meet our instructors

instructor bios

M - R

Ron MacLean

Ron MacLean is author of the story collection Why the Long Face? (2008) and the novel Blue Winnetka Skies (2004). His fiction has appeared in GQ, Greensboro Review, Prism International, Night Train, Other Voices and other quarterlies. He is a recipient of the Frederick Exley Award for Short Fiction and a multiple Pushcart Prize nominee. He holds a Doctor of Arts from the University at Albany, SUNY, and has been a proud part of team Grub since 2004.

Lauren E. MacLeod

Lauren E. MacLeod joined the Strothman Agency after graduating cum laude from Emerson College with a BFA in Writing, Literature and Publishing. Lauren’s primary interests are middle grade novels, young adult fiction and nonfiction, as well as highly polished literary fiction and narrative nonfiction. She also works closely with the agency and its clients to create effective digital platforms and capitalize on the many opportunities presented by social networking. Recent sales include: Real Mermaids Don’t Wear Toe Rings by Hélène Boudreau (Sourcebooks/ Jabberwocky), The Newsoul Trilogy by Jodi Meadows (HarperCollins/ Katherine Tegen Books) and The Widening Gyre: A Journey Across a Melting Landscape by Christopher White (St. Martin’s).

Steve Macone

Steve Macone studied journalism at Boston University and is a contributor at The Onion. His essays, humor writing and reporting have appeared in The American Scholar, Atlantic Online, New Yorker, Boston Globe, Boston Globe Magazine, Boston Phoenix, Salon.com, New York Times, Morning News, Christian Science Monitor, The Drum, The Weekly Dig, and AOL News. He's been featured on NPR and had a story about playing with action figures named a "notable essay" in the Best American Essays series. His writing has been featured on The Daily Beast, Longreads.com, and The New Yorker site's "to read" section.

Michael Marano

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 the former Fiction Editor of the award-winning dark fiction magazine Chiaroscuro and in that capacity has worked one-on-one with authors in the development of their short fiction, some of which have been selected for "Year's Best" anthologies. Stories From the Plague Years, a collection of Marano's new and reprinted short fiction, was published to great acclaim by Cemetery Dance Publications, and was named one of the Top 10 Horror Publications of 2011 by Booklist. 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, SuicideGirls, The Independent Weekly, Paste Magazine, and Science Fiction Universe.

Amy Marcott

Amy Marcott has published fiction in Necessary Fiction, Salt Hill, DIAGRAM, Dogwood, Memorious, Juked, and elsewhere. She has earned fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Somerville Arts Council as well as a scholarship to the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and won third place in Glimmer Train’s Very Short Fiction Contest, among other honors. She received a BA in English from Wesleyan University and an MFA from Penn State University, where she also taught creative writing and composition. She's currently the director of multimedia communications for MIT's Alumni Association, where she's an active blogger and social media marketer and assists with incorporating new technologies into online strategies. She belongs to the Writers' Room of Boston and is at work on a novel.

Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich

Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich is writing a book of combined family memoir and literary journalism about a Louisiana murder, in support of which she has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the Millay Colony for the Arts, Blue Mountain Center, and the Rona Jaffe Foundation, as well as a scholarship from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She earned her MFA at Emerson College and her JD at Harvard Law School. Her essays appear in The New York Times, Oxford American, Fourth Genre, TriQuarterly Online, Bellingham Review (as the winner of the Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction), and elsewhere, and her fiction appears in Southeast Review and Minnetonka Review. She teaches creative writing at Cedar Crest College in Allentown, PA, and at Grub Street. Visit her online at www.alexandria-marzano-lesnevich.com.

Tom Matlack

Tom Matlack is the founder of The Good Men Project. His work has been published by The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and Boston Magazine, among others. He is the former Chief Financial Officer of The Providence Journal Company.

Jennifer Mattson

Jennifer Mattson is a former producer for NPR's nationally syndicated program "The Connection" and worked as an editor for National Public Radio. She spent over six years as a producer for CNN, where she was responsible for CNN's daily live newscasts and producing CNN's international coverage. Jennifer came to CNN to work in the Washington bureau's political unit during the 1996 U.S. presidential election. She later moved to Atlanta, where she worked first as a writer and then as a newscast producer at CNN International. Prior to joining CNN, Jennifer worked as a reporter based in Budapest, Hungary covering Eastern Europe, where she reported on a number of regional stories for USA TODAY including a piece on George Soros and the Clinton-Yeltsin CSCE Summit. She has also reported, most recently, from Asia. Her work has appeared in TheAtlantic.com, USA TODAY, The Boston Globe, The Women's Review of Books, AsianCorrespondent.com, Tablettalk.com and CNN.com. She is the former Managing Editor of AsiaSociety.org. Follow her on Twitter at @jennifermattson

Stephen McCauley

Stephen McCauley is the author of six novels. He has also published two novels under a pseudonym. His stories, reviews, and columns have appeared in the New York Times, Harper's, The Boston Globe, and many other publications. He is currently Associate Director of Creative Writing at Brandeis University.

