meet our instructors

instructor bios

M - R

Michael Marano

Michael Marano is a literary horror and dark science fiction writer, with stories in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 11 and Outsiders: 22 All-New Stories from the Edge; his first novel Dawn Song won the Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild Awards. He is Fiction Editor of the award-winning dark fiction magazine Chiaroscuro (www.chizine.com) and has worked one-on-one with authors in the development of their short fiction. Stories From the Plague Years, a collection of Marano's new and reprinted short fiction, is now in preparation at Cemetery Dance Publications. Since 1990, he has also been reviewing movies and doing pop culture commentary for the Public Radio Satellite System program Movie Magazine International, syndicated in more than 111 markets in the US and Canada. Mike is a former Writing instructor in the SUNY system, and his non-fiction has appeared in venues like The Boston Phoenix, The Weekly Dig, The Independent Weekly, Paste Magazine, and Science Fiction Universe.

Amy Marcott

Amy Marcott's fiction is forthcoming or has been published in DIAGRAM, Dogwood, Memorious, Juked, and Six Sentences. She is the recipient of a Somerville Arts Council fellowship, was nominated for a 2009 Pushcart Prize, and won third place in Glimmer Train's Very Short Fiction Contest, among other honors. She received a BA in English from Wesleyan University and an MFA from Penn State University, where she also taught creative writing and composition. She has been a professional writer and editor for many years and currently plies her trade at MIT, where she's an active blogger and social media marketer and assists with incorporating new technologies into online strategies. She belongs to the Writers' Room of Boston and is currently at work on a novel.

Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich

Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich received her MFA from Emerson College and her JD from Harvard Law School. She is currently writing a memoir about a Louisiana death penalty case, adapted excerpts from which appear in Bellingham Review (as the winner of the 2009 Annie Dillard Award in Creative Nonfiction) and Fourth Genre. Her fiction appears in Connecticut Review and Minnetonka Review, among other journals. She received the 2010 Alice Hayes Fellowship from the Ragdale Foundation and has been awarded residency fellowships to the Millay Colony for the Arts and I-Park.

Tara L. Masih

Tara L. Masih received an MA in Writing and Publishing from Emerson College. She is editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction (a 2009 ForeWord Book of the Year), and author of the story collection Where the Dog Star Never Glows. Tara has published fiction, poetry, and essays in numerous anthologies and literary magazines (such as Confrontation, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Natural Bridge, New Millennium Writings, Red River Review, Night Train, and The Caribbean Writer), and her essays have been read on NPR. Several limited edition illustrated chapbooks featuring her flash fiction have been published by The Feral Press, along with poet’s farthing cards. Awards for her work include first place in The Ledge Magazine’s fiction contest, a finalist fiction grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and Pushcart Prize, Best New American Voices, and Best of the Web nominations. She works as a freelance book editor in Andover, Massachusetts. Visit www.taramasih.com.

Christina McCarroll

Christina McCarroll holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan, where she won two Hopwood Awards and a Helen Zell Post-MFA Fellowship. She earned her M.A. and B.A. in English from Stanford University and has worked as a writer and editor at The Christian Science Monitor in Boston. Her book reviews and nonfiction essays have appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Stanford magazine, and elsewhere, and her fiction has been nominated for the Best New American Voices series. She has taught at Harvard University, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, and the University of Michigan.

Jill McDonough

Jill McDonough's poem "Accident, Mass. Ave." recently won a Pushcart prize and made Rachel Maddow cry. Her first book of poems, Habeas Corpus, was published by Salt in 2008. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center, the New York Public Library, Stanford's Stegner program, and elsewhere, she has been teaching writing at the college level and beyond for ten years. Her work appears in Slate, The Threepenny Review, and a lot of other places.

