Marci Alboher

Marci Alboher is a writer/speaker/coach who focuses on workplace and career issues. Her book, One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model for Work/Life, was published by Warner Books in February 2007. A former corporate lawyer, she became interested in the myriad ways careers are being reinvented when she used law to springboard into a new career as a freelance journalist. Marci holds an undergraduate degree in English from the University of Pennsylvania and a law degree from American University's Washington College of Law.Marci began her career at a boutique law firm in New York City; later she served as in-house counsel for Reader's Digest, first in New York and then in Hong Kong. Marci is a regular contributor to The New York Times where she writes about business travel, small business, and the workplace. Her articles have also appeared in Travel and Leisure, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Time Out New York, and Legal Affairs, among other national publications. She is the author of the book, I Think I Need a Lawyer, Now What?, a layperson's guide to the law, published by Silver Lining Books in 2002. Marci is a sought-after speaker on workplace issues and nonfiction writing. She lives in New York City. For more about Marci, visit www.heymarci.com.

Beth Ann Bauman

Beth Ann Bauman is the author of the short story collection Beautiful Girls (MacAdam/Cage). Her work has been published in literary journals and anthologies, including Many Lights in Many Windows: Twenty Years of Great Fiction and Poetry from The Writers Community. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Arizona, and has received grants from the Jerome Foundation as well as the New York Foundation for the Arts. She teaches fiction writing at the Writer's Voice of the West Side YMCA in New York City.

Maureen Brady

Maureen Brady is the author of the novels Ginger's Fire, Folly, and Give Me Your Good Ear, the short story collection The Question She Put to Herself and three books of nonfiction. Ginger's Fire was nominated for a Lamda Literary Award, the Ferro Grumley award and the ALA Gay Book Award. She also teaches creative writing at NYU and works as a freelance editor for fiction and nonfiction writers. Her recent essays or stories have appeared in In The Family; Cabbage and Bones: Irish American Women Writing (Henry Holt); Mom, Alyson, and Intersections: Poetry and Fiction by Banff Writers. She has been awarded grants by The New York State Council on the Arts, The Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation and The Barbara Deming Money for Women Fund among others. She is currently Board President of The Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. Visit her website at www.maureenbradyny.com for further information or to purchase books.

Patty Dann

Patty Dann's novel SWEET&CRAZY was published in 2003 by St. Martin's Press. She is also the author of The Baby Boat: A Memoir of Adoption, which was published by Hyperion. Her novel, Mermaids, has been translated into French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Japanese. It was also made into a movie, starring Cher, Winona Ryder and Christina Ricci. Her writing has been published in The Writers Handbook:2001. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, and Redbook Magazine. She has served as a judge for the Scholastic Young Writers Awards. She has an MFA in Writing from Columbia University and has taught at Sarah Lawrence College and the West Side YMCA. She was cited by New York Magazine as one of the "Great Teachers of NYC."

Allison Estes

Allison Estes has written fifteen books for young readers, including The Short Stirrup Club series (Simon & Schuster.) She has been teaching children and adults of all ages for nearly twenty years. She trains horses and plays softball when she isn't busy being a soccer mom and appearing at schools and libraries all over the country.

Corie Feiner

Corie Feiner (née Herman) is a dynamic poet and performer from New York. Her first collection of poems was Radishes into Roses (Linear Arts Press) and her work has been featured in numerous literary magazines and anthologies. She performs her work regularly in New York City, the northeast, and Israel and is a cast member of the Jewish ritual theatre troupe, Storahtelling. Recently featured on WNBC for her extraordinary teaching work, she conducts workshops at Manhattanville College, Makor, and The Writer's Voice. She is the Contributing Editor of Tiferet and the Assistant Editor of Bellevue Literary Review. You can find her work on-line at www.poetz.com, www.cortlandreview.com, and www.mipoesias.com (poetry and interview). You can reach her though her web site: www.coriefeiner.com.

Rita Gabis

Rita Gabis is the author of The Wild Field, (Alice James Books). Her poems and essays have appeared in Poetry, Partisan Review, The Massachusetts Review, Columbia Magazine and elsewhere. Her grants and awards include a writing fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, a Connecticut State Arts Grant, and the Curtis Harnack residency at Yaddo. She has been a visiting writer at James Madison University and the University of Connecticut in New Britain. Work is forthcoming in the Harvard Review.

