Come meet our Fall 2023 Writing Instructors, who will each be giving short readings from their own work, as well as each sharing a "kernel" of writing (or life) wisdom. The second half of the event will be a discussion open to audience questions, though there's a catch: questions can be about writing, craft, process OR they can be about anything else outside of writing! So, come prepared to ask the fall instructors your burning writing-related questions, OR ask them about their favorite foods, their arcane hobbies, what superpower they wish they had, the meaning of life, or any of the other big questions writers (and humans) wrestle with daily. Hosted by PVWW Founder / Director Joy Baglio.
Featured Readers / Fall 2023 Writing Instructors
ANDERS CARLSON-WEE is the author of Disease of Kings (W.W. Norton, 2023), The Low Passions (W.W. Norton, 2019), a New York Public Library Book Group Selection, and Dynamite (Bull City Press, 2015), winner of the Frost Place Chapbook Prize. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, BuzzFeed, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many other publications. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Bread Loaf, Sewanee, and the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, he is the winner of the Poetry International Prize. His work has been translated into Chinese. Anders holds an MFA from Vanderbilt University and is represented by Massie & McQuilkin Literary Agents. Find him at www.anderscarlsonwee.com
This season at PVWW, Anders will lead the Poetry Group, a NEW ongoing writing group!
LEONORA DESAR's fiction has appeared in places such as River Styx, Passages North, The Cincinnati Review, Black Warrior Review, and Columbia Journal, where she was chosen as a finalist by Ottessa Moshfegh. She has been selected for The Best Small Fictions 2019 and 2021, Best Microfiction 2019, 2020, 2021, and the Wigleaf Top 50 (2019, 2020, 2021). She was a runner-up/finalist in Quarter After Eight’s Robert J. DeMott Short Prose Contest, judged by Stuart Dybek, and Crazyhorse’s Crazyshorts! contest. Her journalism has appeared in Psychology Today, WomansDay.com, Parenting magazine, WomansDay.com, Business Insider, and others. She holds an MFA in fiction from NYU, where she taught creative writing, and an MS from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
This season at PVWW, Leonora will lead
MELENIE FREEDOM FLYNN’s memoir-in-progress is currently being supported by grants from the Elizabeth George Foundation and Massachusetts Cultural Council. She is the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship, Djerassi Artist-in-Residence Fellowship, Atlantic Center for the Arts Residency, and scholarships to the Community of Writers Workshop. Her essay “Message from Your Inmate” won the annual nonfiction contest at Vela Magazine and her recent work can be seen in Provincetown Arts Magazine and the Straw Dog Pandemic Poetry and Prose Journal. A graduate of the MFA Acting Program at California Institute of the Arts, Melenie has performed in theatres across the country including the New York Theatre Workshop, the Kitchen (NY), Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre (MA), and Majestic Theatre (MA). Visit her online at
www.meleniefreedomflynn.com.
This season at PVWW, Melenie will lead the
Prose Writing Group, a NEW ongoing writing group!
NEIL RICHARD GRAYSON was raised in the woods of upstate New York. Since then, he’s been a schoolteacher, video game designer, rock climbing instructor, bartender, and cross-country hitchhiker. He holds degrees in English & Education from SUNY Potsdam, and an MFA from Ohio State University. His fiction, essays, and poetry have appeared in CutBank, HOBART, StoryScape Journal, Fiction Southeast, among others. He’s been awarded fellowships from The Kenyon Review, Community of Writers, and Martha’s Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing, and was recently nominated for a Pushcart.
This season, Neil will lead the
Intermediate Short Story Intensive (8 Weeks, over 3 Months).
REBECCA HART OLANDER is the editor/director of Perugia Press, a nonprofit feminist poetry press. She has taught poetry writing at Amherst College, Westfield State University, and Mass Poetry, and she works with poets in the Maslow Family Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Wilkes University. Her poetry and collaborative visual and written work has been published widely, and her books include Dressing the Wounds (dancing girl press, 2019) and Uncertain Acrobats (CavanKerry Press, 2021). She holds a BA from Hampshire College, an MAT in English from Smith College, and an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Visit her online at
www.rebeccahartolander.com.
Rebecca will be leading a one-day workshop this season on
Poetry as Time Machine to Childhood.
KIRA ROCKWELL is a neurodiverse playwright and educator. She is an Artist Fellow in Dramatic Writing with the Mass Cultural Council, a Recipient of Judith Royer Excellence in Playwriting Award, an Elliot Norton Nominee, and more. Selected plays include OH TO BE PURE AGAIN (Actor's Express); THE TRAGIC ECSTASY OF GIRLHOOD (Boston Playwrights’ Theatre); and WITH MY EYES SHUT (Original Works Publishing). Her work has been developed with The Kennedy Center, National New Play Network, Great Plains Theatre Commons, among others. Commissions with Ensemble Studio Theatre and Moonbox Productions. BFA in Theatre Performance from Baylor University. MFA in Playwriting from Boston University. As an educator, Rockwell has taught at Brandeis University, Wheaton College, and centers across New England. Before graduate school, Rockwell worked at the intersection of mental health and arts education. Through a trauma-informed, healing-centered lens, she aims to nurture communal spaces that disrupt passivity and empower agency. Find her at www.kirarockwell.com.
This season at PVWW, Kira will lead
|
GAIL THOMAS's published books are: Leaving Paradise, Trail of Roots, Odd Mercy, Waving Back, No Simple Wilderness: An Elegy for Swift River Valley, and Finding the Bear. Trail of Roots won the A. V. Christie Series of Seven Kitchens Press, Odd Mercy, chosen by Ellen Bass, won the Charlotte Mew Prize of Headmistress Press, and Waving Back was named a Must Read by the Massachusetts Center for the Book and Honorable Mention by the New England Book Festival. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies including The Beloit Poetry Journal, Calyx, The North American Review, Italian Americana, and Valparaiso Poetry Review. Individual poems have won prizes including the Naugatuck River Review’s Narrative Poetry Prize, Quartet Journal's Editor's Prize, and the Pat Schneider Poetry Prize. Gail has been a fellow at The McDowell Colony and Ucross. An experienced educator, she lives in Northampton and has retired from Smith College. She teaches, speaks at conferences and poetry festivals, and reads her work widely in community and academic settings. Find her online at
www.gailthomaspoet.com This season at PVWW, Gail will lead
CAROLYN ZAIKOWSKI is is the author of the hybrid novels In Dream, I Dance by Myself, and I Collapse (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016) and A Child Is Being Killed (Aqueous Books, 2013). Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in The Washington Post, Denver Quarterly, The Rumpus, PANK, West Branch, DIAGRAM, Everyday Feminism, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Naropa University's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and is currently an English professor and volunteer death doula. Find her online at
www.carolynzaikowski.com.
This season at PVWW, Carolyn will lead
Host / PVWW Founder & Director JOY BAGLIO is a Northampton MA-based fiction writer and the founder / director of the literary arts organization Pioneer Valley Writers' Workshop. Her short stories have appeared widely, in journals such as
The Missouri Review, American Short Fiction, Conjunctions, Tin House, The Iowa Review, Fairy Tale Review, and elsewhere. Recent honors include fellowships, residencies, and grants from Yaddo, The Elizabeth George Foundation, Ragdale, Vermont Studio Center, Bread Loaf Writers’ and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences, and The Kerouac Project, among others. Joy holds an MFA from The New School and is a contributing editor at the literary magazine
West Branch. She is working on both a collection of short stories and a novel and is represented by Peter Steinberg at United Talent Agency (UTA). Find her online at
www.JoyBaglio.com.