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Tracey Baptiste
Northern NJ
Fiction and Nonfiction Children’s Literature
TRACEY BAPTISTE is a New York Times bestselling author. She writes mostly for children, from picture books to young adult novels.
Barry Brodsky
Swampscott, MA
Writing for Stage and Screen
BARRY BRODSKY began writing plays in the 80s and is a past grant recipient from the Mass. Artists Foundation (now Mass Cultural Council). His plays have been performed around the country and in Canada. He has also written for film, with a short script nominated for Best Short Film at the Madrid International Film Festival. He has been teaching Playwriting since 1990 and Screenwriting since 1998.
Steven Cramer
Lexington, MA
Poetry
STEVEN CRAMER is the author of six poetry collections and has published poems and essays in journals such as The Atlantic Monthly, Field, The Kenyon Review, The Nation, The New England Review, The Paris Review, and Poetry. Recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and two fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, he founded and teaches in the Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Lesley University. He writes poems and about poems. If he could write more lucratively, he doesn’t know if he would, but he can’t so he doesn’t. Some of the poems from his latest collection, Listen, out in October 2020 from MadHat Press, are available online through his website.
Tony Eprile
Bennington, VT
Fiction
TONY EPRILE has been working for some years on an historical novel about South Africa in WWII and war artists. He is also revising a memoir about moving from a fraught political situation in South Africa to an all-boys school in London. His work has been featured in publications like The American Scholar. Other activities include photography, foraging for wild mushrooms, uechi ryu karate, and swimming.
Sara Farizan
Massachusetts
Writing for Young People
SARA FARIZAN is a graduate of the Lesley MFA program class of 2012. Her debut novel, If You Could Be Mine, won the Ferro-Grumley Award, the Edmund White Award, and the Lambda Literary Award for Children’s/Young Adult Literature in 2014, and was named to the American Library Association Rainbow List as one of the year’s best LGBT-themed books. Her other novels are Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel, which was again named to the Rainbow List for 2015 and received two starred reviews, and Here to Stay, which Entertainment Weekly called “a powerful YA novel about identity and prejudice.” Her short stories have been featured in several anthologies including The Radical Element, Fresh Ink, All Out, Hungry Hearts, and the forthcoming Fools in Love. She lives in Massachusetts, enjoys classic film, kayaks way too much, and thanks you for reading her work.
Laurie Foos
Fiction
LAURIE FOOS is the author of Ex Utero, Portrait of the Walrus by a Young Artist, Twinship, Bingo Under the Crucifix, Before Elvis There Was Nothing, and the Blue Girl. She has also published two books for Gemma Media’s Open Door Series for Emerging Readers, The Giant Baby, and most recently, Toast, which she has expanded into a middle grade novel about siblings and autism. She has been teaching at Lesley since 2005 and is also on the faculty in the low-residency BFA in Creative Writing program at Goddard College.
Joan Houlihan
Poetry
JOAN HOULIHAN is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently It Isn’t a Ghost if It Lives in Your Chest. Her previous books include Shadow-feast, named a must-read by the Massachusetts Center for the Book; The Mending Worm, winner of the New Issues Green Rose Award; The Us, named a must-read by the Massachusetts Center for the Book; the sequel Ay; and Hand-Held Executions. She is Professor of Practice in Poetry at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts and has been teaching at Lesley since 2007. She founded and directs the Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference.
Cindy House
New Haven, CT
Nonfiction
CINDY HOUSE has a debut book coming out in early 2022 with Simon & Schuster, a memoir in essays entitled Mother Noise. She opens regularly for David Sedaris across the US and looks forward to joining him on tour post-pandemic.
Rachel Kadish
Newton, MA
Fiction
RACHEL KADISH’s most recent novel, The Weight of Ink, was awarded a National Jewish Book Award. Her work has been read on National Public Radio and has appeared in The New York Times, Salon, Slate, Paris Review, Iowa Review, and the Pushcart Prize Anthology. She has been the Koret Writer-in-Residence at Stanford University and a fiction fellow of the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. She lives outside Boston and is a co-founder of the Stockholm-based initiative Voices Between: Stories Against Extremism.
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Photo credit: Kevin Day
Hester Kaplan
Providence, RI
Fiction
HESTER KAPLAN is the author of novels and short story collections, including The Edge of Marriage, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Prize for Short Fiction. Her fiction and nonfiction has been widely published and anthologized, including in The Best American Short Stories series. She is a 2020 recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is co-founder of Goat Hill Writers and Write Rhode Island, a state-wide high school writing competition. Her most recent fiction can be found in The Idaho Review.
Michelle Knudsen
Brooklyn, NY
Writing for Young People
MICHELLE KNUDSEN is the New York Times best-selling author of fifty books for children and teens, including the award-winning picture book Library Lion, which was selected by TIME magazine as one of the 100 Best Children’s Books of All Time. Her other books include the picture book Marilyn’s Monster (NPR’s Best Books) and the novels The Dragon of Trelian (VOYA Top Shelf Fiction for Middle School Readers) and Evil Librarian (YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults; Sid Fleischman Humor Award). She writes about love, friendship, dragons, demons, magic, musical theater, and, sometimes, giant spiders. She also writes occasional short stories for adults. Her next book will be LUIGI, THE SPIDER WHO WANTED TO BE A KITTEN, coming March 5, 2024, from Candlewick Press.
