meet our instructors

instructor bios

A - G

Allison Adair

Allison Adair has taught poetry workshops and literature seminars at Boston University and the University of Iowa, where she held a Writers' Workshop Teaching-Writing Fellowship. She has written for curricular guides, academic texts, and the Massachusetts Long Road to Justice exhibit, and she served on the editorial board of The Iowa Review. A joint fellowship from Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design allowed her to study painting and poetry in Dublin, Galway, and Belfast, and she was a finalist in the Davoren Hanna Poetry Competition. In 2007 she participated in the National Braille Association's Twice Seen photography exhibit with "Air Show." Other original poems, as well as translations of French and Italian poets, have appeared in various publications, including Emic, The Boston Globe, and Chris Castellani's The Saint of Lost Things. Allison holds an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and she has been a Grub Street board member since 2004.

Steve Almond

Steve Almond is the author of two story collections, My Life in Heavy Metal and The Evil B.B. Chow, the novel Which Brings Me to You (with Julianna Baggott), and the non-fiction book Candyfreak. His new book is a collection of essays, (Not That You Asked). He lives outside Boston with his wife and daughter Josephine, who can now make the noises of seven different farm animals. His on-line home is www.stevenalmond.com.

Jasmine Beach-Ferrara

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.

Ben Berman

Ben Berman has a BA in English from the University of Pennsylvania. He has received honors from the New England Poetry Club and is a recipient of a 2008 Poetry Fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize three times and has poems published in Salamander, The Cimarron Review, Cream City Review, Connecticut Review and other journals, as well. A former Peace Corps Volunteer and high school English teacher, he now coaches Humanities teachers in the Boston Public Schools.

Jenna Blum

New York Times bestselling author Jenna Blum has been a proud Grub fiction instructor for eleven years. Called "the little book that could" in a recent Publisher's Weekly article, Jenna's debut novel Those Who Save Us was published by Harcourt in 2004; in October 2007 the paperback jumped onto the Boston Globe and the New York Times bestseller lists. Educated at Kenyon College and Boston University, Jenna has published short fiction and nonfiction in numerous national periodicals, including Seventeen (where her work first appeared in 1986), The Boston Globe, The Improper Bostonian, Poets & Writers, Meridian, Faultline, Prairie Schooner, The Kenyon Review, The Bellingham Review, and The Briar Cliff Review, which twice nominated Jenna's stories for a Pushcart Prize. Currently, Jenna is working on her second novel, The Stormchasers, which will be published by Dutton, a Penguin imprint. She also travels nationally to speak about Those Who Save Us, writes the Writers' Advice Column for the Grub Free Press, and teaches grub's master novel workshop. Grub is, Jenna will happily tell anyone who will listen, the reason Jenna stays in Boston. Please visit Jenna at her website: www.jennablum.com.

Lisa Borders

Lisa Borders' first novel, Cloud Cuckoo Land, was chosen by Pat Conroy as the winner of River City Publishing's Fred Bonnie Award for Best First Novel and was published in 2002. Cloud Cuckoo Land also received fiction honors in the 2003 Massachusetts Book Awards. Her essay "Enchanted Night" was published in Don't You Forget About Me: Contemporary Writers on the Films of John Hughes (Simon & Schuster, 2007). Lisa has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and her short stories have appeared in Kalliope, Washington Square, Black Warrior Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, CrossConnect and other journals. She has received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Somerville Arts Council and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and residencies at Hedgebrook and the Blue Mountain Center. She was also a visiting writer at the University of Pennsylvania. Lisa holds an MA in Creative Writing from Temple University in Philadelphia, where she taught undergraduate writing. More information on Lisa and her work is available at lisaborders.com.

Eve Bridburg

Eve Bridburg is the founder of Grub Street and is currently a proud member of its Board of Directors. In the fall of 2005, she joined the Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Literary Agency's Boston office. As an agent, Eve is actively seeking new works of literary and up-market fiction, YA fiction, memoir, and creative nonfiction. She is also interested in nonfiction books of all stripes, but is particularly moved by history, politics, parenting, motherhood and health and wellness. Recent sales include Kirsten Menger-Anderson's short story collection: Dr. Olaf von Schuler's Brain to Algonquin, world-renowned obesity expert Jim Levine's NEAT Revolution to Crown in an aggressive six-figure pre-empt, and Marine Captain Donovan Campbell's Joker One: One Platoon's Courage, Heartache, and Sacrifice on the Front Lines of Iraq to Random House at auction.

