manuscript consultations

***Sign up now for our Weekend of Manuscript Consultations, to get a special rate on 25-page consultations!***

Our team of writers can critique projects of any length, whether you have one short story you're struggling to revise, or need feedback on a draft of a novel. Our consultants are among the most talented writers in Boston-- professional teachers and editors who are affiliated with major Boston universities as well as with Grub Street. Consultants will read your manuscript and provide you with detailed, in-depth written feedback and notes, as well as a face-to-face or telephone meeting.

What You Get

  1. An intensive reading of your manuscript by an experienced, qualified reader
  2. 1-3 pages of thoughtful written feedback, with suggestions for revision and next steps
  3. Heavy line edits of one page of your manuscript to demonstrate patterns on the sentence, paragraph, and/or word level
  4. A 30-60 minute in-person or phone consultation to discuss your work

Genres

  • Short Fiction
  • The Novel
  • Poetry
  • Memoir
  • Individual Essay
  • Book-Length Nonfiction
  • Journalism
  • Feature Writing
  • The Graphic Novel
  • Comics
  • Playwriting
  • Young Adult Fiction
  • Children's Fiction
  • Scriptwriting: See Script Service below

Script Service: Our instructors will carefully read and analyze your screenplay and comment on how it is working as a whole. They will examine act and scene structure, story line, characterization, dialogue, pacing, and transitions. This service includes a 4-page comprehensive summary and a one-hour script conference, which gives you the opportunity to ask questions and to discuss strategies for revision. The conferences are held either in person or over the phone.

Rates: For First-Timers

Manuscript Type Rate
  • Prose (Fiction, Narrative Non-fiction):
  • *Based on a 12-point Times New Roman font, 1-inch margins, and double-spaced, or approximately 250 words/page.
  • 1-10 pages: 5 cents/word
  • 11-25 pages: 4 cents/word
  • 26-50 pages: 3 cents/word
  • 51-150 pages: 2 cents/word
  • Over 150 pages: 1 cent/word
  • Poetry:
  • 1-2 poems: $65
  • 3-4 poems: $125
  • Screenplays:
  • Typically 120-140 pages
  • $375 flat rate

*Grub Street members get 5% off every consultation!

Rates: For Ongoing Work

  • If you loved working with your consultant, we absolutely encourage you to keep working with him or her. After the first sessions, all ongoing work is priced at $65/hour.

Personal Advising for Writers

Preparing the MFA Application~ $350

Writer receives full consultation on a 20-25 page story or 10-page poetry collection to be submitted to MFA programs, plus a 30-minute discussion of the work and a 30-minute discussion of the writer’s program interests. The consultant then provides a list of recommended programs based on the writer’s interests and style, and will give tailored suggestions for submitting the strongest application possible.

Submitting to Literary Magazines~ $350

Writer receives full consultation on a 20-25 page story or poetry series to be submitted to print and/or online literary magazines. The consultant then provides a list of recommended literary magazines and journals based on the writer’s interests and style of work.

Submitting to Agencies and/or Editors~ $350

Writer receives full consultation on the 10 first pages of a book-length manuscript and 1-page query letter to be submitted to literary agents and/or editors. Includes discussion of the work and recommendation for how to make the submission “sell” the manuscript most strongly. The consultant then provides a list of recommended agents and/or editors to submit to, based on the writer’s interests and style of work.

Submitting Non-Fiction Book Proposals~ $500

For those who have formulated a book proposal (c. 30-70 pages) including an overview, market analysis, publicity section, author bio, chapter outlines, sample chapters, clips, etc. Consultation provides help with the following: refining, developing, and editing all of the above; honing the market analysis and positioning; choosing most effective sample material; polishing the submission package, and advice on approaching agents.

Applying for Awards, Fellowships, Conferences, and Retreats~ $350

Writer receives full consultation on a 20-25 page story or poetry series to be submitted for awards, fellowships, conferences, or retreats. Includes discussion of the work and tailored suggestions for submitting the strongest application possible.

Other Services (all $65/hour)

Personal Writing “Coaching”

Ongoing planning, deadline-setting, writing assignments, recommended reading, and manuscript consulting as desired.

Intensive Line-Editing

Sentence- and paragraph- level suggestions for the narrative, which may include specific advice on dialogue, tone, diction, description, voice, pace, etc.

Ghost-Writing

Very limited.

***Grub Street does not offer services in proofreading or other noncreative work.***

How Do I Sign Up?

Send Sonya an e-mail at sonya@grubstreet.org with the following information:

  1. Your name and phone number
  2. Your 2 top requests of consultants you'd like to work with. Please see available genres and instructors' bios below!
  3. A bit of context for your piece (2-sentence summary, what draft it is, what you're hoping to do with it, specific feedback you're looking for, etc.)
  4. Your submission attached. Must be in standard manuscript format: Times New Roman, 12-point font, double-spaced, 1-inch margins.

You will receive an e-mail from Grub Street within one week with confirmation of the consultant with whom you’ll be working. Writers must pay in full, and before the consultation begins, by calling 617.695.0075.

Most manuscript consultations will take no longer than 1 month, but please arrange a schedule with deadlines with your consultant. Voilà! Let the literary genius begin!

The Consultants

The following consultants are available to begin projects in Winter 2010.

Jasmine Beach-Ferrara

  • Consults On: Short fiction, individual essays.
  • Interested Themes: Character-driven fiction, the South, LGBT issues, essays related to political issues and commentary.
  • Also Available for: Preparing the MFA, Submitting to Literary Magazines, Intensive Line-Editing, Personal Writing "Coaching."
  • Read Bio
    Jasmine Beach-Ferrara has taught fiction and writing in community-based settings, colleges and prisons. She holds a BA from Brown University and a MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson. She is currently teaching part-time at Emerson College and is a student at Harvard Divinity School. Her fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in American Short Fiction, The Harvard Review, Puerto del Sol, The Bellevue Literary Review and other magazines. Her non-fiction has appeared in The Advocate, Alternet.org and other publications. She is working on a novel.

Chris Boginski

Michelle Hoover
  • Consults On: Short Fiction, The Novel, Memoir, Individual Essay, Book-Length Nonfiction.
  • Interested Themes: Very interested in memoir and the lyric essay and non-fiction in general.
  • Also Available for: Preparing the MFA Application; Submitting to Literary Magazines, Applying for Awards; Fellowships, Conferences, and Retreats.
  • Read Bio
    Christopher Boginski is a recent graduate from the MFA program at the University of Washington, where he taught creative writing and English as a second language and where he was a research assistant for David Shields. He lives in Boston and is in the process of finishing his first book, a memoir that explores the influence of the past upon the present in everyone from himself to Camus.

