Meet Our Instructors

Alana Sanko is an award-winning writer and producer who has written and developed for comedy, drama and animated series, as well as TV movie and network and cable pilots across multiple platforms. Her Nickelodeon series, Just for Kicks, which she created, developed and produced with Executive Producer Whoopi Goldberg, won her a WGA Award and the animated MTV series Spy Groove, which she was Head Writer on, received an Annie Nomination by the International Animated Film Society, ASIFA-Hollywood.

In addition to working on many writing staffs over the years, Alana has written and produced a number of original pilots, including the ABC comedy, See Jayne Run with Brillstein Entertainment. Additional writing credits include: the Disney Channel Original Movie Get a Clue starring Lindsay Lohan, HBO Family’s animated series, A Little Curious, ABC’s Life’s Work, and the acclaimed CBS television series Murphy Brown, which was named on the WGA’s list of 101 Best TV Series. She has also written for numerous children’s series and was a Consulting Producer for Half Life, the limited series winner of the NYC women’s initiative screenwriting competition #GreenlightHer! Alana recently made her directing debut on the short film, The Happiness Intervention, which is currently in post-production. Follow it on Instagram @TheHappinessIntervention.

Alana is the Creative Episodic Lab Director for the Athena Film Festival and a 2026 Artemis Rising Foundation Filmmaker Fellow at Barnard College. She also teaches at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Purchase College’s School of Film and Media Studies and the Sundance Collab. She is a proud member of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, Broadcast Music, Inc., Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques, New York Women in Film & Television and the Writers Guild of America.

Allison has worked in magazine and book publishing for more than 30 years. Her first job was at an independent publisher where she quickly fell in love with shaping manuscripts into books. A brief sojourn into magazines helped her realize it was long form writing that really interested her. Transitioning back to books, she worked her way up to Senior Editor at Ballantine/Random House and then Plume/Penguin Putnam. She developed commercial fiction and nonfiction, working closely with literary agents and authors from negotiating the acquisition of a manuscript through to publication. In 2008 she left full-time publishing to raise her son and is currently based in London. Living in a city with a long history of literature continues to inspire her to work with authors to find their story. She is available to consult remotely on query letters, full or partial manuscripts, and advise on aspects of book publishing.

Amanda Parrish Morgan is the author of STROLLER (Bloomsbury 2022), of which The New Yorker wrote “the central strength of the book is not comprehensiveness but the way the stroller, and Morgan’s experience of her own strollering years, become an omnidirectional magnet, pulling disparate material into friendly proximity.” Amanda’s writing has appeared in The Rumpus, LitHub, Guernica, The Millions, n+1, Electric Literature, Carve, The American Scholar, The Ploughshares Blog, JSTOR Daily, The Washington Post, Real Simple, Women’s Running and ESPNW.

Amy Shearn is the award-winning author of the novels Unseen City, The Mermaid of Brooklyn, and How Far Is the Ocean From Here and the forthcoming Dear Edna Sloane (Red Hen Press, 2024) and Animal Instinct (Putnam, 2025). She has worked as an editor at Medium, JSTOR, Conde Nast, and other organizations, and has taught creative writing at NYU, Sackett Street Writers Workshop, Gotham Writers Workshops, Catapult, Story Studio Chicago, The Resort LIC, and the Yale Writers’ Workshop. Amy’s work has appeared in many publications including the New York Times Modern Love column, Slate, Poets & Writers, Literary Hub, Real Simple, Martha Stewart Living, O: The Oprah Magazine, and Coastal Living. Amy has an MFA from the University of Minnesota, and lives in Brooklyn with her two children. You can find her at amyshearnwrites.com or @amyshearn.

Ashley Renshaw is a writer and educator with over 20 years of experience teaching in the U.S., Switzerland, and New Zealand. She holds two master’s degrees from Teachers College, Columbia University, and has worked as a reading specialist, librarian, and classroom teacher. Now based in Westport, Ashley is writing a collection of personal essays and is passionate about helping others find their voice on the page.

