A graduate of the 2017-2018 Novel Incubator program, Sarah is completing the “final” revisions on her first crime novel, Head Case. Unlike her protagonist she’s never taken the fall for murder, but she did intern in the Boston Medical Examiner’s office, pursuing an MS in Forensics—until she realized that processing human remains made for better story material than career material. Writing was the air in Sarah’s lungs until the baby came along and took her breath away. Now she’s juggling motherhood, the novel, work-work, her husband and geriatric French Bulldogs, and has accepted that she’ll never sleep again.

Rachel Barenbaum is the author of the critically-acclaimed novels Atomic Anna and A Bend in the Stars. She is a prolific writer and reviewer. Her work has appeared in the LA Review of Books, Harper’s Bazaar, and more. She is a scholar in residence at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis and is the founder/ host of the podcast Debut Spotlight. In a former life she was a hedge fund manager and spin instructor. She has degrees from Harvard in Business, and Literature and Philosophy. She is an elected member of Town Meeting in Brookline, MA. www.rachelbarenbaum.com and @rbarenbaum on Twitter and @barenbaumrachel on Insta

Louise Berliner graduated from the Novel Incubator class in 2016. Her first book, written in part thanks to an NEH Youthgrant, was Texas Guinan, Queen of the Night Clubs, a biography of a New York night club hostess from the Roaring 20s famous for saying, "Hello, Suckers!" Her poems, articles and short fiction have appeared in VQR, The Mom Egg, Porter Gulch Review, Ibbetson Review, Sacred Fire magazine, and several plein air chapbook collections. When not writing she can be found weaving sculptural baskets or wandering in her garden.

Susan Bernhard is a Massachusetts Cultural Council fellowship recipient, a graduate of the GrubStreet Novel Incubator program, and a 2019 Tennessee Williams Scholar to the Sewanee Writers Conference. Her fiction has appeared in Little Bird Stories and Solstice Lit Mag. Her debut novel WINTER LOON is an Amazon Bestseller and won the Boston Authors Club Julia Ward Howe Award for Fiction. Susan was born and raised in the Bitterroot Valley of western Montana, is a graduate of the University of Maryland, and lives and writes in Massachusetts. More information at www.susanbernhard.com

Jessica Bird looks up only occasionally from her novel in progress, about a photographer who learns his brother who disappeared when they were children has only now died. In addition to receiving a scholarship to attend GrubStreet's Novel Incubator program in 2020-2021, she has taught literature and composition at Columbia University and the University of Rochester, ghost written a business textbook, temped at a variety of high-drama workplaces, and published television recaps for now-defunct websites. An avid baker, Jessica throws dinner parties to foist new desserts on guests, and aspires one day to win a blue ribbon in a pie baking contest. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband and two persnickety dowager cats.

A graduate of Grub Street’s Novel Incubator, Lisa Birk was formerly a teacher of writing at Boston University and the project manager of Harvard University’s Narrative Journalism Program at the Nieman Foundation. Her work has appeared in many publications including Orion Magazine, the Harvard Review, The Boston Phoenix and The Boston Sunday Globe. It has also been anthologized in several books including W.W. Norton’s Abnormal Psychology. She is seeking representation for two novels, The Rehabilitation of Maria LaHaye and Chipped.

Belle Brett (www.bellebrett.com) is a proud graduate of GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator program. As a child, she produced what would now be called graphic novels, but alas, only the drawings remain as the words were strictly in the oral tradition. Now, several degrees and careers later (teacher, career counselor, researcher), she writes fiction (no pictures, but with a cinematic flavor) about coming-of-age across the life span. Her debut novel, Gina in the Floating World, was published in September 2018 by She Writes Press. She is also an artist (www.bellebrett.studio), blogs on “slow downsizing” (https://slow-downsizing.site123.me/), and enjoys traveling and dancing with her husband and aging contemporaries to live music in the dive bars of Somerville and Cambridge. All of it is grist for her writing mill.

Lise Brody graduated from Year 7 of the Novel Incubator. She is a high school English teacher.

