THE WRITERS STUDIO FACULTY AND STAFF

Cynthia Weiner is assistant director of The Writers Studio. She received her MFA from Brown University, and taught at Pace University in Manhattan for ten years. Her story, "Aftertaste," received Special Mention in the Pushcart 2011 anthology. She won a 2005 Pushcart Prize and is working on a collection of short stories, some of which have appeared or are forthcoming in The Sun, Ploughshares, 5 Trope, Open City, ep;phany and The Sonora Review.

Lorraine L. Babb's fiction and creative non-fiction have appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, Pebble Lake Review, Dos Passos Review, Kalliope and other literary magazines. She was an original co-founder and fiction editor of The Carquinez Review. She is currently working on a novel and a short story collection.

Odette Chatham Baker, a graduate of Tufts University and a longtime editor at Condé Nast, is currently working on a group of short stories about the expatriate's life. Her fiction appears in ep;phany, where she is now a fiction editor.

Lisa Bellamy's chapbook, Nectar, won Encircle Publications/The Aurorean's 2011 chapbook contest. Her poems and prose have appeared in Triquarterly, The Sun, Massachusetts Review, New Ohio Review, Chautauqua, The Southampton Review, Calyx, Cimarron Review, Fugue, Tiferet, PANK, Harpur Palate, Mountain Record  and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, among other publications.  She has received several Pushcart Prize nominations.  In 2008, she won the Fugue Poetry Prize and received honorable mention in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2007.  She graduated from Princeton University. 

Renee Bibby, a fiction writer trained in The Writers Studio method, teaches The Writers Studio Tucson Workshop. She has several years experience as an instructor in employment and educational programs for youth.

Carli Brosseau is a freelance writer. A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill journalism program, she has published in various newspapers and magazines. She trained in The Writers Studio method in Tucson and is working on fiction and nonfiction projects.

Sarah Carriger is an Amsterdam-based science writer and visiting professor at IE University in Madrid where she teaches a communications and writing course. She holds bachelor and master's degrees in English Literature from Stanford University. She is working on her first novel.

Isabelle Deconinck is the press and marketing consultant and the reading series coordinator for The Writers Studio. She is a fiction writer whose work has been published in Five Points, Epiphany, KGBBar Lit, and World Literature Today. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2008 and is the recipient of three Helene Wurlitzer Residency Grants in Fiction (2004, 2006, 2013). Isabelle lives in New York, where she works as a freelancer doing press and marketing for the arts.

Lesley Dormen is Associate Director of The Writers Studio. Her book of linked stories, The Best Place To Be, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2007. Her short stories have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares, Five Points, Open City, Glimmer Train and the anthology 20 Over 40; several have been recognized by Best American Short Stories. Her story, "The Secret of Drawing," which appeared in ep;phany, was nominated for an award recognizing the best fiction on the web. Her personal essays and articles have appeared in The New York Times, Elle, O the Oprah Magazine, among other publications, and anthologized in Unholy Ghost: Writers on Depression. Lesley was awarded a 2008 grant for fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA). She is the recipient of fellowships from The MacDowell Colony and Yaddo.

Janelle Drumwright is a fiction writer trained in The Writers Studio method in Tucson. A graduate of the University of Arizona journalism program, she worked for several years as a sports reporter and copy editor for the Arizona Daily Star.

Therese Eiben's nonfiction and fiction have appeared in Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, Fortune and The Alaska Quarterly Review, among other magazines. Her story "Chekhov Said" was a finalist in Glimmertrain's July 2012 Very Short Story Contest. She is the co-editor of The Practical Writer: From Inspiration to Publication (Penguin 2004) and was formerly the editor of Poets & Writers magazine.

Gail Ford's poetry has appeared in several anthologies, including A Ghost at Heart's Edge, The Spirit of Writing, An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind, and literary journals including Northern Contours, Minotaur and The Monserrat Review. She has a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and since 1990, she has hosted a poetry series, founded Broken Shadow Publications, and co-taught writing workshops for poets and fiction writers.

Rebecca Gee has several years experience teaching creative and skills-building workshops for girls in detention in Chicago. She is a poet and fiction writer who has published in literary journals, and a visual artist who has received numerous awards, including an Arts Midwest/NEA Regional Visual Artist Fellowship. Rebecca teaches high school age writers in The Writers Studio KW program in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn and at The Churchill School in Manhattan. She trained with Philip Schultz in The Writers Studio method in NYC.

Araxe Hajian, a graduate of McGill University and New York University, has been a writer in The Writers Studio in Tucson since its inception. She has attended the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference, and has served on the Board of Governors for the New England Poetry Club. She has taught at private schools in Boston and Tucson and is currently working on a collection of stories.

Michele Herman has published short stories and essays in The New York Times, The Sun, Lilith, ACM, Pearl, The Worcestor Review, Columbia: A Journal of Literature & Art, Outside in Literary & Travel Magazine, and other publications. She was a finalist for the Orlando Prize for Short Fiction in 2010. Her personal essays appear regularly in the Greenwich Village Weekly The Villager. Her nonfiction has received awards from the American Business Press and the New York City Municipal Art Society.

Joel Hinman's fiction has appeared in Epiphany, Fiction Now and The Brooklyn Review. A longtime film producer, Joel is a contributing editor at Epiphany and a curator of the Writers Read reading series. He was nominated for a 2012 Pushcart Prize.

