Whiting Award winner Jeffery Renard Allen teaches at The City University of New York and is an instructor in the graduate writing program at The New School. Born in Chicago in 1962, he holds a Ph.D. in English (Creative Writing) from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the author of a collection of poems, Harbors and Spirits (Moyer Bell), and a novel, Rails under My Back (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2000), which won The Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize for Fiction. Allen is presently at work on a novel based on the life of Thomas Greene Wiggins, a nineteenth century virtuoso and composer who performed under the stage name Blind Tom. A second poetry collection, Stellar Places, will be published in 2006. He will be teaching at THE ARC in Anacostia.

Khris Baxter is a screenwriter, producer, and script consultant. He has sold and optioned six screenplays to major Hollywood studios, including Voyage, produced by USA Pictures. His latest screenplay, Outrider, begins production in 2005. Khris teaches screenwriting at The Writer's Center in Bethesda, Gettysburg College, and at the Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing at Queens University in Charlotte, NC. He is a member of the Virginia Film Commission and lives in Reston, Virginia. He will be teaching at Jessup Prison (not open to the public, obviously).

Bijan C. Bayne, a columnist for Sports Central, lectures frequently on the social significance of Jackie Robinson.  His non-fiction book Sky Kings: Black Pioneers of Professional Basketball, was named to the Suggested Reading List of the Basketball Hall of Fame.  Bayne's work has been featured in Washington Post, The Boston Herald, and The Crisis.   His chapter on Black baseball in North Carolina appears in the book Baseball in the Carolinas (McFarland), and the anthology Basketball in America (Haworth features Bayne's essay on schoolyard basketball. He is currently at work researching a documentary film.

Louis Bayard is the author of the novel Mr. Timothy (HarperCollins), a New York Times Notable Book and one of People magazine's 10 best books of 2003.  His other novels are Fool's Errand and Endangered Species (Alyson).  His reviews and articles have appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Ms., Salon.com, and Nerve.com.  He is also a contributor to the anthologies 101 Damnations (St. Martin’s) and the upcoming The Worst Noel and To Breed or Not to Breed (HarperCollins). He will be teaching at SMYAL, the Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League, in Capitol Hill.

Kate Blackwell is a winner of the the Nebraska Review fiction prize, the So To Speak short-short contest, and the 2004 Larry Neal Fiction Prize given by the District of Columbia Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Her short story collection was a finalist for the 2003 Flannery O’Connor Prize. She has led story writing workshops at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, MD, for over ten years.

Michelle Brafman is pursuing a master’s degree in fiction writing at The Johns Hopkins University. Her short story “Skin” was recently selected for theatrical adaptation by Theater J. An Emmy award winning documentary producer, Ms. Brafman’s signature is her portrayal of communities through the use of intimate narratives. In addition, using the storytelling skills she developed as a filmmaker and writer, Ms. Brafman works as a writing consultant, helping identify and convey their own stories in personal statements and essays.

Susan Burgess-Lent is the author of two novels: In the Borderlands (Xlibris, 2000) and Chasing Midnight (publication pending). Her short stories and essays have been published by The World Press Institute, Wild Child Magazine, Washington Woman, Breakaway Books, Pictures and Stories, and she was featured in a DC anthology, Grace and Gravity, published by Paycock Press. In 2002, she was awarded the top Individual Artist Grant for Fiction by the Maryland State Arts Council.  Her second novel earned first place (Mainstream Fiction) in the 2004 Maryland Writers Association Novel Competition. She lives in Bethesda, MD

Author of 13 books, Sophy Burnham is a mystic, healer and seer. She has distinguished herself as a novelist, investigative journalist, playwright, and spiritual teacher. Her works include the two bestsellers, A Book of Angels and Angel Letters, (often credited with starting the “angel movement”) as well as an earlier New York Times bestseller, The Art Crowd. Her book For Writers Only (which is not only for writers) is about the artist and creativity. A frequent public speaker, she has appeared on many TV and radio shows. Her writings have been published in 22 languages around the world.

A native Washingtonian, Kenneth Carroll is widely published as a poet and essayist, and his short stories have appeared in Children of the Dream (1998 Pocketbooks), Shooting Star, and Gargoyle.   His play "The Mask" was produced by the African Continuum Theater Company, and "Make My Funk The P-Funk," was produced by Woolly Mammoth Theater.  A featured writer in Tellin' Stories, the Smithsonian’s exhibit on black writers, Carroll is the first Executive Director of DC WritersCorps, a past president of the African American Writers Guild, and a founding member of the African American Cultural Arts Center and the 8Rock Writers Collective.

