Our Instructors
Oksana Marafioti
Oksana Marafioti founded Lounge Writers in 2018 with the goal to connect writers of all levels and genres with highly qualified instructors who can pass on the tools of the creative writing trade. Oksana is the author of American Gypsy: A Memoir (FSG, 2012). Her writings have appeared in Rumpus, Slate, and Time magazines, and in a number of literary journals and anthologies. Oksana was the 2013 Library of Congress Literary Award Recipient. From 2019 to 2021, she was a guest editor of the Critical Journal of Romani Studies at CEU. She was the 2020 recipient of the Picador Excellence in Literature Award from the University of Leipzig, Germany. A classically trained pianist, Oksana holds a BS in Cinematography and an MFA in Creative Writing.
Find Oksana at Oksana-Marafioti.com.
Aimee Bender
Aimee Bender is the author of six books of fiction, including the bestseller The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake and most recently The Butterfly Lampshade, longlisted for the PEN/Jean Stein Award.
You can find Aimee at: aimeebender.com
Jessica Reidy
Jessica Reidy is a writer and educator with works in Narrative Magazine as Story of the Week, Prairie Schooner, The Kenyon Review online, and other publications. She is the winner of the Nancy Thorp Poetry Prize, the Penelope Nivens Award for Creative Nonfiction, and the Glenna Luschei Prize, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart and Best of the Net. She is a co-host of Romanistan podcast alongside Paulina Verminski, which is a celebration of Roma, rebels, and roots. Under the name Jezmina Von Thiele, she is a dancer, healer, artist, art model, and fortune teller, dealing in tarot, palmistry, and tea leaves. She tells fortunes in her Roma/Sinti family’s tradition. She is a queer witch, and can be found at jessicareidy.com and jezminavonthiele.com.
Gabino Iglesias
Gabino Iglesias is a writer, journalist, professor, and book reviewer living in Austin, TX. He is the author of ZERO SAINTS and COYOTE SONGS and the editor of BOTH SIDES. His work has been nominated for the Bram Stoker and Locus awards and won the Wonderland Book Award for Best Novel in 2019. His novels, short stories, and essays have appeared in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times and have been published in five languages, optioned for film, and praised by authors as diverse as Roxane Gay, David Joy, Jerry Stahl, and Meg Gardiner. His reviews appear regularly in places like NPR, Publishers Weekly, the San Francisco Chronicle, Criminal Element, Mystery Tribune, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and other print and online venues. He's been a juror for the Shirley Jackson Awards twice and has judged the PANK Big Book Contest, the Splatterpunk Awards, and the Newfound Prose Prize. He teaches creative writing at Southern New Hampshire University's online MFA program. You can find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias.
Kerry Neville
Dr. Kerry Neville is the Coordinator of the MFA Program and an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Georgia College. She is the author of Remember To Forget Me and Necessary Lies. Her fiction and essays have appeared in many journals and magazines including The Gettysburg Review, Epoch, Glimmer Train, The Washington Post, The Irish Times, and Huffington Post. Her stories and essays have been named Notables in Best American Essays and Best American Short Stories. She is the recipient of the John Guyon Prize in Nonfiction. She was a Fulbright Fellow to Ireland in 2018, teaching Memoir Writing for the MA in Creative Writing Program at University of Limerick.
TJ Butler
TJ Butler lives on a sailboat on Maryland's Chesapeake Bay with her husband and dog. She writes fiction and essays that are not all fun and games. She coaches writers interested in accountability, goal setting, and story consultation, and she is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. Her work appears in a variety of literary journals, and she's a regular contributor to Tiny House Magazine. Her short story collection, "A Flame on the Ocean," is forthcoming this fall. Find her at @aGalWithNoName and TJButlerAuthor.com.
Jennifer Brody
Jennifer Brody / Vera Strange is the award-winning author of ten books, including The 13th Continuum trilogy (Turner), the Disney Chills book series featuring Disney villains haunting kids (Disney-Hyperion), and the graphic novels Spectre Deep 6 (Turner) and 200 (Turner, 2021) with Eisner-winning artist and syndicated cartoonist Jules Rivera, prompting Forbes to call Brody “a star in the graphic novel world.” Her debut graphic novel Spectre Deep 6 is also shortlisted for a 2020 Bram Stoker Award.
Olivia Clare
Olivia Clare is the author of a book of short stories, Disasters in the First World (Black Cat/Grove Atlantic), and a book of poems, The 26-Hour Day (New Issues). Her novel is forthcoming from Grove Atlantic. Her stories have been published in The Paris Review, Granta, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, The Southern Review, ZYZZYVA, and elsewhere. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Denver Quarterly, and other journals. She is the recipient of an O. Henry Prize (fiction), a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award (fiction), and a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation.