Barbara Josselsohn is the author of a series of nine contemporary and historical novels — most recently The Secret Orphanage, which was inspired by an actual town in southern France that saved more than 3,000 Jewish people, mostly children, during the Nazi occupation. Her articles and essays appear in The New York Times, New York Magazine, Writer’s Digest, Parents Magazine, Westchester Magazine, and other publications.  Barbara teaches novel and essay writing at numerous venues and privately. She is a member of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association andcoordinator of the Scarsdale Library Writers Center, which supports and promotes local writers. She is currently at work on a new historical novel inspired largely by the rich folklore of eastern Long Island, which is set to release in the summer of 2026. For more details, visit her at www.BarbaraJosselsohn.com.

Cara Wall is a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and Stanford University. While at Iowa, Cara taught fiction writing in the undergraduate creative writing department as well as at the Iowa Young Writer’s Studio in her capacity of founder and inaugural director. Her first novel, The Dearly Beloved, was a Read with Jenna book club selection, one of Entertainment Weekly’s 10 best debut novels, and a New York Times Editor’s Choice. For her writing about faith, marriage, and family from multiple points of view, Cara was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, earned a 2021 Wilbur Award, and was the 2021 The Ragdale Foundation Hannah Judy Gretz Fellow. She lives with her family in New York City and Redding, Connecticut.

Caroline R. Jennings spent ten years working in fitness and several more at home raising her two children. She graduated from Yale University in 2007 where she majored in Spanish with a focus in Spanish Literature. She holds a Master’s degree in Rehabilitative Counseling from The University of Texas at Southwestern. She has recently led reflective writing workshops at the Darien Community Association & Yellow Arrow Publishing.

Chris Belden is the author of several novels, including The Vote, The Private Dick, and Shriver (adapted into the film A Little White Lie). His story collections are Who Am I to Judge? and The Floating Lady of Lake Tawaba. He also edited Closer to Freedom, a collection of poetry and prose produced in the weekly prison writing workshop he ran for ten years. Chris is also the cohost of “Chris & Katie’s Open Mic,” which occurs monthly in South Norwalk.

Christine Pakkala is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop MFA. She was a Fulbright Scholar (1994) in Helsinki, Finland, where she translated modern Finnish poetry. She taught 7th and 9th grade English at Horace Mann and has published essays in Salon, BrainChild and Serendipity and is the 2013 winner of the Ladies Home Journal essay contest. She’s the author of Last-But-Not-Least Lola Going Green, which was the winner of the Santa Monica Public Library’s Green Prize, and a novel for teens, Jasmine and Maddie, which was a VOYA (Voice of Youth Advocate) Top Shelf pick and a Bank Street Best Book.Christine is working on a memoir and the first chapter of it will be published as an essay in “The Seventh Wave”, an arts and literary magazine this fall.

Douglas Bauer’s most recent novel, The Beckoning World, was a Must Read selection of the Massachusetts Library Association and a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award. He is the author of three previous novels — Dexterity; The Very Air and The Book of Famous Iowans — and three works of non-fiction — Prairie City Iowa: Three Seasons at Home; The Stuff of Fiction: Advice on Craft, and What Happens Next?: Matters of Life and Death, which won the PEN/New England Award in Non-Fiction. He is also the editor of the anthologies, Prime Times: Writers on Their Favorite TV Shows and Death by Pad Thai and Other Unforgettable Meals. His numerous essays, reviews, and articles have appeared in Esquire, Harper’s, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Book Review, Agni, Cutleaf, and other publications. He has won grants from the National Endowment for the Arts in both fiction and creative non-fiction. He lives in Cambridge, MA.

Douglas Moser is a Connecticut-based author and director. Memoir pieces published in Echo, Peculiar, and the Good Men Project and in the book Dating & Sex: The Theory of Mutual Self-Destruction, Volume 1. His short story Boxing Day was recently published in the Martian Chronicles magazine. The winner of the Connecticut Critics’ Circle award for A Christmas Carol, for its premiere at the Westport Country Playhouse. He made his opera debut directing the groundbreaking folk opera, Patience & Sarah at Lincoln Center. Before COVID hit he directed Spinning at Long Wharf Theatre. Other projects throughout New York, and regionally, Fairfield, and Stamford. Moser’s novel, James & Jim, a comic thriller, was workshopped at the Writers Hotel. He is also developing a YA novel, Pussy Boy, developed at Westport Writers’ Workshop and Yale Summer Writers’ Program. His short film Glacier Bay, received numerous awards on the festival circuit.