Esther Cohen's first published article was an interview with Jayne Mansfield for the seventh grade paper. Jayne looked astounding, but didn't have much to say. Cohen has since written countless articles, poems, stories, and novels. Book Doctor, a novel about books, sex, creativity, and taxes, is a 2005 Counterpoint title. In 2006, she will publish another novel, Occupation (a love story) (Leapfrog) and Unseenamerica: Photos and Stories by Low Wage Workers (Harper/Collins). Cohen is the Executive Director of Bread and Roses, a national non-profit cultural program associated with Local ll99 New York and the Service Employees International Union. She lives in New York City.

Susan Coll is the author of two novels, karlmarx.com and Rockville Pike, and is currently at work on a third novel. She has contributed to publications including Washington Post Book World, The International Herald Tribune, and the Asian Wall Street Journal. She teaches at the Bethesda Writer’s Center, and lives in Maryland with her husband and three children.

Poet Christopher Conlon is the author of two books, Gilbert and Garbo in Love (Word Works, 2003) and The Weeping Time (Argonne House, 2004). Among other anthologies, Conlon edited the upcoming Poe's Lighthouse (Cemetery Dance, 2006), in which writers completed two dozen story fragments by Edgar Allan Poe. A collection of fiction, Thundershowers at Dusk, is due from Rock Village Publishing next year. A former Peace Corps Volunteer in Botswana, Conlon now teaches at Silver Spring's Nora School, where he runs a popular poetry reading series. His web site can be accessed at christopherconlon.com.

Susan K. Coti is an educator and teaching artist. She conducts writing/storytelling workshops to teachers in Washington, DC and is an advisory board member of the Center for Inspired Teaching. She also is a professional storyteller and performs her own work regionally. Ms. Coti is a grant recipient from Center for Creative Change, where she developed and implemented a program to teach children how to resolve disputes and communicate more effectively, in which the children wrote and performed their own scripts.

Patricia Elam's fiction and non-fiction has appeared in, among other publications, The Washington Post, Essence, and Newsday, and in anthologies such as Father’s Songs and New Stories from the South. A Winner of the 1997 O. Henry Award, she has been a commentator for National Public Radio, NBC News, CNN and the BBC. Patricia holds a B.A. from Adelphi University, a J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law and a M.F.A. from the University of Maryland. Patricia serves on the board of the PEN Faulkner Foundation. Her first novel, Breathing Room, was published in 2001 by Pocket Books/Simon and Schuster.

Barbara Esstman is the co-editor of A More Perfect Union (St. Martin's Press, 1998) and the author of The Other Anna, (Harcourt, 1993), which was adapted to film in 1995, and Night Ride Home (Harcourt, 1997; HarperCollins, 1998), which was adapted to film in 1999. Recognized by Redbook and the Pushcart Prizes, her short stories have appeared in numerous magazines, literary journals the anthology, Grace and Gravity, edited by Richard Peabody (Paycock Press, 2004).  A NEA, VCCA and Maryland Commission for the Arts fellow, she teaches at various universities and the Writer's Center in Bethesda, MD. 

W. Ralph Eubanks is the author of Ever Is a Long Time: a Journey into Mississippi's Dark Past (Basic Books), which Washington Post critic Jonathan Yardley named as one of the best nonfiction books of 2003. He has contributed articles to the Washington Post Outlook and Style sections, the Chicago Tribune, Preservation, and National Public Radio. A graduate of the University of Mississippi (B.A.) and the University of Michigan (M.A., English Language and Literature), Ralph lives in the Chevy Chase neighborhood of Washington, DC, with his wife and three children and is Director of Publishing at the Library of Congress.

Yael Flusberg's writing has been published in DC Poets against the War, Lilith, the Potomac Review, Sojourners, and Travelers’ Tales, among others. She received an Honorable Mention for Creative Nonfiction in Writer’s Digest 72nd Annual Writing Contest in 2003, and a grant from the DC Commission on Arts & Humanities in 2004. She works as a coach and consultant with social change organizations and leaders, and is the co-founder of Sol & Soul, a nonprofit which nurtures and promotes emerging and seasoned artists of conscience.