Veronica Klash
Veronica Klash loves living in Las Vegas and writing in her living room. Her work has appeared in Cheap Pop, Ellipsis Zine, and X-Ray Lit, among others. She’s edited flash fiction for Witness Magazine and is a regular contributor to NPR publication, Desert Companion. Veronica hasn’t only written flash, she’s also written about flash for Fractured Lit. Head over to veronicaklash.com for more.
Dawn Raffel
Dawn Raffel is the author of five books, most recently The Strange Case of Dr. Couney: How a Mysterious European Showman Saved Thousands of American Babies (Blue Rider Press/Penguin). The book was one of NPR’s great reads for 2018. Previous books include a memoir, a novel, and two-story collections. Her work has appeared in BOMB, NOON, Big Other, The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, Best Small Fictions 2015, 2016, and 2021 (forthcoming), and many other journals and anthologies. As a longtime magazine editor, she helped launch O, The Oprah Magazine, where she served as executive articles editor for seven years; she was also the editor of The Literarian, the magazine of the Center for Fiction in New York. She has taught creative writing at Columbia University, The Center for Fiction, and Summer Literary Seminars worldwide, and works as an independent developmental editor.
Emme Lund
Emme Lund holds an MFA from Mills College. Her work has appeared in TIME, Electric Literature, The Rumpus, and Paper Darts, among many other venues. In 2016, Quiet Lightning Books published her chapbook, The Sacred Text of Rosa Who is Great, with art by Stelleaux Peach. Her debut novel, The Boy with a Bird in His Chest, will be published by Atria Books in February 2022. Emme writes and lives in Portland, OR.
David Chrisinger
David Chrisinger leads memoir writing seminars for The War Horse, an award-winning non-profit newsroom that tells the stories of America’s Forever Wars. In addition, David directs the Harris Writing Program at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Stories Are What Save Us (2021) and Public Policy Writing That Matters (2017)—both published by Johns Hopkins University Press—and he is the editor of See Me for Who I Am: Student Veterans' Stories of War and Coming Home (2016), a book designed to help bridge the gap that divides America’s veterans from those who didn’t serve.
Paula Munier
PAULA MUNIER is a literary agent and USA TODAY bestselling author whose roots in the mystery writing community run deep. As Senior Literary Agent and Content Strategist for Talcott Notch Literary, she specializes in crime fiction, representing many great crime writers. She’s the author of the Mercy Carr series: A BORROWING OF BONES won the Dogwise Book of the Year Award and was nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award; BLIND SEARCH also won a DWAA award. THE HIDING PLACE, the latest in the series, debuts March 30, 2021. These mysteries feature former MP Mercy Carr and her bomb-sniffing Malinois Elvis, who team up with local game warden Troy Warden and his search-and-rescue Newfie-retriever mix Susie Bear to solve crimes in the Vermont wilderness.
Paula’s also written three popular books on writing, the bestselling PLOT PERFECT, THE WRITER’S GUIDE TO BEGINNINGS, and WRITING WITH QUIET HANDS, as well as HAPPIER EVERY DAY and the memoir FIXING FREDDIE. She’s an active member of MWA, SinC, and ITW. She served as president of the New England chapter of MWA for four terms and has served on the committee for the New England Crime Bake for more than a decade. She lives in New England with her family, three rescue dogs, and a rescue cat. Find out more at https://paulamunier.com/ and https://careerauthors.com/.
Catherine McNamara
Catherine McNamara grew up in Sydney, ran away to Paris to write and ended up in West Africa co-running a bar, working in Mogadishu and Milan along the way. Her short story collection The Cartography of Others was praised by Hilary Mantel, a finalist in the People’s Book Prize (UK), and won the Eyelands International Fiction Prize (Greece). She is the 2021 winner of the Saboteur Award 2021 (UK) for the Best Short Story Collection with Love Stories for Hectic People. Catherine is Flash Fiction Editor for Litro (UK) and hikes, grows cherries and runs writing retreats in north-eastern Italy. https://www.catherinemcnamarawriter.com/
Ashley Elizabeth
Ashley Elizabeth (she/her) is a teacher, freelance editor, and writer. Her works have appeared in SWWIM, Santa Fe Writers Project, and Kissing Dynamite, among others. Ashley's first chapbook collection, you were supposed to be a friend, is available from Nightingale & Sparrow. As the new Poetry editor for Afro Lit Magazine, assistant editor at Sundress Publications, and co-founder of the Estuary Collective, Ashley provides a safe space for BIPOC writers. She lives in Baltimore, MD with her partner and their cats. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram @ae_thepoet.