Doug Garr

Doug Garr is the author, most recently, of "IBM Redux: Lou Gerstner and the Business Turnaround of the Decade," (HarperBusiness, 1999). He is also the author or co-author of three other books. He wrote economic speeches for former New York Governor Mario Cuomo during his last administration, and he was the principal ghostwriter of the governor's book, "The New York Idea: An Experiment in Democracy" (Crown, 1994). His magazine work has appeared in several national publications, including Business Week, Fortune's Technology Review, GQ, Popular Science, Worth, New York, Strategy & Business, and MIT's Technology Review. His essays have appeared in The East Hampton Star and on the Op-Ed Page of The New York Times.

Richard Goodman

Richard Goodman is the author of French Dirt: The Story of a Garden in the South of France. He has written on a variety of subjects for many national publications, including The New York Times, Garden Design, Creative Nonfiction, Commonweal, Vanity Fair, Grand Tour, salon.com, National Gardening, Saveur, Ascent and The Michigan Quarterly Review. He has twice been awarded a fellowship at the MacDowell Colony and was awarded a fellowship at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in 2003. He created, wrote and narrated a six-part series about New York City for Public Radio in Virginia. He has taught creative writing in New York City for a number of years where he also works as a landscape gardener. He presently teaches creative nonfiction at Spalding University's Brief Residency MFA program in Louisville, Kentucky. He wrote the introduction for the recently published Travelers' Tales Provence, and one of his essays will appear in the forthcoming The Best Travelers' Tales 2004. For more information, and an extensive sampling of Richard Goodman's writing, please go to his homepage.

Click here for an excerpt from French Dirt: The Story of a Garden in the South of France.

Mary Stewart Hammond

Mary Stewart Hammond was reared in Roanoke, Virginia and Baltimore, Maryland. Her poems have been published in many magazines, including American Poetry Review, The American Voice, The Atlantic Monthly, Boulevard, Field, The Gettysburg Review, The New Criterion, The New England Review, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The Yale Review. Anthologies where her poems have appeared include Wedding Readings: Centuries of Writing and Rituals for Love and Marriage, ed. Eleanor Munro, The KGB Bar Book of Poems, ed. David Lehman and Star Black, Inventions of Farewell: A Book of Elegies, ed. Sandra M. Gilbert, Stone and Steel, ed. Bascove, and Where Books Fall Open, ed. Bascove.

Her book, Out of Canaan, received the 1992 Best First Collection of Poetry Award from the Great Lakes Colleges Association. Other awards include MacDowell Colony and Yaddo fellowships, and a Writer's Community Poet-in-Residence fellowship. She lives in New York City. Besides conducting workshops and giving readings at many colleges and universities in the East and the Midwest, she taught advanced level workshops at the Writer's Voice of the West Side Y for nine years and at the JCC for one. She now conducts workshops privately from her home. Her students, some of whom come to her already possessing a few publication credits, or graduate degrees from various writing programs, or just raw talent, go on to win awards such as the Discovery/The Nation, the Nicholas Roerich book publication Prize from Story Line Press, Pushcart Prizes, chap book publication prizes. Others achieve more substantial publishing credentials, or admittance into top graduate writing programs. More information can be found on her website, www.marystewarthammond.com.

Coleman Hough

Coleman Hough wrote the screenplay for FULL FRONTAL directed by Steven Soderbergh. Her poetry has appeared in Southern Poetry Review, Poetry Motel, The Asheville Review and The Louisville Review. She has performed her monologues, The Ugly Sister, Natural Disaster, She's No Expert, and True Grid at Dixon Place. She has recently completed a short film called A TALE OF TWO that she wrote and directed.

Sheila Kohler

Sheila Kohler's books include "The Perfect Place," "The House on R Street," "One Girl," Children of Pithiviers," "Cracks," and "Crossways." Her stories have been included in O'Henry Prize Stories and The Best American Shorts Stories of 2001. Kohler has published essays in The Boston Globe, Salmagundi (summer 2004), and O Magazine ( May 2004), and reviews in The New Leader and Bomb. She has taught at The Writer's Voice, SUNY Purchase, Sarah Lawrence College, Colgate, CCNY, Bennington (where she is now a member of the core faculty), and at Columbia University's School of the Arts.

Jonathan Kravetz

Instructor Jonathan Kravetz is a writer/editor and co-founder and editor-in-chief of the online magazine Ducts (at www.ducts.org). He also founded the New York based monthly reading series, Trumpet Fiction, held each month at KGB Bar in the east village. Jonathan holds a Masters in Film Studies from NYU and studied writing with a number of teachers in New York, including Alice Eliot Dark (fiction), Fred Hudson (screenwriting) and Alison Estes (children’s fiction).