Darlene Ferguson is a poet and advocate who works with peace and justice programs both locally and internationally.   She has worked as a public school teacher, worked selecting exchange students, and on research with teachers in Russia on collaborative research targeting underachievers. She teaches seminars to students ranging from elementary through college level, which focus on homelessness, environmental issues, and other broader social issues.

Jonathan Safran Foer was born in 1977. He has had stories published in the New Yorker, The Paris Review, and Conjunctions, and is the editor of an anthology of writing inspired by the bird boxes of Joseph Cornell, A Convergence of Birds. His first novel, Everything Is Illuminated, was published in 2002 and quickly established itself as an international bestseller. A movie based on the book was released by Warner Independent in September 2005. His second novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close was published by Houghton Mifflin in 2005, and was again a bestseller around the world.

Brian Gilmore was born and raised in Washington D.C. A writer, poet, and lawyer, he is currently teaching at the Howard University School of Law in its Clinical Law Program. Publications include two collections of poetry, Elvis Presley is Alive and Well and Living in Harlem, (Third World Press 1993) and Jungle Nights and Soda Fountain Rags: Poem for Duke Ellington (Karibu Books 2000). He is also currently a columnist with the Progressive Media Project and a contributing writer for JAZZ TIMES Magazine. His writings have been published in Gargoyle, The Crisis, Obsidian II, The Detroit Free Press, The Progressive, The Washington Post, The Miami Herald and The Baltimore Sun.

Patricia Griffith is the author of four novels, the latest Supporting the Sky, was a Literary Guild selection. Her third novel, The World around Midnight, was named one of the best books of the year by the American Library Association. She has had four plays produced and her short stories have twice been included in the O. Henry Prize Stories. She is a co-chairman of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation and an associate professor at The George Washington University.

Donna Hemans is the author of River Woman, which was a finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in 2003 and co-winner of the 2003-4 Towson University Prize for Literature.  Donna’s short fiction has appeared in Caribbean Writer, Crab Orchard Review, MaComere: the Journal of Caribbean Women Writers and Scholars and THEMA. She has served as the Lannan Visiting Creative Writer in Residence at Georgetown University, she received an MFA from American University. 

Dallas Hudgens is the author of a novel, Drive Like Hell, (Scribner, 2005). He first worked in Washington as an assistant producer for "The Sound of Writing," a radio program which was broadcast on National Public Radio in the 1990s. A Washington area freelance writer, Hudgens has been a frequent contributor to the Washington Post. 

Paul Jaskunas is the author of the novel Hidden, which won the Friends of American Writers Award for Fiction and was selected by Amazon.com editors as one of the best 50 books of 2004. Raised in Indiana (mostly), he attended Oberlin College and Cornell University, and resides in Washington, D.C.

Wendi Kaufman holds an MFA in English/Fiction Writing from George Mason University. Her fiction has appeared in various literary journals and magazines, including The New Yorker, Fiction, New York Stories and Other Voices.  Her stories have been anthologized in Scribner's Best of the Fiction Workshops '98 (guest editor, Carol Shields), Elements of Literature (Holt, Rinehart and Winston) and most recently, Faultlines: Stories of Divorce (Penguin/Putnam). Wendi is a recipient of a fellowship from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the winner of a Mary Roberts Rhinehart award for short fiction, and a 2000 Breadloaf Writer's Conference David Sokolov Scholar in Fiction. She is a frequent contributor and reviewer for The Washington Post and teaches creative writing at Johns Hopkins University.  

Matthew Klam is a recipient of a PEN/Robert Bingham Award, a National Endowment of the Arts, a Whiting Writer’s Award, and an O’Henry Award. His first book, Sam The Cat and Other Stories, was a New York Times Notable Book and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book of the Year. He's a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine.

Kate Lehrer writes novels, book reviews, short stories, and essays. She is also a frequent panelist on the Diane Rehm Show Book Club on National Public Radio. Her novels are Confessions of a Bigamist (Harmony 2004); When They Took Away the Man in the Moon (Harmony 1993); Best Intentions (Atlantic-Little Brown 1987). Her historically inspired work, Out of Eden (Harmony, 1996/ paperback, Capital Press, 2003), won the Western Heritage Award. Her work also appears in the anthologies: Snakes, Somewhere Else, and Three Minutes or Less. Kate Lehrer grew up in Texas and lives in Washington, D.C.

