Write Now at The Writers' Colony

Zoe Fawkes is a fantasy novelist, world traveler, feminist and shameless geek.

Ruth Nasrullah I have a passion for learning people’s stories: the way we do things, individually and as a society; how we share our values and face our challenges; what motivates our interaction  with the world. I have worked as a freelance journalist since 2003, focusing on religion and spirituality, backpacking and hiking, social justice and politics, civil rights, and public speaking. From 2006 to 2015 I wrote The Straight Path blog for the Houston Chronicle.  I have also contributed to the paper’s Belief and Gray Matters sections. I have written on politics and civil rights for the MuslimMatters online magazine. I have been a regular contributor to the Religion News Service, Azizah, Islamic Horizons, The Trek, The Lily, and Toastmaster. From 2013 to 2017 (with a break to finish working on my MFA  manuscript), I served as Communications Coordinator for the Houston chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.  In that position, I  was responsible for sharing the chapter’s message, our goals and activities, through print and online media as well as press appearances and interviews. From 2008 to 2011, I managed Light of Islam, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit bookstore and educational center whose mission was to share accurate information about Islam and Muslims.  We sold books, CDs and DVDs that covered everything from Qur’anic studies to modern fiction. Light of  Islam offered classes in Islam 101, Qur’anic studies, and events and club meetings. In December 2003, I completed a Master of Arts degree in journalism from Emerson College, where I received the school’s Presidential  Fellowship. My capstone project profiled drug offenders going through the Roxbury, Massachusetts drug court system. I followed the journalism degree with a Master of Fine Arts in creative nonfiction from Goucher College in 2015.  My final manuscript is a combination of reported writing and memoir examining the experience of minority religions in the United States which I am currently developing into a book. I am president of the Society of Professional Journalists Houston Pro chapter and a member of Investigative Reporters and Editors, Writers  League of Texas and Religion Newswriters Association.  I serve in a  volunteer capacity as communications director for Houston Women March  On. I also volunteer with Team Brownsville, providing humanitarian aid to asylum seekers on the southern border. I am a New Jersey native based in Houston, where I have lived since 2003.

Philip Cioffari grew up in the Bronx and received his B.A. from St. John's University and his Ph.D. from New  York University. He teaches in the writing program at William Paterson  University. His novels and story collections include: If Anyone Asks,  Say I Died From The Heartbreaking Blues; The Bronx Kill; Catholic Boys;  Dark Road, Dead End; Jesusville; and A History Of Things Lost Or Broken. His independent movie, Love In The Age Of Dion, has won numerous film festival awards including, Best Feature Film at the Long Island  International Film Expo and Best Director at the NY International Film and Video Festival. His short stories have been published widely in literary and commercial magazines and anthologies, including North  American Review, Playboy, Michigan Quarterly Review, Northwest Review,  Southern Humanities Review, 100% Pure Florida Fiction, Italian  Americana, The Westchester Review, etc. His plays have been produced off and off-off-Broadway at the Chelsea  Playhouse, The Belmont Italian American Playhouse, American Globe  Theater and American Theatre for Actors, among others. He is a member of the Playwrights/Directors Unit of the Actors Studio.

