2024 Conference Presenters

Prepare to embark on a literary journey like never before as we proudly introduce the extraordinary authors headlining WriteAngles Conference. Our lineup of presenters represents a diverse tapestry of storytelling prowess, each weaving narratives that captivate, inspire, and resonate with the essence of the written word. From seasoned novelists to groundbreaking poets, our authors bring a wealth of experience and creativity to the heart of Write Angles.

Keynote Presenter: Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is a novelist, poet, essayist, and non-traditional scholar. She has published five books of poetry, including The Age of Phillis, based on fifteen years of archival research on the life and times of Phillis Wheatley Peters, a formerly enslaved person who was the first African-American woman to publish a book. The Age of Phillis was longlisted for the National Book Award in Poetry, was a finalist for The Los Angeles Times Book Award, a finalist for the George Washington Prize in History, and won the NAACP Image Award for Literary Work: Poetry as well as the Lenore Marshall Prize in Poetry. Jeffers’s first novel, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, was chosen for Oprah’s Book Club, longlisted for the National Book Award in Fiction, and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, the First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction, and for the Kirkus Prize. Love Songs won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize in Fiction, and the First Novelist’s Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. A native southerner, Jeffers is currently the Paul and Carol Daube Sutton Professor of English at the University of Oklahoma.

Courtney Andree

Before joining the Massachusetts Center for the Book, Courtney Andree worked in publishing at the University of Massachusetts Press, where she managed the Juniper Literary Prize program, and previously held positions at Yale University Press, and W.W. Norton. Andree holds a PhD in English and American Literature from Washington University in Saint Louis, and has taught college courses on literature, writing, and film studies. Originally from Northern Minnesota, Andree has been based in the Pioneer Valley since 2017. Twitter.com/massbook

Yasmine Ameli

Yasmine Ameli is an Iranian American poet and essayist based in western Massachusetts.. She holds a BA in English from Johns Hopkins University and an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Virginia Tech. Her work appears inPoetry, Ploughshares, The Sun, Southern Review, Narrative, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing through Grub Street and independently as a holistic writing coach.

Mary-Kim Arnold

Mary-Kim Arnold is a writer, artist, and educator. She is the author of The Fish & The Dove: Poems (Noemi Press) and Litany for the Long Moment (Essay Press). A transnational, transracial Korean-born adoptee, her text and textile work explore themes of hybridity, dislocation, racial and cultural identity, and gender. A graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts (MFA) and of Brown University (BA, MFA) and former faculty in Brown’s Nonfiction Writing Program, Mary-Kim currently serves as Interim Academic Dean at Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Lynn Bechtel

Lynn Bechtel is a writer, editor, teacher, gardener, and inconsistent meditator. She has an MFA in Writing from University of Massachusetts and worked for many years as an editor and writer at Center for Responsive Schools in Turners Falls, Massachusetts. Since leaving full-time work, she’s been exploring the world of creative nonfiction and has had essays published in The Berkshire Review, The Sunlight Press, Entropy, and in an anthology, Grief Becomes Her.

DeMisty D. Bellinger

DeMisty D. Bellinger is the author of the poetry collections Rubbing Elbows and Peculiar Heritage, and of the novel New to Liberty. Her poetry, essays, and fiction can be found many places online, including The Rumpus, Mom Egg Review, and Kweli Journal, as well as in many print journals and anthologies. DeMisty teaches writing in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, where she lives with her husband and twin daughters. You can learn more about DeMisty at demistybellinger.com.

Chelsea Catherine

Chelsea Catherine won the Mary C Mohr award for nonfiction through the Southern Indiana Review and their second book, Summer of the Cicadas, won the Quill Prose Award from Red Hen Press. In 2022, they spent a month in Alaska at the Alderworks Artists Retreat. They are part of a cohort of ValleyCreates artist grantees in Western Massachusetts and their work can be found in Hobart, December, The Florida Review, and others.

Leah Hager Cohen

Leah Hager Cohen was born in Manhattan and raised at Lexington School for the Deaf in Queens (where her parents worked) and later in Nyack, New York. At age 16, Leah enrolled as a drama student at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, then transferred to Hampshire College to study writing. She joined an arts brigade in Nicaragua, worked as a nanny in Berkeley, and freelanced as an ASL interpreter before attending Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Leah is the author of seven novels, five nonfiction books, as well as various and sundry essays, articles and reviews.

María Luisa Arroyo Cruzado

Born in Manatí, PR & raised in Springfield, MA, María Luisa Arroyo Cruzado, M.F.A., M.A., writes & publishes poems & essays that reflect the cultures & languages dynamically intersecting in her life experiences & imagination: American English, Puerto Rican Spanish, German, & Farsi. María has been facilitating poetry workshops for years including at the Mass Poetry Festival, Split This Rock Poetry Festival, in the community in partnership with libraries, and online.

Nilanjana (Buju) Dasgupta

Nilanjana (Buju) Dasgupta is Provost Professor of Psychology and the Director of the Institute of Diversity Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She received her PhD from Yale University and a bachelor’s degree from Smith College. She is a leader in research on implicit bias and diversity science, funded by the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health; featured in the New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, Wired, Slate, and the Boston Globe.