Pablo Medina

Pablo Medina is the author of 11 books of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and translation, among them the poetry collection Points of Balance/Puntos de apoyo (2005) and the novel The Cigar Roller (2005). In January 2008, Medina and fellow poet Mark Statman published a new English version of García Lorca’s Poet in New York, which John Ashbery called “the definitive version of Lorca’s masterpiece”. Acclaimed as “lyrical and powerfully evocative” and “deserving a prominent spot in today’s literature of exile,” Medina’s work has appeared in various languages, among them Spanish, French, German, and Arabic, and in periodicals and magazines throughout the world. Winner of numerous awards, among them grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the NEA, the Lila-Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund, and others, Medina is currently professor in the Department of Writing, Literature and Publishing at Emerson College in Boston and is on faculty at the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers.

Randy Susan Meyers

The dark domestic drama of Randy Susan Meyers’ debut novel, The Murderer’s Daughters, an international bestseller published by St. Martins Press in January 2010, was called a “knock-out debut” by The LA Times, a “thought-provoking, heat-tugging debut” by Boston Magazine, and “an impressively executed novel, disturbing and convincing” by The Boston Globe. Meyers writing is informed by her years of work with batterers, domestic violence victims, and at-risk youth impacted by family violence. She is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post,, is a member of Beyond The Margins,, a multi-writer blog, and maintains her own blog: Word Love., More information is available at www.randysusanmeyers.com.

Wendy Mnookin

Wendy Mnookin's fourth book of poems, The Moon Makes Its Own Plea, was published by BOA Editions in 2008. Her previous collection, What He Took, won the book prize from the New England Poetry Club. She is also the recipient of a Poetry Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She teaches a poetry workshop at Emerson College and has taught courses and workshops for children and adults throughout the Boston area. She received her BA from Radcliffe College and her MFA in Writing from Vermont College. You can find out more at www.wendymnookin.com.

Mary Carroll Moore

Mary Carroll Moore’s twelve published books include the PEN/Faulkner nominated novel Qualities of Light (Bella Books); How to Master Change in Your Life: Sixty-seven Ways to Handle Life’s Toughest Moments (Eckankar Books); Cholesterol Cures (Rodale Press), and the award-winning Healthy Cooking (Ortho Publications). Your Book Starts Here: Create, Craft, and Sell Your First Novel, Memoir, or Nonfiction Book, based on her How to Plan, Write, and Develop a Book writing workshops, will be released in fall 2010. A former nationally syndicated columnist for the Los Angeles Times, over 300 of Mary’s essays, short stories, articles, and poetry have appeared in literary journals, magazines, and newspapers around the U.S. and have won awards with the McKnight Awards for Creative Prose, Glimmer Train Press, the Loft Mentor Series, and other writing competitions. She teaches creative writing in New York, Boston, New Hampshire, and Minnesota and writes a weekly blog for book writers at http://howtoplanwriteanddevelopabook.blogspot.com.

Micah Nathan

Micah Nathan is an award-winning author, screenwriter, and essayist. His debut novel Gods of Aberdeen (Simon & Schuster) became an international bestseller. Nathan’s short stories have been a finalist for the Tobias Wolff Award for Short Fiction and the Innovative Fiction Award, and his work has appeared in The Bellingham Review, Boston Globe Magazine, Eclectica, Diagram, Commonweal and other national publications. He received his MFA from Boston University, where he was awarded the 2010 Saul Bellow Prize in Fiction.

Ogi Ogas

Dr. Ogi Ogas received his PhD in cognitive neuroscience from Boston University and was a Department of Homeland Security Fellow. He's interested in helping readers understand their everyday behaviors in a surprising new light. His science nonfiction book A Billion Wicked Brains will be published by Penguin in May, 2011. The book combines online data mining with neuroscience to paint a fascinating vision of human desire. His next book, A Billion Brawling Brains, uses a similar approach to explore why and how we fight. He has been published in the Boston Globe and Seed Magazine online, and was a regular contributor to the Baltimore CityPaper. In a previous life, he sold a screenplay to Scout Productions and wrote screenplay coverage for a Hollywood distributor.

