Workshop Leaders
NYWC is fortunate to have a talented and diverse pool of writers volunteering their time to lead creative writing workshops every week.
Danielle Beurteaux is a Brooklyn-based freelance writer whose work has appeared in several national magazines, and who leads a writing workshop for homeless adults at Jan Hus Presbyterian Church on New York’s Upper East Side. A graduate of The New School’s MFA program, she also holds a BA in Literature and Writing from Columbia University. She is a member of PEN America and The Dramatists Guild of America.
Tamiko Beyer’s poetry has appeared in diode, Sonora Review, OCHO, Copper Nickel Review and elsewhere. She has received several fellowships and grants, including a Kundiman fellowship, a grant from the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund, and an Olin and Chancellor’s Fellowship from Washington University in St. Louis where she is currently an M.F.A. candidate. She is the assistant poetry editor of Drunken Boat, and a founding member of Agent 409: a queer, multi-racial writing collective in New York City. Find her online at wonderinghome.com and blogging at kenyonreview.org .
Barbara Cassidy leads a NYWC workshop at the Brooklyn Public Library, Ridge Girls, which is aimed at getting Bay Ridge girls of diverse backgrounds together to write. She also leads a NYWC kids workshop at the Queens Public Library. A graduate of Brooklyn College’s MFA program, her play, Interim, was recently published in the anthology, New Downtown Now.
Judy Chicurel’s work has appeared in a number of regional and national publications, including The New York Times, Newsday, and YM magazines. She recently signed option agreements for her screenplay, The Endless Summer of Miss Ursula Groves, and her play, Beautiful Pearl’s Tavern of the Orient. Judy has led writing workshops with NYWC, and has taught writing for the National Writers Union Community Writing Program, and alternative high school programs. She has a B.A. in English/Education and an M.L.A. in Urban Education from the City University of New York Graduate Center.
Jaime Shearn Coan leads an NYWC workshop for LGBTQ youth at the Ali Forney Center. She is an MFA candidate and adjunct instructor at the City College of New York, and is at work on a novel-in-progress titled Touching the Lighthouse. She lives in Brooklyn.
Clarissa Cummings is a writer born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has been published in African Voices Literary Journal, Fierce Magazine, and the 2007 anthology “What Your Mama Never Told You”. She leads a NYWC workshop for cancer survivors at the Creative Center.
Brooklyn-based writer/musician Matt Everett has had fiction, poetry, and criticism published in Pax Americana, Barrow Street, The Cafe Irreal, The Brooklyn Rail, The Agenda, and elsewhere. As a musician he’s composed for films, dance pieces, church services and circuses, and currently helms Cloud Chamber, a pop/folk outfit with a slight Weimar sensibility. Matt leads a writing workshop on Tuesday nights with an amazingly talented group of LGBTQ senior citizens at the SAGE Center on 13th St. in Manhattan.
Beth Friedland has leds a NYWC workshop for cancer patients and survivors at The Creative Center. She’s also led workshops for NYWC at the Rose Kennedy Family Center. She is currently writing a book of short erotic fiction and lives on the Lower East Side.
Yvonne Garrett leads a workshop at the Brooklyn Veterans Center open to all veterans. She has an MFA in Fiction from the New School, an MA in Humanities & Social Thought from NYU, and a B.A. in English from Smith College. She’s been published in several music magazines, had stories in the Brooklyn Writers’ Space “Reader” anthology, the Raleigh Quarterly, Thema, Bardsong, Compass Rose, and poetry in Roux, Spire, and the Baltimore Review among others. She is on the editorial staff of Black Lawrence Press (associate fiction editor) and Barrow Street. She is a member of PEN America, the MLA, AWP, the PCA/ACA, a regular volunteer for Veteran-related & Animal Rights causes and lives in the East Village.
Madeleine George has led NYWC workshops for seniors in Fort Greene Park and for women at Hopper House, an alternative-to-incarceration program operated by the Women’s Prison Association. Her plays have been staged and developed at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, New York Theatre Workshop, and the Public Theater, among other places, and she is a founding member of the Obie-Award-winning playwrights’ collective 13P (Thirteen Playwrights, Inc.). Her novel for teenagers, Looks, is forthcoming from Viking. During the day Madeleine directs the Bard College campus at Bayview Correctional Facility for Women in Chelsea.
