Fiction & Poetry
Christine Adams
Christine Adams has authored two collections of poetry: Setting the Table in the Age of Reason and Quatrains, the first of which will be released by Propertius Press, Lynchburg Virginia in May, 2024. Currently Chris is in the final research stages for a piece of creative nonfiction, a local history from the perspective of a 235 year-old former mill. The volume has a working title of Homespun: A Biography of a Connecticut Cottage, which is how she perceives her poetry: handcrafted with intention and borne in the spirit of love.
Laurie Lico Albanese
Laurie Lico Albanese is the award-winning author of Hester, a re-imagining of The Scarlet Letter that gives a voice to Hester Prynne, America’s original defiant single mother. Hester is an Audible Best Books of 2022, an IndieNext and Canadian and American Librarians selection, a Gillian Flynn Best Books of Fall, a Book of the Month club selection, and finalist in the Goodreads Best Books of the Year. Albanese earned her MFA in 2016 and teaches writing at Montclair State University. Previous books include Stolen Beauty, The Miracles of Prato, and a memoir in verse. She lives in Montclair with her husband and their two rescue dogs, and is the mother of two grown children.
Joanne Ashe
Joanne Ashe hails from Montclair, New Jersey where her love for the written word was nourished. She is currently a Special Education Teacher, Poet, Spoken Word Artist, and Stand-up Comic who is pursuing her MFA in Creative and Professional Writing at William Paterson University (WPU). Joanne is an active member of Succeed2gether’s Montclair Literary Festival and believes in the immutable fact that poets write from their lived experiences and emphatically insists that EVERY POET IS GUILTY OF ARSON or should be! Her poems are permeated by the power of black women yet seek to empower all women through use of imagery and idioms, creativity and colloquialisms, satire and simile. Joanne’s poetry has been published in “African Voices Magazine,” as well as in Centenary University’s student anthology, “Prism.” She has had the honor of sharing stages with Amiri, Amina and Ras Baraka, Haki Madhubuti, and other prolific writers. Her poetry has been offered as fuel around the world from San Francisco to Senegal, from Georgia to Ghana, from Baltimore to Burkina Faso. The culmination of her MFA Studies will be a collection of her writings in May of 2024.
David Baldacci
David Baldacci is a global #1 bestselling author, and one of the world’s favorite storytellers. His books are published in over 45 languages and in more than 80 countries, with 150 million copies sold worldwide. His works have been adapted for both feature film and television. David Baldacci is also the cofounder, along with his wife, of the Wish You Well Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting literacy efforts across America. Still a resident of his native Virginia, he invites you to visit him at DavidBaldacci.com and his foundation at WishYouWellFoundation.org. Photo © John Groo
Clare Beams
Clare Beams is the author of the novel The Illness Lesson, which was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and the story collection We Show What We Have Learned, which won the Bard Fiction Prize and was a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize, the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award. She was a finalist for the 2023 Joyce Carol Oates Prize and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences, MacDowell, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation. She lives with her husband and two daughters in Pittsburgh and teaches in the Randolph College MFA program. Photo © Kristi Jan Hoover
Maisy Card
Maisy Card is the author of the novel These Ghosts Are Family, which won an American Book Award, the 2021 OCM Bocas Prize in fiction and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and the LA Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review Daily, The New York Times, Guernica, and other publications. She is currently a public librarian and a fiction editor for The Brooklyn Rail. She lives in Newark, NJ. Photo © Tehsuan Glover
Betty Cayouette
Betty Cayouette is an author, viral video content creator and cinematographer. She graduated Summa Cum Laude from Brandeis University in only three years, and currently lives in Salem, Massachusetts. Betty created @bettysbooklist, the viral TikTok/Instagram account which is one of the top book recommendation accounts in the world and is featured in outlets such as The Boston Globe, Euronews, Fox News, The London Times and Glamour UK. One Last Shot is her debut novel.
Abraham Yu-Young Chang
Abraham Yu-Young Chang is an award-winning, published poet with an MFA in creative writing from New York University. He has worked in the publishing industry since 2000 and currently manages Special Sales for Simon & Schuster. He lives in Forest Hills, Queens, with his wife. Photo © Erica R. Levin
Vanessa Chan
Vanessa Chan is the Malaysian author of The Storm We Made, a national bestseller, Good Morning America Book Club Pick and BBC Radio 2 Book Club pick. Acquired by international publishers in a flurry of auctions, the novel, her first, will be published in more than twenty languages worldwide. Her other work has been published in Vogue, Esquire, and more. Vanessa grew up in Malaysia and is now based mostly in Brooklyn. Photo © Mary Inhea Kang
Catherine Chung
Catherine Chung is the author of the novels The Tenth Muse and Forgotten Country. She has a degree in mathematics from the University of Chicago and worked at a think tank in Santa Monica before receiving her MFA from Cornell University. In 2015 Buzzfeed named her one of 32 Essential Asian American Writers. She was named a Granta New Voice, a Director's Visitor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and a winner of the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize. She has received fellowships and awards from the PEN/Hemingway Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and Civitella Ranieri. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, and Granta. Photo © Giorgia Fanelli
Gina Chung
Gina Chung is a Korean American writer from New Jersey currently living in Brooklyn, New York. A recipient of the Pushcart Prize, she is a 2021-2022 Center for Fiction/Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellow and holds an MFA in fiction from The New School. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, Catapult, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Idaho Review, The Rumpus, Pleiades, F(r)iction, and Wigleaf, among others, and has been recognized by several contests, including the American Short(er) Fiction Contest, the Los Angeles Review Literary Awards, and the Ploughshares Emerging Writer's Contest. Photo © S.M Sukardi
Alicia Cook
Alicia Cook is a multi-award-winning writer and mental health and addiction awareness advocate based in Newark, New Jersey. Her writing often focuses on addiction, mental health, and grief – sometimes all at once. She is the poet behind Stuff I've Been Feeling Lately, I Hope My Voice Doesn't Skip, Sorry I Haven't Texted You Back, and The Music Was Just Getting Good. Andrews McMeel Publishing publishes all her books. Her work has been published in a number of anthologies as well as in The New York Times. Cook's advocacy began years ago following the fatal overdose of her 19-year-old cousin. Through her writing, she started shedding light on how drug addiction impacts the mental health of families. An essayist and speaker, her activism to fight the opioid epidemic is far-reaching and has garnered a worldwide readership. She has her own episode on the Emmy-nominated American PBS series Here’s the Story. She has since broadened the scope of her work to include other sensitive topics impacting our lives today. She recently received the Becker Award from the New Jersey Council of Teachers of English. You can find her on Instagram @thealiciacook.
