2018-2019 Academy Masters

Amy Speace: I’m a folk singer and songwriter originally born in Baltimore but now living in Nashville. I spent 20 years in NYC so I feel like that’s where I’m from as it’s where I found my voice but the South has crept into my rhythms and I don’t think I’ll land north of the Mason-Dixon again. I make records and tour the world doing concerts; I teach songwriting and performance and lead workshops and retreats for songwriters. But I started out as a poet and a playwright and an actor/singer and went to Amherst College and majored in English and then to the National Shakespeare Conservatory to study Classical Acting before finding my groove with a guitar and I know I’ve got more to say beyond a 3 minute song. I’ve made 6 albums, my next will be released later in 2019 called “Me & the Ghost of Charlemagne.” I gave birth to my first son in March 2018, the month after turning and I’ve been blogging about it at www.menopausalmommy.blog and want to turn it into a book that is about far more than just being pregnant at the far edge of fertility. I’ve also had essays published in The New York Times, American Songwriter Magazine, Pop Matters and The Blue Rock Journal.

Marie DeNoia Aronsohn is an Emmy Award-winning television journalist, host, and producer with experience as a professor of media and creative writing and in multi-million dollar fundraising at Rutgers University. Marie has spent more than twenty years covering the stories of New Jersey. Marie has frequently guest hosted and substitute produced NJTV’s On the Record with Michael Aron and Reporters Roundtable with Michael Aron. Her most recent TV work was creating, hosting, and co-producing The Spark, a talk show about playwrights, screenwriters, and novelists, which aired on Philadelphia’s Public Television affiliate, WHYY.

Marie has also reported and produced for WCBS-TV in New York and served as MSNBC’s first web news anchor. Marie also produced long-form shows at MSNBC. Marie has authored a nonfiction book about Teamster long haul trucking for the Teamster organization and is currently working as communications strategist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

Sarah Montana is a Gateless Trained teacher, screenwriter, playwright, and writer. She recently made her TEDx debut at Lincoln Square with her talk, "The Real Risk of Forgiveness—And Why It's Worth It." She is currently writing two movies for the Hallmark Channel. Her most recent play, The Girl, The Ghosts, and the Minotaur was selected for a staged reading at Life Jacket Theater Company’s 2017 Proof of Concept Reading Series in New York City. She is currently working on her own memoir and has ghost written book proposals for celebrity experts, some of which have been sold to publishers for six figures. She creates and shapes content for authors and business owners, including ebooks, articles, memoirs, and marketing copy.

Danielle Sessler is a writer and theatre director from Redding, CT currently residing in Burlington, VT. She hit the pause button a little over a year and half ago when she left NYC and a job in advertising producing commercials to move to VT to try to figure it all out. She hopes to use this time with the Academy to edit her first draft of her memoir, which she started writing nearly 10 years ago while at Ithaca College, but wrote the bulk of it last year with mentorship from Suzanne. The memoir addresses abusive young love that teenagers often find themselves in, and how this love and these relationships can go on to alter the rest of our lives. She's also potentially starting a new project - one about a family in Maine that's based off of real experiences and people but would be a piece of fiction. And also trying to hopefully edit an essay on antidepressant withdrawal. When not writing or working in theatre, Danielle likes to spend time by the water (ocean is always preferred), doing meditation and yoga, and seeing live music. Danielle is so grateful to Suzanne and all of you amazing writers for being a part of this process and cannot wait for the next 10 months with the Academy!

Heidi Poon, I’m a 52 year old person, married, with a 17 year old son and fat black cat living in Charlottesville Virginia. I have received Fellowships from Brown Univ. and the Maytag Fellowship at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop where I earned my MFA and learned to see writing as torturous. I have one chapbook, The Good News of the Ground, published by the Poetry Society of America’s National Chapbook Competition. This Spring I was a winner of the Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Prize.

I’m grateful to have received support from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, the Rona Jaffe Scholarship at Breadloaf, and a Carlow University Residency in Ireland as the recipient of the Patricia Dobler Award. I am hoping to find to find relief for some of this, from Gateless, as I’ve found in the past at Suzanne’s retreats. I want to write a memoir during this Academy and feel so lucky to be able to try.

