems in anthologies and periodicals.

Writing Mentors

Joe Ahearn is a successful professional writer with more than 20 years experience in writing for Fortune 100 companies.  Mr. Ahearn has written hundreds of technical and commercial publications, and produced a wide range of marketing materials.  More recently, he has been heavily involved with web-based communications, producing a wide variety of commercial websites. In addition to his professional work,  Mr. Ahearn has published poetry, translations, and essays in leading magazines and journals around the country, including his most recent book of poetry, Five Fictions (Sulphur River Review Press, 2003).

Holly Azevedo has been a writer, editor, instructor and manager for nearly thirty years.  Much of her career was as a project manager for a major information technology corporation, where she wrote and managed the development of communications and technical publications. She has designed and delivered courses to writers, and to technology developers and users. Her non-corporate publications include articles on collectibles and the arts. She holds an MBA from the University of Chicago and an MFA in Creative and Professional Writing from Western Connecticut State University. Her current work is in creative nonfiction, with special interests in history and culture.

Roger Boylan’s roots are in Ireland and the greater New York area.  After attending the University of Ulster and the University of Edinburgh, he worked as a translator, computer technician, teacher, bartender, and book editor and traveled widely throughout Europe, North Africa and North America.  Author of Killoyle (Dalkey Archive Press,1997) and The Great Pint-Pulling Olympiad (Grove Press, 2003), his stories and articles have appeared in various journals, including The Literary Review and The Texas Observer.  He is a regular contributor to Boston Review's New Fiction Forum.

Louisa Burns-Bisogno is an “O’Neill Playwright” and a winner at the National Playwrights Conference. She is an award-winning screenwriter, director, author, and international media consultant with over 100 on-screen credits. Her movies have been produced on cable TV and on all the major U.S. networks, as well as distributed internationally.  Among these are:  My Body, My Child with Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Jessica Parker and Cynthia Nixon; Bridge to Silence, with Marlee Matlin; Mary Silliman’s War,  and Nobody's Child, which netted an Emmy for Marlo Thomas. Louisa has trained professional writers in dramatic series techniques in Moscow, Dublin, and more recently in Rome where she is Head-Writer on a TV series in development. She has written story and scripts for popular American daytime series such as The Young and the Restless, One Life to Live and As the World Turns. She has had numerous plays produced including Angels and Infidels which she also directed. Seven of Louisa’s plays were selected by the New York Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for staged readings. She has produced and directed many of her students’ plays in this prestigious venue.

Richard Cass is author of the story collection, Gleam of Bone (North Coast Press, 2005) and two books of poetry. He has won prizes for his short fiction, from REDBOOK, Playboy, Writers' Digest and the Pacific Northwest Writers' Conference. He is published widely, and a recent short story is included in the anthology, Best American Stories of the West, Volume 1. He lives in Brookfield, Connecticut, where he operates Cass Communications, Inc., specializing in technical and business communications.

Rita Ciresi is author of two award-winning short-story collections, Mother Rocket (Dell, 2002) and Sometimes I Dream in Italian (Dell, 2001); and three novels, Blue Italian (Dell, 1997), Pink Slip (Delacourt, 1999), and Remind me Again Why I Married You (Dell, 2003.)  She is director of creative writing at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

Jane K. Cleland’s multiple award-nominated and IMBA best selling Josie Prescott Antiques Mystery series [St. Martin’s Minotaur] has been reviewed as an Antiques Roadshow for mystery fans. “Josie” stories have also appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Jane chairs the Wolfe Pack’s literary awards, which include the Nero Award and the Black Orchid Novella Award, granted in partnership with Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. She is a past chapter president of the Mystery Writers of America/New York Chapter and served on the national board as well. Library Journal named Consigned to Death a “core title” for librarians looking to build a cozy collection, one of only 22 titles listed, along with books by Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers. Jane also writes noir plays around the theme of women who love men they hate. www.janecleland.net

Leslie Dallas is a screenwriter, story editor and poet. Dallas has been awarded the Samuel Goldwyn Writing Award, the Disney Fellowship and the Jack Nicholson Prize in Screenwriting.  Her work has been staged  at the Newport Beach and the Austin Heart of Film Festivals.  She is a graduate of the UCLA MFA program in Screenwriting, and has worked on numerous projects in television and for the studios.  Her poetry and writing has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, The Pacific Review and Connecticut Review.  After living several lifetimes in Los Angeles, she was recently reincarnated in Connecticut.