Christina Cooke
Christina Cooke's writing has previously appeared in The Caribbean Writer, Prairie Schooner, PRISM international, Epiphany: A Literary Journal, and elsewhere. A MacDowell Fellow, Journey Prize winner, and Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award winner, she holds a Master of Arts degree from the University of New Brunswick and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Born in Jamaica, Christina is now a Canadian citizen who lives and writes in New York City. Photo © Eli Jules
Angie Cruz
Angie Cruz is a novelist and editor. Her most recent novel How Not To Drown in A Glass of Water (2022) was a finalist for the 2024 Neustadt International Prize for Literature, shortlisted for The Aspen Words Literary Prize, winner of the Gold Medal, Latino Book Award and chosen for The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2022. Her novel, Dominicana was the inaugural book pick for GMA book club and shortlisted for The Women’s Prize. She's the founder and Editor-in-chief of the award winning literary journal, Aster(ix) and is currently an Associate Professor at University of Pittsburgh.
Vinson Cunningham
Vinson Cunningham is a staff writer and a theater critic at The New Yorker. His essays, reviews, and profiles have also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, and Vulture, among other places. A former staffer on Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign and in his White House, Cunningham has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, the Yale School of Art, and Columbia University’s School of the Arts. He lives in New York City. Photo © Arielle Gray
Michael Dickman
Michael Dickman was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of four collections of poems, including Flies, winner of the 2010 James Laughlin Award, and Days & Days, a New York Times Best Poetry Book of 2019. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, he lives in Princeton, New Jersey, where he is on the faculty at Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts. Photo © Matthew Dickman
Charlee Dyroff
Charlee Dyroff has an MFA from Columbia University, and her work has appeared in Slate, Gulf Coast, Lapham’s Quarterly, Guernica, Ploughshares, Eater, and The Best American Food Writing of 2019. She lives in New York. Photo © Grace Ann Leadbeater
Elisabeth Egan
Elisabeth Egan is a writer and an editor at the New York Times Book Review and the author of A Window Opens. She lives in Montclair with her family. Photo © Beowulf Sheehan
Elle Evans
A Boston native, Elle Evans, spent five years in Nashville soaking up sweet Southern hospitality and even sweeter iced tea. She now lives in Philadelphia with her husband and rescue dog Calypso, the first of many pets named for Greek mythology characters. Elle enjoys hiking, rock climbing, and attempting ambitious cocktail recipes. She writes under a not-so-secret pseudonym to maintain separation from her day job as a doctor. Photo © Mike Styers
Kim Coleman Foote
Kim Coleman Foote is the author of the debut novel Coleman Hill, which has been long-listed for the Carol Shields Prize and which was a finalist for an NAACP Image Award and Audie Award. Born and raised in New Jersey, Kim has received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown, the NEA, NYFA, Bread Loaf, Phillips Exeter Academy, Center for Fiction, and Fulbright, and residencies at Yaddo, MacDowell, and Hedgebrook, among others. Her fiction and essays have appeared in The Best American Short Stories 2022, The Rumpus, Prairie Schooner, Kweli, and elsewhere. Photo © Sara Abbaspour
Nell Freudenberger
Nell Freudenberger is the author of the novels Lost and Wanted, The Newlyweds, and The Dissident, and of the story collection Lucky Girls, which won the PEN/Malamud Award and the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Named one of The New Yorker’s “20 under 40” in 2010, she is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and a Cullman Fellowship from the New York Public Library. She lives in Brooklyn with her family. The Limits is her latest novel.
Martin Golan
Martin Golan’s newest novel, One Night With Lilith – about a man convinced his wife is the alluring but dangerous “Lilith” of biblical legend – has been called “a fascinating feat of storytelling.” He followed up with a book of poetry, A Note of Consolation for Lucia Joyce, inspired by James Joyce’s heartfelt struggle with his schizophrenic daughter. Golan’s fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in many journals, including Pedestal, Poet Lore, and Blue Fifth Review, where a poem was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He works as a journalist, at a series of newspapers, lastly as an editor for Reuters in New York City. You can learn more about him at martingolan.com.
Garth Risk Hallberg
Garth Risk Hallberg’s first novel, City on Fire, was a New York Times and international best seller and was selected as one of the best books of 2015 by The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, The Guardian, Vogue, and others. It was adapted into the Apple TV+ series of the same name. He is also the author of the novella A Field Guide to the North American Family. In 2017, Granta named him one of the Best of Young American Novelists. His work has been translated into seventeen languages. Photo credit © Michael Lionstar
Richie Hofmann
Richie Hofmann is the author of the collections Second Empire (2015) and A Hundred Lovers (2021), and his poetry has appeared recently in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and The Yale Review. He lives in Chicago. Photo © Marcus Jackson
Eskor David Johnson
Eskor David Johnson is a writer from Trinidad and Tobago and the USA. His writing has appeared in BOMB Magazine, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, and will appear at length in a debut novel Pay As You Go from McSweeney's Press on October 24, 2023. He lives in New York City.
Amitava Kumar
Amitava Kumar was born in Ara, India, and grew up in the nearby town of Patna. He is the author of the novel Immigrant, Montana, as well as several other books of nonfiction and fiction. He lives in Poughkeepsie, New York, and teaches at Vassar College. Photo © Imrul Islam
Rachel Khong
Rachel Khong is the author of Goodbye, Vitamin, winner of the California Book Award for First Fiction, and named a Best Book of the Year by NPR; O, The Oprah Magazine; Vogue; and Esquire. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Cut, The Guardian, The Paris Review, and Tin House. In 2018, she founded The Ruby, a work and event space for women and nonbinary writers and artists in San Francisco’s Mission District. She lives in California. Photo © Andria Lo
Deborah Landau
Deborah Landau is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Skeletons, a New Yorker Best Book of 2023. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Robert Dana Anhinga Prize for Poetry, and The Believer Book Award. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, The Atlantic, among other journals, and in three editions of The Best American Poetry. She directs the Creative Writing Program at NYU, and lives in Brooklyn. Photo © Jaqueline Mia Foster
Caroline Leavitt
Caroline Leavitt is the New York Times bestselling, critically acclaimed author of 13 novels, most recently Days of Wonder, a most anticipated read from Read With Jenna Page, Oprah Daily, Zibby Owens and more. She is the recipient of fellowship from the New York Foundation of the Arts and from the Midatlantic Arts/New Jersey Individual Artist foundation, as well as being a finalist for the Sundance Screenwriters Lab. Her work has appeared in the New York Times “Modern Love” column, New York Magazine, The Daily Beast, Salon and more. A book critic for People and for AARP’s The Ethel, she is the co-founder of the book promotion platform, A Mighty Blaze.