2F: Literary Idol: Star Author Edition: Part I

Option 6: Literary Idol: Star Author Edition: Part II

Tom Meek

Tom Meek's fiction and non-fiction has appeared in The Boston Phoenix, Web del Sol, The Improper Bostonian, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Film Threat, Thieves Jargon, Slow Trains, Word Riot, Playboy.com, and E! Online. He appears regularly on the Taste of Boston Tonight show on WRKO (680) with host Todd Feinburg, the Arnie Arnesen show on WNTK in New Hampshire, the David Brudnoy show on WBZ, and New England Cable News.

Kathy Meis

Kathy Meis has been a television news reporter, a print journalist, a magazine editor, and a ghostwriter of books. She has worked for CBS, Forbes, and many well-know writers. Last year, she founded Bublish, an award-winning social book discovery platform that is revolutionizing the way writers share their stories and readers find books and authors they'll love. Kathy enjoys working with creators to transform book promotion from drudgery into a natural extension of their creative life. She lives in Charleston, South Carolina, with her husband, four children, and Ava, her German Shorthaired Pointer.

Nicole Miller

Nicole Miller has published both fiction and non-fiction in the US and the UK, with two appearances in the May Anthology of Short Stories, edited by Jill Paton Walsh and Sebastian Faulks. After completing an M.Phil in English Literature at Oxford, she worked at The New Yorker and The Oxford English Dictionary, where she still serves as a scholarly reader for the department of etymology, with a specialty in British Dialects. At Emerson College, she held the Emerson Graduate Fellowship in Creative Writing for three years, gaining her MFA in 2012. She was also awarded a PhD in Victorian Literature from University College, London in 2012 and publishes criticism on the works of Charles Dickens. She has taught in the Harvard College Writing Center since 2010 and edits faculty manuscripts for Harvard’s English Department. Her interests span the novel, short story, essay, and memoir form and the translation of Modern Greek poetry. Nicole is thrilled to share her love of words, literature, story-writing, and life-writing with the students of Grub Street this winter.

Wendy Mnookin

Wendy Mnookin's latest book of poetry is The Moon Makes Its Own Plea (BOA Editions, 2008.) The recipient of a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Wendy teaches poetry at Emerson College and at Grub Street. You can find out more about her writing at wendymnookin.com.

Mary Carroll Moore

Mary Carroll Moore’s twelve published books include the PEN/Faulkner nominated novel Qualities of Light (Bella Books); How to Master Change in Your Life: Sixty-seven Ways to Handle Life’s Toughest Moments (Eckankar Books); Cholesterol Cures (Rodale Press), and the award-winning Healthy Cooking (Ortho Publications). Your Book Starts Here: Create, Craft, and Sell Your First Novel, Memoir, or Nonfiction Book, based on her How to Plan, Write, and Develop a Book writing workshops, will be released in fall 2010. A former nationally syndicated columnist for the Los Angeles Times, over 300 of Mary’s essays, short stories, articles, and poetry have appeared in literary journals, magazines, and newspapers around the U.S. and have won awards with the McKnight Awards for Creative Prose, Glimmer Train Press, the Loft Mentor Series, and other writing competitions. She teaches creative writing in New York, Boston, New Hampshire, and Minnesota and writes a weekly blog for book writers at http://howtoplanwriteanddevelopabook.blogspot.com.

Nina Louise Morrison

Nina Louise Morrison is a playwright, actor, director and dramaturg. Her plays include Mad Props, House Rules, The Red Plague, Constitution and Three Patriotic Acts. She is a Richard Rodgers Fellow, a Shubert Foundation grantee, and an affiliated artist with Free Hands Theatre Company, Boston Bohemia, Playwrights Commons' Freedom Art Retreat and Company One’s Playground. Before moving to Boston, Nina was the Senior Program Associate at the Philadelphia Theater Initiative. Training: MFA Columbia University, the National Theatre Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center, the New Actors Workshop, and Oberlin College. More info at ninalouisemorrison.wordpress.com.

Kathleen Willis Morton

Kathleen Willis Morton holds an MFA in Creative Writing. Her first book, The Blue Poppy and the Mustard Seed, was published by Wisdom Publications. 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 www.thebluepoppyandthemustardseed.com.