Helen Bronk completed Grub Street’s Novel Incubator in 2016 and continues work on her novel, Trotamundos, an inverted immigration story set in Cusco, Peru. She has traveled throughout Central and South America. Now a professional grantwriter, she spends too much of her spare time reading.

Kate Burcak is a graduate of the 2018 Grub Street Novel Incubator. She resides in Portland, OR, where she is currently working on her first novel.

Julie Carrick Dalton is a graduate of the GrubStreet Novel Incubator. As a journalist, she has published articles in dozens of publications, including The Boston Globe, BusinessWeek, Inc. Magazine, and The Hollywood Reporter. She holds a Master's in Creative Writing from Harvard Extension School, and her short stories have appeared in The MacGuffin, The Charles River Review, and the anthology Turning Points: Stories about Choice and Change. Her first novel manuscript won the 2017 William Faulkner Literary Competition and the 2017 Writer’s League of Texas contest. She is represented by Stacy Testa at Writers House. Mom to four kids and two dogs, Julie runs a 100-acre family farm and loves to ski, kayak, cook vegetarian food, and dig in the dirt. You can follow her @juliecardalt or juliecarrickdalton.wordpress.com.

Elizabeth Chiles Shelburne is a Tennessee-born, Massachusetts-based writer. Her debut novel HOLDING ON TO NOTHING won the IPPY Gold Medal for Best Regional Fiction from the South and was a SIBA Okra Pick. Her short fiction has been published in Broad River Review and Barren Magazine, and her non-fiction has appeared in The Atlantic, The Boston Globe, Boston Magazine and Dead Darlings. She is a graduate of Amherst College and Grub Street’s Novel Incubator.

Sarah’s work has appeared in Solstice Literary Magazine, The Conium Review, Poetry & Audience, and other places. She has served on the editorial team for Post Road magazine and The Conium Review, and is currently Managing Editor at Pangyrus magazine. By day, she is Chief of Witty Banter at GrubStreet, the nation’s leading creative writing center, and by later that day, she is both a manuscript consultant, and a social media and literary marketing coach. Hailing from Yorkshire, England, her goal in life is to introduce the word “sozzard” to the American vernacular.

Nancy Crochiere’s debut novel, Graceland, will be published by Avon/HarperCollins on May 30. Prior to trying her hand at fiction, Nancy wrote a humor column about family life titled “The Mother Load” for thirteen years. Her essays have appeared in The Boston Globe, Writer’s Digest, and WBUR’s Cognoscenti blog.

Cameron Dryden is a writer, engineer, and inventor with 31 patents. He was NSBE Distinguished Engineer of the Year and is a lay preacher. A graduate of Grubstreet's Novel Incubator, he's revising two fiction novels about Onesimus, the first-century slave who escaped, returned, and eventually became bishop of Ephesus, fourth-largest city in the Roman empire. www.origenes.org and www.fyamelrose.org.

I'm a lawyer and a writer, traveler, eater, constant reader. I am an alum of the first Novel Incubator class. Depending on the day you ask, my novel is either an endless Sisyphean nightmare or a consuming labor of love. I live in Somerville with my husband and my kid.

Michele Ierardi Ferrari currently teaches Novel In Progress at Grub Street. She completed GrubStreet's Novel Generator and Novel Incubator programs. She participated in Breadloaf Sicily, the Tin House Summer Workshop and the Sirenland Writers Conference. She is a TedX Beaconstreet speaker and a Moth GrandSlam storyteller. She lives in Cambridge, MA, with her husband and Jack Russell, Zelda, and is working on a novel set in 1980s New York City.

Jack bought his first computer with contest money he won from writing a one-act comedy, then he used that computer to try writing novels. The computer and all of its component parts have long-since died, but at least one of the novels lived on to be a part of Grub Street's Novel Incubator. In his spare time, he keeps a mostly defunct story blog at hazypicture.com, argues with anti-feminists and works 9:00 - 5:00 in an office.

Kelly J. Ford is the author of Real Bad Things, from Thomas & Mercer, and Cottonmouths, named one of 2017’s best books of the year by the Los Angeles Review and featured in the “52 Books in 52 Weeks” from the Los Angeles Times. An Arkansas native, Kelly writes crime fiction set in the Ozarks and Arkansas River Valley. Kelly is also an occasional co-host with Daniel Ford on the Writer’s Bone podcast. She lives in Vermont with her wife, cat, and dog. She can be found at www.kellyjford.com and twitter.com/Kelly_J_Ford.