Jeffrey Davis is author of The Journey from the Center to the Page: Yoga as Muse: Yoga Philosophies and Practices as Muse for Authentic Writing (Penguin, 2004; Monkfish, 2008) and the poetry collection City Reservoir (Barnburner Press, 1999). He writes the Tracking Wonder blog for Psychology Today, and his essays, articles, short stories, and poems appear in publications around the world including Magma, Common Ground, and the anthology You Are Not Here and Other Works by Buddhist Writers (Wisdom Publications). He is Fiction Editor for Tiferet: A Journal of Spiritual Literature. Davis has taught creative writing at Southern Methodist University and Marist College, and has taught at centers and conferences in Taos, Greece, Block Island, Cape Cod, and Nova Scotia among other places. He is a mentor and coach to professional writers all over the world. He serves  as creativity consultant for professionals, organizations, and schools.

John Dennis is a filmmaker and playwright with over 100 films, plays, and musicals to his credit. Dennis' musical, Jacob's Folly, premiered at Maine Center for the Arts in 2002.  He has written stories, articles, and poems for children's encyclopedias. Much of Mr. Dennis’s work focuses on the concepts of a more humanistic consumer model and a more humanistic society. Two prime examples of this focus are Woolly, a children's feature film about endangered species, and his latest work-in-progress—an online, interactive, 3-D animated children's store.

Kass Fleisher is author of The Bear River Massacre and the Making of History (SUNY Press, 2004); Accidental Species: A Reproduction (Chax Press, 2005); The Adventurous (Factory School, 2006); and Talking out of School: Memoir of an Educated Woman (Dalkey Archive Press, 2008).  Her work has appeared in The Iowa Review, Mandorla, Notre Dame Review, and other publications. Her fiction has been awarded annual  prizes including The Dickinson Review and Plainswoman.  Fleisher, with partner Joe Amato, wrote Bear River and Yellow Medicine, screenplays that achieved semi-final status in the Chesterfield Writer's Film Project (Paramount Studios) and in a Nicholl Fellowship competition (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences).  Fleisher is an Assistant Professor of English at Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois, and is an Executive Editor of the American Book Review.

Roy Johnson's combined professional and academic background encompasses a variety of public relations and marketing communications projects, political consulting assignments, and university teaching experience. Having begun his career in publishing on the editorial track at McGraw-Hill, Roy served in analytical and managerial roles for Dun & Bradstreet (treasury analyst) and BNP Paribas (assistant treasurer) before returning to communications, the field that has been his focus for the past two decades. Roy's work in advertising and public relations features major projects for a diverse range of companies, including Coca-Cola, CNBC, IBM, Sears, and Standard & Poor’s, among many others. In the nonprofit sector, he has developed communications for such organizations as Art Institute of Chicago, the University of Chicago, and the Catholic Guild for the Blind. His government-related work includes service as a researcher, policy analyst, and lead writer for city council members and gubernatorial candidates in Illinois. Since joining the academic sector several years ago, Roy has served as an adjunct instructor for more than 80 communication classes at colleges and universities in the Midwest, New York, and New England. Most recently, he has developed and taught classes at the Baruch College (the City University of New York), Iona College, the Fashion Institute of Technology, and the University of Connecticut. Roy holds an MBA in marketing from New York University’s Stern School of Business and is currently a doctoral student in communication at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Gwen Jones, writing as Trudy Doyle, is the author of four books for Ravenous Romance, Making a Scene, Long, Hard and Lethal, and a third, The Lady’s Choice, which was featured on the Home Shopping Network’s “Escape With Romance” promotion, and The Rage of Innocence. As Gwen Jones, she writes women’s fiction and humor, and is a member of the Romance Writers of America and Liberty States Fiction Writers. A graduate of The College of New Jersey and Western Connecticut's MFA program, she has worked as a newspaper reporter, advertising copywriter, proofreader and bookseller, and is currently an Assistant Professor of English at Mercer County Community College in West Windsor, New Jersey. She blogs at www.trudydoyle.wordpress.com. 