Natalia Naman

Natalia Naman is a playwright living in Boston, MA who has recently been selected by Company One and the Boston Center for the Arts as a writer for the XX Playlab 2012-2013 season.  Her plays include THE OLD SHIP OF ZION, JESS & DJ, LAWNPEOPLE, DROUGHT, and CROSSING OVER.  Her work has been developed and performed at the Lark Play Development Center, NYU Tisch, Princeton University, HERE Arts Center, The Cherry Pit, New Georges, and Boston Playwrights' Theatre.  Natalia is a founding member of New York Madness, a nominee for the Cherry Lane Mentor Project, a three time nominee for TDF's Wendy Wasserstein Prize, and the recipient of the 2008 Outstanding Senior Thesis Award in Princeton's English and Theater and Dance Departments for her play, THE OLD SHIP OF ZION.  She graduated from Princeton with a BA in English and certificates in Theater and African-American Studies, and from NYU Tisch with an MFA in Dramatic Writing.  Natalia is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America.  Learn more about her at www.natalianaman.com.

Alexander Nemser

Alexander Nemser is a local poet, performer, and educator. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, The Atlantic Monthly, AGNI, and n+1. His one-man show, "Moshe Feldstein, Icon of Self-Realization," was praised by the New Yorker's Book Bench blog for its "incandescent, deracinating prose poetry." He was educated at Yale, and attended Oxford on a 2006 Marshall Scholarship.

Celeste Ng

Celeste Ng’s debut novel, Everything I Never Told You, is forthcoming from Penguin Press. Her stories and essays have appeared in One Story, TriQuarterly, the Bellevue Literary Review, The Kenyon Review Online, and elsewhere, and she has been awarded the Pushcart Prize, the Hopwood Award, and a scholarship to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She earned an MFA from the University of Michigan and is a blogger for the Huffington Post, as well as editor-at-large for the writing website Fiction Writers Review. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is currently at work on a second novel and a collection of short stories.

Ogi Ogas

Dr. Ogi Ogas received his PhD in computational neuroscience from Boston University and was a Department of Homeland Security Fellow. His writing has been published in the Boston Globe, Wall Street Journal, Glamour, Wired, and Seed Magazine. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker called his first nonfiction book, A Billion Wicked Thoughts, "a goldmine." His next book, A Billion Angry Brains, (Dutton, 2013) explores the misunderstood emotion of anger. He's presently collaborating with the president of the American Psychiatric Association on a popular book about contemporary psychiatry. He writes the Billion Wicked Thoughts blog for Psychology Today.  He also used his knowledge of cognition to reach the million dollar question on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and battle Ken Jennings in the finals of Grand Slam.  For more information on Ogi, visit www.billionwickedthoughts.com.

Amanda Palmer

Coming into public consciousness in 2002 with punk-cabaret troupe The Dresden Dolls, Amanda Palmer has heaved her way to the top of the music industry. Four albums and five tours later, she and her independent attitude went solo, releasing Who Killed Amanda Palmer, produced by Ben Folds, in 2008. Two self-released EP’s followed, along with a musical theater-esque Evelyn Evelyn album and tour with Jason Webley. Palmer has made a name for herself in the last few years as the quintessential social media artist, engaging in daily interactions with her fans 365 days a year and making an art form out of Twitter. With over half a million Twitter followers and a deeply personal blog, she has one of the most responsive and supportive online fan bases on the internet. Palmer made global headlines this year with her wildly successful Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign, raising $1.2 million dollars for her new album, Theatre is Evil. Passion is what drives Amanda, and her success proves how determined she really is to make a difference not only in her own music, but in the way that music is created and consumed around the globe. Amanda Palmer has taken everything that was in her nimble-fingered grasp, from tweeted keytars to Melbourne coffees and the expansive grounds of the internet, and has woven them into a world first. This is the future of music, and Amanda Palmer is leading the way.

Marketplace Keynote Address

Catherine Parnell

Catherine Parnell is the author of the memoir The Kingdom of His Will (Arrowsmith Press, 2007), and her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Post Road, The Baltimore Review, slush pile, roger, Dos Passos Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Stone’s Throw Magazine, and Consequence Magazine, among others. Her essays and reviews have appeared in numerous newspapers and newsletters. She’s the fiction editor for Salamander and an associate editor for Consequence Magazine. She received her BA from Boston University and her MFA from Bennington College. She teaches writing and literature at Suffolk University, and she recently completed a collection of short stories and is working on a novella.

KL Pereira

KL Pereira is a teaching artist who lives mostly in her head; she's interested in the creaky, creepy underbelly of life and whatever lies beyond. 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. Her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Mythic Deliruim, Jabberwocky, The Medulla Review, Bitch Magazine, Clamor Magazine, and other fine magazines, anthologies, chapbooks, and journals. You can read her column: Slaying Genre: A Monthly Column on Horror, Noir, Fantasy, and the Other Red-Headed Step-Children of the Literary World here. Pereira publishes erotic horror under a different name and is currently working on a collection of flash fiction fairy tales, a mytho-punk noir, and some zombie apocalyptica. For more information, visit www.darknesslovescompany.com.