Marc is currently revising his novel "Deli Seven" and drafting another. His short fiction has appeared in Hunger Mountain, Santa Clara Review, and South Carolina Review. As a founding board member of Grub Street, he helped the organization develop over nine years to become the premier non-profit writing center in New England and a nationally recognized model. He currently serves on the board of 826 Boston.

Lissa Franz is a PEN Discovery Award recipient in fiction and holds an MA in Creative Writing from Boston University. Her short fiction has appeared in Fogged Clarity and Missouri Review. She loves teaching memoir, swimming in open water, and researching anything that has to do with strong women in history. She is currently revising a novel.

Stephanie Gayle is the two-time Pushcart Prize nominated author of the Thomas Lynch mystery series, beginning with Idyll Threats. She is the current Vice President of the national board of Sisters in Crime. She's working on a standalone thriller. Stephanie can be found at www.stephaniegayle.com and https://twitter.com/StephofLegends.

Kat Gibson is a 2015 graduate of Grub Street’s Novel Incubator. She works in tax law and often travels to fantasy worlds, usually when reading the IRS Code. Her hobbies include reading and drinking lots of coffee.

Deborah Good received an Honorable Mention in the 2018 James Jones First Novel Competition for her novel-in-progress, Viktor Schmitz and is a 2015 graduate of Grub Street’s Novel Incubator program. After a childhood on Long Island, she did stints in Ann Arbor and Somerville, ended up in Brookline and hasn't budged since then. She is the mother of two grown daughters.

Carol D. Gray is a writer, psychologist, and 2013 graduate of GrubStreet's Novel Incubator Program. She is currently working on LITTLE BEAST, a middle grade fantasy about a young girl who unexpectedly switches places with her spoiled alter ego in a parallel world. A longtime member of SCBWI, Carol is a huge fan of children’s literature and anything having to do with magic.

Mark Guerin is a 2014 graduate of Grub Street's Novel Incubator program. An award-winning poet in college, he shifted to playwriting in the 80's where he developed plays at the Chicago Dramatists Workshop (a Grub Street for playwrights). He's won an Illinois Arts Council Grant and has an MFA in Dramatic Writing from Brandeis University. His debut novel, You Can See More From Up Here, was published by Golden Antelope Press in October, 2019. Mark lives in Harpswell, ME, with his wife, Carol, and two Brittany Spaniels. To reach Mark Guerin, email him at guerin.mark@gmail.com.

Shalene Gupta has a Masters from Columbia Journalism School. In the past she was a reporter on Fortune where she wrote about the intersection of diversity and tech. Her work has appeared in Harvard Business Review, ESPN-W, and Kirkus Reviews, among others. Before working as a reporter, she taught English in Malaysia on a Fulbright scholarship and wrote a book documenting the history of the Malaysian Fulbright program. She's currently working on a book on trust and business for Harvard Business School, and a YA novel with the Novel Incubator program.

Madeleine Hall is a Boston-based singer/songwriter and early childhood educator. She is a 2019 graduate of GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator Program and is currently working on her first novel. She was born and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts and lives in Roslindale with her husband and daughter.

Desmond Hall is a Jamaican born author whose debut YA novel, YOUR CORNER DARK, is a fast-paced thriller that has been described as American Street meets Long Way Down. This searing and gritty novel takes an unflinching look at the harsh realities of gang life in Jamaica and how far a teen is willing to go for family. The book confronts police brutality, “Colorism”, gang culture and political deception. He graduated Marquette University with a BA in Journalism and was selected for the “Who’s Who of American College Students.” He’s written and directed an HBO feature movie, “A Day in Black and White” which was nominated for the Gordon Parks Award. He’s also written and directed a full-length stage play, “Stockholm, Brooklyn” that won the Audience Award at the Downtown Theater Festival at the Cherry Lane theater. The play was also picked for the Public Theater's New Works Series. For two years, he worked as a high school Biology and English teacher in Brooklyn, NY. In this period of his life he also counseled teenage ex-cons after their release from Rikers Island Correctional Institution. As an advertising creative director, he’s written many TV campaigns, two Superbowl commercials and won multiple awards while running the creative side of Spike Lee’s advertising agency. While working in the advertising and film industry he’s served on the board of the Partnership for a Drug Free America, the Advertising Council, judged the One Show, Addys and the NYC Downtown Film Festival. He’s also been named one of Variety magazine’s Top 50 Creatives to Watch. https://www.amazon.com/Your-Corner-Dark-Desmond-Hall/dp/1534460713