Jami Brandli

  • Consults On: Screenwriting and Playwriting.
  • Also Available for: Personal Writing "Coaching."
  • Read Bio
    Jami Brandli has had plays produced and/or staged in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Detroit, New Mexico and Washington DC where she was accepted as a Visiting Artist at the Kennedy Center for their Playwriting Intensive (2006, 2007). In addition, she was also a contributing writer for both stage and screen for the Elliot Norton Awarding winning production of PS: Page Me Later. She received a literature fellowship from SAC/Massachusetts Cultural Council and was a semi-finalist for the Eugene O'Neill Center (2007). Her play NORMAL was recently in the Smith & Kraus Anthology The Best Ten-Minute Plays, 2007, and she has more plays forthcoming in their 2008 anthologies. In 2007, she served as the Chair of the Women in Film and Video/NE's screenwriting competition. Her short stories have been published in Salt Hill, Other Voices, and Memorious where her story, "Night Shift," has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize, 2007. Most recently, she was finalist for Disney ABC's 2008 Writing Fellowship. Jami is company member playwright at Moving Arts Theatre Company in Los Angeles, and is a proud member of The Dramatists Guild.

Scott Challener

  • Consults On: Poetry.
  • Interested Themes: Lyric poetry; poetic series/sequence.
  • Also Available for: Preparing the MFA Application; Submitting to Literary Magazines; Applying for Awards, Fellowships, Conferences, and Retreats; Intensive Line-Editing; Personal Writing "Coaching."
  • Read Bio
    Scott Challener teaches in Boston University's Writing Program and Metropolitan College, and Northeastern University's College of Professional Studies, as well as at Grub Street. He volunteers for PEN New England's Prison Writing Program and 826 Boston. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Narrative Magazine, The Rumpus, Mississippi Review, Forklift, Ohio, The Cortland Review, and elsewhere. He lives in the Fort Point Channel area of South Boston.

Christine Cipriani

  • Consults On: Book-Length Nonfiction, Individual Essay, Feature Writing, Memoir.
  • Interested Themes: I enjoy all narrative nonfiction, but I'm particularly keen on international cultures and settings, history, politics, religion, the arts, biography, and the personal essay.
  • Also Available for: Submitting to Agencies and/or Editors, Submitting Non-Fiction Book Proposals, Intensive Line-Editing, Personal Writing "Coaching."
  • Read Bio
    Christine Cipriani worked in book publishing for fourteen years, editing a variety of genres at Beacon Press, Penguin India, Random House, and Routledge. She specialized in biography and narrative nonfiction, with recent books including Renée Bergland's Maria Mitchell and the Sexing of Science: An Astronomer among the American Romantics, Clare Dunsford's Spelling Love with an X: A Mother, A Son, and the Gene That Binds Them, and Sasha Abramsky's American Furies: Crime, Punishment, and Vengeance in the Age of Mass Imprisonment. Now an independent editor and writer, she has taught Grub Street workshops on travel writing and the art of self-editing.

Carol Dine

Michelle Hoover
  • Consults On: Memoir, Individual essay.
  • Interested Themes: The arts, family trauma, use of humor, health-related topics.
  • Read Bio
    Carol Dine's memoir, Places in the Bone, (Rutgers University Press, 2005) received favorable reviews in Publisher's Weekly, Library Journal and ForeWord. Her book Van Gogh in Poems, which includes 18 of Vincent's drawings, is forthcoming from The Bitter Oleander Press. She has also published essays on art and the artist's dialogue with politics. Carol has been a resident at MacDowell, Yaddo and Ragdale. She teaches creative writing at Suffolk University.

Tom Eslick

Michelle Hoover
  • Consults On: Short fiction, the novel.
  • Interested Themes: Mystery/suspense, Thriller.
  • Also Available for: Submitting to Agencies and/or Editiors; Intensive Line-editing; Personal Writing "Coaching;" Preparing the MFA Application.
  • Read Bio
    Tom Eslick is the author of Tracked In The Whites (1998), his first mystery, and Snow Kill, released in May 2000, both through Write Way Publishing; his third, Deadly Kin was published by Viking in September, 2003, and his fourth, Mountain Peril, also with Viking, in March, 2005. He has taught English for over forty years on both the college and secondary levels. He is also a songwriter and performer with five albums of original songs to his credit. He has given lectures, led workshops and participated in numerous panel discussions through libraries and organizations such as SeaCoast Writers, Monadnock Writers, The New Hampshire Writer's Project, and Bouchercon, the world wide mystery convention. Tom is a member of The New Hampshire Writers' Project, Mystery Writers of America, International Thriller Writers, and The Authors Guild. He lives in Wilmot, NH with his wife of 42 years, Susan. They have two grown sons, Jason, also a songwriter and performer, who teaches English at a private school in Massachusetts, and John, a freelance graphics designer and caricature artist who works in LA.

Hallie Ephron

Hallie Ephron
  • Consults On: The Novel
  • Interested Themes: Mystery, suspense
  • Read Bio
    Hallie Ephron is a writer, teacher, and award-winning book reviewer who writes a monthly "On Crime" book review column for the Boston Globe. She is the author of Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel: How to Knock 'Em Dead with Style (Writers Digest Books) which was nominated for Edgar and Anthony awards. She is the author of 1001 Books for Every Mood (Adams Media, April, 2008), and co-author of five Dr. Peter Zak mysteries by G. H. Ephron (St. Martin's Minotaur). Her psychological suspense novel, Baby, Baby, will be published in winter, 2009, by HarperCollins. http://www.hallieephron.com

Kate Flora

Kate Flora
  • Consults On: Short Fiction, The Novel
  • Interested Themes: Mystery, suspense, true crime
  • Also Available for: Personal Writing Coaching, Ghost-writing.
  • Read Bio
    Former attorney Kate Flora is the author of ten books. Her dynamic character, Thea Kozak, returns in 2008 in Stalking Death, from Jim Huang's Crum Creek Press/The Mystery Company and The Angel of Knowlton Park, from Five Star. Finding Amy: A True Story of Murder in Maine, co-written with a career police officer, was a 2007 Edgar nominee, and she has gone in a new direction with her gritty police procedural series. Flora's stories have appeared in the Level Best anthologies, in Sisters on The Case, an anthology edited by Sara Paretsky, and in Per Se, an anthology of fiction. In 2008, she was a Derringer nominee for her short fiction. Flora's 11th book will be published in September. She has also published 8 short stories and two profiles in literary journals. She has taught writing at the Cape Cod Writers Conference, for the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, the Cambridge Center for Adult Education, The Brown Learning Community, and Grub Street.

Mark Fogarty

Hallie Ephron
  • Consults On: Screenwriting.
  • Read Bio
    Mark Fogarty is the president and Co-founder of the Rhode Island Film Collaborative (RIFC), a non-profit created to help local filmmakers find resources in the Ocean State. The RIFC has more than 1,900 members and has been involved in the production of dozens of films. For more information, visit www.rifcfilms.com. Mark started Exile Movies in 2003 and has worked as a director of photography and editor on feature-length and short films. Mark recently directed the feature-length epic, smalltown, from his screenplay. You can find out more about the film at www.smalltownmovie.com. As an actor, Mark has been in dozens of films and uses his knowledge of acting to inform his writing. Mark graduated from Emerson College with a degree in filmmaking, and works as a freelance editor and writer.

