Faculty Bios

Cinelle Barnes is a memoirist, essayist, and educator from Manila, Philippines, and is the author of MONSOON MANSION: A MEMOIR (Little A, 2018) and MALAYA: ESSAYS ON FREEDOM (Little A, 2019), and the editor of a forthcoming anthology of essays about the American South (Hub City Press, 2020). She earned an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Converse College. Her writing has appeared in Buzzfeed Reader, Catapult, Literary Hub, Hyphen, Panorama: A Journal of Intelligent Travel, and South 85, among others. Her work has received fellowships and grants from VONA, Kundiman, the John and Susan Bennett Memorial Arts Fund, and the Lowcountry Quarterly Arts Grant. Her debut memoir was listed as a Best Nonfiction Book of 2018 by Bustle and nominated for the 2018 Reading Women Nonfiction

Award. Barnes was a WILLA: Women Writing the American West Awards screener and a 2018-19 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards juror, and is the 2018-19 writer-in-residence at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art in Charleston, SC, where she and her family live. She recently received the Focus Fellowship for Journalism which will provide a two week research and writing residency for a nonfiction book project on the water crisis. WORKSHOP: What’s Mine and Yours: Writing Nonfiction Family Stories

Jeffrey Blount is the award-winning author of three novels — Almost Snow White, winner of the 2013 USA Best Book Awards. Hating Heidi Foster, winner of the 2013 Readers Favorite Book Award for young adult literature. The Emancipation of Evan Walls, winner of the 2019 Readers Favorite Book Award, winner of the 2019 American Bookfest Best Book Award and a Shelf Unbound 2019 Notable Book. He is also an Emmy award-winning television director and a 2016 inductee to the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame. During a 34-year career at NBC News, Jeffrey directed a decade of Meet The Press, The Today Show, NBC Nightly

News, and major special events. He was a contributor for HuffPost and has been published in The Washington Post, The Grio.com and other publications, commenting on issues of race, social justice and writing. He is also an award-winning documentary scriptwriter for films and interactives that are now on display in the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture. the Newseum, America I AM: The African American Imprint at the National Constitution Center, The Museum at Bethel Woods, at the site of the 1969 Woodstock Music and Arts Fair, and others. These projects have won Cine Golden

Eagle Awards, Muse Awards and a Thea Award. Born and raised in Smithfield, Virginia, he now lives in Washington, DC. KEYNOTE, WORKSHOP: The Shy Writer’s Guide to Presenting Yourself and Your Work

Belle Boggs is the author of The Gulf: A Novel; The Art of Waiting; and Mattaponi Queen: Stories. The Art of Waiting was a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay and was named a best book of the year by Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, the Globe and Mail, Buzzfeed, and O, the Oprah Magazine. Mattaponi Queen, a collection of linked stories set along Virginia’s Mattaponi River, won the Bakeless Prize and the Library of Virginia Literary Award and was a finalist for the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, and the Bread Loaf and Sewanee writers’ conferences. Her stories and essays have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Orion, the Paris

Review, Harper's, Ecotone, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She is an associate professor of English at North Carolina State University, where she also directs the MFA program in creative writing. WORKSHOP: You Do Look Funny in Your Bathing Suit: Humor in Life's Dreadful Moments

Amanda Bostic has more than eighteen years of experience in publishing, including sixteen years with the Thomas Nelson fiction team. During that time, she held nearly every editorial title before beginning to serve as publisher in 2017. She has edited numerous bestselling and award-winning authors, including Patti Callahan, Charles Martin, Terri Blackstock, and Colleen Coble. PANELS