James Lomuscio is an award-winning journalist with more than 28 years experience as a newspaper and magazine writer and editor for The New York Times and other local publications.  Mr. Lomuscio is the author of Village of the Dammed: The Fight for Open Space and the Flooding of a Connecticut Town (University Press of New England, 2005).

Victoria Ludwin is a fiction writer and essayist and she has published fiction, essays and reviews in the magazines BOMB, where she is a contributing editor, City, Riotgrrl, and Artcritical. She has written award-winning advertising campaigns for IBM and for Better Homes and Gardens. Ms. Ludwin has taught writing at The New School and served as director of marketing and circulation at the Arts/Culture Quarterly. 

Nick Mamatas authored Move Under Ground (Night Shade 2004, Prime 2006), Under My Roof (Soft Skull Press, 2007) and Sensation (PM Press, 2011); two collections, 3000MPH In Every Direction At Once (Prime 2003) and You Might Sleep...(Prime, 2009), and the novella Northern Gothic (Soft Skull, 2001). He is also the editor of the anthologies The Urban Bizarre (Prime, 2003), Spicy Slipstream Stories (with Jay Lake, Lethe 2008), and Haunted Legends (with Ellen Datlow, Tor 2010). Nick also co-edited the online magazine Clarkesworld, earning him nominations for the Hugo and World Fantasy awards.  His short stories have appeared in the literary journals Mississippi Review Online, subTERRAIN, and Per Contra, slicks including Razor and Spex, and science fiction/fantasy and horror magazines and anthologies including Tor.com, Lovecraft Unbound, and Asimov's Science Fiction. His fiction has been nominated for the Bram Stoker Awards, the International Horror Guild Award, and Germany's Kurd-Laßwitz Preis and was translated into Greek, Italian, and German. His reportage and essays have appeared in the Village Voice, the Smart Set, H+, Clamor, In These Times, Poets and Writers, The Writer's Chronicle and various anthologies. Nick also edits Haikasoru, the first imprint dedicated to Japanese science fiction and fantasy in translation.

Kyle Minor is a professional playwright and theater critic/feature writer whose works have appeared frequently in The New York Times, the New Haven Register and other publications.  Minor is a full-time instructor of English and Communications at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut.   He serves as the director/producer of the Mainstage Productions, and also teaches writing and playwriting courses in low-residency programs.

Mark Misercola is a communications strategist and a former speechwriter for senior executives of corporations including IBM, Nynex, and PricewaterhouseCoopers.  He is currently Regional Director for Internal Communications for Deutsche Bank in New York as well as an adjunct professor of advertising and public relations.  Mr. Misercola's first novel, a suspense thriller is titled, Death to the Centurion (Twilight Times Books, 2004).

Sonja Mongar, a Montana-born journalist, editor, photographer and memoirist,is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico in Mayagüez, where she teaches creative writing, film studies and journalism. She participated in the Sea Grant'ss Science & Journalism project, which was created to train science majors as science journalists. She holds an MA from UCF and an MFA from UNO in creative nonfiction. Her twenty-year writing career includes print journalism, editing and radio broadcasting, marketing, advertising and public relations.  Independent projects that blur the lines between culture, canon, genre, language and generation have resulted in the production of four volumes of bilingual literary and arts journals—pastiche and Manchas… as well as a project involving student writers,  Colorín Colorado: Voces del Mar, featuring coastal and marine themed stories of West Puerto Rico’s past.  Mongar experiments with multimodal life writing using cyber-hypertext as narrative space. She has published Tomfoolery, a trauma narrative of her brother’s murder and Love in a Field of Wheat, based on her great-grandmother’s 1907 diary. Other works in progress include a full-length memoir and a film documentary. Mongar plays harmonica in the fusión jíbara band, Mijo de la Palma, and co-produces free art, poetry and music events for the community.