Ethan Gilsdorf

Ethan Gilsdorf
  • Consults On: Poetry, Memoir, Individual Essay, Book-Length Nonfiction, Journalism, Feature Writing
  • Interested Themes: travel, pop culture, family/medical trauma, childhood, adolescence, food, personal narrative
  • Also Available for: Line-editing, Personal Writing "Coaching."
  • Read Bio
    Ethan Gilsdorf is a freelance journalist, poet, critic, editor and teacher. A regular contributor to The New York Times, Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle and The Improper Bostonian, Gilsdorf also writes on travel, arts and culture for National Geographic Traveler, Psychology Today, Fodor's travel guides, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Poets & Writers, and the Christian Science Monitor. As a poet, he is the winner of the Hobblestock Peace Poetry Competition and the Esmé Bradberry Contemporary Poets Prize, and has published poems in Poetry, The Southern Review, The North American Review and several anthologies. He is co-founder of Grub Street's Young Adult Writers Program (YAWP), volunteers as a guest speaker in the Boston Public Schools and leads journalism, feature writing, travel writing and creative writing workshops at Grub Street, Emerson College, Media Bistro and, for younger students, in schools and community centers. His book, Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms will be published by The Lyons Press in September 2009. Read more at http://www.ethangilsdorf.com/

Rebecca Givens

  • Consults On: Poetry, Memoir, Individual essay, Short fiction, Feature writing, Young adult writing
  • Interested Themes: Literary fiction, Science and health writing, Translation and language issues, Philosophy, Travel, Humanities, Education
  • Also Available for: Preparing the MFA Application; Submitting to Literary Magazines; Applying for Awards, Conferences, Fellowships, and Retreats; Personal Writing Coaching
  • Read Bio
    Rebecca Givens' poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Gettysburg Review, Cincinnati Review, American Letters & Commentary, Georgia Review, Florida Review, Carolina Quarterly, and Scene 360. She has collaborated with multimedia artists including Monica Ong to create works of interactive visual art and poetry. Her poems have won an Academy of American Poets Award, the Dana Award for Poetry, and the Bergen Prize, Meeker Prize, and Clapp Fellowship from Yale University. She studied English and German at Yale and Boston University (M.A. in English) and has taught at Wheelock College, Athens College in Greece, and schools throughout the city. This August, she will receive her M.S. in speech-language pathology from the MGH Institute of Health Professions and will begin work in the field. To learn more, visit www.rebeccagivens.com

Beth Raisner Glass

Michelle Hoover
  • Consults On: Children's Fiction and Young Adult Fiction. Picture Books, Chapter Books, Middle Grade Novels, Magazine pieces, and writing for schools as a free lance writer.
  • Also Available For: Preparing the MFA Application, Submitting to Agents and/or Editors, Intensive Line-Editing, Personal Writing "Coaching."
  • Read Bio
    Beth Raisner Glass is a children's book author, newspaper writer and teacher. She has taught in the Massachusetts public school system (k-4), and was Associate Professor of Education at Wellesley College. Her first picture book, Noises at Night, was published to wide acclaim and was featured on the Today Show's Best Books for Children segment. Her next picture book, Blue Ribbon Dad, is will be published in 2010. Her middle grade novel, A Date for Honey Moone is currently under consideration. She received her Bachelors in Education from Lesley College, and M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Lesley University. She has been an Interdisciplinary Advisor for Lesley University's MFA Creative Writing program where she advises upon and critiques and counsels MFA students and their writing. Visit her author website at www.bethglass.com.

Lynne Griffin

Lynne Griffin
  • Consults On: Book-Length Non-Fiction, the Novel
  • Interested Themes: Women’s fiction, mystery, literary suspense, young adult, family/child care, education, and health
  • Read Bio
    Lynne Griffin is the author of Negotiation Generation: Take Back Your Parental Authority Without Punishment (Penguin, 2007) which will be translated into Chinese, and has gone into its second printing here in the US. Her novel, Life Without Summer, will be published by St Martin's Press in winter 2009. To date, St Martin's has sold the rights to publish her novel in France, Holland and Germany. She is presently at work on her second novel. Lynne lectures nationally, teaches at the graduate level, and is a regular television and radio guest. She is a member of the popular blog, The Writers' Group and writes for Parenting Magazine and Scholastic Magazine. She is interested in providing feedback on book length nonfiction and the novel. Her special interests include women's fiction, mystery, literary suspense, young adult, family/child care, education, and health. To learn more about Lynne and her work, visit www.LynneGriffin.com

Eric Grunwald

Eric Grunwald
  • Consults On: short fiction, the novel, memoir, individual essay, and book-length non-fiction
  • Interested Themes: Literary, Short Story, Contemporary, Historical, Mystery, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Suspense, Humor, Nonfiction: Translation, Lit Crit, Philosophy, Language & Literature, Film/Cinema/Stage, Travel, History, Biograph/autobiography, Humanities, Technical Writing/Manuals, Popular Science, Art/Architecture, Humor
  • Also Available for: Preparing the MFA Application; Submitting to Literary Magazines; Applying for Awards, Fellowships, Conferences and Retreats; Intensive Line Editing; Personal Writing Coaching
  • Read Bio
    Former managing editor of Agni (2000-2004), Eric Grunwald is a fiction writer, book reviewer, translator, photographer and actor. His work has appeared in Partisan Review, The MacGuffin, The Boston Sunday Globe, The San Francisco Chronicle, Spoiled Ink, Two Lines, The Denver Post, The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, The Improper Bostonian, and Agni. He received his MA in creative writing (fiction) from Boston University and his undergraduate degree from Stanford, with distinction, in Russian and East European history. He is fluent in German (has lived in Berlin) and proficient in Italian. He has received grants from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation (2003) and the St. Botolph's Club Foundation (2001), as well as fellowships from the Writers' Room of Boston, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. He teaches fiction, composition, and American Literature at Suffolk University, ESL at Roxbury Community College, and German at Boston Language Institute. He has chaired PEN New England's Freedom to Write Committee. More, including samples of his work, can be found at http://www.ericgrunwald.com.

Brian Halley

  • Consults On: The Novel, Memoir, Individual Essay, Book-Length Nonfiction.
  • Interested Themes: I'm particularly interested in non-fiction, especially work that is community- or politically-oriented, and nature/environmental writing. I'm also interested in memoir by writers who feel under-represented, due to class, race, sexual orientation, etc...
  • Also Available for: Submitting to Agencies and/or Editors, Submitting Non-Fiction Book Proposals, Personal Writing "Coaching."
  • Read Bio
    After completing an MA at the University of London, Brian Halley started his publishing career at the Sayle Agency, working for London-based literary agent Rachel Calder, who specializes in literary fiction. He moved back to the US in 2001, taking a job with the Beacon Press in Boston. As an Editor at Beacon, he built a strong environmental list while also acquiring and editing books on law and society, progressive politics, and GLBT issues, working with journalists, activists, and literary authors. Recent books include David Gessner's Soaring with Fidel: An Osprey Odyssey from Cape Cod to Cuba and Beyond, Kai Wright's Drifting Toward Love: Black, Brown, Gay, and Coming of Age on the Streets of New York, and Mark Winne's Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty, while forthcoming books include Amy Seidl's Early Spring: An Ecologist and Her Children Wake to a Warming World and BU law professor Jay Wexler's Holy Hullabaloos: A Road Trip to the Battlegrounds of the Church/State War.