Jeff McCracken

Jeff McCracken is an accomplished director, producer, actor and writer. He developed and co-produced the Robert Redford feature film, Quiz Show that won the New York Film Critics Award as well as being nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture. He also Executive Produced, "One Cup of Coffee" which won the Audience Award for Best Picture at the Sundance Film Festival and was released by Miramax as "Pastime." He's directed over seventy episodes of television including NYPD Blue, Still Standing, Boy Meets World, Dinosaurs. As an actor he's starred on Broadway, Off-Broadway, films and television. He's recently written a new dramatic play Nectar From the Gods and the feature film Jimmy Nolan that he's also preparing to produce and direct. He teaches in the film and television department at Chapman University.

Hermine Meinhard

Hermine Meinhard÷s first book, Bright Turquoise Umbrella (Tupelo Press, 2004), follows a child into young womanhood through a shifting, magical realist world. Her poems have appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Barrow Street, La Petite Zine, How2, Luna, The Prose Poem, Verse Daily and other publications. She was a finalist for the Poetry Society of America's 2004 Robert H. Winner Memorial Award, the winner of the Sue Saniel Elkind Poetry Award, and a Pushcart Prize nominee. Other honors include fellowships at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Ragdale Foundation and the Blue Mountain Center. Poetry editor of the literary journal 3rd bed, she also teaches at New York University, and this June will conduct a one-week poetry workshop, "The Soul of a Poem in the Heart of Italy," in Tuscany. Click here for more information. She has an M.F.A. from Sarah Lawrence College. To learn more about Hermine and her approach to teaching and to read reviews of her work, visit her website: www.herminemeinhard.net.

J.B. Miller

J.B. Miller is the author of "The Satanic Nurses and Other Literary Parodies" (St. Martin's Press) and has written for Salon.com and The New York Times. His sketch comedy has been produced at Naked Angels and he has performed stand-up at the Comic Strip.

Charles Salzberg

Charles Salzberg is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Esquire, New York Magazine, GQ, Elle, Redbook, Ladies Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, The New York Times Arts and Leisure, The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times Book Review and various other publications. He is the author of From Set Shot to Slam Dunk, An Oral History of the NBA, and On A Clear Day They Could See Seventh Place, Baseball's 10 Worst Teams of the Century (with George Robinson) and co-author of My Zany Life and Times, by Soupy Sales, Missy Hyatt, The First Lady of Wrestling (with Mark Goldblatt,) and the forthcoming Catch Them Being Good by Tony DiCicco and Colleen Hacker, PhD. He is currently a visiting professor of magazine journalism at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and teaches advanced non-fiction at Sarah Lawrence College. He was cited by New York Magazine as one of New York's Great Teachers.

Charlie Schulman

Charlie is the bookwriter of the new musical "The Fartiste" (OUTSTANDING MUSICAL FRINGENYC 2006) "The Fartiste" is based on his original screenplay and will have an commercial run Off-Broadway in 2007. Follow the show's developments at www.thefartiste.com. His chapter on Playwriting is published in The Portable MFA In Creative Writing (Writers Digest). Charlie teaches screenwriting in the Dramatic Writing Program at New York University and playwriting at Spalding University’s MFA program.

AWARDS: Avery Hopwood Award for Drama, Paulette Goddard Fellowship, Charles McArthur Award for comedy.

OFF-BROADWAY Credits: Angel of Death (American Jewish Theater) The Ground Zero Club (Playwrights Horizons) and The Birthday Present
(Circle Rep) His plays are published by The Dramatist Play Service and in several anthologies.

Rachel Sherman

Rachel Sherman was born in 1975. She holds an MFA in fiction from Columbia University. Her short stories have been published in McSweeney’s, Open City, Post Road, Conjunctions and Story Quarterly, among other publications, and in the book Full Frontal Fiction: The Best of Nerve Anthology (Three Rivers Press, 2000).

Her book of short stories THE FIRST HURT, was published by Open City Books in May 2006. (www.thefirsthurt.com)

Alex Simmons

Creator/writer/publisher. Over the past 20 years he has written (and in some cases also created) a number of juvenile mysteries under a variety of pseudonyms for many well-known publishers. He has also penned two educational documentaries, and several stage plays. One of his plays, SHERLOCK HOLMES & THE HANDS OF OTHELLO, received critical praise and was published in an anthology by Signet/Mentor Books. Simmons has written three movie novelizations for Disney and three biographies for Steck-Vaughn, including one on Denzel Washington. Simmons has also created/written and independently published a critically acclaimed adventure comic book series, BLACKJACK, about an African-American soldier of fortune in the 1930s. Simmons co-created an African-American hero for DC Comics in their BATMAN books; authored several SCOOBY-DOO comic book stories; 12 interactive mysteries for the Tiger Toys electronic game, WHO DONE IT, (which received three educational awards). He is currently writing a middle grade mystery series, THE RAVEN LEAGUE (Penguin Books); and consulting on several exciting entertainment projects. Simmons has traveled the country as a guest speaker and teaching artist for many years, creating and conducting numerous workshops in creative writing (prose, comics, and playwriting). Simmons is the Educational Outreach Co-ordinator for the Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) and sits on the board of the New York State Alliance for Arts Education.