Marcia LeBeau
Marcia LeBeau is a multidisciplinary artist. Her debut poetry collection, A Curious Hunger, is forthcoming from Broadstone Books in May 2024. Her poems, essays and reviews appear in O, The Oprah Magazine, New Ohio Review, Rattle, Painted Bride Quarterly, Moon City Review, and elsewhere. She was a third-place co-winner of the 2023 Allen Ginsberg Award, was longlisted for the 2022 Ralph Angel Prize, and received an honorable mention for the Rattle Poetry Prize. Her work has also received several Pushcart Prize nominations. She has an MFA in poetry from VCFA and is the founder of The Write Space, a co-working and event space for creative writers in The Valley Arts District of Orange, New Jersey. She lives with her husband and two sons in South Orange, New Jersey.
Rosey Lee
Rosey Lee writes stories about complicated families and complex friendships, but a happy ending is guaranteed. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, where she enjoys cooking, flower arranging, and occasional bursts of fanatical bargain shopping. She grew up on the Westbank of New Orleans, Louisiana, and carries the area and her loved ones in her heart when she’s away from them.
Judith Lindbergh
Judith Lindbergh’s new novel, Akmaral, about a nomad woman warrior on the ancient Central Asian steppes, is forthcoming from Regal House Publishing on May 7, 2024. Her debut novel, The Thrall’s Tale, about three women in the first Viking Age settlement in Greenland, was an IndieBound Pick, a Borders Original Voices Selection, and praised by Pulitzer Prize winners Geraldine Brooks and Robert Olen Butler. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including in Newsweek, Zibby Magazine, Next Avenue, Writer’s Digest, Edible Jersey, Literary Mama, Archaeology Magazine, Other Voices, and UP HERE: The North at the Center of the World published by University of Washington Press. She also contributed to the Smithsonian Institution’s exhibition Vikings: The Norse Atlantic Saga and provided expert commentary on two documentary series for The History Channel. Judith received a 2024 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. She is the Founder/Director of The Writers Circle, a New Jersey-based creative writing center where she teaches aspiring and accomplished writers from ages 8-80.
Annell López
Annell López is a Dominican immigrant. She is the winner of the Louise Meriwether First Book Prize and the author of the short story collection I’ll Give You A Reason, from the Feminist Press. A Peter Taylor Fellow at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshops, her work has also received support from Tin House and has appeared in Guernica, American Short Fiction, Michigan Quarterly Review, Brooklyn Rail, and elsewhere. López received her MFA from the University of New Orleans. She is working on a novel.
Claire Messud
Claire Messud is the author of seven works of fiction. She teaches at Harvard and is the recipient of Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts & Letters. She’s been longlisted for the Booker Prize and has twice been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. This Strange Eventful History is her first work of fiction in seven years. Photo © Lucian Wood
Rabbi Dr Jay Michaelson
Jay Michaelson is the author of ten books, most recently The Secret That is Not a Secret: Ten Heretical Tales. Jay’s previous book, The Heresy of Jacob Frank: From Jewish Messianism to Esoteric Myth, won the 2022 National Jewish Book Award for scholarship. As a journalist, Jay regularly appears on CNN and in Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, The Forward, and other publications, and won the 2023 New York Society for Professional Journalists Award for Opinion Writing. For ten years, he worked as an LGBTQ activist, and is the author of the bestselling God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality. Jay is also a meditation teacher in Buddhist and Jewish traditions, and co-directs the Adamah Meditation Retreat. He lives here in Montclair.
Eliza Minot
Eliza Minot (Mine-it) is the author of the critically acclaimed novels THE TINY ONE, The Brambles, and In The Orchard, all published by Knopf. Vintage will release the paperback of In The Orchard in July. She lives in Maplewood, NJ, with her family. Photo © Eliza Minot
Annabel Monaghan
Annabel Monaghan is the author of Nora Goes Off Script, Same Time Next Summer, and Summer Romance (out June 2024), as well as two young adult novels and Does This Volvo Make My Butt Look Big?, a selection of columns that appeared in the Huffington Post, the Week, and the Rye Record. She lives in Rye, New York, with her family. Photo © Jo Bryan Photography
Ann Napolitano
Ann Napolitano is the bestselling author of Hello Beautiful which was selected as Oprah’s 100th Book Club pick; Dear Edward, an instant New York Times bestseller, a Read with Jenna selection, and an Apple TV+ series; A Good Hard Look, and Within Arm’s Reach. For seven years, Napolitano was the associate editor of the literary magazine One Story, and she received an MFA from New York University. She has taught fiction writing at Brooklyn College’s MFA program, New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies, and Gotham Writers Workshop. Photo credit © Jake Chessum
Cleyvis Natera
Cleyvis Natera is an award-winning author and college professor. Her debut novel, Neruda on the Park, was awarded a Silver Medal by the International Latino Book Awards for Best First Book of Fiction in 2023. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, TIME, The Washington Post, USA TODAY, The Kenyon Review, Aster(ix) and Kweli Journal. Natera has received awards, fellowships and artist residencies by the Vermont Studio Center, PEN America, Hermitage Artist Retreat, among others. Natera’s second novel, The Grand Paloma Resort, is forthcoming in 2025. She will join Montclair State University in the fall of 2024 as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing where she will help develop an M.F.A. program with a bilingual emphasis. Photo © Beowulf Sheehan
Sandra Newman
Sandra Newman's new novel, Julia, is a retelling of George Orwell's 1984. She is the author of five other novels, including The Heavens, which was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and Notable Book, and The Country of Ice Cream Star, which was longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her short fiction has appeared in Granta, Zyzzyva, Conjunctions, and many other publications.