Debbie Hagan

Debbie hagan
  • Consults On: Memoir, individual essay, book-length nonfiction, journalism, and feature writing
  • Interested Themes: Art, home decor, travel, food, social justice, mental health, and legal issues
  • Also Available for: Preparing the MFA application; submitting to agencies and/or editors; submitting non-fiction book proposals; intensive line-editing
  • Read Bio
    Debbie Hagan is a writer, journalist, and teacher, who has written for Boston Globe Magazine, American Style, Robb Report, and Art New England. To date she has published more than 500 articles in leading newspapers and magazines. She is author of Against the Tide (Hamilton Books, 2004), a narrative nonfiction book about an iconoclastic law school. Currently, Debbie is completing a memoir-investigative report about the consequences of school bullying. Hagan received her MFA from Goucher College in 2007. She was a staff member of Brevity literary magazine. To learn more about Debbie and her work visit www.debhagan.com.

Christopher Hennessy

Christopher Hennessy
  • Consults On: Poetry, Individual Essay, Journalism, Feature Writing
  • Interested Themes: Gay and lesbian issues and themes; lyric poetry; the intersection of identity/autobiography and writing; interviewing; using a blog to amp up your writing and promote your work
  • Also Available for: Preparing the MFA Application; Submitting to Literary Magazines; Applying for Awards, Fellowships, Conferences, and Retreats; Intensive Line-Editing (depending on project); Personal Writing 'Coaching' (depending on project)
  • Read Bio
    Christopher Hennessy is the author of Outside the Lines: Talking with Contemporary Gay Poets (University of Michigan, 2005). His work has been published in the American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Verse, The Writer's Chronicle, Bloom, Crab Orchard Review, Cimmaron Review, Natural Bridge, Lambda Book Report, James White Review, and the Gay and Lesbian Review-Worldwide, and elsewhere. His poems have also appeared in the anthology This New Breed. Hennessy is associate editor of Gay and Lesbian Review-Worldwide and has taught at Emerson College, where he received his MFA. Hennessy has served as a judge for the Publishing Triangle's Thom Gunn and Audre Lorde poetry awards. He has moderated panels on poetry at the Provincetown Poetry Festival and the New-York City-based Pink Ink Conference. He presented on a panel at the 2008 Associated Writing Programs (AWP) national conference.

Mike Heppner

Mike Heppner
  • Consults On: Short Fiction, The Novel, Memoir, Individual Essay
  • Also Available for: Preparing the MFA Application, Submitting to Literary Magazines, Intensive Line-Editing, Ghost-Writing, Personal Writing "Coaching"
  • Read Bio
    Mike Heppner was born in Rhode Island in 1972 and grew up in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. His first novel, The Egg Code, was published in 2002, and his second, Pike's Folly, in 2006. He lives in Belmont, Massachusetts and teaches Creative Writing at Emerson College. A third novel is forthcoming. For more information, go to http://www.mikeheppner.com.

Michelle Hoover

Michelle Hoover
  • Consults On: Short Fiction, The Novel, The Memoir, Individual Essay, and Book-Length Nonfiction.
  • Interested Themes: Literary Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mystery, Horror/Suspense, Travel Writing, Personal Essay/Creative Nonfiction/Memoir
  • Also Available for: Intensive Line-Editing; Personal Writing “Coaching”; Submitting to Agencies and Editors; Applying for Awards, Fellowships, Conferences, and Retreats
  • Read Bio
    Michelle Hoover is a full-time instructor at Boston University and has published short stories and novel excerpts in numerous journals, including Prairie Schooner, The Massachusetts Review, Night Train and Confrontation. She has been the Philip Roth Writer-in-Residence at Bucknell, a MacDowell Fellow, and in 2005 the winner of the PEN/New England Discovery Award for Fiction. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and published in Best New American Voices. Her novel, The Quickening, will be published by Other Press in 2010.

Tim Horvath

Tim Horvath
  • Consults On: short fiction, the novel, poetry, individual essays, and book-length nonfiction
  • Interested Themes: philosophy, psychology, music, science, humor, and the role of landscape in fiction
  • Also Available for: advising toward preparing for the MFA application, submitting to literary magazines, and intensive line-editing
  • Read Bio
    Tim Horvath received his MFA from the University of New Hampshire, where he won the Thomas Williams Memorial Prize and the Lt. Albert Charait Award. In 2006, his story "The Understory" won the Raymond Carver Short Story Award, whose judge was Bill Henderson, founder and president of the Pushcart Press; it was nominated for a Pushcart. "Circulation" won the '06 Prize of the Society for the Study of the Short Story, and will be published in book form in March 2009 by Sunnyoutside Press. Tim has received a Yaddo Residency and been a four-time finalist in Glimmer Train competitions. His fiction has been published in Conjunctions, Alimentum: The Literature of Food, Fiction, Puerto del Sol, Web Conjunctions, Diagram, Sleepingfish, 3 A.M., and elsewhere, and his poetry appears in Night Train. He has completed a short story manuscript called The Complicator: Stories, as well as the draft of a novel, entitled Goodbye in Many Languages. Examples of his writing and audio samples from the novel can be found at www.timhorvath.com. Tim was a high school English teacher for nine years and teaches fiction writing at Chester College of New England and the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. At Grub Street he has developed the classes "Cortiscrawl: Writing with the Brain in Mind" and "More and Less: Varieties of Minimalism and Maximalism."

Stuart Horwitz

Stuart Horwitz
  • Consults On: The Novel, Poetry, Memoir, Individual Essay, Book-length Nonfiction
  • Interested Themes: Everything
  • Also Available for: Submitting Non-Fiction Book Proposals, Intensive Line-Editing, Ghost-Writing
  • Read Bio
    Stuart Horwitz is the founder of ENTITY: Book Architecture, a manuscript assistance firm which has helped worthy books reach publication by major houses. He has written non-fiction book proposals, and co-written and ghostwritten manuscripts in a wide variety of genres, including: psychology, true crime, cooking, sports, business, fine arts, politics, self-help and hard science (more details available at www.bookarchitecture.com). Stuart has also functioned as a fiction coach for best-selling novels. He is an award-winning, published poet and performer, currently the frontman for the poetry punk-funk band Art Don't Pay. He holds two Masters degrees, one from New York University in Religious Studies and Literature and one from Harvard University in East Asian Studies.

Daphne Kalotay

Daphne Kalotay
  • Consults On: Short Fiction for individual manuscripts; any fiction (novels or stories) for coaching
  • Also Available for: Preparing the MFA application; submitting to literary magazines; submitting to agencies/editors; applying for awards/fellowships, etc.; personal writing coaching
  • Read Bio
    Daphne Kalotay's fiction collection Calamity and Other Stories (Doubleday 2005/Anchor paperback 2006) includes stories from Missouri Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Good Housekeeping, AGNI, The Literary Review and Prairie Schooner and was short listed for the 2005 Story Prize. Daphne has received fellowships from the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, the Seaside Institute and the Fondation de La Napoule and has been a resident artist/fellow at the MacDowell Colony, the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow, Ledig House International Writers Residency, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She holds an MA in Creative Writing and a PhD in Modern and Contemporary Literature, both from Boston University, and has taught fiction writing at Boston University and Middlebury College. Her experience as an awards panelist includes work for the Brookline Fund for Arts and Culture and the Brookline Arts Council, final judge for the Florence Engel Randall Fiction Prize, and application evaluator for BU's Creative Writing MA program.