Leanna Hamill is an estate planning attorney in Hingham, Massachusetts and a graduate of Grub Street's Novel Incubator. She is currently seeking representation for her novel, ALMOST HOME, about a young woman who returns home to her small fishing town after her estranged father has died, where she must learn to forgive him, and herself, so she can move forward.

Suzanne’s writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Creative Nonfiction, Huffington Post, and the Boston Globe. She holds an MFA from Lesley University and is a graduate of the Novel Generator and Novel Incubator programs, where she developed her novel-in-progress, Less Blood, More Sugar. When she’s not revising the beast, she tutors students at Cape Cod Community College and freelances for the Provincetown Independent.

Mary Heitkamp is a recent graduate of the Novel Incubator program and cofounder of Readerly, a new book discovery platform. She has an MFA in creative nonfiction from Vermont College of Fine Arts and has published essays in The Chattahoochee Review, 1966: A Journal of Creative Nonfiction, and Numéro Cinq Magazine. She is currently pantsing her way through her first novel.

Michelle Hoover leads the GrubStreet Novel Incubator program and coordinates the Massachusetts Book Awards beginning with their 20th year anniversary. She is a 2014 NEA Fellow and has been a Writer-in-Residence at Brandeis University, a MacDowell Fellow, and a winner of the PEN/New England Discovery Award. Her debut, The Quickening, was a 2010 Massachusetts Book Award "Must Read" and a finalist for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize. Her second novel, Bottomland, was the 2017 All Iowa Reads selection and a 2016 Mass Book "Must Read." She is a native of Iowa and lives in Boston. For more, go to www.michelle-hoover.com.

Rose Himber Howse is a student in GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator. She is currently revising her first novel, Stones They Broke, which explores queer identity in the southern Appalachian Mountains. Rose enjoys writing about, and eating, neon orange foods. She also teaches literacy to adults in Boston.

Cynthia Johnson’s career in television, radio and film lasted over 35 years. Her production experience ranged from public service campaigns, documentaries, docu-dramas and live studio productions. Ms. Johnson worked for PBS, NBC and CBS affiliates and has won 9-New England EMMY Awards, 2-Gold World Medal from the International Film and Television Festival of New York, CEBA Award from the National Association of Black Journalists and the 2003 Massachusetts Psychological Award for her contributions in broadcast and media. Ms. Johnson has written several dramatic scripts for television including the docu-drama, Journey of Courage, a historical look at 350 years of black presence in New England and WGBH’s Ellington’s Sentimental Mood. In 2000, Ms. Johnson wrote a dramatic piece for Gore Place Museum in Waltham entitled, The Trunk, a biography of Robert Roberts, the domestic of Massachusetts Federalist Governor, Christopher Gore. The Trunk has been performed for over 5K students through out New England. Currently, Ms. Johnson is working on her first novel with Grub Street’s Novel Incubator.

Jen Johnson is a 2016 graduate of the Grub Street Novel Incubator program and a member of the program’s alumni board. She was a Donovan Urban Teaching Scholar at Boston College and now teaches ESL to elementary school students. Jen lives with her husband and two young children outside of Boston.

Sharissa Jones hails from rural Nebraska, growing up on a farm that is fifty miles from the nearest McDonald's and somehow her fiction always ends up back on the plains. She is a member of the 2015 Grub Street Novel Incubator class and is currently working on a novel about a wrongful conviction set in, of course, Nebraska. Sharissa lives in Cambridge, MA with her husband and two young daughters.