Alex Simmons Comics Workshops (Download PDF)

More information on the Raven Leauge Files.

Daniel Stern

Daniel has written for several of the nation's top publications, including U.S. News & World Report, The Washington Post, and Salon. He has covered a wide range of topics from science to pop culture, in feature articles, book reviews, essays, short stories, and news reports. Most recently he has taught creative writing, literature, poetry, and publishing courses at various institutions, including Hunter College and the 92 Street Y in New York City and the University of Colorado in Boulder. In addition, he runs a premier private tutoring and college prep company in Manhattan, Metro Academic Prep.

Alix Strauss

The media savvy social satirist has been a featured lifestyle trend writer on national morning shows and talk shows including ABC, CBS, CNN and most recently, VH1.  Her articles cover a range of topics, from beauty and food trends to celebrity interviews, appearing in an array of publications and newspapers such as: The New York Times, The New York Post, and Daily News, as well as national magazines: Time Magazine, Town & Country Travel, Travel & Leisure Golf, Marie Claire, Self, Men's Health and Outside, among others.  Alix has been writing about lifestyle trends for the past two years covering such topics as: High-end invites, A-list parties, Goodie bags, Diva Diets, Slumber parties, Must-have-beauty-products and Trailer-trash treats.  Her collection of shorts, THE JOY OF FUNERALS, was published by St. Martin's Press in both hard and soft cover.  The Joy of Funerals will be heading to the big screen with Stockard Channing attached to direct.  Alix will write the screenplay as well.  Currently, she is working on a novel.

The Joy of Funerals is the recent winner of the Ingram Award, and was named Best Debut Novel by The New York Resident.  In addition, Alix's work has been anthologized, and her short fiction has appeared in the Hampton Shorts Literary Journal, the Idaho Review, Quality Women's Fiction, The Blue Moon Café III, and A Kudzu Christmas.  Her short story, Shrinking Away, won the David Dornstein Creative Writing Award.  She is the recipient of several awards and fellowships: The Wesleyan Writers Conference, Skidmore College Writer's Institute, Sarah Lawrence Summer and Squaw Valley's Screenwriters' Summer program.

Alix has spoken at numerous conferences and panels including: The Southern Festival of Books, The Northwest Bookfest, The New England's Writer's Conference, Wesleyan Writer's conference, The 92nd Street Y, NYU, Center For Communications, Mediabistro, Columbia University, among others.  She hosted a monthly event at Makor called Word of Mouth Thursdays, readings of personal essays, works in-progress and novel excerpts.

For more information, visit her website at Joyoffunerals.com.

Erich R. Sysak

Erich Sysak is the author of Dog Catcher (Monsoon 05), a novel that explores the hostile sub-culture of organized greyhound racing in Central Florida. His short stories, articles and essays also appear in Oxford Magazine, storySouth, the Paumanok Review, and Projected Letters, the Bangkok Post, the Nation newspaper, Antiquarian Book Review, Knot Magazine and International Living. He teaches Creative Writing at Webster University in Cha am, Thailand. Cha am sits on the coast of the Gulf of Thailand, about 150 kilometers south of Bangkok.

Tim Tomlinson

Tim Tomlinson's fiction has appeared in many venues, including The Missouri Review, The Gettysburg Review, Libido, Hampton Shorts, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, and The North American Review. He has published haiku in Black Bough, Modern Haiku, Parnassus Literary Journal, Potpourri, and Time Haiku. His articles on travel, scuba diving, and the arts have appeared in The New York Times, The New York Post, The New York Daily News, Musician, Downtown Express and Spa Magazine. He has taught fiction and screenwriting workshops at the University of the Philippines. He consults regularly with television and screenwriters for the Media Development Authority in Singapore. His workshop, Building the Dramatic Arc, will be a featured event in a New York Writers Workshop Intensive Retreat in Hua Hin, Thailand, in January 2006. He is fiction editor of the webzine ducts.org. At NYU he teaches courses on writing and contemporary culture.