Called by the Chicago Tribune, “An earthy, red-headed  yarn-spinning woman,” Crescent Dragonwagon is the much-published author of fifty books in five genres, numerous magazine articles, and two blogs. Presently, at 6:00 p.m. CST on Facebook Live, Crescent reads aloud each evening with tech/text support by Mark Graff. Selections are books she's written and ones written by her mother, Charlotte Zolotowoffers. You can find her delicious recipies (like the lentil soup mentioned in the podcast) on her blog as well as in her cookbooks. Crescent is the developer and leader of the Fearless WritingTM family of on- and off-line workshops and courses, which have helped hundreds of writers write (and in many cases publish) with greater ease, more authenticity of voice, and less angst. One of her best-known students was the late Julia Child, who took Fearless when she was over 80, preparatory to beginning her memoir, My Life in France.  “I loved (Fearless), ” Julia wrote. “And I recommend it often and enthusiastically, to both established and aspiring writers; indeed, to anyone in search of a rejuvenating new way of looking at and understanding life. ” Born in New York, Crescent spent the majority of her life in the South, in the Ozark Mountain resort town of Eureka Springs, Arkansas. There, for eighteen years, she ran an acclaimed country inn and restaurant called Dairy Hollow House with her late husband, the writer/historic preservationist Ned Shank.  “You don’t have to believe in reincarnation to believe in reincarnation,” she has sometimes said, “Just live long enough.” Some of her lifetimes in the one life she’s living actually include  growing up in a literary family, the daughter of show-business biographer Maurice Zolotow and children’s book writer/editor Charlotte  Zolotow (she now serves as literary executor to both her parents... writing eight culinary-memoirs, including the James Beard Award-winning Passionate Vegetarian,  Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread Cookbook, The Cornbread Gospels and Bean by Bean (click here to hear an NPR interview on the latter, in On Point with Tom Ashbrook) …which (along with her life as a chef/innkeeper/restaurateur) led to the distinction of having prepared beans and cornbread for a U.S.  President (Bill Clinton), titled royalty (Princess Elizabeth of  Yugoslavia), and world-renowned feminist (Betty Friedan) She also prepared brunch for 1200 people at Bill Clinton’s first presidential election. … which lead to appearances on Good Morning America, Today, TVFN, & CNN Writing 28 children’s books, including the Coretta Scott King Award-winning Half a Moon and One Whole Star and the Golden Kite Winner Home Place (both illustrated by Jerry Pinkney) … which lead to more than 20 years of periodic appearances and workshops  in schools and universities, initially as part of the NEA-funded  Artists-in-Schools Program the publication of two novels, including New York Times Notable The Year It Rained (published in five languages) and, in collaboration with Pulitzer Prize-winner Paul Zindel, the young-adult novel, To Take a Dare. Both are available on Kindle. She’s also published a book of poetry, Message from the Avocados. having the privilege of walking her late mother, Charlotte Zolotow,  through the last five years of her life until her death at the age of 98

Charles Templeton, author of Boot: A Sorta Novel of Vietnam, was born in deep East Texas in 1946. So deep, they had to pipe in the sunshine. His parents were nomads in the Mojave Desert in the fifties where Chuck Yeager taught him how to crush beer cans on his forehead. After being dismissed from the Copyle Lincoln Therapeutic Boarding School for Miscreant Teenage Girls, he attended Sherman High School in Sherman, TX. He was admitted to Austin College after promising to bring back all of the furniture that had disappeared from the office of the president. As the president of the college predicted, Charles found himself in the Marine Corps in 1967. Charles went aboard a Caribbean bound helicopter carrier with his squadron in the Spring of 1968 to prevent the insurgent Cuban communist guerillas from invading Florida. His squadron was so successful that Charles was promoted to corporal and received orders for Vietnam shortly afterward. Charles served as a Marine Corps helicopter crew chief in HMM-265 in Vietnam in 1968 – 69, where he earned his Air Crew wings and flew over 150 missions. He was promoted to Sergeant and received orders for the Presidential Helicopter Squadron when his squadron was ordered to stand down in 1969. Charles completed his B.A. at Austin College in Sherman, Texas, in 1973 and M.ED. from North Texas State Univ. in 1974 after paying off his excessive parking fines. After a career in education in Texas and becoming a hundredaire, Charles retired. He moved with the love of his life, Sandra, to Eureka Springs, Arkansas. He is a board member of The Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow and creator of the Write Now at The Writers' Colony podcast. Charles has three adult daughters and five granddaughters who continue to bring joy, love, headaches from laughter into his world. Charles still enjoys Bleu de Hue brownies, a Templetini, and listening to music from the Vietnam era. Life never seems to grow old. Charles is still a voracious reader and lover of the written and wakes up every day, thankful for the gifts he has been given, and looking forward to whatever adventures the day brings. Knowing that whatever happens, it beats ‘shovelin’ shit in the south China Sea.’