Mike Maggio is the author of Sifting through the Madness (Xlibris, Inc, 2001), a collection of stories. His fiction and poetry have appeared in Potomac Review, Pleiades, Apalachee Quarterly, The L.A. Weekly, The Washington CityPaper, VOL. NO MAGAZINE, Gypsy, Pig Iron and Live Poets. He holds a Master's degree in Applied Linguistics from USC and works in the field of International Education. He has also published a chapbook entitled Oranges from Palestine (Mardi Gras Press, 1996) and a collection of poetry on cassette entitled Your Secret Is Safe with Me, issued by Black Bear Publications.

Meena Arora Nayak is an assistant professor of English at Northern Virginia Community College, where she teaches Mythology, Creative Writing and English Composition. She is also an author of two novels, In the Aftermath and About Daddy, and a Children’s book, The Puffin Book of Legendary Lives. Meena believes that teaching and writing are both osmotic processes, both involving the diffusion of ideas and shared experiences.

Howard Norman is the author of The Bird Artist, a National Book Award Finalist. He also wrote The Northern Lights, a 1987 National Book Award Finalist, and Kiss in the Hotel Joseph Conrad and Other Stories. His books have been translated into twelve languages.

Lisa Page is a freelance writer based in the Washington, DC area. She has worked as an editor, speechwriter, media spokesperson and teacher of creative writing. She was literary host of the cable access TV program, The Coffeehouse. Her work has appeared in various magazines and anthologies. Originally from Chicago, she makes her home outside Washington, DC with her husband and son.

Judith Hillman Paterson earned a BA in Sociology from Hollins College and a Ph.D. in English from Auburn University.  A renowned journalist and memoirist, she has lived in Washington, DC for 24 years. Paterson's non-fiction has been published widely in national magazines and newspapers, including The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times. Her numerous books include Be Somebody, a biography of women's rights activist Marguerite Rawalt, and Sweet Mystery: a Book of Remembering (FSG,1996), which focuses on the history of her family in the context of Alabama's black and white history.

Richard Peabody was born in Northwest DC and has lived in the Washington area most of his life. He is editor of Gargoyle Magazine (founded in 1976), and has published a novella, two books of short stories, six books of poems, plus an e-book, and co-edited six anthologies with Lucinda Ebersole including--Mondo Barbie (St. Martin's Press, 1993) and Conversations with Gore Vidal (Univ. of Mississippi, 2005).  Last year he solo edited Grace and Gravity: Fiction by Washington Area Women (Paycock Press, 2004).  Peabody teaches fiction writing for the Johns Hopkins Advanced Studies Program.

Liz Poliner is the author of Mutual Life & Casualty, a novel in stories.  In addition, her stories and poems have appeared widely in literary journals including Kenyon Review, Southern Review, Other Voices, and The Laurel Review.  A recipient of numerous grants from the D.C. Commission on the Arts & Humanities, and fellowships to Yaddo and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, she has also been named a Tennessee Williams Scholar in Fiction at the Sewanee Writer's Conference and a Bernard O'Keefe Scholar in Fiction at the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference. 

Georgia Robertson is a writer and a grief counselor in private practice, as well as a bereavement councellor at the Montgomery Hospice in Rockville.  She has lectured extensively throughout the area on bereavement, tragedy assistance, conscious living and dying, and on the therapeutic uses of creative writing. She will be participating in Washington Write-a-Story Day during her "Writing and Healing" workshop at Smith Farm Center for Healing.

Dana Roeser is the 2005-2006 Jenny McKean Moore Writer-in-Washington at The George Washington University. Her collection of poems, Beautiful Motion, won the Samuel French Morse Prize from Northwestern University Press. In 2005, she won the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award. Roeser's work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in The Iowa Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Massachusetts Review, Northwest Review, The Antioch Review, Indiana Review, Notre Dame Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Passages North, Sou’wester, The Laurel Review, Pool, Shade, and other publications, and has been featured on Poetry Daily (www.poems.com).

