Julia Cooke’s writing has appeared in the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Atlantic, the Village Voice, the Paris Review Daily, the Best Women’s Travel Writing anthology, and more. She’s a frequent contributor to Guernica and Conde Nast Traveller. Her book on youth culture in Havana, entitled All the Young Punks: Grandchildren of the Cuban Revolution, will be out next spring. She teaches writing at the New School.

Rosie Misdary is a writer who was resuscitated from journalism. She believes firmly in the Hero’s Journey and speaks Latin as evidence of her fervor. She is finishing her first novel which remains woefully unnamed. She is a member of The Kilgore Trout House of Wayward Writers (www.troutfamilyalmanac.com) who will be collectively publishing an Almanac this fall with PaperCut Press.

 Richard Jeffrey Newman Carol Bartold

Carol Bartold is a Delaware native and Bronxville, New York resident Carol Bartold graduated with Honors in Music from Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Virginia and studied Business Administration at California State University, Los Angeles.  She worked as an auditor for Price Waterhouse, financial analyst for 20^th Century Fox Film Corporation, and controller for TreePeople Inc.  She holds the Master in Fine Arts degree in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College.  She is the senior reporter for www.MyHometownBronxville.com.  When she isn’t writing or recording debits and credits, Bartold sings at Christ Church, Concordia College and with the Sarah Lawrence College Women’s Vocal Ensemble and Chamber Choir.

Kirsten Major was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and holds an MFA from Cornell University, where she restored a 1968 Volkswagen Squareback and then accidentally blew it up a month later.  Her writing has appeared in various magazines and journals, including the Rake, Chelsea, The Berkeley Fiction Review, and Popular Mechanics.  She is, so far as she knows, the only author of a New York Times’ Modern Love Column that was not about her own love life.  Kirsten will be reading from “Student Loans in Outer Space,” which will be released in Sept 2013.

Richard Jeffrey Newman writes about the impact of feminism on his life as a man and of classical Persian poetry on our lives as Americans. His books include The Silence of Men, a volume of poetry, and The Teller of Tales: Stories from Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, a translation of part of the Iranian national epic. He curates the First Tuesdays reading series in Queens and is on the Board of Directors of Newtown Literary Alliance, a Queens-based literary non-profit. He is professor of English at Nassau Community College in Garden City, NY. His website is www.richardjnewman.com.

On Friday April 26th at 7PM, Paragraph Members Bonnie Altucher, Roberta Lawrence and Caroline Rothstein shared their work at KGB Bar.

Bonnie Altucher grew up in New York City and received an MFA in fiction from Brooklyn College. Her poetry was published in Roof Magazine, and she has been awarded residency fellowships in fiction from Ucross, Ragdale, VCCA and MacDowell. In 1998 she founded and edited Documentmag, an online journal about documentary filmmaking. She has reviewed books for Electric Literature’s The Outlet and is finishing Autonomy, a novel about a psychotherapy cult in New York in the 60’s and 80’s.

Roberta Lawrence is a singer/songwriter turned writer. Her novel-in-progress, Quietly Crazy for You, was inspired by the years she spent in the parallel universe of jazz and studio musician. Her short story collection is entitled The Velocity of Grief and chronicles a young widow’s struggles to build a new life. Roberta has won a New Voices Award from the Writer’s Voice, a Ludwig Vogelstein Fiction grant, and residencies at Ragdale and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her articles and reviews have appeared in BOMB, Musician, and ASCAP in Action. She helms her marketing/PR firm, Roberta Lawrence Media. As a songwriter, singer and record producer, she has worked with Richie Havens, Bob James, Herbie Hancock and Donald Harrison. Her CD with trumpeter Mike Lawrence, “Nightwind,” topped the Billboard charts. She is currently working on her own CD, to be released in December 2013.