Caroline Leavitt

  • Consults On: The novel. 
  • Interested Themes: Partial to dark dramas, character-driven fiction.
  • Also Available for: Intensive line editing. 
  • Read Bio
    Caroline Leavitt is the award-winning author of 8 critically acclaimed novels including Meeting Rozzy Halfway, Lifelines, Jealousies, Family, Into Thin Air, Living Other Lives, Combing Back to Me, and Girls in Trouble.  Her 9th novel, Pictures of You, will be published by Algonquin Books in August, 2010. Many of her novels have been optioned for film. Her work has appeared in New York Magazine, Salon, Psychology Today and numerous anthologies. She is an advanced novel writing instructor at UCLA Writers Program online, a book critic for People Magazine and a book columnist for The Boston Globe. A recipient of a New York Foundation of the Arts Award in Fiction, Caroline is also a second prize winner in the Goldenberg Fiction Awards, a National Magazine Award nominee, an Indie Pick author, a finalist in the Nickelodeon Screenwriting Competition, and a semi-finalist in the Fade-In/Writers Net Screenplay competition. She has judged the Midatlantic Arts Foundation Fiction Grants, as well as the Writer's Voice Awards. Caroline lives in New York City's unofficial 6th borough, Hoboken, N.J. with her husband, the writer Jeff Tamarkin, and their son Max.  She can be reached at www.carolineleavitt.com and at her blog http://carolineleavittville.blogspot.com/

Alison Lobron

  • Consults On: Essay, Memoir, and Journalism.
  • Interested Themes: Youth and education; the intersection between the self as writer and the self as character; relationships.
  • Also Available for: Submitting to Agenices and/or Editors; Submitting Non-Fiction Book Proposals; Intensive Line-Editing, and Personal Writing "Coaching."
  • Read Bio
    Alison Lobron is an associate editor at CommonWealth Magazine and a freelance writer. Since 2005, she has been a regular contributor for The Boston Globe Magazine, where she writes often about education, urban life, and relationships. A former political reporter and high school English teacher, she is a graduate of Brown University and Middlebury College. Alison lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts in real life, and at www.alisonlobron.com in cyber-life.

Michael Lowenthal

Kate Flora
  • Consults On: Short Fiction, The Novel, Memoir, Individual Essay, Book-Length Nonfiction, Feature Writing 
  • Interested Themes: Literary fiction, Jewish, gay and lesbian, travel, political, historical fiction, and most things under the sun.
  • Also Available for: Submitting to Literary Magazines; Applying for Awards, Fellowships, Conferences, and Retreats; Personal Writing "Coaching"
  • Read Bio
    Michael Lowenthal is the author of three novels: The Same Embrace (Dutton, 1998), Avoidance (Graywolf Press, 2002), and Charity Girl (Houghton Mifflin, 2007), which was a New York Times Book Review "Editors' Choice" selection, a Boston Globe bestseller, and a BookSense Top Twenty Pick. His stories and essays have appeared in publications such as The New York Times Magazine, Esquire.com, Tin House, The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, and Nerve.com, and have been anthologized in more than twenty books, including Best New American Voices 2005 and Lost Tribe: Jewish Fiction from the Edge. Lowenthal has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Bread Loaf and Wesleyan writers' conferences, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, the Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers in Scotland, and the Sacatar Foundation in Brazil. As an editor at University Press of New England, he founded the Hardscrabble Books imprint, where he published writers including Chris Bohjalian and Ernest Hebert. After teaching creative writing for many years at Boston College, he is now a core faculty member in the low-residency MFA program at Lesley University. He can be reached at www.michaellowenthal.com.

Nick Mamatas

Nick Mamatas
  • Consults On: The novel, short story, essay, feature writing, non-fiction book, young adult fiction.
  • Interested Themes: Science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, postmodern/experimental fiction, left politics, popular culture (TV, comics, etc.), martial arts, and gift books
  • Also Available for: submissions and MFA applications
  • Read Bio
    Nick Mamatas is the author of two novels, the satirical Under My Roof and the Lovecraftian Beat road novel Move Under Ground, the latter of which was nominated for both the Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild awards for first novel. He's also published over thirty short stories in diverse genres (science fiction, horror, crime, subversive pornography), which have appeared everywhere from Mississippi Review to Brutarian Quarterly. Recent stories will be collected in You Might Sleep... by Prime Books in the summer of 2008. In 2009, Haunted Legends, an anthology of reimagined regional ghost stories, co-edited with Ellen Datlow, will be published by Tor Books. Nick has also written hundreds of feature articles, personal essays, commentaries, and cultural criticism pieces for venues including Village Voice, In These Times, Clamor, The Writer, Poets & Writers, and Razor.

Michael Marano

  • Consults On: Short Fiction, The Novel, Individual Essay, Book-Length Nonfiction, Journalism, Feature Writing.
  • Interested Themes: Genre fiction, including, but not limited to: Mystery, Thrillers, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Humor, Western. Popular Non-Fiction and Non-Fiction about pop culture topics and personalities. Magazine and newspaper writing about film, TV, media, music, including reviews and criticism. Personal essays.
  • Also Available for: Submitting to Literary Magazines, Submitting to Agencies and/or Editors, Submitting Non-Fiction Book Proposals, Intensive Line-Editing, Ghost-Writing, Personal Writing "Coaching."
  • Read Bio
    Michael Marano is a literary horror and dark science fiction writer, with stories in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 11 and Outsiders: 22 All-New Stories from the Edge; his first novel Dawn Song won the Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild Awards. He is Fiction Editor of the award-winning dark fiction magazine Chiaroscuro (www.chizine.com) and has worked one-on-one with authors in the development of their short fiction. Stories From the Plague Years, a collection of Marano's new and reprinted short fiction, is now in preparation at Cemetery Dance Publications. Since 1990, he has also been reviewing movies and doing pop culture commentary for the Public Radio Satellite System program Movie Magazine International, syndicated in more than 111 markets in the US and Canada. Mike is a former Writing instructor in the SUNY system, and his non-fiction has appeared in venues like The Boston Phoenix, The Weekly Dig, The Independent Weekly, Paste Magazine, and Science Fiction Universe.

Amy Marcott

Amy Marcott
  • Consults On: Short Fiction, The Novel
  • Also Available for: Preparing the MFA Application; Submitting to Literary Magazines; Submitting to Agencies and/or Editors; Applying for Awards, Fellowships, Conferences, and Retreats; Intensive Line-Editing
  • Read Bio
    Amy Marcott has taught creative writing and composition at Penn State University, where she received an MFA. She received her undergraduate degree from Wesleyan University. She is the recipient of a Somerville Arts Council fellowship, and her fiction has appeared in Memorious, Juked, and Six Sentences, was nominated for a 2009 Pushcart Prize, won third place in Glimmer Train's Very Short Fiction Contest, was a finalist in Glimmer Train's Fiction Open Contest, and has been nominated for Scribner's Best New American Voices anthology and the Associated Writing Programs' Intro Awards. Her first novel is currently under consideration. She has been a professional writer and editor for many years and currently plies her trade at MIT, where she's an active blogger and social media marketer and assists with incorporating new technologies into online strategies.