Diane Goettel is the Editor of The Adirondack Review and Managing Editor of Black Lawrence Press. Her fiction has appeared in 42 Opus, failbetter, and Lichen, among other journals. In addition to leading workshops for NYWC, Diane is currently a Dzanc Books writer-in-residence at The High School for Telecommunication Arts and Technology and teaches students pursuing their GEDs at Touro College. Diane completed her undergraduate work at Sarah Lawrence College and is currently pursuing a Master’s in English at Brooklyn College.
Kaitlyn Greenidge leads a NYWC workshop at The Blossom Program for Girls. She lives in Brooklyn, NY and works as a researcher for a local history museum. She has previously taught creative writing with the Writers’ Express, Inc. in Boston, MA.
Suzanne Guillette is a writer, teacher, and editor. Her work has been seen in numerous publications, including Tin House, SELF, and other national periodicals. An occasional performer with SpeakyEasy: Stories from the Back Room, Suzanne holds a Bachelor’s in Philosophy and a Master’s of Fine Arts in Creative Non-fiction. As a volunteer facilitator for the New York Writer’s Coalition, Suzanne leads a weekly writing workshop for formerly incarcerated women in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Her first book, MUCH TO YOUR CHAGRIN, is forthcoming from Atria.
Born in Santiago, Dominincan Republic and raised in East New York, Henry Guzmán has written numerous plays for the theater including PILGRIM, CALIBAN, INKARRI’’S RETURN, DINNER WITH JOBITA AND LA CHACHA, FLYIN’ HIGH, ANTHROPOPHAGUS (“A Cannabalist Manifesto”), BLACK BOX. He was a Van Lier Playwriting Fellow at the New York Theater Workshop where he wrote CONFESSIONS OF A P.K.* (”Preacher’’s Kid). A graduate of NYU’s Dramatic Writing program, Henry also directs and occasionally performs his own theatrical monologues.
Debra Kirschner leads an NYWC workshop at Emmanuel Baptist Church for “Prime Time” Senior women. She also leads a creative writing workshop at the Hoboken Shelter for homeless adults. Debra wrote, directed and independently produced the feature film The Tollbooth, which stars Marla Sokoloff (The Practice, Big Day, Desperate Housewives), Rob McElhenney (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), Idina Menzel (Wicked, Rent) and Tovah Feldshuh (Law and Order, Kissing Jessica Stein). The Tollbooth played festivals throughout the world and is being distributed by Peace Arch and Castle Hill Productions, who played it theatrically in New York, Long Island and Florida and plan to release the DVD in the US and Canada on April 8, 2008. She earned her degree in Playwriting and Women’s Studies at Rutgers University where she wrote and directed several plays and is a graduate of New York University’s Film Intensive Program. She has a screenplay in development called Pippi Was Here and a television project in development that is still untitled. She is a member of New York Women in Film and Television. For more information on The Tollbooth please see www.thetollboothmovie.com.
Margaret Lubalin has been a copywriter and advertising Creative Director for over 20 years. She is also a poet, book artist and general life observer. Margaret has taught writing and book-making classes at the Society of Scribes, The Ink Pad and in the Reading Program at P.S. 96. For the past two years she’s lead a NYWC writing workshop at Inwood House, a residence for pregnant teens. She also leads a NYWC writing workshop in the Gramercy Park Area. Margaret studied creative writing at The New School, in a variety of writers groups and at the New York Writers Coalition. She has authored and self-published two books of poetry, “Openings” and “Harvest” and has had several of her poems published by Plum Biscuit, the NYWC online literary magazine. She also has the rare distinction of inventing the “poem mobile.”
Melanie O’Harra has led NYWC’s writing workshop at The Aurora and is currently leading a workshop with the World Trade Center Survivors Network.
NPR host Garrison Keillor featured Kate Payne’s poetry on air for A Prairie Home Companion’s Annual Spring Lyric Contest. Kate leads her NYWC workshop with elementary children at the Brooklyn Public Library’s Bedford branch, just down the street from her house. She also writes grants for non-profit organizations on a freelance basis and collects anything that seems handy or old. She is presently working on a non-fiction book: The Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking, due out Spring 2011 from HarperCollins.
Sheryl Posnick leads NYWC’s workshop for women living at the Downtown Brooklyn YWCA, a short walk from her Cobble Hill home. By day works as a Development and Acquisitions editor for Kaplan Publishing.