  

Karen Braziller’s primary experience is as an acquisitions editor at S&S, Dutton, and elsewhere, and as the editorial director of Persea Books, a literary house she co-founded. She has worked closely with numerous authors, from conception to published book—among them, Oscar Hijuelos, Joyce Carol Oates, Meg Kearney, Pablo Medina, Thylias Moss, Gary Soto, and Alan Ziegler. In 2008, she began a prose workshop, adapting her one-on-one experience to the group format while aiming for the same goal: a publishable manuscript that realizes the writer’s vision. In the workshop’s five years, ten books have been published or are under contract.

Nancy Rawlinson is an independent editor, teacher, and creative coach with over ten years of experience. She works with both fiction and nonfiction writers to help them complete manuscripts, move past their inner blocks, and achieve publication. She has worked as an editor at Madison magazine, Publisher’s Weekly, and Guernica: A Magazine of Art and Politics. Nancy also runs her own independent workshops in New York City. As a writer, Nancy has been awarded residencies and fellowships from the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony, the Ragdale Foundation, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the Jentel Artist Residency Program. Her website is www.nancyrawlinson.com.

Alexandra Shelley, a book editor for 20 years, is former deputy editorial director at Bridge Works Publishing.  She now works independently with authors, mainly on novels and narrative non-fiction.  Among the best-selling books she’s worked on recently are Kathryn Stockett’s THE HELP and Emily Giffin’s WHERE WE BELONG. She also teaches fiction workshops at The New School and in her living room.  She edits about 30 books a year, which is why she can be found staring moodily at the Paragraph coffeemaker trying to remember that she’s in the kitchen not on a drought-stricken Australian sheep farm or a packet ship crossing the Atlantic.

 Catherine Stine

Rahaleh Nassri

Will Heinrich

KGB Bar

Will Heinrich spent his early childhood in Tokyo and grew up in New York. His novel The King’s Evil was published in 2003 and won a PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship in 2004. He currently writes about art for The New York Observer and GalleristNY.com.

Rahaleh Nassri is a playwright whose new translation and adaptation of Camus’ Les Justes was produced by Washington Shakespeare Company last year. She is also a theatrical director and actress, with an MFA in Classical Acting and a resume full of Shakespearean characters including Beatrice, Tamora, Hermia, Romeo and Mark Antony. She was born in Iran, raised in South Carolina, but spent most of her adult life in Washington, DC, where her first job after receiving a BA in International Affairs was in the press office of the French Embassy as managing editor of their English language publication News from France. She currently lives in Brooklyn, where she runs the acting school www.brooklynactingschool.org. Details of her new play House of Strength are available at www.zoorhouse.com.

Catherine Stine writes YA, New Adult and Middle Grade fiction. Selected YA novels include her futuristic thriller,Fireseed One, with illustrations by the author, and Refugees, which earned a New York Public Library Best Book. Middle grade novels include End of the Race and A Girl’s Best Friend. More and more, she’s enjoying writing speculative tales. She teaches literature at the School of Visual Arts and creative writing at the Philadelphia Writing Conference and in her own ongoing NYC writing workshop. Catherine earned a double focus MFA in Creative Writing at the New School. At KGB, she’ll read from her sequel to Fireseed One, entitled Ruby’s Fire. Visit her blog at www.catherinestine.blogspot.com and her website www.catherinestine.c

Pics to come!

Holly Crafts Colasanti is an NY State licensed acupuncturist, holds board certification in Chinese herbal medicine.  B.A in film and psychology from Stanford University, studied baking and pastry arts at the California Culinary Academy.  During her clinical internship at Pacific College of Oriental Medicine NY, she externed at St. Vincent’s Comprehensive Cancer Center, St. Vincent’s HIV Center and The Fortune Society, an Alternative to Incarceration program in Long Island City.  During treatment, she utilizes whichever modalities that are most applicable, whether with acupuncture, tui na, cupping, moxibustion, herbal medicine or Chinese abdominal massage. She uses the acupuncture system of Master Tung and utilizes channel theory to treat pain conditions in all areas of the body. Works in active partnership with patients, engaging comprehensively to facilitate balance and support health. She integrates eastern and western nutrition with Chinese herbal medicine into the best nexus of individual lifestyle recommendations. She combines food and nutrition, herbal and preventative medicine and community while practicing at City Acupuncture of New York.

