Faculty & Participants
Jane K. Cleland’s multiple award-nominated and IMBA best selling Josie Prescott Antiques Mystery series (St. Martin’s Minotaur) has been reviewed as an Antiques Roadshow for mystery fans. Jane chairs the Wolfe Pack’s literary awards, which include the Nero Award and the Black Orchid Novella Award, granted in partnership with Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. www.nerowolfe.org She also chairs the Mystery Writers of America/St. Martin’s Minotaur Best First Novel contest committee, an award presented annually at the Edgars. She is a past chapter president and current board member of the Mystery Writers of America/New York Chapter. www.janecleland.net
Esther Cohen has published five books, and edited several hundred, from national book award winning authors to books of cartoons. She co-founded a book publishing company, two literary magazines, and is currently writing a novel about upstate New York.
Patricia Lee Gauch, author of over 35 books for young people, is vice president and editor-at-large of Philomel Books. Publisher of both picture books and novels, she is an editor for T.A. Barron, Andrew Clements, Janet Lisle, and Caldecott winners John Schoenherr, David Small, Jane Yolen and Ed Young. She has reviewed numerous children’s and young adult books for the Book Review section of The New York Times.
John Herman is an associate director of Manhattanville’s graduate writing program. He is the author of two novels for adults published by Doubleday/Nan Talese: The Light of Common Day; and The Weight of Love, which was chosen by Publishers Weekly as one of the best novels of that year. He also wrote two young adult novels, Deep Waters and Labyrinth, and a children’s book, A Winter’s Night, all published by Putnam/Philomel.
Pamela Katz is a screenwriter and novelist living in New York City. She has collaborated on three films with the legendary German director, Margarethe von Trotta: Rosenstrasse; The Other Woman-a searing look at "spying for love" by the East German secret police; and The Controversy: A dramatic portrait of Hannah Arendt. Other credits include Remembrance (in production)--a film inspired by a couple whose successful escape from a concentration camp began a love story that survived a thirty year separation. She has published one novel and numerous essays, and teaches screenwriting in the NYU/Tisch School of the Arts Graduate program.
James King is the author of Bill Warrington’s Last Chance, which will be published in August 2010. The bulk of the novel was written while Jim was a candidate for Manhattanville’s Master of Arts-Writing (MAW) degree, which he earned in 2008. The following year his novel had, as he puts it, “the incredible good fortune” to have been picked up by editor Liz Van Hoose at Viking. Jim’s nonfiction work has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, Catholic World, and a variety of business periodicals. Jim lives in Wilton, Connecticut, where he is at work on his second novel.
Catherine Lewis is the author of two novels, Dry Fire (W.W. Norton), Postcards to Father Abraham and the forthcoming Thrice Told Tales (Simon & Schuster). Her short stories have appeared in various magazines and in the recent anthologyTelling Stories Out of Court ed., O’Brien (Cornell UP). She is an associate professor and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Purchase College, SUNY.
Paul Levitz entered the comics industry in 1971 as editor/publisher of The Comic Reader, the first mass-circulation fanzine devoted to comics news. He received Comic-con International’s Inkpot Award in 2002 and the prestigious Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award in 2008. Levitz is primarily known for his work for DC Comics, where he has written most of their classic characters including the Justice Society, Superman , and an acclaimed run on The Legion of Super-Heroes. A DC staffer from 1973, Levitz became Executive Vice President & Publisher in 1989 and served as President & Publisher from 2002-2009. He continues as a Contributing Editor, but is now concentrating on his writing.
Joanne Mongelli is Deputy Director of Programs for the Westchester Arts Council.
Kevin Pilkington is a member of the writing faculty at Sarah Lawrence College. He is the author of six collections: Spare Change (La Jolla Poets Press National Book Award winner); Ready to Eat the Sky (finalist for an Independent Publishers Books Award). In the Eyes of a Dog (September 2009); The Unemployed Man Who Became a Tree (Black Lawrence Press, 2011). His poetry has appeared in many anthologies including Birthday Poems: A Celebration, Western Wind, and Contemporary Poetry of New England. He has been nominated for four Pushcarts and his poems and reviews have appeared in numerous magazines including: Poetry, Ploughshares, Iowa Review, Boston Review, Yankee, Hayden’s Ferry, Columbia, Greensboro Review, North American Review, Gulf Coast, Valparaiso Review.
Mark Matousek is the author of two acclaimed memoirs, Sex Death Enlightenment: A True Story and The Boy He Left Behind: A Man's Search for His Lost Father," as well as "When You're Falling, Dive: Lessons in the Art of Living." He is a contributing editor to O: The Oprah Magazine and Tricycle: The Buddhist Review whose work has appeared in numerous anthologies and publications, including The New Yorker, Details, and The Village Voice, as well as online at The Huffington Post. Matousek is Creative Director of V-Men (with Eve Ensler), an organization to end violence against women, and is currently completing a theater piece called "Ten Ways To Be a Man." His new book, Ethical Wisdom: What Makes Us Good, will be published later this year.
Polly Shulman, the author of the YA novel Enthusiasm and the forthcoming middle-grade novel The Grimm Legacy, has written and edited for The New York Times, The Village Voice, Discover, Science, Psychology Today, Newsday, Salon, Slate, and many other publications. She is a graduate of Yale University, where she majored in math. She lives in New York City.
Karen Sirabian is Director of Manhattanville College’s Master of Arts in Writing Program and one of the founders of Inkwell, the nationally recognized literary journal affiliated with program. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in numerous venues, including RUNES: A Review of Poetry, Writer’s Forum and The Madison Review.
Wendy Corsi Staub, New York Times bestselling author, has published more than seventy novels and has sold more than three million books worldwide. Under her own name, Wendy achieved New York Times bestselling status with her single title psychological suspense novels. Those novels and the women's fiction she writes under the pseudonym Wendy Markham have also frequently appeared on the USA Today, Barnes and Noble Top Ten, and Bookscan bestseller lists. Her latest thriller, Live to Tell (Avon Books, March 2010) received a starred review in Publishers Weekly and marks the first title in a suspense trilogy.
Liz Van Hoose is an associate editor at Viking Penguin, where she edits fiction and narrative nonfiction, including works by Ron Currie, Jr.; Robert Love; Danielle Trussoni; and James King, whose debut novel, Bill Warrington’s Last Chance, will be published in August.