Elizabeth Peterson

Elizabeth Peterson is a writer, tutor, teacher, and aspiring novelist. Her work has been published in several small literary journals and shortlisted for the Loft Mentor Series Competition and Hunger Mountain’s Frank Mosher Short Fiction Prize. She was the winner of the Phi Theta Kappa National Competition in Creative Writing.

Chelsey Philpot

Chelsey Philpot is a book reviews editor at School Library Journal and a contributing writer for the Boston Globe, where she pens a column about YA literature. She has a degree in English from Vassar College and a master's in Journalism from Boston University. She has written about books, arts, and culture for the New York Times Book Review, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Slate, and numerous other publications.

Sumanth Prabhaker

Sumanth Prabhaker is a graduate of the University of North Carolina Wilmington MFA program and the founding editor of Madras Press. His stories have appeared in Mid-American Review, Post Road, Best American Fantasy, and elsewhere.

Kate Racculia

Kate Racculia is a writer and researcher living in Somerville, Massachusetts. Her first novel, This Must Be the Place, was published by Henry Holt & Company in 2010 and named a Must-Read by the Massachusetts Center for the Book. Her second novel, Bellweather Rhapsody, will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2014. You can find her online at www.kateracculia.com.

Diana Renn

Diana Renn’s young adult novel, Tokyo Heist, was published by Viking Children's Books/Penguin in June 2012. Her essays and short fiction -- for adults and for young readers -- have been published in a variety of magazines, including The Writer, Writer's Digest, YARN (Young Adult Review Network), Literary Mama, Lit 103.3: Fiction for the Ears, The Indiana Review, and Cricket Magazine for Children. She has also published several textbooks for students of English as a Second Language. She lives outside of Boston with her husband and son, and is working on her next novel. Visit her website and her group blog about mystery writing for kids and teens, Sleuths Spies & Alibis.

Hillary Rettig

Hillary Rettig is an author, workshop leader and coach who specializes in helping people overcome procrastination and use their time better. Her latest book is The Seven Secrets of the Prolific: The Definitive Guide to Overcoming Procrastination, Perfectionism and Writer's Block (Infinite Art, 2011). Of her prior book, The Lifelong Activist: How to Change the World Without Losing Your Way (Lantern Books, 2006), the leading liberal blog, DailyKos.com, said, "If I had but one book to spend hard-earned cash on this year, The Lifelong Activist would be it, hands down." Hillary is a Bronx native who currently enjoys living in East Boston. She has published numerous nonfiction articles, and also short fiction. Some of the acclaimed science fiction writers she has studied with are Ursula K. LeGuin, Samuel R. Delaney and the late Octavia Butler. Hillary is also a kidney donor, foster parent, lover of dogs and other animals, and vegan. Download free ebooks and other information on productivity and related fields at www.hillaryrettig.com, and Hillary welcomes your emails at hillaryrettig@yahoo.com.

Alan Rinzler

Alan Rinzler has edited and published Toni Morrison, Tom Robbins, Hunter S. Thompson, Jerzy Kosinski, Shirley MacLaine, Robert Ludlum, Andy Warhol, Clive Cussler, Bob Dylan, and others while working as Assistant to the Managing Editor at Simon and Schuster, Senior Editor at Macmillan and Holt, Director of Trade Publishing at Bantam Books, VP and Associate Publisher of Rolling Stone Magazine, President of Straight Arrow Books, West Coast Editor for the Grove Press, and elsewhere.

Jane Roper

Jane Roper is the author of a memoir, Double Time: How I Survived– and Mostly Thrived– Through the First Three Years of Mothering Twins and a novel, Eden Lake. She received her MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and her writing has appeared on Salon, Babble, Poets & Writers, The Rumpus and elsewhere. Jane lives in the Boston area with her husband and twin daughters.

Aviv Rubinstien

Aviv Rubinstien is an award-winning filmmaker and screenwriter. He has worked in Narrative, Experimenta, Documentary film and Music Video. He has an MFA from Boston University and has taught at the BU Academy of Media Production since 2007. Aviv also guest lectures at the university of Rhode Island.

Trish Ryan

Trish Ryan is the author of two memoirs, A Maze of Grace: A Memoir of Second Chances (Hachette 2010) and He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not: A Memoir of Finding Faith, Hope, and Happily Ever After (Hachette 2008). This fall she will be an Evelyn Danzig Haas ’39 Visiting Artist at Wheaton College in Norton, MA. Trish lives in Cambridge, MA with her husband Steve and their genetically improbable mixed-breed dog. You can visit Trish online at www.trishryanonline.com.