Elise Hart Kipness is a USA Today bestselling author and former national TV sports reporter. She is known for the acclaimed Kate Green thriller series, Lights Out (2023), Dangerous Play (2024), and Close Call (2025), which has been optioned for television by Universal Television and Mary J. Blige’s Blue Butterfly.

Kipness has earned worldwide recognition, including Men’s Journal’s Top 10 Books of the Year, a Woman’s Day Must-Read Selection, and a Scripps News Beach Read Pick and has been featured on CBS Mornings+, CBS New York’s Club Calvi, People Magazine, and Newsday.

Like her fearless protagonist, Kipness chased marquee athletes at the US Open and stood beneath the blinding lights of Madison Square Garden, in her past life as a reporter for FOX Sports Network and WNBC New York.

Ines Rodrigues is a journalist and writer who holds an MFA in creative writing and literary translation from Columbia University (New York). She published her first novel, Days of Bossa Nova, in 2017, and she’s currently writing her second work of fiction. Ines has been an instructor at the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College since 2016. She is the former editor of Scarsdale Living Magazine, and also teaches Italian and creative writing at Bronxville Adult School. She is the curator of The Scarsdale Salon, a quarterly literary event in partnership with the Salon de Belleville (Paris, France). Read more about Ines Rodrigues at https://www.inesrodriguesauthor.com/

Jaclyn Gilbert is the founder of Driftless Literary. She began her career in sales and marketing at Workman Publishing before joining Janklow & Nesbit’s foreign rights team—where she helped secure translation rights to works by Jhumpa Lahiri, Tom Wolfe, Laura Hillenbrand, Sarah Manguso, Maggie Nelson, and many others. Jaclyn holds a B.A. from Yale and an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. In 2018, her debut novel, Late Air, was published by Little A, and her stories, essays and reviews have appeared in Post Road Magazine, Tin House, Long Reads, The Paper Brigade, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. Formerly she worked as a literary agent at Cullen Stanley International, where she worked on selling works for translation by Kiese Laymon, Gina Apostol, Ariana Reines, and Kate Zambreno.

Jane Roper is the author of the novels The Society of Shame—a finalist for the Thurber Prize in American Humor—and Eden Lake, as well as a memoir, Double Time: How I Survived–and Mostly Thrived–Through the First Three Years of Mothering Twins. Her essays and humor have appeared in Salon, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The Millions, Poets & Writers, LitHub, NPR, and elsewhere. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Jane is originally from Fairfield, Connecticut and currently lives just north of Boston with her husband, rad teenage twins, and two cats, one of whom sucks.

Jessica Grunenberg is a former producer for News 12 where she was responsible for writing stories and developing the station’s online presence. She left to start her own consulting firm, working with small businesses and nonprofits to help them implement social media strategies and create engaging digital content. Jessica is also a yoga and meditation teacher. She is currently working on her debut novel.

Jessica Noyes McEntee cut her teeth as an editor at John Wiley & Sons and has provided ghostwriting and independent editorial services for clients in New York and Connecticut. A magna cum laude graduate of Amherst College, she’s the author of four novels. Her debut poetry chapbook was published by Finishing Line Press in 2019, and she was appointed Westport’s Poet Laureate in 2022.

Julia Fine is the author of the novels Maddalena and the Dark, The Upstairs House, winner of the Chicago Review of Books Award for Fiction, and What Should Be Wild, which was shortlisted for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior First Novel. Writing as Margaux Eliot, her novel Honeymoon Stage is expected in Fall 2025. Julia teaches writing in Chicago, where she lives with her family.

Visit her at julia-fine.com

Julie Sarkissian is the author of Dear Lucy, published by Simon and Schuster and nominated for the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her essays, short fiction and book reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Tin House, The Huffington Post, The New York Observer, and Flavorwire, among others. Born and raised in Southern California, she has a BA in English from Princeton and an MFA from The New School.

She worked for Sackett Street Writers in Brooklyn, NY as a fiction instructor and manuscript consultant before moving to Westport, CT with husband and two young children.