Viet Thanh Nguyen
Viet Thanh Nguyen was born in Vietnam and raised in America. He is the author of The Committed, which continues the story of The Sympathizer, awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, alongside seven other prizes. He is also the author of the short story collection The Refugees; the nonfiction book Nothing Ever Dies, a finalist for the National Book Award; and is the editor of an anthology of refugee writing, The Displaced. He is the Aerol Arnold Professor of English and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California and a recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur foundations. He lives in Los Angeles. Photo © Hopper Stone
Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates is the author of many works of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. She is the editor of New Jersey Noir, Prison Noir, A Darker Shade of Noir: New Stories of Body Horror by Women Writers, and Cutting Edge: New Stories of Mystery and Crime by Women Writers. Oates is a recipient of the National Book Award, PEN America’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Humanities Medal, and a World Fantasy Award for Short Fiction. She lives in Princeton, New Jersey. Photo © Carissa Gallo
Téa Obreht
Téa Obreht is the internationally bestselling author of The Tiger’s Wife, which won the 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Award. Her second novel, Inland, was an instant bestseller, won the Southwest Book Award, and was a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, and Zoetrope: All-Story, among many other publications. Originally from the former Yugoslavia, Obreht now resides in Wyoming. Photo © Ilan Harel
Julie Orringer
Julie Orringer is the author of three award-winning books: The Invisible Bridge, a New York Times bestselling novel; How to Breathe Underwater, a collection of stories; and The Flight Portfolio, the inspiration for the Netflix series Transatlantic, which first aired in April 2023. All of Orringer’s work has been published by Alfred A. Knopf, and her books have been translated into twenty languages. She is the winner of the Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, the MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and children and is at work on a new novel.
Zibby Owens
Zibby Owens — like Pippa Jones — wears a lot of hats. She is the award-winning podcast host of Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books; founder and CEO of Zibby Media, which includes the publishing house Zibby Books, a book club, retreats, classes, and events; and is the proud owner of Zibby’s Bookshop, an independent bookstore in Santa Monica. Her previous books include Bookends: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature, children’s book Princess Charming, and two anthologies that she edited. A frequent contributor to Good Morning America, Katie Couric Media, and other outlets, she is – most of all! – the mother of four fabulous kids ages 9 to 16 — and wife to Kyle Owens, founder of Morning Moon Productions.
Deborah Paredez
Deborah Paredez is a poet and cultural critic. She is the author of Selenidad: Selena, Latinos, and the Performance of Memory (Duke 2009) and American Diva(Norton 2024) and of the poetry collections, This Side of Skin (Wings Press 2002) and Year of the Dog (BOA Editions 2020). She is the chair of the creative writing program at Columbia University and the co-founder of CantoMundo, a national organization dedicated to Latinx poets and poetry.
Julia Phillips
Julia Phillips is the bestselling author of the novel Disappearing Earth, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and one of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of the Year. Her second novel, Bear, will be published in June.
Emily Raboteau
Emily Raboteau writes at the intersection of social and environmental justice, climate change, parenthood, and race. Her books include The Professor's Daughter, Searching for Zion, and Lessons for Survival. She is a contributing editor at Orion, a regular contributor at the New York Review of Books, and a professor of creative writing at the City College of New York (CUNY). Photo © Eliza Griffiths
Ruth Reichl
Ruth Reichl is the New York Times bestselling author of five memoirs, the novel Delicious!, and the cookbook My Kitchen Year. She was editor in chief of Gourmet magazine, and previously served as restaurant critic for The New York Times, as well as food editor and restaurant critic for the Los Angeles Times. She has been honored with six James Beard Awards.
Melissa Rivero
Melissa Rivero is the author of The Affairs of the Falcóns, which won the 2019 New American Voices Award and a 2020 International Latino Book Award. The book was also long-listed for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. Born in Lima, Peru, and raised in Brooklyn, she is a graduate of NYU and Brooklyn Law School. She still lives in Brooklyn with her family. Photo © Bartosz Potocki
Lisa Williamson Rosenberg
Lisa Williamson Rosenberg is an author and psychotherapist in private practice specializing in developmental trauma and racial identity. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Lisa’s short fiction has appeared in Literary Mama and The Piltdown Review, her essays in Longreads, Narrative.ly, The Common, Grok Nation, and Mamalode. Her debut novel, Embers On The Wind, was released on August 1, 2022 by Little A Books. Lisa’s second novel, The Boy In The Water, will be released in January, 2025. A born-and-raised New Yorker, Lisa now lives in Montclair, New Jersey with her husband and dog. She is the mother of two college kids.
Frank Rubino
Frank Rubino is one of the Gang of Six, who organize the Red Wheelbarrow Poets monthly reading series at Felician College in Rutherford, NJ. He co-hosts a zoom poetry workshop every Tuesday evening. His poetry and art have appeared in The Red Wheelbarrow, Thimble, Caliban, The Esthetic Apostle, Chaleur, DMQReview, and other journals. He works as a cloud architect and lives in Montclair, NJ. Photo © Bill Shaw
Anastasia Rubis
Anastasia Rubis writing has appeared in the New York Times, Huffington Post, New York Observer, and literary journals. Her story “Blue Pools” was included in the anthology Oh, Baby published by Creative Nonfiction. Her story “Girl Falling” was named a Notable Essay in Best American Essays of 2014. She co-wrote and co-directed the 13-minute documentary Breakfast Lunch Dinner: The Greek Diner Story. Stacy earned a BA magna cum laude from Brown University and an MA from Montclair State University, where she was an adjunct professor of English. She was also an advertising and public relations executive in Manhattan. She and her husband live in Montclair NJ, where they raised their daughter. Oriana is her first novel.