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Photo Credit: Alvaro Keding
Michael Lowenthal
Boston, MA
Fiction
MICHAEL LOWENTHAL is the author of four novels: The Same Embrace, Avoidance, Charity Girl (a New York TimesBook Review “Editors’ Choice” and Washington Post “Top Fiction of 2007” pick), and The Paternity Test (an Indie Next List selection and a Lambda Literary Award finalist). His short stories and essays have appeared in Tin House, Ploughshares, the Southern Review, the Kenyon Review, Guernica, and The Rumpus, and have been widely anthologized. A collection of his short stories, Sex with Strangers, is due out in 2021.
Pamela Petro
Northampton, MA
Creative Nonfiction; Graphic Novel & Comics
PAMELA PETRO is a writer, artist, and educator. She works in both research nonfiction and memoir—often braiding the two together—and as a visual artist works with experimental forms of photography. In addition to the MFA, she teaches creative writing at Smith College and is the Director of the Dylan Thomas Summer School at the University of Wales, Trinity St David. Her essays have been published in Lumina, The Paris Review, Granta, Slab, and Harvard Review Online.
Cynthia Platt
Marblehead, MA
Writing for Young People
CYNTHIA PLATT is the author of three picture books and her first chapter book, Parker Bell and the Science of Friendship, was published in May 2019. Postcards from Summer, her first young adult novel, will be published in summer 2021. She also teaches at Montserrat College of Art and writes for the Khan Academy Kids learning app.
Janet Pocorobba
Calais, VT
Program Director
JANET POCOROBBA writes memoir and essay and is currently writing a hybrid memoir about a co-op in a village in Vermont that incorporates personal memoir and social history. She is the author of The Fourth String: A Memoir of Sensei and Me, and has published other work in lit mags, most recently “Stalking the Self: Finding a Point of View in Memoir,” Writers’ Digest Sept/Oct 2021.
Kevin Prufer
Houston, TX
Poetry
KEVIN PRUFER is the author of seven books of poetry and the editor of numerous anthologies, the most recent of which is How He Loved Them (Four Way Books), winner of the Julie Suk Award and long-listed for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize. Prufer is also Co-Curator of the Unsung Masters Series, and Professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston. Among Prufer’s awards and honors are four Pushcart prizes and multiple Best American Poetry selections, numerous awards from the Poetry Society of America, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Lannan Foundation.
Jason Reynolds
Washington, DC
Young Adult & Children’s
JASON REYNOLDS is an award-winning and #1 New York Times bestselling author. Jason’s many books include Miles Morales: Spider Man, the Track series (Ghost, Patina, Sunny, and Lu), Long Way Down, which received a Newbery Honor, a Printz Honor, and a Correta Scott King Honor, and Look Both Ways, which was a National Book Award Finalist. His latest book, Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, is a collaboration with Ibram X. Kendi. Recently named the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, Jason has appeared on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Late Night with Seth Meyers, and CBS This Morning.
Check Jason out at our Bookstore!
Photo Credit: James J. Reddington
Cassie M. Seinuk
Westborough MA
Writing for Stage and Screen
CASSIE M. SEINUK is a Jewish Cuban playwright, stage manager, and educator in Boston, MA. Her play From the Deep won the Kennedy Center ACTF Latinidad Playwrights Award, The Pestalozzi New Play Prize, the Boston University Jewish Culture Endowment grant, Honorable Mention on the 2015 Kilroys List, and IRNE Award and FringeNYC award nominations. Seinuk’s short works have been produced internationally, including her award winning 10 minute play Occupy Hallmark, which won the Gary Garrison National 10 Minute Play award at the Kennedy Center. Seinuk is on faculty at Boston Conservatory at Berklee and Lesley University MFA in Creative Writing.
Sinan Ünel
Easthampton, MA & NYC
Writing for Stage and Screen
Born in the US and raised in Istanbul, much of Sinan Ünel’s work reflects a yearning to find common ground, and to unite worlds. His plays have been produced in New York City, regionally, and across Europe. Sinan has been awarded The John Gassner Memorial Award, The Daryl Roth Creative Spirit Award, and was a fellow with the Huntington Theatre Company from 2003 to 2005. His script Race Point was the winner of the 2001 New Century Writer Award for best screenplay. Sinan divides his time between Easthampton, MA and NYC.
Sara Zarr
Writing for Young People
SARA ZARR is the acclaimed author of nine novels for young readers and a work of nonfiction. She’s a National Book Award finalist and two-time Utah Book Award winner, and the host and producer of the podcast This Creative Life. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in Image, Gather, and several anthologies. Sara also does some book consulting and coaching as her schedule allows. She divides her time between Salt Lake City and San Francisco.