One-on-One Mentorship Instruction

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.