Carly Sachs (Regional Manager, NW DC) received her BA from Kent State and her MFA from The New School. She currently teaches creative writing at George Washington University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best American Poetry 2004, goodfoot, PMS, Another Chicago Magazine, Runes Review, Alimentum, inkandashes.com, notellmotel.org and on the buses of Cleveland, Ohio. Her anthology, the why and later, is forthcoming from deep cleveland press.

Lisa Schamess is the author of a novel, Borrowed Light, (SMU Press, 2002), winner of the Texas Institute of Literature’s Steven Turner award for First Fiction and a finalist for the Institute’s Best Novel by a Texas Author, as well as for the Paterson Fiction prize the same year. and a three-time Creative Writing Fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (1995, 1996, 2004). A recipient of a 2004 Artist Fellowship from the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, an American University Merit Fellowship in Creative Writing, and a 2004 Mellon Committee Fellowship from American University, Ms. Schamess recently completed a
novella, A Soloist, and is currently at work on a second novel about DC.

Andrea Schultz (Regional Manager, Anacostia) is an undergraduate creative writing major at The George Washington University. Her writing won a first prize with the National Independence Festival of Creative Arts (NIFCA) in her native Barbados. A military veteran, Andrea Schultz was featured in the Tidewater Community College Newspaper (AP) from 2001--2003.

Poems by Dean Smith (Regional Manager, SW and Special Locations) have appeared in Poetry East, Open City, The Pearl, The Virginia Literary Review, The Charlotte Review, Gulf Stream and most recently in the DC Poets Against the War Anthology. His book of poems, American Boy, won the 2000 Washington Writer's Prize and was also awarded the Maryland Prize for Literature in 2001 for the best book published by a Maryland writer over the past three years.  His prose has appeared in the Baltimore City Paper, IndieWire, The Woodstock Independent and Mr. Beller's Neighborhood.  He received an MFA in Poetry in 1989 from Columbia University.

Mary L. Tabor’s short story collection, The Woman Who Never Cooked, won Mid-List Press’s First Series Award; Mid-List will publish the book in January 2006. Her fiction has recently appeared in Chautauqua Literary Journal, Image, the Mid-American Review, Chelsea, Hayden’s Ferry Review, American Literary Review. She is currently completing a novel. She worked as a high school English teacher, then as an executive in a DC trade association. At age 49 when her youngest child graduated college, she signed the last tuition check, quit, and changed her life to write. She teaches at George Washington University and the Smithsonian’s Campus-on-the-Mall.

Mary L. Westcott is the author of three books of poetry, Brain Custody, Fishing for Light, Lopsided Love (Argonne Hotel Press).  Her work has appeared over 35 literary magazines including Potomac Review, Lucid Stone and others.  After a career with the National Institutes of Health, she now consults on a variety of grant review projects.  Westcott taught and mentored children in the Montgomery County schools and has participated in a number of writing seminars at the Writers Center in Bethesda and elsewhere.  In 1987 she received a doctorate in sociology from the University of Maryland.

Mary-Sherman Willis is a fourth-generation Washingtonian. She grew up in Northwest Washington and attended the Horace Mann, Sidwell Friends and Madeira Schools. She has a degree in journalism from the University of Maryland. As a writer and editor, she contributed to dozens of volumes in the Time-Life Books series. She’s been a magazine writer, a ghost writer, and a garden writer. She also published poetry and book reviews in various magazines and anthologies, such as the New Republic, Poet Lore and Archipelago.org. She recently received an MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College and is teaching creative writing at George Washington University.

Helen Winternitz is the author of two books of non-fiction, East Along the Equator: Traveling Up the Congo and into Mobutu's Zaire, and A Season of Stones: Living with the Palestinians. She has worked as a journalist The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Post, and Times of London, and reviews books for New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times. Helen writes primarily about Africa and the Middle East and is at work on a fiction collection.

James Zug (Regional Manager, NE DC) is the author of Squash: A History of the Game (Scribner) and American Traveler: The Life and Adventures of John Ledyard, the Man Who Dreamed of Walking the World (Basic Books), as well as the editor of The Last Voyage of Captain Cook: The Collected Writings of John Ledyard (National Geographic, 2005). He has a masters in nonfiction writing from Columbia, where he wrote a privately-published history of a Quaker summer community in Pennsylvania. A new book, Anvil of Struggle: The History of the Guardian, South Africa's Anti-Apartheid Newspaper 1937-1963 is forthcoming.