Jonathan Santlofer
Jonathan Santlofer is a writer and artist. His debut novel, The Death Artist, was an international bestseller, a People Magazine “Page-Turner of the Week” and is currently in development at Fox, along with his second and third novels. His fourth novel, Anatomy of Fear, won the Nero Award for best crime novel of 2009. Jonathan created the Crime Fiction Academy at The Center for Fiction. As an artist, Jonathan has been making replications of famous paintings for clients for more than 20 years. Photo © Clarke Tolton
Corey Sobel
Corey Sobel is the author of The Redshirt, a finalist for The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, winner of the Gold Medal in LGBT+ Fiction from the Independent Publisher Book Awards, and a National Public Radio best book of the year. His short fiction has been awarded the Prose Prize by The Columbia Review, while other writing has appeared in Esquire, Defector, The Rumpus, and Literary Hub, among other publications. The paperback of The Redshirt was published in March.
Willard Spiegelman
Willard Spiegelman was for many years the Hughes Professor of English at Southern Methodist University in Dallas and the editor of the Southwest Review. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and Bogliasco Foundations, he is the author of eight books, including Nothing Stays Put: The Life and Poetry of Amy Clampitt, and the editor of Love, Amy: The Selected Letters of Amy Clampitt. Photo © Michael Lionstar
Mariah Stovall
Mariah Stovall has written fiction for the anthology Black Punk Now, and for Ninth Letter, Vol 1. Brooklyn, Hobart, the Minola Review, and Joyland; and nonfiction for The Los Angeles Review of Books, Full Stop, Hanif Abdurraqib’s 68to05, The Paris Review, Poets & Writers, and LitHub. I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both is her first novel and 24 Hour Revenge Therapy is her favorite Jawbreaker album. She lives in New Jersey.
Jiaming Tang
Jiaming Tang is a queer immigrant writer. He holds an MFA from the University of Alabama, and his writing has appeared in AGNI, Lit Hub, The Masters Review, Joyland Magazine, and elsewhere. He is a 2022-23 Center for Fiction Emerging Writer Fellow and lives in Brooklyn, NY. Cinema Love is his first novel. Photo © Dutton
Matthew Thomas
Matthew Thomas’s New York Times bestselling novel We Are Not Ourselves was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize, the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and the John Gardner Fiction Book Award; longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award, the Guardian First Book Award, and the Folio Prize; named a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times; and named one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post, Esquire, Entertainment Weekly, and a number of other publications. It has been translated into a dozen languages. Photo © Yves Samuel
John J. Trause
John J. Trause, the Director of Oradell Public Library, is the author of six books of poetry, Why Sing?; Picture This: For Your Eyes and Ears; Exercises in High Treason; Eye Candy for Andy; Inside Out, Upside Down, and Round and Round; Seriously Serial; and Latter-Day Litany, the latter staged Off Broadway. His translations, poetry, and visual work appear internationally in many journals and anthologies, including Rabbit Ears: TV Poems. Marymark Press has published his visual poetry and art as broadsides and sheets. He is a founder of the William Carlos Williams Poetry Cooperative (Red Wheelbarrow) in Rutherford, N. J., and the former host and curator of its monthly reading series.
Boo Trundle
Boo Trundle is a writer, artist, and performer whose work has appeared across various platforms and publications, including The Brooklyn Rail, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and NPR’s The Moth. She has released three albums of original music with Big Deal Records. She lives in New Jersey. The Daughter Ship is her first novel. Photo © Nina Subin
Donald Zirilli
Donald Zirilli (zirealism.com) is the Poetry Adjudicator for the New Jersey Teen Arts Festival. He edited the Rutherford Red Wheelbarrow (redwheelbarrowpoets.org) and Now Culture (nowculture.com). His poetry has been published in over 40 periodicals and anthologies and was nominated for a Pushcart, a Forward Prize and Best of the Net, and he was a finalist for the James Tate Prize. His chapbook, Heaven’s Not for You, was published in 2018 by Kelsay Books.
Non-Fiction
Ruha Benjamin
Ruha Benjamin is a professor of African American studies and the founder of the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab at Princeton University. The author of the Stowe Prize–winning Viral Justice, as well as Race After Technology and People’s Science, Benjamin lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
Frank Bruni
Frank Bruni has been a prominent journalist for more than three decades, including more than twenty-five years at The New York Times, in roles as diverse as op-ed columnist, White House correspondent, Rome bureau chief, and chief restaurant critic. He is the author of four New York Times bestsellers. In July 2021, he became a full professor at Duke University, teaching in the school of public policy. He currently writes his popular weekly newsletter for the Times and produces additional essays as one of the newspaper’s Contributing Opinion Writers. Contact him on X: @FrankBruni; Facebook: @FrankBruniNYT; Instagram/Threads: @frankabruni64 or his website Frank.Bruni.com.
Heather Clark
Heather Clark is the author of The Grief of Influence: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes; The Ulster Renaissance: Poetry in Belfast 1962-1972; and Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the LA Times Book Prize in Biography, and was a New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book of 2021. She lives outside of New York City. Photo © Carolyn Simpson
Candy Cooper
Candy J. Cooper is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and winner of the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting. She has been a staff writer for four newspapers, including The Detroit Free Press and The San Francisco Examiner. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Columbia Journalism Review and The Chronicle of Higher Education, among other publications. She is the author of Poisoned Water: How The Citizens of Flint, Michigan Fought For Their Lives and Warned the Nation, published by Bloomsbury. Photo © Kate Albright
Sir Angus Deaton
Angus Deaton, winner of the 2015 Nobel Prize in economics, is the Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of Economics and International Affairs Emeritus and Senior Scholar at Princeton University. He is the author (with Anne Case) of the New York Times bestselling book Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism (Princeton).
Dionne Ford
Dionne Ford is an NEA creative writing fellow and the co-editor of the anthology Slavery's Descendants: Shared Legacies of Race and Reconciliation (Rutgers University Press). Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Virginia Quarterly Review, Literary Hub, New Jersey Monthly, Ebony and other publications and won awards from the National Association of Black Journalists and the Newswomen's Club of New York. She holds an MFA from New York University and a BA from Fordham University where she teaches creative writing. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and daughters.
Teresa Ghilarducci
Teresa Ghilarducci is professor of economics and policy analysis at the New School for Social Research in New York City. She serves as the director of the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis and the New School’s Retirement Equity Lab (ReLab). She also writes a regular column for Forbes’s #RetireWell blog.