Allison Kornet has written for Psychology Today, SAIL Magazine, New Woman, and The Boston Herald. Her work has been nominated for an ASME award, anthologized in Women's Health, and published in Herstory: What I Learned in My Bathtub...and More True Stories on Life, Love, and Other Inconveniences. A high school English teacher and graduate of the Novel Incubator program, she is currently wrangling with the fourth draft of her first novel. She gets her best ideas while rowing a single or hiking with Harry, the family Bernese Mountain dog.

Kim Libby is 2015 graduate of the Novel Incubator Program, and she is at work revising her first novel: a work of historical fiction set in her native state of Maine. Kim has taught English Literature/Writing for eleven years, including one year as the Writer-in-Residence at St. Albans School in Washington, D.C. She currently teaches at Noble & Greenough, an independent school in Dedham, MA.

Pamela Loring is a writer and editor, and alumna of GrubStreet’s 2016 Novel Incubator program. She runs the Salty Quill Writers’ Retreat for Women, which she co-founded in 2015. For her fiction, she has received residencies from Monson Arts, Ragdale, Edward Albee Foundation, C-Scape, and Turkey Land Cove Foundation. She’s at work on her second novel and shopping her first.

Anne Macdonald is a writer and IT project manager currently working on a fictionalized story of her family during WWII, with the working title This is Who We Once Were. She lives in Melrose, Massachusetts, with her husband and enjoys walking, gardening, and reading, when she’s not writing. Find out more at https://anneswritinglife.blog/

John McClure is a graduate of GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator. A recovering philosopher, he can’t keep Aristotle from coming up in conversation. He lives with his husband and crazy dog in Somerville beneath the many drafts of his first novel.

Andrea Meyer has written creative treatments for commercial directors, a sex and the movies column for IFC, and a horror movie for MGM. Her first novel, Room for Love (St. Martin’s Press) is a romantic comedy based on an article she wrote for the New York Post, for which she pretended to look for a roommate as a ploy to meet men. She completed her second novel—about a marriage reeling from unemployment, house renovations, and infertility sex—in GrubStreet's Novel Incubator program. A long-time film and entertainment journalist, Andrea has interviewed more actors and directors than she can remember. Her articles and essays have appeared in such publications as Elle, Glamour, Variety, Modern Loss, Interview, Pangyrus, and the Boston Globe. She teaches fiction and creative non-fiction writing at GrubStreet and is currently completing a literary romp about a Cambridge “manny” and the women whose lives he throws into chaos.

Her 2nd novel is THE LATE BLOOMERS’ CLUB. In addition to being a writer and baker, Louise is an art school dropout, an amateur flower gardener, an old-time banjo player, an obsessive moviegoer, and a champion of old dogs. Learn more at http://louisemillerauthor.tumblr.com. Follow her on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/louisethebaker/ Twitter https://twitter.com/louisethebaker or Facebook https://www.facebook.com/louisemillerauthor/

E. B. Moore is a metal sculptor turned writer. Her chapbook of poems, New Eden, A Legacy, (Finishing Line Press, 2009) served as the foundation for her novel, An Unseemly Wife (NAL/Penguin). These writings are based on family stories from her Amish roots in Lancaster Pennsylvania. Ms Moore graduated from Grub Street’s Novel Incubator and has received full fellowships to The Vermont Studio Center and Yaddo. Her second novel, Stones in the Road (NAL/Penguin Random House) comes out 9/6/15. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Alison Murphy is a freelance writer and Senior Program Manager at GrubStreet, one of the world's leading independent creative writing centers. Her nonfiction can be found in ROAR Magazine, Men's Journal, and elsewhere. In her spare time, she teaches creative writing to inmates at the Bay State Correctional Center. Alison can usually be found at her laptop with her faithful basset hound Murray at her feet, hard at work on her first novel.

Christine Murphy is a Grubstreet Novel Incubator alumna. She is represented by Catherine Cho of Paper Literary.

Michael Nolan is a member of the Novel Incubator's second class. He writes and he reads and he enjoys working out in his gym. In winter, he takes solitary rides to Outer Cape Cod, where he sits high on the dunes of Wellfleet, looking down and listening to the roll of the unrelenting sea. It's always the same sound. Yet, strangely, it never gets boring.