Lyrical Faith

A Bronx native, Lyrical Faith (she/her) is an educator, activist and spoken word poet. She is the 3rd Ranked Woman Poet in the World as of the 2022 Women of the World (Virtual) Poetry Slam, and is co-founder of the longest running open mic & showcase in Harlem, established in 2012. Her work has been featured on media platforms such as Huffington Post Black Voices, Write About Now, and News 12 The Bronx. Lyrical is also the Co-Producer of the Valley Voices Storytelling Slam with New England Public Media at the Academy of Music Theatre in Northampton, MA.

Mary Foulk

A graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts, Mary Warren Foulk (she/her) has been published in The Hollins Critic, Palette Poetry, Fjords Review, Silkworm, The Gay & Lesbian Review, and North American Review, among other publications. She has two award-winning chapbooks, If I Could Write You a Happier Ending (dancing girl press) and Erasures of My Coming Out (Letter) (The Poetry Box). Her newest collection, The Show Must Go On, is forthcoming from Fernwood Press (Summer 2024).

Tzivia Gover

Tzivia Gover is the author of seven books including Dreaming on the Page: Tap into Your Midnight Mind to Supercharge Your Writing. Her poems have been published in dozens of journals and anthologies including The Mom Egg Review, The Naugatuck River Review, and Lilith Magazine. Her articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and other national and regional publications. A certified Dreamwork Professional she teaches domestically and abroad.

Judy Holmes

Judy Owens Holmes is a retired long-term substitute teacher for the city of Springfield, Massachusetts, who in addition to her academic degrees holds a STREET PHD from the School of Hard Knocks. A former addict, Judy coordinates a Spiritual Transition women’s outreach group. She joined Voices From Inside in 2017 and now serves on the VFI Board of Directors as Vice President. Judy also facilitates a VFI workshop at ALL INCLUSIVE SOCIAL SERVICES located in Springfield, Massachusetts

Audrey I-Wei Huang

Audrey I-Wei Huang is a frontline bookseller at Belmont Books. She’s been with the store since it opened in June 2017. She is also a lapsed lawyer, happily not practicing the law while discovering all the books. Since 2021, she has served on the American Book Association’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee. Audrey reads across almost all genres and age groups but primarily reads BIPOC authors with all the intersections. One of her favorite things to do in the store is to rip open the ARC envelopes to see what treasure lies inside.

Millicent Jackson

Millicent Jackson is a fiction writer currently based in Western Massachusetts. Her fiction has been featured in Today’s Black Woman magazine and The Power to Write by Caroline Joy Adams. For ten of those years as a professional writer, she facilitated writing workshops for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women at a Western Massachusetts correctional facility. The last two years, she served as the Executive Director for the non-profit Voices from Inside. Millicent is the recipient of 2008 and 2017 scholarships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Ma and an 2018 alum of Tin House Writers Workshop in Portland, Oregon.

Regine Jackson

Regine Jackson, a Springfield, Massachusetts native, is a writer driven by her passion for storytelling. Being a voracious reader since she was a child, Jackson yearned for more stories where the characters looked like her and the people around her. While usually focused on science-fiction, horror, and fantasy genres, she also delves into inner-city life through prose and poetry. Jackson aspires to empower BIPOC women to share their stories, representing their voices and experiences in her work while nurturing her own craft and bringing creativity to her city.

Jennifer Jacobson

Mother, writer, curriculum developer, and community gardener, Jennifer Jacobson’s prose appears in Switch, The Masters Review, Chronogram, Storytelling Magazine and elsewhere. Currently Director of Community Engagement & Alumni Relations at UMass Amherst’s MFA for Poets and Writers and the Juniper Initiative, Jennifer also serves as co-chair of Paperbark literary magazine, a convener for the Council on the Uncertain Human Future, and, since 2014, as an instructor for Smith’s pre-college program in creative writing.

Silk Jazmyne

Silk Jazmyne is a student of life who loves the artistically strange and narrative in all its forms. She’s a Speculative fiction writer and teaching artist for Kitchen Table Literary Arts, Grubstreet Writers and The Porch. She received her M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the University of Tampa. Her work has appeared in Midnight & Indigo, African Writer Magazine, Ekphrastic Exhibition in Tandem: Back | Forth.

Celia Jeffries

Celia Jeffries is the author of the award-winning novel Blue Desert. Her work has appeared in numerous newspapers and literary magazines including Westview, Writer’s Chronicle, Solstice Literary Magazine, and Puerto del Sol, as well as the anthology Beyond the Yellow Wallpaper. Jeffries holds an MA from Brandeis and worked in news and educational publishing before earning an MFA from Lesley University.