Lorna Selley: I’m in the middle of writing a novel about two writers who are brought together through a series of events that seem to bend the rules of time and space. Once together, they unravel a mystery that’s haunted a small Appalachian tourist town for decades. At least, I think that’s the crux of it, but sometimes the book has its own ideas. I’ve lived in many places, from Sydney to Virginia to a dusty expat compound in Saudi Arabia, but I’m originally from the UK. I skirted around the issue of being a writer for most of my life and built a career as a project manager instead, which was almost enjoyable. But I now live in Switzerland with my husband and two dogs, and life is bliss despite recovering from Lyme’s disease. I’m so excited to be a part of the Gateless Writer’s Academy!

Tinatsu Wallace: I'm a full-time visual effects artist for film and television and an intermittent writer of fantasy and science fiction stories. My fiction has been published in Daily Science Fiction, Shimmer Magazine, and two Triangulations anthologies. I'm also a newly-minted Gateless-trained teacher. Currently, I live in Atlanta with my husband and one obese cat. My plan is to work through some short fiction and essays, while pretending that I'm not trying to slowly back into linking and fleshing out some of those pieces into a longer work.

Jennifer Wetham, Gateless Trained Teacher. Jennifer earned her MA in Literature from Western Washington University and her MFA in the writing of poetry from Pacific University. Devoted to the faculty and students of two year colleges in Washington State, she spent the first thirteen years of her career teaching a wide range of writing and literature courses, including college writing, technical writing, creative writing, Shakespeare, and the poetics of rap and hip hop. In 2013, Jen left the classroom to focus on creating 21st century professional learning experiences for the 8500 faculty who teach in the 34 community and technical colleges in Washington State. Over the last four years In her role as program administrator for faculty development at the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, she has organized retreats, conferences, and seminars that empower faculty from all disciplines to link their success with student success and cultivate professional identities that allow them to thrive in their organizations, as opposed to merely surviving. Jen also facilitates an emergent community of practice for professional developers in the community and technical college (CTC) system. Among her passions are cultivating shared and distributed leadership in communities of practice; the how-to's of expert facilitation in faculty learning communities; equipping faculty with the skills and competencies to be campus and state-wide leaders for student learning; and, finally, research-based teaching practices proven to simultaneously eliminate equity gaps, increase completions, and ensure student learning. She currently lives in Olympia, Washington with her partner, Ray, and their lovely dog Bird.

Stephanie Greene is a returned Vermont native who has worked as a librarian, literacy activist, teacher and freelance journalist. She has written nonfiction for The Daily Californian, The Boston Business Journal, and The Worcester Business Journal. Her fiction has appeared in Nostoc Magazine and Green Mountains Review.

Her first novel, Normal For Beginners, is safely locked in a drawer. The second, A Perm for Mrs. Medusa, makes her laugh out loud as she conjures ways to ruin her characters’ lives.

She lives on the family farm with her husband, also a writer. One of her two sons lives down the road with his lovely girlfriend, a bossy dachshund and seven chickens, who race to meet her, hoping for their favorite handout, old hotdog rolls.

Corrine Englegau, Gateless Trained Teacher. Hey y’all! I’m Corrine. My home base is Gainesville, Florida. I love to explore consciousness, the art of alchemy and the reality of magic. Wherever I am in the world, you are likely to find me at a coffee shop and I suppose that when I die and am autopsied someone will finally bear witness to the fact that my veins run with coffee rather than blood. I believe storytelling and listening to others’ stories can change the world. I believe that absolutely everything we think we know is a story, and this excites me beyond measure because it means we can write whatever we want! We are all limitless! I am currently working on two novels that have been called “quantum fantasy” by peers though I tend to think of them as “magical realism” when I give them a name, which is something I’m very hesitant to do. They are both opening up beautifully and I'm learning to trust them to their own birth a little more every day. I spend a lot of my time journaling. I ended up at Gateless through a series of phenomenal synchronicities and can say without a doubt that this way, the method, this key, has changed my life completely. I am so excited to delve deeper and am honored to be diving in with all of you!

Amy Mercer lives in Charleston, SC with her husband and three sons. She received her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Queens University in Charlotte in 2010. Amy works as an admin for the Art and Architectural History Dept. at the College of Charleston and continues to freelance in her spare time.