Ashleigh Renard
Through her candid presence on social media, Ashleigh Renard has built a committed mass-following who tune in daily for her fresh, no-fuss advice on everything from keeping monogamy hot, to renegotiating a marriage, to getting kids to clean the house (because nothing makes her prouder than child labor). With savvy and plenty of humor, her down-to-earth voice tackles topics that are relatable to anyone struggling with the awkwardness of living in a meat suit at Earth School. Her debut book, SWING – A Memoir of Doing it All, was published on May 25 and sold 5000 print copies in its first week. You can find Ashleigh at https://ashleighrenard.com/ and on Instagram @Ashleighrenard.
Charles Garrett
Charles Garrett is a widely published writer out of New Orleans Louisiana. A father of 2, an amateur rugby athlete and horticulturist, he spends all of his extra time, hunting and engaging wholeheartedly in the craft of writing. He has read and recited his poetry across the south and is currently concluding the creation of his Holy Trinity: A Novel - Mansavage in Deadhorse. A Screenplay - The Lottery, and A collection of Poetry - ARTiculate: The Rise.
Connect with Charles here:
Portfolio: http://charlesbbst.contently.com/
Instagram: @charlesclaudelgarrett
Facebook: charles.garrett
Twitter: @Cajun1don
Kathy Fish
Kathy Fish has published five collections of short fiction, most recently Wild Life: Collected Works from 2003-2018. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Copper Nickel, Washington Square Review, and numerous other journals, textbooks, and anthologies. Fish’s “Collective Nouns for Humans in the Wild,” was selected for Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018 and the current edition of The Norton Reader. She is the recipient of a Ragdale Foundation Fellowship and a Copper Nickel Editors’ Prize. Her free monthly newsletter, The Art of Flash Fiction, includes a craft article and writing prompt. Subscribe at https://artofflashfiction.substack.com. More about the author may be found at kathy-fish.com.
Leonora Simonovis
Leonora Simonovis is a bilingual poet who grew up near Caracas, Venezuela and currently lives in San Diego, CA where she teaches Latin American literature and creative writing at the University of San Diego. She has an MFA from Antioch University, Los Angeles, and is a contributing editor for Drizzle Review. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Gargoyle Magazine, Diode Poetry Journal, The Rumpus, Arkansas International, Inverted Syntax, and Tinderbox Poetry Journal, among others. Her poetry manuscript 'Study of the Raft' was the winner of the 2021 Colorado Prize for Poetry and will be published in November of 2021.
You can find Leonora at: leonorasimonovis.com
Abby L. Vandiver
Abby L. Vandiver, also writing as Abby Collette, is a hybrid author who has penned more than twenty-five books and short stories. She has hit both the Wall Street Journal and USA Today's bestseller list. Books one and two, A Deadly Inside Scoop and A Game of Cones, from her latest cozy series, An Ice Cream Parlor Mystery, published by Penguin Berkley, is out now.
Connect with Abby here: abbyvandiver.com
And here: Twitter: www.twitter.com/abbyvandiver
Instagram: www.instagram.com/abbylvandiver
Facebook: www.facebook.com/authorabbyl.vandiver
Dawn Michelle Hardy.
Dawn Michelle Hardy is a creative publicity strategist and staunch advocate for self-published and traditionally published authors. For nearly twenty years, she has developed and facilitated multimedia book publicity campaigns that drive sales, create fan bases, garner book awards and industry honors, that helped leverage the author’s success for book deals, brand partnerships, and speaking engagements. For several consecutive years, her debut authors have won awards including, Next Generation Indie Excellence Award (NIEA), Non-Fiction Book Award, Reader’s Choice, Wishing Shelf, American Fiction Award as well as a sports biography short-listed for the 2015 PEN Literary Award and a poetry finalist in 2016 NAACP Image Awards. She is also the host of the new interactive streaming show for authors, BOOK BANTER TV.
Connect with Dawn Michelle Hardy here: The Literary Lobbyist
Derek Pollard
Derek Pollard is editor of Till One Day the Sun Shall Shine More Brightly: The Poetry and Prose of Donald Revell, author of the poetry collection On the Verge of Something Bright and Good, and co-author with Derek Henderson of the poetry collection Inconsequentia. He currently serves as Series Editor for the Poets on Poetry Series, founded by Donald Hall and published by the University of Michigan Press. Previously, he served as Associate Editor at Interim: A Journal of Poetry & Poetics; as Poetry and Nonfiction Editor at Witness; and as Associate Editor at New Issues Poetry & Prose.