E. K. Mortenson’s poetry has appeared in print and online in such venues as The Found Poetry Project, Pisgah Review, RATTLE, Six Sentences, Connecticut Review, Broken Bridge Review, and Connecticut River Review.  He is the author of the chapbook Dreamer or the Dream (Last Automat Press, 2010)  and his full-length manuscript, What Wakes Us, is scheduled to appear in 2011-2012 from Cervena Barva Press.  He was the 2008 recipient of the Leslie Leeds Poetry Prize.   Mortenson is a member of the National Book Critics’ Circle and his book reviews have appeared in RATTLE, Connecticut River Review, Rain Taxi, Gently Read Lit, and The Centrifugal Eye.

Daniel Nester is a journalist, essayist, poet, editor, and teacher. His new book, How to Be Inappropriate, a collection of humorous nonfiction, is just out from Soft Skull Press. Nester’s first two books, God Save My Queen: A Tribute (Soft Skull Press, 2003) and God Save My Queen II: The Show Must Go On (2004), are collections on his obsession with the rock band Queen. His third, The History of My World Tonight (BlazeVOX, 2006), is a collection of poems. As a journalist and essayist, his work has appeared in a variety of places, such as Poets & Writers, The Morning News, The Daily Beast, Time Out New York, The Rumpus, Bloomsbury Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and Bookslut. He is the former editor of the online journals Unpleasant Event Schedule and La Petite Zine and worked as Assistant Web Editor for Sestinas for McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. His work has been anthologized in such collections as Lost and Found, The Best American Poetry 2003, The Best Creative Nonfiction, Vol. 1, Third Rail: The Poetry of Rock and Roll, Isn’t It Romantic? 100 Love Poems by Younger American Poets, and Gamers: Writers, Artists, and Programmers on the Pleasure of the Pixels. His poems have appeared in such journals as Coconut, Shampoo, Taint, Gulf Coast, Barrow Street, jubilat, Crazyhorse, Open City, Slope, Spoon River Poetry Review, and other places. He is an assistant professor of English at The College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY, where he teaches creative nonfiction.

Kristin Nord is a former newspaper editor and longtime feature writer who writes narrative nonfiction, and divides her time between Connecticut and Cape Breton Island. You can view her current work online at Seniorwomen.com, The Chronicle Herald (in Halifax, Nova Scotia) and in local and regional publications. Nord teaches a variety of journalism and writing courses at WCSU.

Lou Orfanella, a New York based teacher, writer, and workshop facilitator, has also worked as a broadcast and print journalist. Orfanella is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and drama. His recent work includes The Sun Cannot Decide, Brief Encounters: Flash Fiction, and A Cabin in the Pines: A One Act Play. He has published over 100 articles, essays, columns, reviews and poems in numerous regional and national magazines, newspapers, and journals including The New York Daily News, College Bound, English Journal, World Hunger Year Magazine, Discoveries, Teacher Magazine, and New York Teacher. He holds degrees from Columbia University and Fordham University. Orfanella, who teaches writing at WCSU, has presented scores of public readings of his work and offers individual and group writing workshops.

Dan Pope is the author of In the Cherry Tree (Picador, 2003.) His stories have been published in numerous magazines including, Crazyhorse, Postroad, and Iowa Review. Pope is a graduate of the Iowa Writer's Workshop, where he attended  on a Truman Capote Fellowship. He is a winner of the Glenn Schaeffer Award from the International Institute of Modern Letters, and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts awarded him a grant in fiction.

David Rich wrote the feature film Renegades, starring Kiefer Sutherland and Lou Diamond Philips.  He worked on other film scripts, for which he received a multitude of pats on the back in lieu of credit.  Rich wrote television episodes for MacGyver, Legend and StarGate - SG1 and he has written three plays. He sat on the other side of the desk as Vice President of Development for George Englund Productions, based at Warner Brothers. 