Marisa Pagano

Marisa Pagano began her publishing career in New York City at The Robbins Office, aiding in the promotion and representation of Joe Klein, David Remnick, Rebecca Mead, Frank Rich, Peter Singer, and Ron Rosenbaum, among other journalists and nonfiction writers. As an associate of the agent Bill Clegg, she handled and edited such novelists as Laura Zigman, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Heather McGowan, David Huddle, and Andrew Sean Greer, along with several poets, including Anne Carson and Mark Doty. In 2001, she joined with Bill Clegg and Sarah Burnes to establish Burnes and Clegg, Inc., a boutique literary agency representing Nicole Krauss, Nick Flynn, Susan Choi, and other critical talents. Assuming the duties of agent, editor, and contracts manager, she helped Burnes & Clegg become one of the industry's premier agencies in under a year. In 2002, Marisa moved to the Penguin Group, shadowing editorial director Jennifer Hershey and participating in the acquisition or editing of such titles as Kavita Daswani's For Matrimonial Purposes, Jilliane Hoffman's Retribution, Arturo Pérez-Reverte's Queen of the South, and Sharon Pywell's What Happened to Henry. In 2003, she joined the editorial department at Bloomsbury USA, working with a range of genres -- fiction, memoir, humor, history, short stories, investigative journalism, and illustrated books -- and a diverse group of authors: Roz Chast, Alan Hollinghurst, Douglas Coupland, David Leavitt, Elizabeth Kolbert, Ben Schott, Robert Sullivan, Wendy Shanker, Sloane Tanen, and Edward Sorel, among others. She played an instrumental role in the acquisition and shaping of Chelsea Handler's My Horizontal Life, which has spent close to ninety weeks on The New York Times best-seller list. Hoping to round out her experience, Marisa transitioned to academic publishing and Columbia University Press in 2005, where she has held the position of Senior Copywriter in the marketing and publicity departments. Concurrent with her employment, she acted as reader for the Bettina Schrewe Literary Scouting Agency and completed a MA in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. She also became a book reviewer for Publishers Weekly.

KL Pereira

KL Pereira writes poetry, nonfiction, cross-genre, and memoir. Pereira has taught poetry classes and writing workshops at East Boston High School, Casa Myrna Vasquez, Freedom House, The Women's Center, and Center for New Words and has served as an editor and writer for LiP Magazine, Whats Up Magazine/Spare Change News, advocacy publications by and for the homeless and underemployed. Her work has appeared in The Pitkin Review, Girlistic Magazine, The Hub Journal: Boston's Literary Occasional, Sui Generis, Bitch Magazine, Clamor Magazine, Whats Up Magazine/Spare Change News, Girl Culture: An Encyclopedia and the forthcoming Boy Culture: An Encyclopedia, both from Greenwood Press. She holds a BA in Literature and Languages from Bard College, an MA in Gender/Cultural Studies from Simmons College and an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College.

Hillary Rettig

Hillary Rettig is an author, workshop leader and coach who specializes in helping artists, activists, academics and other "ambitious dreamers" overcome procrastination and use their time better. The leading liberal blog, DailyKos.com, said of Hillary's book The Lifelong Activist: How to Change the World Without Losing Your Way (Lantern Books, 2006), "If I had but one book to spend hard-earned cash on this year, The Lifelong Activist would be it, hands down." Hillary's free, downloadable ebook, The Little Guide To Beating Procrastination, Perfectionism and Blocks, is available at her website www.lifelongactivist.com/downloads and Hillary may be reached at lifelongactivist@yahoo.com. Hillary is a New York City native and current Boston resident, who has published science fiction along with nonfiction. Some of the acclaimed science fiction writers she has studied with are Ursula K. LeGuin, Samuel R. Delaney and the late Octavia Butler. A lifelong writer, her other passions include her family, her dogs, social justice and veganism.