Christina McCarroll

Mike Heppner
  • Consults On: Short Fiction, Memoir, Individual Essay, Journalism, and Feature Writing.
  • Interested Themes: Literary short fiction, especially work that wrestles with family, memory, relationships, identity, and isolation; and nonfiction that focuses on mental health and illness, science, culture, gender, psychology, literature, history, biography, and memoir.
  • Also Available for: Preparing the MFA Application.
  • Read Bio
    Christina McCarroll holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan, where she won two Hopwood Awards and a Helen Zell Post-MFA Fellowship. She earned her M.A. and B.A. in English from Stanford University and has worked as a writer and editor at The Christian Science Monitor in Boston. Her book reviews and nonfiction essays have appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Stanford magazine, and elsewhere, and her fiction has been nominated for the Best New American Voices series. She teaches in the English department at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and will be teaching at Lesley University this fall.

Jane Moore

  • Consults On: The Novel, Short Fiction, Memoir, Personal Essay.
  • Interested Themes: All literary fiction, with special interest in travel, medicine, music, and suspense; personal narrative nonfiction.
  • Also Available for: Applying for Awards & Fellowships, Intensive Line-Editing, Personal Writing "Coaching."
  • Read Bio
    Jane Moore (a.k.a. Jenny) has provided thoughtful, constructive critiques to writers for more than a decade. Since earning her MFA in fiction writing at the New School in 2000, Jane has honed her critiquing and writing chops in master-level workshops and in one-on-one exchanges with published writers. She just finished a massive overhaul of her first novel, excerpts of which were exhibited in Boston City Hall as part of the Mayor’s Prose & Poetry program. Now she’s writing a second novel and works as an editor for literary, cultural, and financial publications. Jane has been an editor at LIT magazine and a guest artist at the Arts Mentoring Program at Girls Ranch, and is the recipient of grants from the Squaw Valley Community of Writers and Stanford University. Her defense of The Great Gatsby appeared in Grub’s The Free Press “Point/Counterpoint” column.

Kathleen Willis Morton

  • Consults On: Memoir, Individual essay, book-length nonfiction, short fiction, the novel.
  • Interested themes: Narrative subject focused nonfiction, spirituality, food, travel, literary fiction, poetry, memoir.
  • Also Available for: Submitting to Literary Magazines; Submitting Non-Fiction Book Propoals; Intensive line editing; Personal writing coaching; Ghost-writing.
  • Read Bio
    Kathleen Willis Morton holds an MFA in Creative Writing. Her first book, The Blue Poppy and the Mustard Seed, was published by Wisdom Books. She has been published in Shambhala Sun Magazine, Hip Mama Magazine, and the anthology, Best Buddhist Writing 2009 published by Shambhala/Random House Publications. She can be reached at http://www.thebluepoppyandthemustardseed.com/.

Wendy Mnookin

  • Consults On: Poetry
  • Interested Themes: Family and relationships, "truth" in poetry of family and personal history, persona poetry, arrangement of poems in a manuscript--and whatever moves you.
  • Read Bio
    Wendy Mnookin's fourth book of poems, The Moon Makes Its Own Plea, was published by BOA Editions in 2008. Her previous collection, What He Took, won the book prize from the New England Poetry Club. She is also the recipient of a Poetry Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She teaches a poetry workshop at Emerson College and has taught courses and workshops for children and adults throughout the Boston area. She received her BA from Radcliffe College and her MFA in Writing from Vermont College. You can find out more at www.wendymnookin.com.

Donna Moreau

Donna Moreau
  • Consults On: Memoir, Individual Essay, Book-Length Nonfiction, Playwriting.
  • Interested Themes: Literary nonfiction - all themes, personal essay - all themes, memoir, history - especially American history.
  • Also Available for: Preparing the MFA Application, Submitting to Literary Magazines, Submitting to Agenices and/or Editors, Submitting Non-Fiction Book Proposals, Intensive Line-Editing, Personal Writing "Coaching."
  • Read Bio
    Donna Moreau has vast array of professional experience, the most recent incarnation is that of writer and teacher. She graduated with a degree in Theater Arts from Emerson College in 1981. Twenty years later she received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Columbia University's School of the Arts Writing Program. While living in New York City, The New York Department of Cultural Affairs awarded Donna a grant in support of her work, Waiting Wives: The story of Schilling Manor, Heart of the Vietnam War. The book, published in May 2005 by Simon & Schuster, is in its third printing. She is currently working on a memoir entitled Flat Coins in a Jar.

Stuart Nadler

Michelle Hoover
  • Consults On: Short Fiction, the Novel, Individual Essay.
  • Interested Themes: Literary fiction, Jewish literature, stories about family and relationships; essays on politics, race, class, film, music, food, technology and sports.
  • Also Available for: Preparing the MFA Application; Submitting to Literary Magazines; Submitting to Agencies and/or Editors; Applying for Awards, Fellowships, Conferences, and Retreats; Intensive Line-Editing; Personal Writing "Coaching".
  • Read Bio
    Stuart Nadler is a graduate of the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he was awarded a Truman Capote Fellowship and a Teaching Writing Fellowship. He was most recently the Carol Houck Smith Fiction Fellow at the University of Wisconsin. He has taught creative writing at the University of Iowa and the University of Wisconsin. His fiction has been nominated for the Best New American Voices series, and has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Esopus, the Avery Anthology, and the Atlantic Monthly.

Lesléa Newman

  • Consults On: Short Fiction, The Novel, Poetry, Memoir, Individual Essay, Young Adult Ficton, Children's Fiction
  • Interested Themes: GLBT literature, Jewish literature, feminist literature, literature with strong female protagonists, historical fiction, humor, formal and free verse poetry, cross-genre (a novel told in verse, for example), children's books for alternative families.
  • Also Available for: Preparing the MFA Application, Submitting to Literary Magazines, Submitting to Agents/Editors, Applying for Awards/Fellowships/Conferences/Retreats, Intensive Line-Editing, Personal Writing "Coaching."
  • Read Bio
    Lesléa Newman is the author of 55 books for adults and children including the novel, The Reluctant Daughter, the short story collection, A Letter to Harvey Milk, the poetry collection, Nobody's Mother, the young adult novel Jailbait, the middle-grade novel, Hachiko Waits, the children's book, Heather Has Two Mommies, and the writing guide, Write From The Heart. Her literary awards include creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Artists Foundation, a James Baldwin award in cultural achievement, a Parents' Choice Silver Medal, and four Pushcart Prize nominations. Nine of her books have been Lambda Literary Award finalists. Currently, she is the poet laureate of Northampton, MA. Visit www.lesleanewman.com for more information.