Martha Anne Toll's fiction has appeared in ​Catapult, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, eMerge, Slush Pile Magazine, Yale's Letters Journal, Inkapture Magazine, Referential Magazine, and Poetica E-Magazine.  Her essays and reviews appear regularly on NPR and in The Millions; as well as in Washington Post's The Lily, The Rumpus, Bloom, Scoundrel Time, After the Art [forthcoming] Narrative Magazine, [PANK] Magazine, Cargo Literary, Tin House blog, The Nervous Breakdown, Heck Magazine, and the Washington Independent Review of Books.  Martha was a nominator and critic for NPR's 2017,  2018, and 2019 book concierge.  A four-time finalist in Glimmer Train writing contests, Martha won the Dante Society of America’s prize for the best essay written by an undergraduate at an American or Canadian university. The themes in Martha's fiction include the emotional power of music, the interplay of time and memory, and the disciplined life.  At Tin House Writers’ Workshop, Martha worked with Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Harding, and novelist Pauls Toutonghi. At the Colgate Writers’ Conference, she worked with novelist Brian Hall.  Martha's novel in process was longlisted for the 2019 Dzanc Fiction Award [top 10 out of 700 entries] and shortlisted for the 2016 Mary Roberts Rinehart fiction contest.  She was a 2017 and 2018 Fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and was a 2019 fellow at VCCA's Moulin à Nef.  Martha was also awarded a 2019 residency at Monson Arts and at Dairy Hollow for 2020. She is a member of the National Book Critics Circle, and serves as a frequent interviewer at Washington DC's beloved independent bookstore Politics & Prose. Martha is the Executive Director of the Washington, DC-based Butler Family Fund, a path-breaking social justice philanthropy governed by a family board in the US and the UK.  The Butler Family Fund is deeply committed to racial equity in all of its work and supports advocacy to prevent and end homelessness and reform the criminal justice system, with particular focus on abolishing the death penalty and ending the sentence of juvenile life without parole. Martha serves on the board of Funders Together to End Homelessness and is an active  member of 8th Amendment Project’s collaborative dedicated to the abolition of the death penalty in the U.S.  She speaks at conferences around the country as well as frequently contributing to philanthropic publications. Martha grew up in suburban Philadelphia and majored in music at Yale University, performing as a violist in the Yale Symphony and numerous chamber music groups and other ensembles. She studied viola with Max Aronoff, a founding member of the Curtis String Quartet, and Lillian Fuchs, faculty at the Juilliard School. Martha received her law degree from the Boston University School of Law. To learn more about Martha, visit marthaannetoll.com.

Wendy Taylor Carlisle was born in Manhattan, raised in Bermuda,  Connecticut and Ft Lauderdale, Florida and lives now in the Arkansas  Ozarks in a house she built in 1980. She has an MA from The University  of Arkansas and an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is the author of The Mercy of Traffic (Unlikely Books, 2019), Discount Fireworks (Jacaranda Press, 2008) and Reading Berryman to the Dog (Jacaranda Press, 2000.) Chapbooks include They Went to the Beach to Play (Locofo Chaps, 2016), Chap Book (Platypus Press, 2016), Persephone on the Metro (MadHat press, 2014), The Storage of Angels (Slow Water Press, 2008), and After Happily Ever After (Two River Chapbooks, 2003.) Her work appears in multiple anthologies and in The Writers' Colony's literary magazine, eMerge.

Margie Semilof is a Boston-based playwright. Her short plays have been produced at a variety of regional and national festivals, such as The Group Rep, in LA, Theatre East, in New York, Firehouse Center for the Arts, Newburyport, Mass., at Greenbrier Valley Theatre New Voices, Lewisburg, WV., and the Weathervane 8x10 in Akron, Ohio, to name a few. She was recently commissioned by Theatre East in NYC to write short pieces for the 5x5 festival that ran in conjunction with the NYCPride Festival in 2019, and a piece for students at Stella Adler Studio's summer program in New York. Her full-length comedy, Queen of the Coast, recently received a staged reading in development with Traguna Productions, NYC. She is vice president of Playwrights Platform, a playwright cooperative in Boston. An Ohio native, Michael Fontana has lived in Bella Vista for the past 11 years. He worked as an activist, teacher, and fundraiser before retirement. His poems most recently appeared in eMerge, Oakland Review, and Owen Wister Review. He earned creative writing degrees from Charter Oak College and Miami University. Awards include an Older Writers Grant from the Speculative Literature Foundation and a Sally A. Williams Artist Fund Grant from the Arkansas Arts Council. His past work providing creative opportunities for homeless people and people with mental illness still gives him his greatest sense of accomplishment.