Tracey Palmer is a freelance writer and editor and founder of Palmer Communications. A graduate of Grub Street’s Novel Incubator, Tracey's first, unpublished novel was named a finalist in the Writer’s League of Texas manuscript competition. She was a scholarship recipient at the Salty Quill Writers Retreat and selected to attend the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She's currently working on a literary novel about a U.S. Army veteran of the war in Afghanistan, who comes home to two young sons she hardly knows.

I'm a writer born and raised in NYC. My first novel RE JANE will be published with Pamela Dorman Books/Viking/Penguin May 5, 2015.

Julie Peterson is a freelance writer and editor in the tech space. She is a 2018 graduate of GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator and is currently working on a novel about a war photographer and the ethics of photojournalism. Though she is a huge fan of the Oxford comma, Julie has an irrational hatred of ampersands. She has three kids, one spouse, and a goofy dog. In her free time, she does laundry.

Hesse Phillips (she/they) was raised next door to a chicken farm in rural Pennsylvania but now lives in Spain. Their first novel Lightborne, about queer Elizabethan playwright Christopher Marlowe, will be published by Atlantic Books UK in 2024. Hesse’s poetry and prose have appeared in The Bridport Review, the époque press é-zine, Roi Fainéant Press, Embark: a Literary Journal for Novelists, and Pangyrus, among others. They have a PhD in Drama from Tufts University and are currently tackling the true story that inspired Shakespeare’s King Lear in their next novel. For more about Hesse and their work, see hessephillips.com

Meghana Ranganathan is an alum of the Novel Incubator (2018-2019) and a Ph.D student at MIT studying ice flow in Antarctica. Her science communication work has appeared in Scientific American and TEDx. She is currently working on a family saga and loves reading, writing, and talking about reading and writing.

Janet Rich Edwards is a graduate of the 2016 Novel Incubator course at Grub Street. Her first novel, The Weight of Clay, is currently on submission. When she’s not sneaking hours to write fiction, Janet is trying her hardest to write fact, as an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School. She lives with her husband and never more than two cats in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Kelly Robertson is a graduate of the Novel Incubator and is working on a novel loosely based on the first female trainer of guide dogs for the blind. She is a recovering CPA and lives with her two whippets, Zoe and Zephyr. When not writing, she can be found walking her whippets through the streets of Cambridge. Her flash fiction can be heard at The Drum, a Literary Magazine for Your Ears. She blogs about writing and dogs at kellyrobertson.com and tweets randomly at @robertsonkelly.

Julia Rold's work has appeared in The Missouri Review, The Boston Globe Magazine, the Best New Voices collection, and named for a Pushcart Prize. Her plays have been performed at the Boston Center for the Arts and the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre. A winner of Artist Grants in both playwriting and fiction from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, she has also received awards from the St. Botolph Foundation, the Steelgrass Foundation, the Fulbright Foundation, and has twice been among the winners of the Faulkner-Wisdom Award for Novella. She is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Berklee College of Music.

Rebecca Rolland is the author of The Art of Talking with Children (HarperOne, March 2022), as well as a speech-language pathologist, lecturer, and the mom of two book-loving kids. She is a graduate of the Novel Incubator program and is at www.rebeccarolland.com, or twitter: rolland_rg.

Laura Roper is working on an historical novel and is a current Novel Incubator student. She works in the field of international development as a nonprofit management consultant, although her appetite for adventure isn't what it once was. She lives in Somerville, but spends a good deal of time on the Cape and on the road.

Dan Rose, a graduate of GrubStreet's Novel Incubator program, is a writer and technology consultant with degrees in Philosophy, Computer Science, and Cognitive Science. He previously worked in Silicon Valley on improving search engines. His most recent technical book was translated into five languages, none of which he speaks.

Emily Ross's YA novel HALF IN LOVE WITH DEATH (Simon & Schuster/ Simon Pulse) was named a finalist for best YA novel in the International Thriller Writers 2016 Thriller Awards. She received a 2014 MCC Artist Fellowship finalist award for fiction. She is currently working on her second novel, The Black Sea. She is the mother of two millennials and lives in Quincy MA with her husband. Find out more at http://www.emilyrosswrites.com/, on instagram (https://www.instagram.com/eross816/) or Twitter (https://twitter.com/emilyross816).