Web: https://constellarcreative.com/about
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/derekpollard-phd
Poets on Poetry: https://www.press.umich.edu/browse/series/UM31
David LeGere
David LeGere is a publishing professional with fourteen years of experience in the US, specializing in the trade nonfiction, gift, and outdoor markets. He has worked with a vast network of industry professionals and published hundreds of titles, ranging from recently celebrated nonfiction like Fast Funny Women, a hilarious collection of nonfiction essays edited by Gina Barreca with notable contributors like “Judge Judy” Sheindlin, Susan Shapiro, and Fay Weldon, to award-winning fiction like The Astronaut’s Son, Foreword Indie Award winner and CT Book Prize finalist by Tom Seigel. He has published three titles that have won the National Outdoor Book Award (2016, 2018, and 2020), and he is an Editorial Director at Rowman & Littlefield in addition to the CEO of Woodhall Press. A graduate of Fairfield University’s MFA program, he is also a dedicated English professor and writer.
For more information visit him at www.dllegere.com, www.woodhallpress.com, and listen to his podcast at Publish This! Over Lunch.
Social media handles:
@woodhallpress on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Tiktok, and Twitter
@dllegere on Instagram, David LeGere on Facebook, or www.dllegere.com
Steena Holmes
Steena Holmes is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author with over 2 million copies of her titles sold worldwide, including The Patient, The Forgotten Ones, and Saving Abby. Named in the Top 20 Women Author to read by Good Housekeeping, she won the National Indie Excellence Award for her breakout novel Finding Emma as well as the USA Book News Award for The Word Game. Steena has been featured in various newspapers and magazines, websites such as Goodreads, BookBub, RedBook, Glamour, Coastal Living, and Good Housekeeping. To find out more about her books and her love for traveling, you can visit her website at http://www.steenaholmes.com.
Instagram: @authorsteenaholmes
Facebook: @authorsteenaholmes
Aida Zilelian
Aida Zilelian is a first-generation American-Armenian writer, educator, and literary organizer. Her fiction explores the depths of love and family relationships, culture and the connections between characters that transcend time and circumstance. Her first novel (unpublished) The Hollowing Moon, was one of the top three finalists of the Anderbo Novel Contest. The sequel The Legacy of Lost Things was published in 2015 (Bleeding Heart Publications) and was the recipient of the 2014 Tololyan Literary Award. Aida has been featured on NPR, The Huffington Post, Kirkus Reviews, Poets & Writers, and various reading series throughout Queens and Manhattan. Her short story collection These Hills Were Meant for You was shortlisted for the 2018 Katherine Anne Porter Award.
Elizabeth Pinborough
Elizabeth Pinborough is an artist and writer who helps people love their unique, lovely brains. She believes that the brain is the greatest asset any of us has and that it’s vital to take care of throughout life. Elizabeth is a graduate of BYU and Yale Divinity School, yet what qualifies her to do this work is seven years of healing a traumatic brain injury, which has required creativity, dogged determination, and a good amount of starting again. Her first poetry collection, The Brain’s Lectionary: Psalms and Observations (BCCPress 2022), combines word and image to reimagine what the writer’s brain looks like in the wake of a language-disrupting injury. Elizabeth is based in Salt Lake City, Utah, where she can be found making poetry out of neuroscience and art out of paint, pen, thread, and cloth.
Premee Mohamed
Premee Mohamed is an Indo-Caribbean scientist and speculative fiction author based in Edmonton, Alberta. She is an Assistant Editor at the short fiction audio venue Escape Pod and the author of novels 'Beneath the Rising' (finalist for the Crawford Award, Aurora Prize, British Fantasy Award, and Locus Award) and 'A Broken Darkness,' and novellas 'These Lifeless Things,' 'And What Can We Offer You Tonight,' and 'The Annual Migration of Clouds.' Her next novel, 'The Void Ascendant,' is the final book in the Beneath the Rising trilogy and is due out in spring 2022. Her short fiction has appeared in many venues and she can be found on Twitter at @premeesaurus and on her website at www.premeemohamed.com
Tommy Dean
Tommy Dean is the author of two flash fiction chapbooks Special Like the People on TV (Redbird Chapbooks, 2014) and Covenants (ELJ Editions, 2021). Hollows, A collection of flash fiction is forthcoming from Alternating Current Press. He lives in Indiana where he currently is the Editor at Fractured Lit and Uncharted Magazine. A graduate of the Queens University of Charlotte MFA program, he is currently working on a novel. A recipient of the 2019 Lascaux Prize in Short Fiction, his writing can be found in Best Microfiction 2019 and 2020, Best Small Fiction 2019, Monkeybicycle, and the Atticus Review. He taught writing workshops for the Gotham Writers Workshop, the Barrelhouse Conversations and Connections conference, and The Writers Workshop. Find him at tommydeanwriter.com and on Twitter @TommyDeanWriter.