Ron Samul is publisher of the international e-zine Miranda Literary Magazine.  He writes for Inquiring News in Hartford, Connecticut, reviews books for Library Journal, and is founder of Northeast Boxing News.  A professional tutor and creative writing mentor, Samul also instructs students in new media and electronic publishing, and manages electronic media for a collection of creative, journalistic and educational websites.  He has been a standing literary judge for the IMPAC Connecticut State University Young Writers Competition, and a judge for the Langston Hughes Poetry Contest for the city of Norwich, Connecticut.  Winner of the Connecticut AWP award in Fiction in 2006, his primary creative outlets are fiction writing and electronic publishing.  Samul holds an MFA in Creative and Professional Writing from WCSU and lives in New London, Connecticut.

Melissa Sanders-Self  has published short fiction in anthologies published in New Rivers Press, Doubleday and New Brighton Books. Her first novel, All that Lives (Warner Books, 2002) was based on the legend of the famous Bell Witch of Tennessee. She wrote, directed and produced the documentary film Writing Women's Lives, which aired nationally on PBS and is available through Films for the Humanities. Ms Sanders-Self teaches advanced and intermediate fiction at the University of California, Santa Cruz and is at work on a new novel.

Laurel Saville is a writer and communications consultant. She holds a B.A. with honors from New York University, and an M.F.A. from The Writing Seminars from Bennington College. She has written four books and numerous articles on design. Her short stories and essays have won awards and appeared in a variety of publications including House Beautiful, Room, and Seven Days. She has worked with some of the world's largest corporations as well as small start-ups and non-profits. Her professional expertise includes crafting marketing, branding and communications strategies, as well as web sites, brochures, and other publications. Her most recent book, Postmortem (iUniverse.com, 2009), a memoir about her mother, a 1950s beauty queen who descended into alcoholism and was discovered murdered in a burned out building in West Hollywood, is highly praised as "riveting....surefooted, clear-sighted prose is a miracle of compassion," "a remarkable read," "beautifully descriptive," with "a cinematic pacing," and "an unflinching act of courage." Read more about Laurel at her website www.LaurelSaville.com, and about her new book at www.PostmortemTheBook.com.

John D. Scrimgeour is the author of two books of creative nonfiction and a book of poetry.  His most recent book, Themes for English B: A Professor's Education in and Out of Class (U of Georgia, 2006) won the 2005 AWP Award for Creative Nonfiction.  His other books are  the poetry collection The Last Miles (Fine Tooth Press, 2005) and the memoir, Spin Moves (Pecan Grove Press, 2000).  His nonfiction has appeared in publications such as The Boston Globe Magazine, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Thought & Action.  His essay, “The Outfield,” won the Writing about Baseball contest sponsored by the magazine Creative Nonfiction.  Scrimgeour’s poetry has appeared in such magazines as Ploughshares, Poetry, Colorado Review and River Styx.  In 2010, he and the musician Philip Swanson, as the performance group Confluence, released a CD of poetry and music titled Ogunquit (confluence-poetryandmusic.com). He is a Professor of English at Salem State University.

Irene Sherlock is Associate Director of Publications and Design at WCSU. She holds an MA in English from WCSU, an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College and an MS in Marriage and Family Therapy from Southern Connecticut State University. Her poems, essays and short stories have been published in Amaranth, Chautauqua Literary Journal, Cloven Sphere, Cream City Review, Connecticut Review, Dos Passos Review, Fairfield Review, Melusine, Miranda Magazine, Poem-memoir-story, Poet Lore, Poetry Motel, Primavera, Roux, Runes, Slipstream, Tar Wolf Review, The New York Times, White Pelican Review and in several anthologies. Her essays have aired on WSHU National Public Radio. For three years, Sherlock has been writer-in-residence at the Adirondack Mountain Writers' Retreat.

Lisa Siedlarz is author of I Dream My Brother Plays Baseball (Clemson University Digital Press, 2009) and What We Sign Up For (forthcoming from Pecan Grove Press, 2011). She is editor of Connecticut River Review, the national poetry journal supported by the Connecticut Poetry Society, and she is managing editor for Connecticut Review. Her work has appeared in publications including The MacGuffin, Calyx, RATTLE, War, Literature & the Arts, Louisiana Literature, Main Street Rag, The Patterson Review, Big Bridge, Kritya, and Poems & Plays. Her work has been anthologized in Warsaw Tales, and Battle Runes: Writings on War.  Siedlarz facilitated a 16-week writing workshop with Vietnam veterans and edited a collection of their work titled A Season of Now. She teaches a bi-monthly creative writing workshop with veterans at the New Haven Vet Center.