Sarah Levine

Sarah Levine’s debut poetry collection, Each Knuckle with Sugar, won the 2022 Driftwood Press Open Reading Contest (Driftwood Press, 2024). She is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, author of chapbooks, Take Me Home (Finishing Line Press, 2020) and Her Man (New Megaphone Press, 2014) and her poems have appeared in Passages North, Best New Poets anthology, Green Mountains Review among other publications. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, MAT from Smith College, and BA from UMASS Amherst Honors College. Levine is a 2023-2024 Teachers for Global Classrooms Fulbright award recipient and teaches 7th Grade ELA and 12th Grade AP Literature at Williston Northampton School where she currently holds the Richard C. Gregory Endowed Chair.

Patricia Lee Lewis

Patricia Lee Lewis, MFA/Poetry, Vermont College of Fine Arts; BA Smith College, is an award-winning poet and a founding mother of Straw Dog Writers Guild. A native Texan, she lived 43 years on Patchwork Farm Retreat’s mountaintop, Westhampton MA, leading hundreds of writing workshops and retreats, and 74 writing & yoga retreats internationally. Now living in downtown Northampton, MA, she is forever working on a novel set on a West Texas ranch in 1938.

Nicole M. Young-Martin

Nicole M. Young-Martin (she/her) is a performer, poet, playwright, director, event producer/curator, and nonprofit professional with over 20 years of experience combined in these areas. Nicole has worked across various disciplines, including theatre, poetry, and classical music. She released her debut spoken word album, In/Put: Live from the Valley in 2019. Her play, get (t)his!, received a 2009 James Baldwin Memorial Playwriting Award from the Five Colleges Multicultural Theater Committee and has since been produced in Michigan and New York City. Nicole is the producer of the Black Writers Read podcast.

Lydia McOscar

Lydia McOscar is the managing editor of Restless Books. She entered the publishing world as trade sales manager for Artbook | D.A.P. Prior to that she spent a decade at Brookline Booksmith, working as a buyer. During her tenure she created sections for Latinx studies, Indigenous studies, disability studies, self-care, horror fiction, and short stories. Lydia also held positions at Brookline Booksmith as an events director and used book buyer.

Alene Moroni

Alene Moroni has worked almost every possible public library job over a multi-decade career and is currently the head of technical services at the Forbes Library in Northampton. Her favorite aspects of her calling include collection development (procuring and managing library materials) and readers’ advisory (recommending great stories to patrons). She calls Seattle her home and has lived in western Massachusetts since 2015 with her librarian partner and an array of permanent and foster cats.

Nerissa Nields

Nerissa Nields has written 21 CDs-worth of songs for the beloved and lauded folk-rock band The Nields. At the height of touring and performing, she became a novelist. Her publications include a YA novel, Plastic Angel and All Together Singing in the Kitchen, as well as How to Be an Adult: A Creative Guide to Navigating Your Twenties. Her work has been published in numerous journals, including Brevity, American Songwriter, The Huffington Post, The Maine Review, and the Boston Globe. She is currently working on The Nields’ twenty-second album (tentatively titled Library) and the third novel in a trilogy about a family band.

Bethany Powell

Bethany Powell is a writer and bookseller living Western Mass. Her speculative poetry has appeared in magazines like Asimov’s, Liminality, and Strange Horizons. She works at the Odyssey Bookshop and is a recent graduate from Mount Holyoke College through the Frances Perkins Program. She facilitates restorative writing workshops for women in recovery and experiencing incarceration with Voices From Inside.

Julie Wittes Schlack

Julie Wittes Schlack is a writer, teacher, and editor. Kirkus Reviews named her personal essay collection, This All-at-Onceness, one of the Best Independent Nonfiction Books of 2019, and described her novel, Burning and Dodging, as “An astute and absorbing study of personal growth, human connection, and the nature of reality.” Julie is a regular contributor to WBUR’s journal of opinions and ideas, Cognoscenti. Her short stories, poetry, and essays have appeared in numerous journals, including Shenandoah, The Writer’s Chronicle, The Boston Globe, The Dos Passos Review, Eleven Eleven, Ninth Letter, Phoebe, St. Ann’s Review, and Tampa Review.

Layla Schlack

Layla Schlack is a writer, editor and educator. She has been editing print magazines about wine, food and travel – including Whetstone, Wine Enthusiast, Fine Cooking, and Hemispheres — for more than 15 years. Her articles about the food industry and its history have appeared in numerous publications, including Whetstone, The Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Toast, and Taste. She has an MFA in Creative & Professional Writing from Western Connecticut State University and is coauthoring a book titled Communion: Pairing for the People with Cha McCoy.

Christopher J. Sparks

October Skies slung so low
Tree kaleidoscope dreams float
Wet and shimmering with half rememberings
Of the season unlacing.

Lisken Van Pelt Dus

Lisken Van Pelt Dus teaches languages, writing, and martial arts in western Massachusetts. Her poetry can be found in many journals, including most recently Sand Hills Literary Magazine, Book of Matches, Split Rock Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Sky Island Journal, the Ekphrastic Review, and in anthologies such as the Crafty Poet Anthology Series. Available books include a full-length collection, What We’re Made Of (2016), and a chapbook, Letters to my Dead (2022).