Jennifer Haus is a licensed clinical social worker with a Master’s degree from NYU
School of Social Work, certified hypnotist from the National Guild of Hypnotists.
Worked at Washington Square Institute for Psychotherapy, NYU Medical Center Hospital for Joint Diseases, and NYU Counseling Services.  As a SIFI instructor, she supervised graduate MSW students in an adult outpatient clinic.  While working at NYU HJD, she ran a successful support group for patients living with chronic pain and managing chronic illness. She treats anxiety, depression, chronic pain, substance abuse, codependency, and challenging relationships.  Treatment modalities include psychotherapy and wellness techniques including Hypnosis, Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) and Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). As a lecturer, she has spoken to clinicians at hospitals and employees of corporations on the topics of wellness, stress reduction, chronic pain, sexuality, caregiver stress, self-care  and chronic illness.   Member of National Association of Social Workers and the National Guild of Hypnotists. For more: www.youandtherapy.com

Kim Merrill

Marie-Helene Bertino

Rebecca Jane Stokes

Kim, Marie and Rebecca

Marie-Helene Bertino‘s collection of short stories SAFE AS HOUSES received The 2012 Iowa Short Fiction Award and was published in October of 2012.  She has taught for The Gotham Writer’s Workshop and One Story’s Emerging Writer’s Workshop and was an Emerging Writer Fellow at NYC’s Center for Fiction.  She hails from Philadelphia and lives in Brooklyn.  Currently, she is a biographer for people living with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).  For more information, visit www.mariehelenebertino.com, or follow her @mhbertino.

Kim Merrill is a playwright whose work been produced by NJ Repertory, Contemporary American Theatre Festival, Theater for the New City, Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey, Manhattan Theatre Source , Culture Project, New Perspectives, and other off-off-broadway places.  Workshops and readings at New Georges, PlayLabs at the Playwrights Center, Cleveland Playhouse, Geva Theatre, Cherry Lane, Women’s Project, LaMama Experiments, and Miami’s City Theatre.  She’s received an Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award (2009), EST/Sloan commission (2007), Playwrights First Award (1998), Pilgrim Project grant (2001), publication by Dramatists Play Service, and is a member of the Ensemble Studio Theatre playwright unit.

Rebecca Jane Stokes received her BA from Sewanee, and her MFA from the New School for Drama. She interned as a writer’s assistant on HBO’s ‘In Treatment,’ and worked a writer’s assistant on Lifetime TV’s movie and web series, ‘Inspector Mom’. Her plays include ‘Freakish,’ a stage-reading produced by the Abroad Stage Company, and ‘Men To Be Feared’, produced at the New York International Fringe Festival by One21 Productions. Stokes is a freelance humorist, whose contributions can be found at XOJane.com, TheHairpin.com, Jezebel.com, and FemPop.com.

Daniel Lazar has been with the Writers House literary agency for over ten years, starting once upon a time as a summer intern and now as a senior agent representing a wide range of fiction, non-fiction and children’s books. Some of his clients include the bestselling Dork Diaries series by Rachel Renee Russell, Seraphina by Rachel Hartman, Timmy Failure by Stephan Pastis, The One I Left Behind by Jennifer McMahon, The Gilly Salt Sisters by Tiffany Baker, House of Lies by Martin Kihn and The Malice of Fortune by Michael Ennis. For more information: www.writershouse.com

Claudia Ballard has been an agent at WME since 2008. She represents mainly fiction, from established short-story writers to debut novelists and beyond. She works with a variety of authors including Amelia Gray, Patricio Pron, Marjorie Celona, Aria Sloss, and screenwriters Seth Grahame-Smith and Charlie Kaufman. She is interested in taking on exciting new voices, risk-takers, and storytellers of all kinds.