Leslie Jamison
Leslie Jamison is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Recovering and The Empathy Exams; the collection of essays Make It Scream, Make It Burn, a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award; and the novel The Gin Closet, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She writes for numerous publications including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, the New York Times, Harper’s, and the New York Review of Books. She teaches at Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn. Photo © Grace Anne Leadbeater
Benilde Little
Benilde Little is the bestselling author of the novels Good Hair, The Itch, Acting Out, Who Does She Think She Is? and a memoir Welcome to My Breakdown. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times and numerous anthologies, including The Meaning of Michelle, About Face and Blue Light Corner. She was nominated for an NAACP Image Award and the Hurston Wright Legacy award. A former reporter for The Cleveland Plain Dealer, The Star Ledger, People magazine and a senior editor at Essence, Little has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Essence, Jet, People Magazine, Heart and Soul, More magazine, among others. She has been a creative writing professor at Ramapo College, The City College of New York and currently runs The Memoir Clinic. She and her husband live in Montclair and have two adult children.
Carlos Lozada
Carlos Lozada is an opinion columnist at the New York Times and co-host of the weekly Matter of Opinion podcast. He is the author of The Washington Book: How to Read Politics and Politicians (2024) and What Were We Thinking: A Brief Intellectual History of the Trump Era (2020). Previously, he was a book critic and senior editor at the Washington Post and the managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine. Lozada has won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism and the National Book Critics Circle citation for excellence in reviewing. He has been a Knight-Bagehot fellow at Columbia University and a professor of political journalism at the University of Notre Dame. A native of Lima, Peru, he became a U.S. citizen in 2014. Photo © Bill O’Leary
Luppe B. Luppen
Luppe B. Luppen is a lawyer, reporter, and commentator who lives in New York City. On social media, he is @nycsouthpaw. His writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Yahoo News, Talking Points Memo, and his newsletter, Pawprints, among other publications.
Barbara McQuade
Barbara McQuade is a professor from practice at the University of Michigan Law School, her alma mater, where she teaches courses in criminal law, criminal procedure, national security, and data privacy. She is also a legal analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, and a co-host of the podcast #SistersInLaw. From 2010 to 2017, McQuade served as U.S Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan. Ms. McQuade was appointed by President Barack Obama, and was the first woman to serve in her position. Earlier in her career, she worked as a sports writer and copy editor, a judicial law clerk, an associate in private practice, and an assistant U.S. attorney. She and her husband have four children and live in Ann Arbor. Attack from Within, a New York Times bestseller, is her first book.
Carrie Mullins
Carrie Mullins is a journalist and essayist whose work has appeared in Parents, Food & Wine Magazine, Epicurious, Tin House, and Publishers Weekly, among other publications. She is a former National Editor at the James Beard Award-winning website Serious Eats and a longtime contributor to Electric Literature, where she covered the intersection of literature and culture. She lives in New York City with her husband and sons.
George Musser
George Musser is an award-winning science editor and writer. He is the author of three books that bring deep science topics to the human level: Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation (2023), Spooky Action at a Distance (2015), and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to String Theory (2008). As a senior editor at Scientific American for 15 years, Musser shared in two National Magazine Awards, and his writing has been recognized by the American Astronomical Society and American Institute of Physics. He lives in Glen Ridge with his wife, daughter, and schnauzer.
Timothy O'Brien
Timothy L. O’Brien is a senior columnist with Bloomberg Opinion and also a political analyst with MSNBC. Tim writes extensively about a wide range of topics, including business, technology, media, national politics, white-collar crime, the U.S. presidency, Russia, gambling, and Hollywood. He is the author of three books, including a biography of Donald Trump – TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald. Trump sued O'Brien for libel and lost the case in 2011. Previously Tim was the executive editor of The HuffPost where he received a Pulitzer Prize for a series about wounded war veterans. Tim is the recipient of several other awards including a Loeb and recognition from SABEW, the Society of Professional Journalists, and the Deadline Club. Tim has also been a reporter and writer for the Wall Street Journal, Talk Magazine, the Village Voice, and National Geographic.
Nell Irvin Painter
Nell Irvin Painter, Edwards Professor of American History, Emerita, Princeton University, is the author of books of history including the New York Times bestseller The History of White People; Sojourner Truth, A Life, A Symbol; the National Book Critics Circle finalist Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over; and the forthcoming I Just Keep Talking: A Life in Essays. A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2007, she has received honorary degrees from Yale, Wesleyan, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Dartmouth. After a Ph.D. in history from Harvard, she earned degrees in painting from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers and the Rhode Island School of Design. Nell Painter lives and works in East Orange, New Jersey, and has made artists' books in residencies such as MacDowell, Yaddo, Ucross, and Bogliasco. She currently serves as Madame Chairman of MacDowell.
Judge Victoria Pratt
The Honorable Victoria Pratt served as the chief judge of the Newark Municipal Court, is a professor at the Rutgers-Newark School of Criminal Justice and has taught at the Rutgers School of Law-Newark. Her TED talk, “How Judges Can Show Respect,” has been viewed over thirty million times on Facebook. She lives in Montclair, New Jersey. Photo © Tinnetta Bell
Eric Ripert
Eric Ripert, chef and co-owner of New York's internationally acclaimed seafood restaurant Le Bernardin, is the author of six cookbooks, including The New York Times bestsellers Seafood Simple and Vegetable Simple, as well as My Best: Eric Ripert, Avec Eric, On the Line, A Return to Cooking, and Le Bernardin: Four Star Simplicity, and a New York Times bestselling memoir, 32 Yolks: From My Mother’s Table to Working the Line.
Eric Roston
Eric Roston is a journalist who has covered climate change — from science to economics to human behavior — for more than 20 years, half that span at Bloomberg News. He is the author of The Carbon Age (Bloomsbury USA, 2009), a tour of more than a dozen scientific disciplines relevant to readers trying to understand the warming world. He is a former TIME magazine Washington correspondent and New York-based business reporter. Roston has lived in Montclair for nine years, with his wife and daughter.
Mark Rotella
Mark Rotella is the director of the Coccia Institute for the Italian Experience at Montclair State University, where he is also a professor of creative writing. He is a former senior editor at Publishers Weekly, where he covered cookbooks and books on food and drink. He has written two books, both published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux: Stolen Figs: And Other Adventures in Calabria and Amore: The Story of Italian American Song.