Karen Smith-Vastola is a member of the playwrights and directors group at the Actors Studio. She has taught playwriting at Andy's Summer Playhouse and Columbia University, and has written numerous plays, including; The Appointment and Eggs & Apples, the latter of which received the John Golden Playwriting Award in 2004 and was read at DR2 Theater in New York.  Monologues and scenes from her plays Dog Eat Dog, The Family Tree, and Dead or Alive have been published in the Best Women's and Men's Anthologies (Dramatic Publishing) and Best Stage Monologues and Scenes from the 90's (Meriwether Publishing).

Paul Steinmetz is Director of WCSU University Relations and an adjunct faculty member of the Writing, Linguistics and Creative Writing department. He was editor of The News-Times, the daily newspaper that covers the region, for 10 years. He writes a blog, WCSU in the Age of Reason, for Hearst Connecticut Newspapers and lectures and provides written commentary on the news and public relations industries. He is a contributing editor for Tribuna Newspaper and wrote a chapter in the PRNews Media Training Guidebook. Paul holds an M.B.A. from WCSU and a B.A. in journalism from San Francisco State University.

Thea Temple was Special Assistant to the Director of the Literature Program at the National Endowment for the Arts from 1991-93.  During federal budget freezes and cuts, she worked as Challenge/Advancement Liaison and specialist for Audience Development Projects and Literary Centers, Special Projects, and Small Press and Literary Magazine Publishing. Upon leaving the Endowment for the Arts, Temple was elected to two terms as Treasurer of Associated Writing Programs (AWP).  She has also facilitated task forces for the Southern Arts Federation and co-founded the Texas Literary Partnership with the Texas Commission on the Arts, the (then called) Austin Writers' League, and other literary groups to promote statewide

Tim Weed attended Middlebury College and earned master’s degrees from the University of California and Warren Wilson College (MFA in Fiction Writing). His short fiction has appeared in Colorado Review, Gulf Coast, the anthology Experienced: Rock Music Tales of Fact and Fiction, and elsewhere. Tim’s nonfiction essays and features on writing, travel and the outdoors may be found in numerous magazines including Cross Country Skier, Writer’s Chronicle, Backcountry, and Northern Woodlands. The Camp at Cutthroat Lake, a short fiction collection, was a finalist for the Lewis-Clark Press Discovery Award.  Tim travels widely as a director of student travel programs for National Geographic Student Expeditions. His writing interests include short fiction, historical fiction, travel writing, writing about nature and the outdoors, and novels for young adult and middle grade readers. Tim is at work on a novel.

Anne Witkavitch is a communications expert, transition specialist, published author and sought after speaker. Her award-winning anthology, Press Pause Moments: Essays about Life Transitions by Women Writers, is a collection of stories about change, adversity and celebration. The book received a 2011 Clarion award. Anne is a contributing writer and blogger for MariaShriver.com, TravelingMom.com, CreatedbyChicks.com and her blog, The Eclectic Writer; her work has also appeared in Connecticut Muse, Miranda Literary Magazine, and the Journal of Employee Communications. She has ghost written numerous articles and edited technical guidebooks and nonfiction books. She also served as managing editor of several Thin Threads special editions and the 2010 anthology. Anne's work appears in the anthology Women Writing on Family: Tips on Writing, Teaching and Publishing. As principal of Anne W Associates, Anne consults with clients on strategic communications and change management. She also teaches managerial and professional writing at Western Connecticut State University and received her M.F.A. in Professional Writing from that school in 2007. She is a former corporate communications executive for GE and The Hartford.

Karen Romano Young is a science writer, children's author and illustrator. She has been involved with books and writing for as long as she can remember. The author of more than twenty books, including novels, nonfiction, and graphic novels, Karen has taken her work to the top of the world -- the Arctic Ocean -- and the bottom of the ocean -- in a submarine. Recent work includes writing and drawing aboard an icebreaker, creating Humanimal Doodles -- a science comic, and the children's book Doodlebug: A Novel in Doodles. 


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