Kara Gallagher has been writing since the second grade. And since then, she has felt the joy and the despair of the calling of writer. She is in love with it all. Her project for the academy is a historical novel inspired by a short biography she read about her great (x3) grandmother. There was not a lot written about her life, and Kara aims to fill in her details and tell her story for her. She lives in a small town by the sea in Massachusetts with her husband, a set of 8 year old triplets and and a 6 year old with special needs. There is no shortage of real life material and enjoys writing memoir vignettes about her domestic adventures and lessons she learns from the smallest teachers in her life. She coaches fitness classes, dabbles in all things spiritual, is a perpetual student, always trying to learn and always curious. She loves taking her littles to the beach, lives for date nights with her husband and has a happy dog named Honey who keeps her company while she writes. She doesn’t trust perfection and is most comfortable around mistake makers and risk takers. Leaning in to her authentic self and writing from a place of raw truth is the dangling carrot that keeps her at her keyboard. She is simultaneously terrified and cannot wait to share her work with others.

I’m Coleen Lahr, and I love writing, running, rock music, the Jersey shore, daisies and bread.

When I’m not writing, I can be found making sandwiches in my family's restaurant, running (and sometimes walking) Disney races, reading any book I can get my hands on (most recently Deena Kastor’s Let Your Mind Run) and playing with my adorable kids. I live in New Jersey with my husband, two children, two dogs, cat, and lizard.

During The Academy, I plan (hope!) to write a memoir about my definitive and devastating infertility diagnosis, the subsequent adoption of my two amazing children, and how running made me okay again.

Kellie here. I am gently retiring from an almost-two-decade yoga teaching career to put both feet into some writing that has been stirring and spilling these past few years. My fascinations lie in the human body, the play of science (what we can prove thru scientific method) and spirituality (the ways something deeper in us surpasses all expectations and assumptions), and in the dynamic inexhaustible explorations of nature in all her layers and creations. I believe if we don't continually throw ourselves a curve ball or two, life will because learning is necessary for vitality and the vitality that comes from facing challenges equals a good nights sleep. My intro to Gateless was a ridiculous mistake. I was seeking a vacation on the CT sound with a bunch of gals and a private chef. What I got was a sisterhood of mind-blowing word crafters and a writing philosophy that blew the roof off my own house. There's a sacred haven in the Gateless method. An invitation to surrender to the tips of your fingers, tap the fierceness of your own voice, and absorb reflection from those who also love to serve authenticity and grit. All this feeds the courage to rise again, and again, and again - not just on the page but in all areas of living. I'm excited for the opportunity to join you all and see what we create together!!

Lauren Sheehan is a stay at home mom, wife, writer, maker, teacher. She has created online courses on the art of feminine presence, the menstrual cycle and mentored/midwifed women for 10 years. Her life is dedicated to the journey of becoming a woman. She lives in Colorado with her family.

Dvora Wolff Rabino is a daughter, sister, mother, wife and retired media lawyer who writes in her spare time. Over the past ten or fifteen years, she has taken classes and workshops in memoir, personal essay, short story and novel writing at the Sarah Lawrence College Writing Institute, Gotham Writers Workshop and Writers Voice. A few weeks ago, she was also privileged to participate in the fantastically inspiring Gateless Writing retreat that Suzanne hosted in Guilford CT.

Dvora is now seeking representation for her first novel, a semi-humorous, semi-poignant, character-driven but plot-rich story about a deliberately childless female speechwriter for a Republican U.S. Senator who, while working on a pro-life speech, learns she is pregnant with the child of her cheating husband. The book follows the whip-smart but initially self-muzzling protagonist as she is confronted at home and at work by issues of adultery, reproductive rights, patronizing and threatening bosses, sexism, racism, the alt right and the left-right divide.

Dvora currently plans to work in the Academy on a second novel, Ruthie and the Chocolate Shaman, which she has recently begun.

Dvora lives in Westchester County, north of New York City, with her second husband, a professor of philosophy and ethics and a genuine Renaissance man. Between them they have four good-hearted, accomplished adult children, two children-in-law and three adorable young grandchildren.

Margaret Ryan: I go by the name of Margaret Ryan, married to a genius, wife and playmate Anna. We are celebrating over 30 years of fun together. My home is my paradise located in Pacifica, Ca. My back garden is the ocean. I have the honor of watching whales hang out during their migration journeys and Pelicans teaching their young how to dive for food. To the right of our home is a State Park. Where a large family of raccoons who are known to terrorize the neighborhood and Peregrine falcons that mesmerize us with their grace and beauty live and thrive.