Alex Samets leads the NYWC workshop at SAGE, working with elders at the LGBT Center in Manhattan. She will receive an MFA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College in May of 2010. Alex lives, writes, practices yoga, and walks her dog in the relatively untamed Inwood, Manhattan, which is the urban equivalent of the wilds of Vermont, where she grew up.
Mary Ellen Sanger is currently leading a Spanish-language workshop for Mexican immigrants and their families at Mano a Mano on Fulton Street in Manhattan. She also does a weekly workshop for people in the early stages of memory loss at Riverstone Senior Life Services in Washington Heights. She lived for 17 years in Mexico, and has published short stories and poems in Spanish and English in several Mexican journals, including Luna Zeta and Zocalo. She has published poetry, essays, and stories in online venues, including Poets Against the War, Travelers’ Tales, Mexconnect, Hack Writers, Delirium Journal, and Mexico Files. Her essay “A Grammar of Place” was anthologized in Mexico, a Love Story. She is currently writing a collection of short stories inspired by the women of Ixcotel State Penitentiary in Oaxaca, Mexico where she spent thirty-three days and nights falsely imprisoned in the fall of 2003. Stories from the collection have appeared in CrossBronx and J Journal, New Writing on Justice (from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice).
Eileen Sutton is a New York-based fiction writer, teacher, and journalist. She has worked with teens, and now leads a creative-writing workshop for seniors on the Lower East Side. A graduate of New York University’s MFA program, she also holds a BA in English from UCLA. Her first novel, set on the Lower East Side, spans nearly 100 years and speaks in four languages: English, Spanish, Yiddish, Street. Her journalism has appeared, among others, in the London Guardian, The Village Voice, and The National Law Journal. She was a semi-finalist in the 1999 Nation/Discovery Poetry Contest, and has received a 2010 teaching grant from Poets & Writers. Her second novel and a collection of stories are in progress.
Jesse Sweet is a documentary film maker who most recently produced and directed the third hour of the critically acclaimed PBS series “African American Lives 2″, hosted by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., which pieced together the family histories of 12 African Americans (including Don Cheadle, Morgan Freeman, Maya Angelou, Chris Rock and Tina Turner) during the slave era. Previously he wrote and produced the A&E documentary “The American Brew”, which explored the history and contemporary culture of beer in America; “African American Lives 1″ which traced the family histories of 8 guests including Oprah Winfrey and Whoopi Goldberg. The New York Times called this series, “The most exciting documentary on this or any other topic in quite some time.” Additional credits include writing, producing and directing the A&E Biography on Leo Tolstoy; writing, producing and directing the A&E Biography on Fyodor Dostoevksy, associate producer on ABC’s “Peter Jennings Reports: Beyond Conspiracy, the 40th Anniversary of the Kennedy Assassincation”; field producer on HBO’s “Autopsy 8″; field producer on HBO’s “The Iceman Confesses Secrets of a Mafia Hitman”; and associate producer on PBS’ American Masters: “Clint Eastwood: Out of the Shadows.”
Jesse’s short story “The Age of Heroes and Greatness” was published in Dirt Press in the Spring of 2007. He writes film reviews for “The L Magazine.” He leads a NYWC creative writing workshop for formerly incarcerated people with the Fortune Society. Jesse graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College in 1998 with a double honors major in Film Studies and Philosophy..
Mary E. Smith leads a workshop in Queens at the Broadway Community Library. She is a Children’s Librarian who enjoys writing and sharing in the creative endeavors of her community.
Melanie Votaw has led an NYWC workshop for adults at Barrier-Free Living. She is the author of seven non-fiction books, including 52 Weeks of Passionate Sex and Hummingbirds: Jewels On Air. She has published fiction in book anthologies and more than 50 poems in the literary magazines of six countries, including American Writing and Folio. She has also written magazine articles for such publications as Woman’s Day and Travel Savvy and is a member of the Authors Guild and the American Society of Journalists and Authors. A speaker and teacher of both seminars and online courses, Melanie has produced a lecture/meditation CD entitled The Creative Impulse. Read a profile of and interview with Melanie Votaw.
Kesha Star Young has been published in Words of Fire:
An Anthology of Dragon’s Den Poetry Reading from Think Tank Press, New Orleans. She has facilitated NYWC workshops in a range of settings and is currently writing with 6th graders at the Khalil Gibran International Academy. She has an MA in Cultural Anthropology and Social Transformation from the California Institute of Integral Studies and is working on a collection of personal essays.