Keija Parssinen graduated cum laude from Princeton University, where she studied English literature and received a certificate from the  Program for the Study of Women and Gender. She earned her MFA at the  University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Truman Capote fellow, a Teaching and Writing fellow, and the student editor of the  Iowa Short Fiction contest. After finishing the program, she won a  Michener-Copernicus award for her debut novel, The Ruins of Us,  which was published in the US, UK, Ireland, Australia, South Africa,  Italy and around the Middle East. The novel was long-listed for the  Chautauqua Prize, was chosen as Book of the Month by National Geographic Traveler, and was selected as a Best Book of the Middle East Region by Turkey’s Today’s Zaman newspaper. In Fall 2019, it was published in Arabic by the Syrian Ministry of Culture. Her second novel, The Unraveling of Mercy Louis, won an Alex  Award from the American Library Association, was chosen as Book of the  Month by Emily St. John Mandel, and was selected as a Best Book of the  Year by the Kansas City Star, Lone Star Literary Life, Missouri Life,  Vox Magazine, and Brazos Bookstore. Her short fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared or are  forthcoming in The Southern Review, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles  Review of Books, the Lonely Planet travel-writing anthologies, World  Literature Today, Slate, The Arkansas International, The Brooklyn  Quarterly, Slice Magazine, Salon, Five Chapters, the New Delta Review,  Marie Claire, Off Assignment, and elsewhere. Her work has been supported by fellowships and residencies from Hedgebrook, the Corporation of  Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, Ragdale, the Vermont Studio Center, Playa  Summer Lake, the Oklahoma Center for the Humanities, and The Writer’s  Colony at Dairy Hollow, where she was a My Time Fellow. Keija was born in Saudi Arabia and lived there for twelve years before her family moved to Austin, Texas. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Kenyon College and lives in Ohio with her family. Wendy Taylor Carlisle was born in Manhattan, raised in Bermuda, Connecticut and Ft Lauderdale, Florida and lives now in the Arkansas Ozarks in a house she built in 1980. She has an MA from The University of Arkansas and an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is the author of The Mercy of Traffic (Unlikely Books, 2019), Discount Fireworks (Jacaranda Press, 2008) and Reading Berryman to the Dog (Jacaranda Press, 2000.) Chapbooks include They Went to the Beach to Play (Locofo Chaps, 2016), Chap Book (Platypus Press, 2016), Persephone on the Metro (MadHat press, 2014), The Storage of Angels (Slow Water Press, 2008), and After Happily Ever After (Two River Chapbooks, 2003.) Her work appears in multiple anthologies.

Chad Gurley talks with Daniel Krotz about the new book, "Not Dead Yet: Reflections on Life, Aging, and Death," available now in bookstores.

Chad Gurley talks with Cné Breaux and Ilene Powell about Krewe du Kork's upcoming Harlequin Ball benefiting The Writers' Colony. 

Welcome to the first episode of The Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow's podcast, "Write Now at The Writers' Colony." In this episode, host, Chad Gurley, talks with author, Sherri C. Perry. We also learn more about The Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, from Executive Director, Michelle Hannon.

Melody S. Gee is the author of three books of poetry, The Convert’s Heart is Good to Eat (Driftwood Press, 2022) runner-up for the Adrift Chapbook Prize; The Dead in Daylight (2016, Cooper Dillon Books), long listed for the Julie Suk Award; and Each Crumbling House (2010, Perugia Press), winner of the Perugia Press Poetry Prize. Her poems, essays, and reviews appear recently in Commonweal Magazine, Essay Daily, Lantern Review, Rappahannock Review, Ruminate, The Academy of American Poets. Born in Taiwan and raised in California, she is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley and the University of New Mexico. She has taught writing at Purdue University, Southwestern Illinois College, and St. Louis Community College, and currently works as a freelance content and communications strategist. Melody is the recipient of Kundiman fellowships in poetry and fiction, a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award, an Artist Support Grant from the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis, two Pushcart Prize nominations, a Best New Poets nomination, and the Robert Watson Literary Prize. She lives in St. Louis, MO with her husband and daughters.

Deirdre Fagan is the award-winning author of the memoir, Find a Place for Me: Embracing Love and Life in the Face of Death (Pact Press, Regal House Publishing, November 1, 2022), a short story collection, The Grief Eater (Adelaide Books, 2020), and a chapbook of poetry, Have Love (Finishing Line Press, 2019). Her poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies. Fagan is also the author of the reference book, Critical Companion to Robert Frost (Facts on File, 2007) and has published critical essays on poetry, memoir, and pedagogy. Notably, her essay on Emily Dickinson’s dash was included in Harold Bloom’s Modern Critical Views. Fagan holds a doctorate in Humanistic Studies (English and Philosophy) and a master’s in English from University at Albany, SUNY, and a bachelor’s in English from University at Buffalo, SUNY, and has taught university courses in writing and literature for over two decades. She is a native New Yorker who has also lived in Arizona, Florida, Illinois, and Maryland, and currently resides in Michigan where she teaches and coordinates the creative writing program at Ferris State University. Living Now Awards Aging/Death and Dying Category Bronze Medalist, Eric Hoffer Book Award Category Finalist and Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist for her short story collection, longlisted for Memoir Magazine’s 2022 Memoir Prize for Books, poetry Best of the Net finalist and Pushcart Prize nominee, Fagan is the poetry editor at Orange Blossom Review and is seeking a publisher for a recently completed poetry collection and drafted second memoir.