Celeste Ng

Celeste Ng
  • Consults On: Short Fiction, The Novel
  • Interested Themes: Literary fiction, family issues, "culture clash," and anything that tells a good story
  • Also Available for: Preparing the MFA Application, Intensive line editing, Personal Writing Coaching
  • Read Bio
    Celeste Ng holds a BA from Harvard and an MFA from the University of Michigan, where she won the Hopwood Award in Graduate Short Fiction. Her fiction and nonfiction has appeared in One Story, TriQuarterly, Subtropics, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere; she is also a blogger for the Huffington Post and contributing editor at Fiction Writers Review.

Jon Papernick

Jon Papernick
  • Consults On: Short fiction, the novel, memoir
  • Also Available for: Applying to MFA programs, Submitting to literary magazines, Personal writing coaching
  • Read Bio
    Jon Papernick was born and raised in Toronto, Canada. His first collection of short stories, The Ascent of Eli Israel, was published by Arcade Publishing in 2002. The New York Times wrote: "There is a muscular certainty to the best of Papernick's stories that is altogether harrowing. Papernick's penetrating clear-sighted stories ring true." He is the author of Who by Fire, Who by Blood and is in the process of adapting it into a graphic novel with artist Sandy Jimenez. He recently completed his second collection of short stories entitled, There is No Other. Papernick's short fiction has appeared in publications such as Exile, The Sarah Lawrence Review, The Reading Room, Nerve.com, Night Train Magazine, Confrontation, Lost Tribe: Jewish Fiction from the Edge [Harper], and Scribblers on the Roof [Persea]. His journalism and reviews have been published in The Jerusalem Post, Time Magazine, JBooks.Com, The Jewish Week, Jewcy and Papernick has taught writing at the Center for Creative Youth at Wesleyan University, Pratt Institute, Boston University and Grub Street. He has been the Fannie Hurst Writer-in-Residence at Brandeis University, and the Visiting Writer-in Residence at Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel. He currently teaches fiction writing at Emerson College, and lives outside Boston with his wife and two sons. Check out his blog The Conversational Anarchist http://jonpapernick.blogspot.com.

KL Pereira

KL Pereira
  • Consults On: Poetry, Memoir, Individual Essay.
  • Interested Themes: Social justice, Queer writing, literary fiction, humanities, Women's writing, Popular Culture, Cross-Genre/Experimental writing, music, film, art.
  • Also Available for: Preparing the MFA Application, Intensive Line-Editing, Personal Writing "Coaching."
  • Read Bio
    KL Pereira writes poetry, nonfiction, cross-genre, and memoir. Pereira has taught poetry classes and writing workshops at East Boston High School, Casa Myrna Vasquez, Freedom House, The Women's Center, and Center for New Words and has served as an editor and writer for LiP Magazine, Whats Up Magazine/Spare Change News, advocacy publications by and for the homeless and underemployed. Her work has appeared in The Pitkin Review, Girlistic Magazine, The Hub Journal: Boston's Literary Occasional, Sui Generis, Bitch Magazine, Clamor Magazine, Whats Up Magazine/Spare Change News, Girl Culture: An Encyclopedia and the forthcoming Boy Culture: An Encyclopedia, both from Greenwood Press. She holds a BA in Literature and Languages from Bard College, an MA in Gender/Cultural Studies from Simmons College and an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College.

Kathleen Rooney

Kathleen Rooney
  • Consults On: Short Fiction, Poetry, Memoir, Individual Essay, Book-Length Nonfiction
  • Interested Themes: I’m interested in all styles and subjects of writing, but I’m especially passionate about pop culture, women’s studies, politics, food writing, occupational memoirs and personal essays.
  • Also Available for: Preparing the MFA Application; Submitting to Literary Magazines; Submitting to Agencies and/or Editors; Submitting Non-Fiction Book Proposals; Applying for Awards, Fellowships, Conferences, and Retreats; Intensive Line-Editing; Personal Writing "Coaching"
  • Read Bio
    Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press and the author of the nonfiction book Reading With Oprah: the Book Club that Changed America (University of Arkansas Press, 2005; paperback 2008) and the memoir Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object (University of Arkansas, 2009). Her prose collection For You, For You I Am Trilling These Songs is forthcoming from Counterpoint in 2010. Her first poetry collection Oneiromance (an epithalamion) won the 2007 Gatewood Prize from Switchback Books, and her collaborative poetry collection That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness (co-written with Elisa Gabbert) came out with Otoliths in 2008. A 2003 recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from Poetry magazine, her criticism and essays have appeared recently or are forthcoming in Gettysburg Review, BITCH, the Nation, Contemporary Poetry Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Western Humanities Review, Quarterly West, and Ninth Letter. She has taught English and Creative Writing at Emerson College, Northeastern University, the Boston Center for Adult Education, and Pacific Lutheran University. She lives in Chicago with her husband, the writer Martin Seay. Learn more at http://www.kathleenrooney.com.

James Scott

James Scott
  • Consults On: Short Fiction, The Novel, Screenwriting, Journalism, Feature Writing, and Book-Length Nonfiction
  • Interested Themes: All types of fiction, but lean more towards literary novels and short fiction. Non-fiction interests are pop culture (music, film), sports, and history. Screenplays of any genre are welcome.
  • Also Available for: Preparing the MFA application; submitting to agencies and/or editors; applying for awards, fellowships, conferences, and retreats; intensive line-editing; ghost-writing; and personal writing "coaching"
  • Read Bio
    James Scott has published fiction in One Story, American Short Fiction, Saint Ann's Review and others. He received his MFA from Emerson College in December 2007. While there, he was a recipient of the Presidential Award and a runner-up for the graduate short fiction award. His work has received numerous nominations for the Pushcart Prize, as well as scholarships from Middlebury College, the Sewanee Writers' Conference, the Wesleyan University Writers' Conference, and the New York State Writers' Institute. He was also the fiction editor and managing editor of Redivider. Before Emerson, James worked for a literary agency and a production company, as well as Bob Vila and the Boston Red Sox. Currently, he writes for the music magazine Under the Radar.

Clara Silverstein

  • Consults On: Memoir, Book-Length Nonfiction, Individual essays, Journalism, Feature Writing.
  • Interested Themes: Food writing and cookbooks, personality profiles, historical research, writing about race.
  • Also Available for: Submitting to agencies and/or editors, Ghost-writing.
  • Read Bio
    Clara Silverstein is the author of the memoir White Girl: A Story of School Desegregation (University of Georgia Press), and two cookbooks, The Boston Chef's Table (Globe Pequot Press), and the New England Soup Factory Cookbook (Thomas Nelson) with chef Marjorie Druker, a top-selling soup cookbook on Amazon.com. A former food writer and editor at the Boston Herald, Silverstein's articles have also been published in Health magazine, Prevention, Runner's World, American Heritage, the Boston Globe, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. She directs the Chautauqua Writers' Center, a summer creative writing program at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York, and has led writing workshops at Grub Street, Boston University, and Emerson College.