Anne Brewer is a professional book editor with 10 years of experience working as an acquisitions and development editor at New York City publishing houses. After graduating from Harvard College, she began her career at St. Martin’s Press, where she worked on primarily women’s fiction and YA, including with New York Times bestselling authors Tatiana de Rosnay, P. C. Cast and Kristin Cast, and Erica Spindler. After 2 years, she moved in-house to Thomas Dunne Books/Minotaur where she was privileged to work with New York Times bestselling and two-time Edgar Award winning author John Hart, as well as a wide variety of other talented authors, including Thomas Christopher Greene, Judith Flanders, G. M. Malliet, Jane Maas, Kitty Kelley, Paula Brackston, Donna Andrews, and

many more. Most recently, she worked as senior acquisitions editor at the indie crime fiction publisher Crooked Lane Books, where she acquired (among others) titles from USA Today bestselling author Amanda Flower, critically acclaimed author Nicola Upson, as well as developed series concepts and first-book story bibles for a number of new crime series. WORKSHOP: The Plot Thickens: a User’s Guide to Novel Structure, CRITIQUES

Kerry D’Agostino is a literary agent at Curtis Brown, Ltd. She received her bachelor’s degree in English from Bowdoin College, her masters in Art in Education from Harvard Graduate School of Education, and her certificate in publishing from the Columbia Journalism School. She started at Curtis Brown in 2011 as assistant to Tim Knowlton and Holly Frederick in the Film and Television Department. After some time as a film and audio rights associate, she also began assisting Peter Ginsberg. In addition to her continued work with Peter, Kerry now represents authors of literary and commercial fiction, and select narrative nonfiction. She is particularly interested in work that is

voice driven, accessible, and authentic. Above all, she is drawn to work that either introduces her to someone, somewhere, or something new, or makes her see something old in a new way. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband. PANELS, CRITIQUES, PITCHES & QUERIES

Patti Callahan Henry is a New York Times and USA Today best-selling author of fifteen novels, including the (Historical Fiction), BECOMING MRS. LEWIS—The Improbable Love Story of Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis (writing as Patti Callahan). In addition, she is the recipient of The Christy Award—A 2019 Winner "Book of the Year.”; The Harper Lee Distinguished Writer of the Year for 2020 and the Alabama Library Association Book of the Year for 2019. Patti’s books include Losing the Moon, Between the Tides; Where the River Runs; When Light Breaks; Between the Tides; The Art of Keeping Secrets; Driftwood Summer; The Perfect Love Song: A Holiday Story; Coming Up for

Air; And Then I Found You; The Stories We Tell; The Idea of Love, The Bookshop at Water’s End, Becoming Mrs. Lewis and The Favorite Daughter. Her upcoming historical fiction, Surviving Savannah will be released on March 9, 2021.

A finalist in the Townsend Prize for Fiction, an Indie Next Pick, an OKRA pick, and a multiple nominee for the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) Novel of the Year, Patti is published in numerous languages. Her articles and essays have appeared in Southern Living, PINK, Writer’s Digest, Garden and Gun, Portico Magazine, Love Magazine (UK), Red Magazine (UK), Atlanta Journal, Birmingham Magazine, and more.

Her essays can also be found in anthologies and collections such as Our Prince of Scribes: Writers Remember Pat Conroy; Southern Writers Writing, and State of the Heart. Patti is a frequent speaker at luncheons, book clubs, and women’s groups. KEYNOTE, WORKSHOP: The Soul of Story

Len Lawson is the author of Chime (Get Fresh Books, 2019), the chapbook Before the Night Wakes You (Finishing Line Press, 2017), and co-editor of Hand in Hand: Poets Respond to Race (Muddy Ford Press, 2017). His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. He has received fellowships from Callaloo, Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Weymouth Center for the Arts, and others. His poetry appears in Callaloo, African American Review (forthcoming), Ninth Letter, Verse Daily, Mississippi Review, and elsewhere. Len is also a Ph.D. candidate in English Literature and Criticism at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, earning the 2020

IUP Outstanding Doctoral Student Award. He has taught English in South Carolina higher education for ten years. ROUNDTABLE OR PANEL, WORKSHOP: Love Thy Self: A Poetic Approach

