meet our instructors

instructor bios

G - L

Judah Leblang
Judah Leblang Judah Leblang is a Boston-based writer, teacher and storyteller. His radio essays have appeared on 160 NPR and ABC-network stations around the US, and on several college and community radio stations. His column, "Life in the Slow Lane," appears regularly in Bay Windows, a Boston-area newspaper.

Elisa Gabbert
Elisa Gabbert Elisa Gabbert is the poetry editor of Absent and the author of Thanks for Sending the Engine (Kitchen Press) and The French Exit (Birds LLC). With Kathleen Rooney, she has co-written several collaborative collections, including Don't Ever Stay the Same; Keep Changing (Spooky Girlfriend Press) and That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness (Otoliths). Elisa's poems have appeared in Colorado Review, Diagram, The Laurel Review, Pleiades, Puerto del Sol, Salt Hill, Washington Square, and other journals.

Ethan Gilsdorf
Ethan Gilsdorf Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the travel memoir/pop culture investigation Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms, named a Must-Read Book by the Massachusetts Book Awards. A poet, teacher, critic and journalist, Gilsdorf has worked as a freelance correspondent, guidebook writer, and film, book and restaurant reviewer in Paris as well as the U.S. Now based in Somerville, Massachusetts, he publishes travel, arts, and pop culture stories regularly in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post and Christian Science Monitor, and has been published in dozens of other magazines, newspapers and guidebooks worldwide, including National Geographic Traveler, Psychology Today, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Australian Financial Review, USA Today, and Fodor's travel guides. He is a book and film critic for the Boston Globe and the film columnist for Art New England. His blog "Geek Pride" is seen regularly on PsychologyToday.com, and he also blogs for Boston.com's Globetrotting, Tor.com and TheOneRing.net. As a poet, he is the winner of the Hobblestock Peace Poetry Competition and the Bradberry Contemporary Poets Prize, and has published poems in Poetry, The Southern Review, The North American Review and several anthologies. He is co-founder of Grub Street's Young Adult Writers Program (YAWP), volunteers as a guest speaker in the Boston Public Schools and leads creative writing workshops in journalism, travel and essay writing, and poetry, as well as book promotion and writing career planning workshops, at Grub Street, Emerson College, Media Bistro. He speaks frequently at conventions, universities, and book festivals nationwide. Follow Ethan’s adventures at http://www.ethangilsdorf.com.
Beth Raisner Glass
Beth Raisner Glass Beth Raisner Glass is a children's book author, newspaper writer and teacher. She has taught in the Massachusetts public school system, and was Associate Professor of Education at Wellesley College. Her first picture book, Noises at Night, was published to wide acclaim and was featured on the Today Show's "Best Books for Children" segment. Her next picture book, Blue Ribbon Dad, is will be published in 2010. Her middle grade novel, A Date for Honey Moone is currently under consideration. She received her Bachelors in Education from Lesley College, and M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Lesley University.
Lynne Griffin
Lynne Griffin Lynne Griffin writes about family life. She is the author of the novels Sea Escape (Simon & Schuster, 2010) and Life Without Summer (St. Martin’s Press, 2009), and the nonfiction parenting guide, Negotiation Generation (Penguin, 2007). In addition to teaching at Grub Street, Lynne teaches in the graduate program of family studies at Wheelock College. She is the parenting contributor for Boston’s Fox Morning News, where she talks about family life issues. For more about Lynne’s work, visit her website, www.LynneGriffin.com or her blog, www.Family-Life-Stories.com.
Michelle Hoover
Michelle Hoover Michelle Hoover is a full-time instructor at Boston University and has published short stories and novel excerpts in numerous journals, including Prairie Schooner, The Massachusetts Review, StoryQuarterly and Confrontation. She has been the Philip Roth Writer-in-Residence at Bucknell, a MacDowell Fellow, and in 2005 the winner of the PEN/New England Discovery Award for Fiction. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and published in Best New American Voices. Her novel, The Quickening, will be published by Other Press in June 2010.
Amanda Keil
Amanda Keil Bio coming!

Crystal King
Crystal King Crystal King is a freelance writer and Pushcart-nominated poet who is currently working on her first novel. She holds an M.A. in Critical & Creative Thinking from UMass Boston where she centered her thesis on developing a system to help fiction writers in progress. Additionally, Crystal has worked in marketing and public relations for over 15 years and currently drives social media for CA, Inc., a $4.3B high-tech firm. She also teaches courses in social media for artists at Mass College of Art.

Neil Landau
Neil Landau Neil Landau’s film credits include the popular teen comedy, Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, currently slated for remake by The Mark Gordon Company.  His TV credits include the original Melrose Place, The Magnificent Seven, MTV’s Undressed, Twice in a Lifetime” and Doogie Howser, M.D. He has developed numerous one-hour drama TV pilots for Warner Bros., Touchstone, CBS, and Lifetime TV, and written movies for Universal, Disney, Columbia Pictures, and 20th Century Fox. He is currently re-writing a 3D animated feature based on the popular Tadeo Jones comic books for StudioCanal, Fox, and El Toro Pictures.  Neil Landau is also a Professor of Screenwriting in the MFA Screenwriting and Producing Programs at UCLA School of Film, Television, and Digital Media. His first book, 101 Things I Learned in Film School (from Grand Central Publishing), was launched in May, 2010.
Leslie Lawrence
Leslie Lawrence Bio coming!