Adam Stumacher

Adam Stumacher
  • Consults On: Short Fiction, The Novel, Memoir, Individual Essay, and Book-Length Nonfiction.
  • Interested Themes: Education, politics, religion, and travel. Much of my own fiction has been inspired by my experiences living and traveling in Asia, the Mideast, and Latin America, as well as working with immigrants and refugees in inner city communities, so I am particularly interested in assisting on projects dealing with diverse settings and characters.
  • Also Available for: Preparation for MFA programs, submitting to literary journals, and intensive line editing.
  • Read Bio
    Adam Stumacher's fiction has appeared in Best New American Voices, has been published in TriQuarterly, The Massachusetts Review, Carve, Barnstorm and The Sun, and was winner of the Raymond Carver Short Story Award. His nonfiction has appeared in the Guardian (UK) and the anthology Peace Under Fire. He holds degrees from Cornell University and Saint Mary's College, where he was recipient of the Jeanine Cooney and Agnes Butler fellowships. More recently, he was the the Carol Houck Smith Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, where he taught undergraduate courses. In addition to his work at Grub Street, he teaches creative writing at MIT and has many years experience as an educator in urban high schools. He is the author of a short story collection, Slipknot, and is currently working on a novel, entitled A Liar's Opus.

Mary Sullivan

Mary Sullivan
  • Consults On: The novel, young adult fiction, and nonfiction, depending on the topic
  • Interested themes: I am open to all types of fiction, but I especially like literary fiction, adult and YA. My interests include the environment, parenting, Africa, Iraq, education, homelessness, music, mysteries, and family trauma of all sorts (esp. the young adult as the outsider).
  • Also Available for: Intensive line editing, ghostwriting, personal writing coaching
  • Read Bio
    Mary Sullivan is the author of two novels, Stay and Ship Sooner, and she has ghostwritten for the Beacon Street Girls series. She has received a Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant for Literature, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Award, and a St. Botolph's Award. She was also chosen as one of the Borders' Original New Voices. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and their three daughters.

Holly Tavel

Tracy Winn
  • Consults On: Short Fiction, Memoir, Individual Essay
  • Interested Themes: Literary short stories, creative non-fiction/personal essays on any topic
  • Also Available for: Preparing the MFA Application, Submitting to Literary Magazines, Applying for Awards and Fellowships, Intensive Line Editing, Personal Writing Coaching.
  • Read Bio
    Holly Tavel is a writer and artist whose fiction has appeared in, or is forthcoming from, Torpedo, Elimae, McSweeney's, and Diagram, which awarded her its Innovative Fiction Award in 2007. She holds an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University. For several years, as a member of Glowlab, a Brooklyn-based artist's collective, she collaborated on projects involving public-space performance, social sculpture, and experimental walks, was editor of Glowlab's Neuroscape Journal, and helped curate the Psy.Geo.Conflux, an annual New York-based event bringing together artists, lecturers, and the public for several days of projects exploring urban space and the city. Her visual/conceptual art has featured in group shows at the Participant Gallery in New York, and at Art Interactive in Cambridge, MA. In 2005 she developed a Psychogeography course at Brown, which she is teaching for the third time this summer. In addition to working on a novel, she is in the process of collaborating on a book focused around writers' responses to found photographs. She lives in Brooklyn, and teaches in the English Department at CUNY-Borough of Manhattan Community College.

Becky Tuch

Laura van den Berg
  • Consults On: Short fiction, including short short stories; the Novel.
  • Interested Themes: Jewish identity, family, relationships, dark comedy, satire.
  • Also Available for: Submitting to Literary Magazines, Personal Writing "Coaching."
  • Read Bio
    Becky Tuch has won several awards for her fiction (from Briar Cliff Review, Byline Magazine and The Tennessee Writer's Alliance) and received Honorable Mentions from the 2008 Pushcart Prize Anthology and Writers' Journal. She has published stories, poetry and art and reviews in numerous publications including Blueline, Eclipse, Folio, The Connecticut River Review, Artsmedia and The Women's Review of Books. She is also the founding editor of TheReviewReview.net, a website which reviews literary magazines and offers publishing tips to writers. Her website and commitment to the writing life were featured in The Somerville News in the winter of 2009. She teaches fiction to kids, teens and adults throughout Boston.

Laura van den Berg

Laura van den Berg
  • Consults On: Short Fiction
  • Interested Themes: Anything and everything!
  • Also Available for: Preparing the MFA Application; Submitting to Literary Magazines; Submitting to Agencies and/or Editors; Applying for Awards, Fellowships, Conferences, and Retreats; Personal Writing Coaching; Intensive Line-Editing.
  • Read Bio
    Laura van den Berg earned her MFA at Emerson College. She is the recipient of scholarships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers' Conferences, the 2009 Julia Peterkin Award, and the 2009-2010 Emerging Writer Lectureship at Gettysburg College. Formerly an assistant editor at Ploughshares, Laura is currently a fiction editor at West Branch and the assistant editor of Memorious, an online journal of new verse and fiction. She has taught writing at Emerson College, Grub Street, and in PEN/New England's Freedom to Write Program. Her fiction has or will soon appear in One Story, Boston Review, Epoch, The Literary Review, American Short Fiction, StoryQuarterly, Best American Nonrequired Reading 2008, Best New American Voices 2010, and The Pushcart Prize XXIV: Best of the Small Presses, among others. The winner of the Dzanc Prize, Laura's first collection of stories, What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us, will be published by Dzanc Books in October 2009. To learn more about Laura, please visit www.lauravandenberg.com.

Lara JK Wilson

  • Consults On: Short Fiction, the Novel, Creative Nonfiction, and Memoir.
  • Interested Themes: Literary and historical fiction, humor, family and mothers' issues, character motivation, setting as character, psychic distance, pacing and plot
  • Read Bio
    Lara JK Wilson's short stories have been published in The Kenyon Review, Indiana Review, StoryQuarterly, Confrontation, and American Fiction, among others. Her prizewinning story in the 2007 Nelson Algren Awards was featured in the Chicago Tribune book section. Other stories have won the So to Speak Fiction Contest, first-runner-up in the Mark Twain Award contest, and nominations for Best New American Voices and the Pushcart Prize. She was a fiction scholar at both the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers' Conferences, and is currently working on a novel.

Tracy Winn

Tracy Winn
  • Consults On: Short fiction, memoir
  • Interested Themes: Literary short stories, creative non-fiction/personal essays on any topic
  • Also Available for: Personal Writing Coaching
  • Read Bio
    Tracy Winn's debut collection of linked short stories, Mrs. Somebody Somebody is forthcoming from SMU Press. She earned her MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers, and her stories, which have appeared in publications such as Alaska Quarterly Review and Hayden's Ferry Review, have been nominated for a Pushcart and for inclusion in the Best American Mystery Stories. She is the recipient of grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Barbara Deming Memorial Trust, the Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation, and fellowships from the Millay Colony and the MacDowell Colony. 


Testimonials

"Kathleen Rooney has been enormously helpful to my writing. She is sharp, tactful, encouraging, perceptive, prompt, thorough, intelligent, well-read and aesthetically cognizant. Most important, she is able to balance tough, honest criticism with words of praise. I recommend her enthusiastically."

-Jim English, Historical Novel and Memoir. Providence, Rhode Island

"I took Memoir II with Donna Moreau and liked working with her so much that I hired her to review my book proposal. She was thorough, incisive, and generous with her time. I recommend her highly and look forward to working with her again.

-Randy Ross, Non-Fiction. Somerville, Massachusetts

For more information, call 617.695.0075, or send e-mail to info@grubstreet.org.