Amanda Skenandore
Amanda Skenandore is the award-winning author of three historical novels, The Second Life of Mirielle West, The Undertaker’s Assistant, and Between Earth and Sky. She’s also a registered nurse and certified infection preventionist. She lives in Las Vegas with her husband Steven and their pet turtle Lenore.
Tonya Todd
Your Instructor: Author and actress Tonya Todd plunged into Las Vegas, the Entertainment Capital of the World, young enough to immerse herself in bright lights, big city, and bigger dreams. Tonya is invested in Own Voices writing and diverse representation in both the literary and cinematic worlds she inhabits. Her involvement in the literary, theatre, and filmmaking communities provides a platform to champion marginalized artists and contributes toward an environment that embraces a variety of voices. In her role as host of The 52 Love Podcast, she interviewed a myriad of creatives dedicated to celebrating love and art in all its forms.
To connect with Tonya, follow her social media http://www.mstonyatodd.com/about/links/ and her IMDb page at imdb.me/TonyaTodd.
Natalia Sylvester
Born in Lima, Peru, Natalia Sylvester is an award-winning writer of novels, essays, and poetry. CHASING THE SUN was named the Best Debut Book of 2014 by Latinidad Magazine and EVERYONE KNOWS YOU GO HOME won an International Latino Book Award and the 2019 Jesse H. Jones Award for Best Work of Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters. Her debut YA novel, RUNNING, was a 2020 Junior Library Guild Selection and her sophomore YA, BREATHE AND COUNT BACK FROM TEN, will be out in May 2022 from HarperCollins. Sylvester's essays have appeared in the New York Times, Bustle, Catapult, Latina magazine, and McSweeney’s Publishing, and have been widely anthologized. She received a BA in creative writing from the University of Miami and now lives and writes in South Florida. nataliasylvester.com | Twitter/Instagram: @nataliasylv.
Eraldo Souza dos Santos
Eraldo Souza dos Santos is a writer interested in the history and politics of social movements. In his current book project, he offers the first global history of civil disobedience. His writing has appeared in The Diplomat, The Washington Post, World Politics Review, and elsewhere. He is a 2022 LA Review of Books Publishing Fellow.
Caren Gussoff Sumption
Caren Gussoff Sumption is a sci-fi, horror, and literary fiction writer, living in south Seattle, WA. The author of 6 books and more than 100 short stories, Caren received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and in 2008, was the Carl Brandon Society’s Octavia E. Butler Scholar at Clarion West. Her most recent novella -- a deep space, post-colonial comedy of manners called "So Quick Bright Things Come to Confusion" -- will be out from Vernacular Books in September, 2022. Find her online at spitkitten.com
Gila Green
Canadian Gila Green is the Israel-based author of four novels: King of the Class, Passport Control, White Zion, and No Entry, and dozens of short stories. She enjoys writing about daring heroines who find themselves in extraordinary situations. Gila is an editor, an EFL college lecturer, and a mother of five who has lived in Canada, Israel, and South Africa. Find out more about Gila here: https://www.gilagreenwrites.com/
Diana Norma Szokolyai
Diana Norma Szokolyai is a writer, teacher and artistic director. Her books include CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos & Sourcebook for Creative Writing, Parallel Sparrows, and Roses in the Snow. Her writing appears in Critical Romani Studies, The Poetry Miscellany, The Boston Globe, MER VOX Quarterly, and VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts and is forthcoming in the anthology Stone to Stone: Writing by Romani Women. Her poetry has been anthologized in Other Countries: Contemporary Poets Rewiring History and Die Morgendämmerung der Worte, Moderner Poesie–Atlas der Roma und Sinti. She was awarded a 2021 Center for Arts and Social Justice Fellowship at Vermont College of Fine Arts for her work translating Romani poets into English. She teaches writing at Salem State University and Harborlight Montessori, and she is the co-founder/co-director of The Cambridge Writers’ Workshop. Together with Dennis Shafer, she founded the Chagall Performance Art Collaborative, an interdisciplinary arts studio and gallery space on Artists’ Row in Salem, MA. A first generation American of Hungarian Romani heritage, she holds an M.A. in French Studies from UConn, an Ed.M in Arts in Education from Harvard, and an M.F.A. in Writing from VCFA.