Yichen Shi-Naseer earned her master's in mathematics from Cambridge University and PhD in black-hole physics from Harvard University. She has lived in eight countries and traveled to 70+, and she is fluent in seven languages. It is her goal to bridge people around the world by telling stories from different cultures. She currently lives in Uppsala, Sweden, and is working on two novels, both literary fiction with thriller elements. Her first novel portrays the effects of the one-child policy across rural and urban China, exploring themes of vengeance and atonement. Her second novel, mostly set in Pakistan, examines how women are expected to live in different parts of today's world. Visit her at https://scholar.harvard.edu/yshi

Sara Shukla is an editor and contributor with Cognoscenti, WBUR's ideas an opinions page, and her forthcoming novel will be published by Little A in 2024. She's an alum of GrubStreet's novel incubator with additional writing in the Los Angeles Review of Books, McSweeney's and elsewhere.

An award-winning screenwriter/filmmaker, modestly published short fiction author and contributor to Beyond the Bechdel (a feminist cinema blog), Devi is an alumnus of AFI’s Directing Workshop for Women and Fox Studios Filmmakers Lab, and scholarship winner of the Nostos Screenwriting Retreat and Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. She recently graduated from GrubStreet's Novel Incubator and is currently revising her first novel and working on a collection of short speculative stories.

Pat Sollner’s work has appeared in The Mississippi Review, Cat’s Ear, The Seneca Review, and Oasis. Dust to Dust was one of the winners in the Drum 2012 Flash Contest. Pat holds a PhD in Comparative Literature with a concentration in Russian Literature. She received NDEA fellowships to study in the USSR during the Cold War, and has taught Russian and Russian Literature at the University of Massachusetts, and essay writing at Simmons College and Boston University. She is a 2014 graduate of the Novel Incubator, and is at work on her novel, Leningrad Roulette.

Liesl Swogger is an alum of Grub Street's Novel Incubator program. Her essays have appeared in publications such as The Common, Burrow Press Review, and The Writer's Chronicle. She is hard at work on her first novel, something along the lines of 'Billy Elliot' set in Houston, Texas.

Mandy Syers is a graduate of GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator program. She lives in Providence, RI, where she is a writer and an EMT. Her company, Legacy Letters, helps parents pass down family stories to their children.

RJ Taylor is a speculative and literary fiction writer. She writes mostly fantasy, near-future, and hidden magic novels, short stories, and flash fiction. RJ has an MFA from Emerson College and was part of the pilot year of Grub Street’s Novel Incubator program, a year-long intensive novel writing and revision course. She has also had the honor of participating in four Out of Excuses Writing Retreats studying with Brandon Sanderson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Howard Tayler, and Dan Wells, among other fantastic mentors. Her short pieces have appeared in Quarter After Eight, been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, and received honorable mention in the Glimmertrain Short Story contest. She’s had other lives as a bookstore manager and a librarian.

Leslie Teel wrote her first YA suspense in third grade because she was jealous of a classmate who had written one first. More recently, she graduated from the Year Six Novel Incubator, where she worked on her second YA suspense novel. Leslie's story "The Featured Guest" was included in the 2017 YA charity anthology 13 Candles: Halloween Tales of Tricks & Transformation. Her other short fiction has appeared in The Blue Lake Review and Amarillo Bay. She currently lives in Watertown, MA with two stripey cats and a non-stripey human. Instagram: @leslie.teel Twitter: @ldorannat

Milo Todd is a writer, editor, and educator. His fiction focuses on trans and queer history, with additional works on the trans experience and the trans body. He was selected for Lambda Literary, Pitch Wars, Tin House, Monson Arts, and the Novel Incubator. He's also an editor of fiction for Foglifter Journal, an award-winning journal for LGBTQ+ writers. You can find him at milotodd.com.