Lucinda Holt, a graduate of Amherst College, is currently working on a collection of short stories. Her one-act play "SanctOvum: My One Good Ovary" was recently produced at The Producers Club. She is director of the Online Program.

Jim Humes received an MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. His short fiction has earned him the Katherine Anne Porter Prize, the Henfield/TransAtlantic Review Award and a residency at the MacDowell Colony, as well as recognition by the AIGA for experience-based storytelling. He continues to work on fiction, creative non-fiction, and mixed-media projects. 

Eleanor Kedney is director of studio branches for The Writers Studio. A graduate of SUNY at Stony Brook, she has been a long-time writer in The Writers Studio in NYC. Her poems have appeared in Many Mountains Moving, NY Quarterly, and American Poets & Poetry, among others. She is working on a collection of poems.

Maurya Kerr holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from St. Mary's College of California LEAP program and has studied writing at The Writers Studio and UC Berkeley.  She is working on a collection of poetry.

Sasha Khmelnik holds a degree in English Literature from Brown University. She works in the field of textbook publishing and trained to teach The Writers Studio method with Philip Schultz in New York, where she is currently working on a collection of short stories. 

Lizabeth Kingsley is administrative director of The Writers Studio. A poet, she teaches an Online Level II class. Liz is a graduate of Mount Holyoke College and New York University. Her poetry has appeared in New Ohio Review, her fiction has appeared in The William and Mary Review, and a personal essay was published in an issue of New Jersey Family Magazine. Another essay is forthcoming in an anthology entitled, "STEPPING UP: Stories of Blended Families. Her poem "Trust" was nominated for a 2013 Pushcart Prize.

Linn Kolbe is a PhD researcher with teaching and supervisory duties at VU University Amsterdam, where she is currently working on several scientific articles on decision-making in innovation processes.  She trained in The Writers Studio method under Nancy Matsunaga and writes fiction.

Peter Krass has published his poetry in several literary magazines, and is currently the poetry editor of West View. His poem "Stoic Coffee" appears in the July 2012 issue of The Commonline Journal. His poem "Dressed in Green," which appeared in the Summer 2010 edition of Rattle, was awarded a Special Mention in the 2012 Pushcart Prize anthology. Over the past 20 years he has written for and edited magazines and newspapers, and was most recently a senior editor at Inc. He holds a bachelor's degree in English literature from NYU, where he studied with Elizabeth Bishop, and is working on a collection of poetry.

Inge Lamboo is an Amsterdam-based marketing writer.  She is a graduate of the University of Utrecht’s Honors College with a combined degree in Liberal Arts and Sciences, World Literature and Journalism. She trained in the Writers Studio method under Nancy Matsunaga and her current writing focus is short fiction.

Andree Lockwood has been an editor for Cambridge University Press, Simon and Schuster, and Harry N. Abrams. She is the author of several nonfiction books published by Ariel Books and is working on a collection of short stories. Her story, "Anyone Crazier Than You," appears in Epiphany's Spring/Summer 2o11 issue. She is a graduate of the University of London.

Lela Scott MacNeil is a fiction writer trained in The Writers Studio method in Tucson. A graduate of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts Dramatic Writing program, she now works for the University of Arizona Press. She is working on a collection of short stories.

Nancy Matsunaga is a graduate of Oberlin College and holds a master's degree in education. She is an editor with Pearson Education and a freelance non-fiction writer. She is currently working on fiction and creative non-fiction projects.

Brian McDonald received an MFA in poetry from NYU and is working on his first collection of poems. He trained to teach The Writers Studio method in NYC with director Philip Schultz. 

Sarah McElwain is the editor of SAYING GRACE (Chronicle Books 2003) and the author of TO THE HAPPY COUPLE! (Chronicle Books 2006). She is also the second-prize winner in American Fiction, Volume 10. She works as a graphic designer in New York City.

Abby Minot, a member of the on-line Master Class, is a University of California at Berkeley alumni. She has owned and operated several businesses and founded a non-profit corporation. She is working on a collection of short stories.

Joanne Naiman has edited books for Penguin and the University of Mississippi Press. Recipient of a Clarion Award, she is working on a collection of short fiction.

Rachael Nevins is a freelance writer and editor. She studied English literature at Yale College and the teaching of English at Teachers College of Columbia University. Her poem "Housekeeping" will appear in the June 2011 issue of Rattle. She blogs at The Variegated Life and is working on a collection of poems about motherhood.

Molly Patterson is a graduate of Carleton College. Her short story "The Mechanics of Motion" appeared in the Spring 2008 issue of Zone 3, and her work received Honorable Mention in both the Glimmer Train Very Short Fiction Contest and the River Styx Micro-fiction Contest.

Mark Peterson founded the San Francisco Writers Studio program after studying and training at The Writers Studio in NYC. A graduate of the University of California at Santa Cruz, he has been editing the fiction, nonfiction and poetry of numerous Bay Area writers since relocating to the West Coast. His poetry has been published in the Santa Barbara Review, and he is working on a collection of stories.

Whitney Porter's fiction has appeared in Metazen, Battered Suitcase, Craniotomic and Ping Pong Magazine. She has a B.A. in Journalism at Empire State SUNY and is working on her first novel.