Dana Rubin
Dana Rubin is a consultant, speechwriter, and speaker who’s on a mission to encourage more women to put their views into the public square. Last summer Dana has published a groundbreaking women’s speech anthology, "Speaking While Female: 75 Extraordinary Speeches by American Women,” which tells the story of America through the voices of women, from 1637-2021. Dana has also created the Speaking While Female Speech Bank, a free resource with thousands of speeches by women from across time and around the world. to broaden our understanding of the role of women orators in history. It' the world’s largest online archive of women’s speeches and is being used by teachers, students, and scholars as a supplement to official textbooks, curriculum and sources that leave women out. With her consultancy called Speech Studio, Dana also leads workshops that support individuals to be more powerful speakers, thought leaders, subject matter experts, brand ambassadors, and role models for future generations.
Hilke Schellmann
Hilke Schellmann is an Emmy award winning investigative reporter and assistant professor of journalism at New York University. As a contributor to The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian, Schellmann writes about holding artificial intelligence (AI) accountable. In her book, The Algorithm: How AI Decides Who Gets Hired, Monitored, Promoted, and Fired, And Why We Need To Fight Back (Hachette), she investigates the rise of AI in the world of work. Drawing on exclusive information from whistleblowers, internal documents and real‑world tests, Schellmann discovers that many of the algorithms making high‑stakes decisions are biased, racist, and do more harm than good. The Algorithm was named one of the best books on AI by the New York Times. Photo © Jennifer S. Altman
Shannon McKenna Schmidt
Shannon McKenna Schmidt is the author of The First Lady of World War II: Eleanor Roosevelt’s Daring Journey to the Frontlines and Back. She is also the co-author of two previous books, Novel Destinations and Writers Between the Covers. From 2010 through 2017, Shannon traveled full-time—first in the United States by RV and then backpacking around the globe. She lives in Hoboken, New Jersey. Photo © Marta Perales Photography
Nina Sharma
Nina Sharma’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, Electric Literature, Longreads, and The Margins. A graduate of the MFA program at Columbia University, she served as the programs director at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and currently teaches at Columbia and Barnard College. She is a proud cofounder of the all–South Asian women’s improv group Not Your Biwi. She lives in New York City. Photo © Ricardo Horatio Nelson
Karen Valby
Karen Valby is a writer living in Austin, Texas. Her work has appeared in Vanity Fair, where she is a frequent contributor, the New York Times, O Magazine, Glamour, Fast Company, and EW, where she spent fifteen years writing about culture.
Hunter Walker
Hunter Walker is an investigative reporter at Talking Points Memo, a former White House correspondent, and the coauthor of the New York Times bestseller The Breach. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, the Atlantic, and other publications. He lives in Brooklyn.
Elizabeth White
Dr. Elizabeth “Barry” White recently retired from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, where she served as historian and as Research Director for the USHMM’s Center for the Prevention of Genocide. Prior to working for the USHMM, Barry spent a career at the US Department of Justice working on investigations and prosecutions of Nazi criminals and other human rights violators. She served as deputy director and chief historian of the Office of Special Investigations and as deputy chief and chief historian of the Human Rights and Special Prosecutions Section. She lives in Falls Church, Virginia. Photo © Erica Land Photography
Children's
Alliah L. Agostini
Alliah L. Agostini is the author of The Juneteenth Story: Celebrating the End of Slavery in the United States, the upcoming Oprah Winfrey: A Little Golden Book Biography, and Junior Library Guild Selection BIG TUNE: Rise of the Dancehall Prince. A Buffalo, NY native, Alliah writes to share joy and truth with children and their families. She resides in Montclair with her husband and two children.
Tracey Baptiste
Tracey Baptiste is a New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty books for children including the popular Jumbies series including The Jumbies, Rise Of The Jumbies, and The Jumbie God’s Revenge as well as the picture book Looking For A Jumbie. She writes picture books, middle grade, and young adult, fiction and nonfiction, and has contributed to several anthologies. Her latest works are African Icons: Ten People Who Shaped History and the picture book Mermaid and Pirate. Find Tracey online at www.traceybaptiste.com and connect on Instagram @traceybaptistewrites.
Amelia Martinez
Amelia Martinez was formerly a case manager for the NY/NJ Indian Council, a federally funded program under the Department of Labor exclusively for Native American Youth to empower and assist in their education and training needs for 10 years. She currently works as the Rockland County Human Rights Assistant to the Commissioner and volunteers as a New York State CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) for Children in foster care. Amelia is the daughter of Chief Silent Wolf, Chief Perry’s predecessor.
Michaela McClain
Michaela McClain is a singer/songwriter, educator, performer & creator of Music with Michaela, a baby & me music program founded here in Montclair, offering baby & me music classes for baby & caregiver. Michaela is a seasoned performer, having performed for many private events throughout NJ & NYC.
Jason Patterson
Jason Patterson is part of Dan and Jason, a two-headed troll that grew up in Vermont. As a little two-headed troll they enjoyed smashing toys together, drawing comics, and joking around about stories and stuff. Now fully grown, they get paid big bags of dunkets to do the same thing! Imagine that!
Other Speakers
Ivan Amato
Ivan Amato is a longtime science and technology writer and editor. His work has appeared in many newspapers and magazines, among them Time, Fortune, Washington Post, Technology Review, Discover and Scientific American. He has been a staff writer and editor on several magazine mastheads, a founder of science cafes on both coasts, a science correspondent for NPR and a technology podcast producer for a government agency. He has written books on topics ranging from the materials in our constructed landscape to the history of space technology. He is a winner of a James T. Grady-James H. Stack Award for Interpreting Chemistry for the Public and a Foresight Prize for his writings on nanotechnology, and his first book, Stuff, was named a New York Times Notable Book. He currently works as the science communications manager for Columbia University's Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute.
Nicole Bozzuto
Nicole Bozzuto is the lead singer, songwriter and rhythm guitar player for Nikki & The Skyrockets, a small band with a big-sky rockin' Americana sound. Originally from Connecticut, Nicole spent years traveling the world before joining the ranks of Jersey City's thriving music scene. Her music speaks of wanderlust and weariness from the road. She can be found both solo and with her band around New York and New Jersey, and was recently featured in the Jersey Journal's "Hottest Musicians on the rise in Hudson" by Jim Testa.
