Conference Team - WriteAngles Conference

Planning Committee

Thank you to everyone who has worked so hard behind the scenes to bring WriteAngles together.

Connie Senior

Connie Senior is the author of two novels in a fantasy trilogy with a third and final book due in 2026. She lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Don Lesser

Don Lesser is the author of Crystal Springs. He has an MFA from Umass Amherst and is currently working on the WriteAngles fundraising committee.

Ellen Meeropol

Ellen Meeropol is the author of the novels The Lost Women of Azalea Court, Her Sister’s Tattoo, Kinship of Clover, On Hurricane Island, House Arrest, and Sometimes an Island, forthcoming in April 2026.

Fungai Tichawangana

Fungai is a web developer and writer with a passion for helping creatives use digital tools to launch and market their work. He is the founder of Artist Dynamix, a digital marketing agency based in Amherst MA.

Ginny Sullivan

Ginny Sullivan is an early childhood educator and landscape designer whose writing explores these worlds. Lens on Outdoor Learning (2011) is an ethnography of children's learning in nature. Her poems have been published in The Arkansas Review, Beyond Words, Valley Voices, and the Naugatuck River Review, among others. She is (naturally) working on a manuscript for a book.

Jacqueline Sheehan

Jacqueline Sheehan is a New York Times Bestselling author of six novels. She is one of the founders of Straw Dog Writers Guild.

Jamie Hennick

Jamie (she/her) writes and works in western Massachusetts, where she can be found walking in the woods, swimming in the river, and/or working on her debut short fiction collection. She is happy to be connected to the Straw Dog community! Her work can be found at here.

Jan Maher

Jan Maher's two novels, Heaven, Indiana and Earth As It Is and short-story collection The Persistence of Memory and Other Stories have each been designated Kirkus Reviews “Best Of.” Her award-winning plays include “Intruders,” “Ismene,” and “Widow’s Walk.” She is co-founder of The LAVA Center, a community arts and humanities center in Greenfield, where her play “Ismene” is being produced in September, 2025.
Visit Her site here.

Joan Axelrod-Contrada

Joan Axelrod is a longtime member of the WriteAngles organizing committee. She writes books for young people as well as a monthly column for The Daily Hampshire Gazette, which she is hoping to include in a collection of essays.

Julie Wittes Schlack

Julie Wittes Schlack is the author of the essay collection, This All-at-Onceness (named by Kirkus Reviews as one of the best Indie Nonfiction books of 2019) and the novel, Burning and Dodging. She lives with her husband in a co-housing community in Northampton.

Liz Bedell

Liz Bedell (she/her) writes and teaches in western Massachusetts, where she is currently trying to make sense of the early fragments of a new novel project. She holds an MFA in Fiction and Literary Translation from VCFA.

Lynn Bechtel

Lynn Bechtel has published articles, essays, and poetry in professional magazines, literary journals, and anthologies. She worked for many years as an editor and writer for Center for Responsive Schools.

Mark Schlack

Mark Schlack writes sci-fi and spec fic in Northampton, MA. His work includes Replay Earth and the upcoming The Turn. He has written and edited extensively about advanced technologies for various magazines and websites over the last 35 years.

Morgan Sheehan

Morgan is a writer, teacher, and a freelance editor. She’s a published poet, essayist, and a produced playwright. You can find her working on her new YA novel, practicing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, or dealing with her flock of ducks.

Patricia Lee Lewis

(aka Pat Sackrey) a co-founder and first president of Straw Dog Writers Guild, is an award-winning poet. She has published two books of poetry, A Kind of Yellow (first-place winner of Writer’s Digest’s International Chapbook Poetry contest); and the full-length High Lonesome. Patricia’s first novel, Thorns of the Mesquite, in paperback and as an audio book, will launch in mid-November 2025, on her 88th birthday. She is beyond grateful to live and work in the company of other writers.
Visit her site here.

PD Pin

Patricia Pin worked as the Programs Director at The Mount, author Edith Wharton’s home, a literary center in western Massachusetts. In partnership with the Straw Dog Writers Guild, Pin helped establish an Emerging Writers Residency at The Mount, now in its fifth year. She works at Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in the role of Advancement Officer and is the coordinator of the WriteAngles volunteer conference committee.

Stephanie Shafram

Stephanie Shafran moved to Northampton in 2017, after retiring from a teaching and counseling career. Over the past three decades, she has published poetry, flash fiction, and creative non-fiction in anthologies and literary journals. In 2020, Stephanie published a chapbook titled Awakening. Currently, she is writing a memoir.