Kate Gray’s first full-length book of poems, Another Sunset We Survive (Cedar House Books, 2007) was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award and followed chapbooks, Bone-Knowing (2006), winner of the Gertrude Press Poetry Prize and Where She Goes (2000), winner of the Blue Light Chapbook Prize. Kate’s first novel, Carry the Sky (Forest Avenue, 2014) stares at bullying without blinking.

Over the years she’s been awarded residencies at Hedgbrook, Norcroft, and Soapstone, and a fellowship from the Oregon Literary Arts. Her poetry and essays have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. In Any More, Black Shoe, Kate Gray’s novel-in-progress, she narrates, in Sylvia Plath’s voice, what led to The Bell Jar and her suicide attempt in 1953.

Kate’s passion comes as a teacher, writing coach, and a volunteer writing facilitator with women inmates. For Every Girl: New & Selected Poems will be published by Widow & Orphan Press in March, 2019.

Kathy Satterfield is an affiliate of Amherst Writers and Artists, an international community of workshop leaders. She received her MFA from Bennington College, after taking time off to raise two boys. In what feels like a previous life, she worked as an editor and writer for react magazine and TIME for Kids, TIME’s newsmagazine for students in elementary school. More recently, she has been published online in Mom Egg Review. She is currently working on a memoir about raising a son with an extremely rare chromosome abnormality.

Work one-one-one with Libby Waterford, self-published author of over twenty novels, novellas, and anthologies. You’ll learn what steps to take toward self-publishing your project, from where to find editors and cover designers to how to upload your completed manuscript to retailers and distributors. Wherever you are on your self-publishing path, Libby can help you advance to the next stage.

Liz Matthews is a writer and editor who received her M.F.A. in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts (2008) and M.A. in English Education from Teachers College, Columbia University. Liz began her professional career in publishing, both at a literary agency and as an Editorial Assistant at Random House before teaching middle and high school English at Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in Quality Women’s Fiction, Town & Country, Literary Mama, Brain Child, Mothers Always Write, The Rumpus, and Big Fiction Little Truths among other places.Liz teaches Introductory & Intermediate Fiction, Flash Fiction, and Creative Writing at Westport Writers’ Workshop.

Marine Assaiante is a French actress, writer and producer based in New York City. After a successful festival run with over 80 Film Festival selections and 22 Awards won, the first season of her web series Check, Please! is now available on their YouTube channel (I hear an accent productions). She acted, directed and produced plays in Paris for 10 years, before moving to New York in 2015. She then created her production Company called I Hear An Accent Productions in order to create her own content. She’s currently working on her new mini web series called Mom to Be, a 30-second funny vignettes series about pregnancy, directly inspired by her life as a mom. She received a NY Women’s fund for post-production for the project and started releasing the episodes (2 episodes/week) on June 1 st on all social media platforms.

Nancy Hayden began as a writer/performer in the Mainstage cast of The Second City in Detroit. After co-writing and appearing in five revues, Nancy went on to become a director of several Second City productions, including the first ever national touring Theatricals production, “My Cousin’s Wedding.” In her television career, Nancy has worked as a staff writer for “Detroiters” on Comedy Central, as well as several productions for Bravo, including “Bravo After Hours” and the digital series, “Ex-Housewife.” She also wrote shorts for DreamWorksTV and AwesomenessTV and co-wrote “Love, Factually,” the hit holiday parody that ran for two seasons at The Kennedy Center. Nancy has taught improvisation, acting, directing, and writing at The Second City and improv/sketch creation at Michigan State University and California Institute of the Arts. She served as Associate Artistic Director of The Second City Hollywood before being named Artistic Director of the Second City Training Center in Chicago. Most recently Nancy was thrilled to return to her beloved hometown of Detroit when she was named Executive Director of the Detroit Creativity Project, a non-profit organization that provides improv training as a crucial life skill to the students of Detroit.

Padya Paramita is a Bangladesh-born, New Haven-based writer, editor, and foodie. She received her MFA in creative nonfiction from Columbia University. Her debut novel Appetite is forthcoming in August 2026 from the Dial Press at Penguin Random House.