Chris Boginski

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.

Scott Challener

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. 

Chip Cheek

Chip Cheek received his MFA in 2007 from Emerson College, where he was editor-in-chief of the literary journal Redivider. His stories have appeared in Washington Square, Night Train, Quick Fiction, Minnetonka Review, Fringe, and Brevity and Echo: An Anthology of Short Short Stories. A story of his will also appear in the forthcoming edition of What If: Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers, by Anne Bernays and Pamela Painter. Born in Georgia, raised in Texas, he currently resides in Somerville and keeps a day-job in textbook publishing.

Jennifer De Leon

Jennifer De Leon's fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Ms., Poets & Writers Magazine, Guernica, SOLSTICE, Kweli Journal, and The Best Women's Travel Writing 2010. She earned a B.A. in International Relations from Connecticut College, an M.A.T. from the University of San Francisco, and is completing her M.F.A. in Fiction from UMASS Boston. Jenn has received fellowships from the VONA Writing Conference with Junot Díaz, the Macondo Writers' Workshop with Sandra Cisneros, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. She teaches creative writing at UMASS Boston and is a fiction reader for Ploughshares. Currently, she is working on her first novel and editing a literary anthology on Latinas and College.

Sorche Fairbank

Since establishing Fairbank Literary Representation in 2002, Sorche Elizabeth Fairbank has had the pleasure of working with a dynamic and varied list, representing best-selling authors, Edgar recipients, award-winning journalists, and of course one of her favorite kinds of client -- the first-time author. Her tastes in novels tend toward literary fiction, international voices and women's voices, and the mystery/suspense genre. On the nonfiction side, she is most likely to take on books that tackle current events and societal issues with a narrative treatment. She has a strong interest in women's voices and class and race issues, quality lifestyle books (food, wine, and home design), sports, memoir, humor, and pop culture. And to date, she has signed on three terrific clients through Grub Street, with more certain to follow.

Subjects and genres not of interest by Sorche and Fairbank Literary include: sci-fi and fantasy, children's and YA, self-help, romance, sports fiction, and generally anything that opens with a dream scene and/or exhaustive descriptions of weather. Unless, of course, it's really really really good.

Notable authors and books represented by Fairbank Literary include: O. Henry Prize winner Charlotte Forbes; Pulitzer nominee and LA Times Cairo Bureau Chief Jeffrey Fleishman; Matthew Frederick and his best-selling 101 Things I Learned In Architecture School; Travis Bradford, president of the Prometheus Institute for Sustainable Development and author of Solar Revolution; Darci Klein's To Full Term, A Mother's Triumph Over Miscarriage; Jonathan McCullough's A Tale Of Two Subs: An Untold Story Of World War II, Two Sister Ships, And Extraordinary Heroism; the estate of Robin Moore (The French Connection, The Green Berets, etc.); Xaviera Hollander (The Happy Hooker); syndicated cartoonist Man Martin (Days of the Endless Corvette); Edgar-winning mystery writer and host of Anatomy Of A Mystery, Rex Burns; and Robert McKinnon, founder of Yellow Brick Road and editor of the forthcoming Legacy: Today's Leaders on Tomorrow's World, a collection of essays by such luminaries as Al Gore, Paul Simon, Mia Hamm, Richard Louv, and others. Updated information on Sorche Fairbank and Fairbank Literary, their clients, and recent deals can be found at www.publishersmarketplace.com/members/SorcheFairbank

Mark Fogarty

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.

Regie Gibson

Author, songwriter, educator and workshop facilitator Regie Gibson has performed taught and lectured at universities, theaters and various other venues in seven countries most recently Havana, Cuba. Both he and his work appear in the New Line Cinema film lovejones, a film based on events in his life. He was Writer in Residence at the Effie O. Ellis Center sponsored by National-Louis University and is Chernin Center for the Arts Community Writers Fellow. His work has appeared in a number of anthologies and journals including The Harvard Divinity Bulletin, The Iowa Review and Poetry Magazine. He is a National Poetry Slam Individual Champion, has been a featured numerous times on NPR, on HBO's Def Poetry Jam, and on WGBH-2 Art Close-Up. His first collection of poems Storms Beneath the Skin has received the Golden Pen Award. He is currently working on two manuscripts and has received his MFA in poetry from New England College.

Ethan Gilsdorf

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/

Beth Raisner Glass

Beth Raisner Glass is a children's book author, newspaper writer and teacher. She has taught in the Massachusetts public school system, 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.