Kim Burns
A voracious reader from an early age, Kim Burns discovered a love of romance novels while working as a young page at the local library. She accepted a position at Random House just two weeks after graduating from Rutgers University because her roommate had pointed out that this was the best way to get free books. For over fifteen years, she worked in sales and marketing within the publishing world, met authors and creators, and happily read anything and everything. Several years ago, she decided to spread her love of reading with a younger generation and is now fulfilling her dream of teaching history at a high school in Newark.
Kevin Caufield
Kevin Caufield is a Master's of Social Work student at Rutgers University, graduating in May 2024. He has been working with Out Montclair for a year to complete his field requirements. At Out Montclair, Kevin helped launch two monthly Queer Lit Clubs, one of which he moderates. Kevin loves hearing human stories and supporting all to be their authentic selves.
Deborah Garrison
Deborah Garrison, a proud Montclair resident, is an editor of poetry, fiction, and biography at Knopf and Pantheon Books, and was previously an editor at The New Yorker. She is the author of the poetry collections A Working Girl Can’t Win and The Second Child and her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, Poets & Writers, The Yale Review, and elsewhere.
Caytha Jentis
Caytha Jentis is a playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and film producer. She has written five feature films and a stage play was recently produced Off Broadway. Essays have been published in digital magazines and included in anthologies. Her rally cry is "fun never gets old." You can find out more at www.caytha.com.
Merrie Koehlert
For 37 years Merrie Koehlert has been painting and making art. After earning a BFA in painting from the University of Michigan, she moved to New York City where she continued her studies, taking classes at the NY Academy of Figurative Art, The Art Students League, and the School of Visual Arts. During this time she sold work through her business, Artwork For Public Spaces”, making commissioned pieces for restaurants, nightclubs, and neighborhood billboards in Manhattan. Later, while continuing to paint, she became an art educator and taught at Winston Prep School for 22 years, both in New York City and in Whippany, NJ. She has an ongoing series of female heroes that feature large-scale oil portraits of legendary women artists. In 2021 she had a solo show titled“Heartworn Places” at Montclair State University’s LAB studio. The series was also a part of the BID Windows show in Montclair. This featured oil paintings of domestic objects and explored their unexpected beauty in our lives. She is currently a full time painter, and can be found at work in her studio everyday.
Sharron Miller
Sharron Miller is Founder/Director of Sharron Miller’s Academy for the Performing Arts (SMAPA) – celebrating 29 years as a not-for-profit arts education organization. Ms. Miller is a former Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater principal dancer and veteran of seven Broadway shows. She has appeared on television, in film, and in hundreds of radio and television commercials. She is a member of Actors’ Equity Association and SAG/AFTRA. Sharron resides in Montclair, New Jersey, with her daughter Jaimie and granddaughter Jubilee.
Scott E. Moore
Scott E. Moore is an Americana Soul singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer from New Jersey. He has released five solo records, toured the US, playing stages large and small, as either a frontman or sideman, alongside legends and upstarts like himself - from intimate rooms to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival (which he will be performing again on 5/4/24). Scott created the “Writer’s Hang” songwriter series in 1998. The residency ran for 10 years in Hoboken, NJ, and was featured in a Sundance Channel documentary called “Keeping Time: New Music from America’s Roots,” along with Nickel Creek, Gillian Welch & David Rawlings. His guitar playing can be heard on lots of TV shows and many independent records. He has performed ‘ambient soul’ at live yoga events at venues like Kripalu, Omega Institute, and the Yoga Journal Conference. He also co-composed and produced a 6-CD set of meditation music for Deepak Chopra and Oprah Winfrey. Scott is also an accomplished, award-winning TV producer and documentary filmmaker, who started his career at MTV. http://scottemoore.com/
Christina Romans
Christine Romans is an NBC News senior business correspondent, Emmy-Award winning journalist and author. Known as explainer-in-chief of all things money, she translates what budgets, bailouts and economic data mean for the American family. Her experience ranges from anchoring award-winning breaking news around the world to reporting deeply sourced stories that connect events in Washington and on Wall Street to the American kitchen table. Romans is the author of three books: Smart is the New Rich: If You Can’t Afford it—Put it Down (Wiley 2010), How to Speak Money (Wiley 2012), and Smart is the New Rich Money Guide for Millennials (Wiley March 2015). She is a proud native of Iowa and a graduate of Iowa State University.
Liz Samuel
Liz Samuel is an actress, producer, writer, host and proud Montclairian! With credits in film, television and theatre, Liz has been seen in shows for NBC, CBS, Apple TV, Netflix and more. She is the founder, host and producer of the Montclair Story Salon, a monthly storytelling fundraising event series. Liz created and starred in the award-winning digital series, MOMTRESS, a semi-autobiographical dramedy about juggling parenting, aging and an acting career. When she’s not producing or performing, she’s busy driving around her teenage son, trying to Facetime her busy college student daughter, walking her big Golden Retriever and attending fitness classes! www.lizsamuel.com IG:@lizgsamuel
Kate Tuttle
Kate Tuttle is a book critic and essayist. A past president of the National Book Critics Circle, she has edited the books pages at the Boston Globe and People Magazine. Her reviews and essays have appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and elsewhere. A Kansas native, she now lives in New Jersey after stints in Boston and Atlanta.
Ira Wagner
Ira Wagner became the Executive Director of the Montclair Art Museum in April 2021. A Montclair resident for more than 30 years, Ira began studying photography in 2008, after working on Wall Street for more than 25 years. With an interest in urban history and design, he has focused on photographing the urban landscape. He received his MFA from the Hartford Art School in 2013 and has taught photography at Monmouth University in New Jersey from 2013 to 2021. His project "Houseraising", photographs of houses being raised on the Jersey Shore following Hurricane Sandy was featured in The New Republic, The National Geographic, and was released in a photobook by Daylight Books in 2018. His most recent completed project, Twinhouses of the Great Northeast, had a photograph included in MAM’s Personal Landscapes exhibition during 2020. Based on images from Twinhouses, he was selected a Critical Mass Top 50 photographer by Photolucida and participated in Review Santa Fe during 2019. As Executive Director of the Museum, he has added an emphasis on photography in exhibitions and acquisitions, been closely involved in the three year project to reinstall MAM’s outstanding collection of Native American art, and worked to establish strong collaborations with many community partners.