Rahla Xenopoulos is the author of “A Memoir of Love and Madness.’ (Random House) and the novels ‘Bubbles,’ (Penguin.) ‘Tribe’ (Penguin) and ‘The Season of Glass.’ (Penguin). A fellow at the Royal Society of the Arts, she has published short stories in the anthologies, ‘Women Flashing’, ‘Twist’ and ‘Just Keep Breathing.’ She has written for The Sunday Times, Glamour Magazine, and Oprah Magazine. Her latest book, The Season of Glass was a finalist for the Sunday Times Literary Award. She gives writing workshops to underprovided children and is on the boards of SA-Yes. And Short Story Day Africa, and teaches writing in South Africa, the U.K., as well as in Greece and New York, and has worked with both experienced writers and novices from all over the world.

Rahla lives in New York with her husband and teenage triplets.

Rebecca Dimyan is an award-winning author, editor, and professor. Her memoir Chronic was published in 2023 and delves into her experience with chronic illness and alternative medicine. Her debut novel Waiting for Beirut explores love and identity against the backdrop of 1950’s Lebanon and Connecticut. Both books won the Firebird Book Award. Her personal and micro essays have been published in many places including Vox First Person, River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative, Sky Island Journal, Yahoo Health, and forthcoming in The 2026 CT Literary Anthology. Rebecca is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Fairfield University.

Sam’s short fiction has been a Narrative Story of the Week, a finalist in American Short Fiction’s Halifax Ranch Prize, and shortlisted in the Bridport Prize. She won the Anthony Grooms’ Prize in 2024 and appeared in The Connecticut Literary Anthology 2024. Sam completed her MFA at Fairfield University, taught a fiction workshop at the Darien Arts Center, and works as a freelance Developmental Editor. Her first children’s picture book was published in the UK in 2025. Her first novel, The Light Remains, received an honorary mention in the Fairfield Book Prize and will be published in South Africa and the US in April, 2026.

Spade Robinson (www.atlantafilmproject.com) began curating scripts, films and documentary works in progress projects during her time at Sundance Institute, where she worked with the Feature Film Program, Documentary Film Program and Sundance Film Festival. During that time, she worked with hundreds of filmmakers to develop the most compelling versions of their stories. Underneath Rahdi Taylor of the DFP, she created a series of workshops to cultivate emerging filmmakers, building a pipeline into the funding opportunities there. In 2015, Spade founded Atlanta Film Project to support storytellers more democratically, around the world. Since then, she’s worked with countless storytellers and companies, including HBO, FOX, Disney, Women In Film, Film Independent and Sundance, to this end.

Suzanne Farrell Smith is the author of three books: Small Off Things: Meditations from an Anxious Mind, an essay collection; The Memory Sessions, a memoir about searching for lost childhood memory; and The Writing Shop, a teaching guidebook. She is widely published, has been Notable in Best American, and won a Pushcart. Suzanne is the recipient of an Artist Fellowship from the state of Connecticut, where she lives with her husband and three sons.

Tessa Fontaine is the author of THE ELECTRIC WOMAN: A MEMOIR IN DEATH-DEFYING ACTS, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick, and best book of 2018 by Southern Living, Refinery29, Amazon Editors’, and The New York Post. Other writing can be found in Outside, The New York Times, Glamour, AGNI, The Believer, LitHub, Creative Nonfiction, and more. Raised outside San Francisco, Tessa is a former professor and has taught in jails and prisons for five years. She co-founded and teaches the Accountability Workshops with writer and pal Annie Hartnett, and lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with her husband, daughter, goofy dog and sassy cat. THE RED GROVE is her first novel.

Victoria Buitron is a writer, creative writing instructor, and translator who hails from Ecuador and resides in Connecticut. She received an MFA in creative writing from Fairfield University. Her debut memoir-in-essays, A Body Across Two Hemispheres (Woodhall Press), was the 2021 Fairfield Book Prize winner. In 2023, she received the Artistic Excellence Award from the Connecticut Office of the Arts, which also receives federal funding. She has been the series editor for the Connecticut Literary Anthology since 2023. Craigardan, Tin House, GrubStreet, Sundress Publications, VONA and more organizations have championed her work through grants or writing residencies. Her debut poetry collection, Unburying the Bones, is 2025’s VersoFrontera inaugural prize winner and will be published by Texas Review Press.