Nicole Vecchiotti has worked in publishing since 1997. In 2006, she founded Union Park Press, a New England publisher specializing in regional interest titles, now an imprint of Globe Pequot/Rowman and Littlefield. She is a graduate of the 2019-2020 Novel Incubator class and at work on her first novel.

Bonnie Waltch is the award-winning senior producer and writer of the one-hour PBS and international broadcast documentary, Earth Emergency, and series of five short films, Climate Emergency: Feedback Loops, narrated by Richard Gere. She has worked for a variety of television science series such as NOVA, Scientific American Frontiers, and Discover Magazine. She has produced, directed, and written films for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Pikes Peak Visitor Center, the Tennessee State Museum, the Mob Museum, and the National World War II Museum, among others. She was executive director of Filmmakers Collaborative, a nonprofit support organization for independent filmmakers, for 10 years. She is about to begin yet another round of querying her incubator novel, Finding Black Jaguar.

Tracey Palmer, Rachel Barenbaum, and Emily Ross are the Editors. We put together these posts for you. We hope you enjoy them.

Ashley is a sixth-year Novel Incubator student working on a fairy tale about selkies and motherhood. She's been writing stories set on boats since before she could read and spends a significant amount of her time at the New England Aquarium. For "research."

Jerry Whelan graduated from Boston Latin School, Boston College & Middlebury College. While still teaching languages at Boston College High School, he completed a draft of his first novel, an historical saga set in 19th century Boston. It includes a Darling of a character he’s still loath to kill, who speaks in near-incomprehensible Joycean tongues. Not surprisingly, this MS is serving as an excellent doorstop. His second novel, The Man Who Walked In Circles, graduated from Grub Street’s Novel Incubator program, and is a better Man for it, though not yet the Man of Jerry’s dreams. Jerry’s publications to date include translations of Mario Vargas Llosa in Salmagundi, and his first published short story “Pasquale The Glassblower,” in the Fall 2012 issue of the Madison Review. Jerry’s current language obsession is German. Es lebe Dead Darlings!

Karen Wilfrid is a writer and seventh-grade English teacher. Her debut middle-grade novel, JUST LIZZIE, will be published by HarperCollins in Fall 2023.

Anna Williams is a Novel Generator alum working on a middle-grade novel about the seductive and dangerous power of fantasy worlds. She lives in Boston with her husband and two really excellent cats. You can see these excellent cats for yourself on Instagram via @lady_catsalot.

Rob Wilstein is a 2012 graduate of Grub Street’s Novel Incubator program. He is currently working on a third novel, a family saga set on Martha’s Vineyard. Rob lives in Arlington, MA. with his wife and Portuguese Water Dog.

Jennie Wood is a non-binary author, comic creator and musician. They created the critically acclaimed, award-winning Flutter graphic novel series. Flutter was named one of The Advocate’s best LGBTQ graphic novels of the year, a Barnes & Noble book of the month, an INDIEFAB Book of the Year finalist, and a Virginia Library Association Diversity Honor Book. In 2018, Dark Horse published The Flutter Collection, the entire series in one book, which won the Next Generation Indie Book award for best graphic novel of the year. Jennie is also the author of the award-winning YA novel, A Boy Like Me. Their work can be seen in several anthologies, including The New York Times best-selling FUBAR, the Eisner award-winning anthology Love is Love, and John Carpenter’s Tales for a HalloweenNight. Jennie’s next graphic novel, Paper Planes, will be published in May 2023 by Maverick. For more: jenniewood.com

Cara Wood is a member of the 2015 GrubStreet Novel Incubator class. A PR and marketing professional by day, she holds a master’s degree in communication from Clark University. You can follow her on Twitter @theory2life.

Margaret Zamos-Monteith earned a BA from USC, an MA from Columbia University, and an MFA from Brooklyn College. Her writing has appeared in BOMB, Fugue, Gargoyle, Evergreen Review, and other places. The recipient of an NEH stipend and a scholarship from Grub Street, she was also a finalist for the Southwest Review's David Nathan Meyerson Fiction Prize and a semi-finalist for The L Magazine’s Literary Upstart. For more information, visit www.margaretzamosmonteith.com or follow her at https://twitter.com/MZamosMonteith.