I’ve spent a lifetime writing many stories; my ambition is to complete them and then some. Starting with the Abby O’Neil Private Investigator Series. Currently I’m making edits and revisions to Book One, It Started With A Lie. I plan to spend my time at the Academy writing Book Two, Better Than, Less Than.

Career: I’m in the throws of launching my latest company - she is called Ripplicious. We focus on: Executive Advising & Coaching, and supporting small business owners to grow and scale their products, services and operational practices and processes.

Deciding to participate in the Academy was not an easy decision for me. It has heightened my insecurity of being in the presence of such gifted writers. I feel scared and committed to showing up, being open to learning and available for play.

Elizabeth Crook is the CEO of Orchard Advisors and the author of the critically acclaimed Live Large: An Achiever’s Guide to What's Next. A seasoned business advisor and strategist, Elizabeth is known for bringing compassion, practicality and humor to those “what-do-we-do-now” situations. She has worked for decades with CEOs and leadership teams to grow smart, profitable companies. Through her own life and her work with high achievers, she knows that in spite of our accomplishments we all have moments of self doubt and hesitation. We long to know we’re not in this alone. Elizabeth is the experienced guide you can count on to help you reach your wide horizon.

Jacquie Donahue is a Gateless Trained Teacher. I am a woman on the cusp of change. A visionary and creative powerhouse, artist and author dedicated to resurrecting and sharing the sacred feminine arts with women who feel called to bring their highest vision of self back to life.

Twenty years ago I was compelled by an inner desire to lead retreats for women, because it was what I, myself, craved. This was before there was a real blueprint for it.

And what I want you to know is that I am exactly like you. I’ve stumbled. I’ve been through trauma, I’ve faced down the fear of rejection, been silenced, felt the pain and anguish of being invisible, of not feeling worthy and valuable. I know what it’s like to be stripped of your voice and your power, to live someone else’s dream instead of your own.

Like so many, I lost who I was, but I remembered how to find her by never giving up on her. I want you to know, it is possible to be who you were meant to be.

And in the journey of remembering who we are, I am here for you. That is my life work.

My Soul-salons, retreats, written offerings and (future) on-line courses and books offer the practices, encouragement and support modern women need to become courageous and claim more creative agency in their lives. These are practices I use myself, so I know they open the heart and invite us to fall madly in love with self and Source.

Lucia M. Kloster, MA. Lucia has years of experience writing diaries and journals that have seen the end of a matchstick due to her lack of trust in the world around her: a mother who didn’t know what the word private meant, five nosey siblings, and a few teachers who relished dumbing down sensitive little girls. Lucia is here now, bravely showcasing her vulnerabilities through raw emotional story telling of the little Catholic girl within still trying to make sense of the world around her. Stories throughout Lucia’s childhood, woven into a collection of free verse poetry, short stories and a young adult novel, are being reborn as she allows the spirit to move her towards publishing her book, Moments of Grace. Lucia aims to empower others to remember and honor their own moments of grace.

Lucia finds solace exploring the backwoods of her southern Vermont home. She often gathers energy from the hum of a busy city and is known to take off mid-winter, backpack filled with blank journals and watercolor supplies, on solo journeys to gain artistic inspiration. She holds a MA in Theology and a BA in Art. She was Wildwood Arts artist in residence in September 2016 exploring Vermont’s wildflowers through drawing, painting, photography and writing.

And yes, she is done burning paper.

Felicity Haselton has a short publication list. She lives on the back of Terrible Mountain in Vermont. At times, she is cripplingly introverted. She is working on a memoir.

Melanie Maure. What to say in a bio...I'll say what I do, enjoy, love instead of the flimsy titles. I live and play and create in British Columbia. I counsel and coach and connect with people who've experienced trauma. I coach and co-create with fellow writers. I thrill and despair as a writer. And I have a love, his name is Jim. Jim is the world's most gorgeous black lab. Throughout the academy, I will be reworking a completed manuscript for a novel and will work on finishing a second novel. At least that's what I'm telling myself now.

Karen Krasny is a mother, a grandmother, a widow, a photographer, a writer, and the most organized person you will ever meet. She is a photojournalist by training and a volunteer crisis counselor. Born in Canada, she has lived in Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto, New York City, Sanibel, Morristown, Saratoga Springs, and Vermont.