Artist Sean Fitzgibbon explores unusual, real places and events through his work.  He has an MFA in art and a passion for making art and visual storytelling. He is a 2021 Artists 360 recipient and a 2023 recipient of the Arkansas Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship Award for graphic nonfiction “What Follows Is True: Crescent Hotel. He has exhibited work throughout the US.  He also illustrates books and recently completed writing and illustrating a documentary-style graphic nonfiction that explores the Crescent Hotel’s strange two years as the Baker Hospital, one of the darkest and most controversial legends in the town of Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Be sure to also follow his work on Instagram at instagram.com/seanpfitzgibbon and Facebook at facebook.com/seanfitzgibbonart

More Than Tutus and Pointe Shoes: A Reading List of Ballet Books Martha Anne Toll writes fiction, essays, and book reviews, and reads anything that’s not nailed down. Her debut novel, Three Muses, won the Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction. Toll brings a long career in social justice to her work covering writers of color and women writers. She is a book reviewer and author interviewer at NPR Books, the Washington Post, Pointe Magazine, The Millions, and elsewhere. She also publishes short fiction and essays in a wide variety of outlets. Toll has recently joined the Board of Directors of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation.

Out of the Ashes: A Story of Recovery and Hope is educator Sallie Crotty’s first book. Previously she has published poems, personal essays, and articles in The Dairy Hollow Echo (an anthology of best selections from The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow’s eMerge); The Drabble; eMerge; Resources to Recover (an online resource for people living with mental illness); The Menninger Clinic’s Annual Fund 2016 publication; Texas Jewish Post; and Capitalines. The Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference selected her writing for workshop three times, and in 2018 The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow awarded her a residency. In 2018 Oral Fixation (An Obsession with True Life Tales) selected her to tell part of her story to an audience of nearly 400 people, with the performance later shared on YouTube. Sallie has served as a middle school English teacher and private writing tutor for numerous students. Known for her creative lessons and individual attention, Sallie uses a writing and reading workshop approach. Sallie holds a B.A. in English from Sewanee: The University of the South and an Ed.M. from Harvard University. Currently she is pursuing her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at Queens University of Charlotte. Since 2019 Sallie, a native Texan, has lived in Seattle with her husband. They have two young adult children. She is working on a poetry collection.

Lisa Braxton is an essayist, short story writer, and novelist. She earned her MFA in creative writing from Southern New Hampshire University, her Master of Science in Journalism Broadcasting from Northwestern University and her Bachelor of Arts in Mass Media from Hampton University. Her debut novel, The Talking Drum, was published by Inanna Publications in May 2020. She is a fellow of the Kimbilio Fiction Writers Program and a book reviewer for 2040 Review. Her stories and essays have appeared in Vermont Literary Review, Black Lives Have Always Mattered, Chicken Soup for the Soul and The Book of Hope. She received Honorable Mention in Writer’s Digest magazine’s 84th and 86th annual writing contests in the inspirational essay category. Her website is: Lisa Braxton | Author of the novel, The Talking Drum

Rosaleen Bertolino was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and is currently living in Mexico. She received her B.A. from the University of California at Santa Cruz and her M.A. in English/Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. Her awards include a Marin Arts Council Individual Artist Grant and an Honorable Mention for the James D. Phelan Award. She has twice been a finalist for Glimmer Train's Very Short Fiction Award, and has been a writer in residence at the Writer's Colony at Dairy Hollow in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, during 2008, 2007, and 2006. She is co-founder and host of the reading series Prose Cafe, based in San Miquel de Allende, Mexico, and the winner of the 2019 Many Voices Project Prose competition. Her debut collection, "The Paper Demon and Other Stories," was released New Rivers Press in the fall of 2021 and was a handpicked book at Small Press Distribution.

Helena Rho is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominated writer and a former assistant professor of pediatrics. She received her Doctor of Medicine in 1992 and has practiced and taught at Top Ten Children’s Hospitals—the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the Johns Hopkins Hospital, and the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. She earned her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Pittsburgh. Her essays have been included in anthologies published by Southern Methodist University Press: “The Burden of Baby Boy Smith” in Rage and Reconciliation (2005) and “The Good Doctor” in Silence Kills (2007). She was awarded a writing fellowship in TWP: To Think, To Write, To Publish, a National Science Foundation program through the Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes at Arizona State University. Her work has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Slate, Crab Orchard Review, Entropy, Sycamore Review, Solstice, Fourth Genre, 805 Lit + Art, and in Post Road.