Ray McManus’s poems and prose have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. His first book, Driving Through the Country Before You Are Born, was selected by Southern poet Kate Daniels and published by USC Press in 2007. Since then he has gone on to publish three more books: Left Behind (published by Stepping Stones Press in 2008), Red Dirt Jesus (selected by Alicia Ostriker for the Marick Press Poetry Prize and published by Marick Press in 2011), and Punch. (published by Hub City Press in 2014, and winner of the 2015 Independent Publishers Book Award). McManus has recently co-edited an anthology with USC Press called Found Anew. IN CONVERSATION, POETRY ROUNDTABLE Marly Rusoff began her career as a bookseller in Minneapolis while a student at the University of Minnesota. The store became a gathering place for writers and it was upstairs that she and a number of them formed the Loft, a nationally recognized nonprofit organization whose mission is to foster a writing community and audience for literature. She has worked with the following authors as a publicist and/or marketing director: Margaret Atwood, Thomas Cahill, Pres Jimmy Carter, , Pat Conroy, Peter Jennings, Tim O’Brien, Dennis Lehane, Bill Moyers, Sena Jeter Naslund, Cokie Roberts and Paul Theroux. While at Doubleday, Rusoff created the first publisher’s Reading Group Guide aimed at book groups, a popular marketing tool now widely used. In 2001, she

opened the Marly Rusoff Literary Agency. She has placed fiction and memoir to publishers for many

authors, including, Jeffrey Blount, Meg Waite Clayton, Pat Conroy, Patti Callahan Henry, Garrison Keillor, Cassandra King Conroy, Robin Oliveira, Ron Rash, Daren Wang and others. PANELS

Peter Schmitt is the author of six collections of poems: Goodbye, Apostrophe (Regal House Publishing, 2020); Renewing the Vows (David Robert Books); Hazard Duty, and Country Airport (Copper Beech Press); and two chapbooks, Incident in an Apartment Complex: A Suite of Voices, and To Disappear (Pudding House). He has received The Lavan Award from The Academy of American Poets (selected by Richard Wilbur); The “Discovery”/The Nation Prize (judged by Anthony Hecht, Mary Jo Salter, and Nicholas Christopher); The Julia Peterkin Award (Converse College); is a two-time recipient of grants from The Florida Arts Council; and was awarded a Fellowship from The Ingram Merrill Foundation. His poems were featured several times on National Public Radio’s Writers Almanac, and his poem, “Packing Plant,” won The Sunken Garden Poetry Festival open competition in Farmington,

Connecticut. His work has appeared in many leading publications, including The Hopkins Review, The Hudson Review, The Nation, The Paris Review, Poetry, and The Southern Review, and has been widely anthologized. He has also reviewed poetry and fiction for The South Florida Sun-Sentinel and The Miami Herald. A native Miamian and graduate with honors from Amherst College, where he studied with Richard Wilbur and received the College’s poetry prizes his junior and senior years; and from The University of Iowa, where his teachers included Donald Justice. Peter has taught creative writing and literature at The University of Miami since 1986. For information on his books, please visit his website at peterschmittpoet.com or contact him directly at pschmitt@miami.edu. WORKSHOP: Image Is Everything

Susan Zurenda taught literature, composition, and creative writing to thousands of high school and college students for 33 years. She then turned her attention to putting a novel in her heart on paper. Her debut novel, Bells for Eli, was released March 2, 2020. During her years of teaching at Spartanburg Community College and then as an AP English teacher at Spartanburg High School, Susan published short stories and won numerous regional awards such as the South Carolina Fiction Prize (twice), the Porter Fleming Competition, The Southern Writers Symposium Emerging Writers Fiction Contest, The Hub City Hardegree Contest in Fiction, Alabama Conclave First Novel Chapter Contest, and The Jubilee Writing Competition (twice). Since 2018, she has published six stories in literary magazines. Susan received her undergraduate and graduate degrees in

English from Converse College and now works as a book publicist managing media relations for Magic Time Literary Publicity. WORKSHOP: Family Stories: Evoking Emotion In Your Characters