Faculty Bios

Cinelle Barnes is a memoirist, essayist, and educator from Manila, Philippines, and is the author of MONSOON MANSION: A MEMOIR (Little A, 2018) and MALAYA: ESSAYS ON FREEDOM (Little A, 2019), and the editor of a forthcoming anthology of essays about the American South (Hub City Press, 2020). She earned an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Converse College. Her writing has appeared in Buzzfeed Reader, Catapult, Literary Hub, Hyphen, Panorama: A Journal of Intelligent Travel, and South 85, among others. Her work has received fellowships and grants from VONA, Kundiman, the John and Susan Bennett Memorial Arts Fund, and the Lowcountry Quarterly Arts Grant. Her debut memoir was listed as a Best Nonfiction Book of 2018 by Bustle and nominated for the 2018 Reading Women Nonfiction

Award. Barnes was a WILLA: Women Writing the American West Awards screener and a 2018-19 Scholastic Art & Writing Awards juror, and is the 2018-19 writer-in-residence at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art in Charleston, SC, where she and her family live. She recently received the Focus Fellowship for Journalism which will provide a two week research and writing residency for a nonfiction book project on the water crisis. WORKSHOP: What’s Mine and Yours: Writing Nonfiction Family Stories

Derek Berry is the author of the novel Heathens and Liars of Lickskillet County (PRA, 2016), and two poetry chapbooks GLITTER HUSK & BUGGERY, recipient of the 2020 BOOM Chapbook Prize from Bateau Press. Derek is the recipient of the Emrys Poetry Prize, KAKALAK Poetry Award, & Broad River Prize for Prose, among other honors. Their recent work has appeared in Gigantic Sequins, Raleigh Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Taco Bell Quarterly, & elsewhere. They live in Aiken, South Carolina. Their work can be found at derekberrywriter.com WORKSHOP: Poetry As An Act of Play: Experimentation, Curiosity, & Failure

Alexa Bigwarfe is a wife, mother, proud veteran, a USA Today Best-Selling author, author coach, publisher, and podcaster. Her writing career began after her infant daughter passed away at 2 days old and she turned to writing for healing, which led to self-publishing. Now she guides other authors through the publishing and marketing process in her company Write|Publish|Sell (http://writepublishsell.com) and publishing houses Kat Biggie Press, Purple Butterfly Press, and Chrysalis Press. She is also the founder and host of the Women in Publishing Summit, www.womeninpublishingsummit.com. She founded a nonprofit, Sunshine After the Storm, after the loss of her infant

daughter, to support grieving mothers and help them through their worst moment through support activities and healing retreats. A spirited activist, Alexa enjoys bringing light to topics surrounding marginalized voices, particularly as they pertain to women and children. She lives in Columbia, SC with her husband, three living children destined to be activists too, and her dog. WORKSHOP: How to Get Started in Your Nonfiction Project

Jeffrey Blount is the award-winning author of three novels — Almost Snow White, winner of the 2013 USA Best Book Awards. Hating Heidi Foster, winner of the 2013 Readers Favorite Book Award for young adult literature. The Emancipation of Evan Walls, winner of the 2019 Readers Favorite Book Award, winner of the 2019 American Bookfest Best Book Award and a Shelf Unbound 2019 Notable Book. He is also an Emmy award-winning television director and a 2016 inductee to the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame. During a 34-year career at NBC News, Jeffrey directed a decade of Meet The Press, The Today Show, NBC Nightly

News, and major special events. He was a contributor for HuffPost and has been published in The Washington Post, The Grio.com and other publications, commenting on issues of race, social justice and writing. He is also an award-winning documentary scriptwriter for films and interactives that are now on display in the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture. the Newseum, America I AM: The African American Imprint at the National Constitution Center, The Museum at Bethel Woods, at the site of the 1969 Woodstock Music and Arts Fair, and others. These projects have won Cine Golden Eagle Awards, Muse Awards and a Thea Award. Born and raised in Smithfield, Virginia, he now lives in Washington, DC. KEYNOTE, WORKSHOP: The Shy Writer’s Guide to Presenting Yourself and Your Work

Belle Boggs is the author of The Gulf: A Novel; The Art of Waiting; and Mattaponi Queen: Stories. The Art of Waiting was a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay and was named a best book of the year by Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, the Globe and Mail, Buzzfeed, and O, the Oprah Magazine. Mattaponi Queen, a collection of linked stories set along Virginia’s Mattaponi River, won the Bakeless Prize and the Library of Virginia Literary Award and was a finalist for the 2010 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina Arts Council, and the Bread Loaf and Sewanee writers’ conferences. Her stories and essays have appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Orion, the Paris

Review, Harper's, Ecotone, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She is an associate professor of English at

North Carolina State University, where she also directs the MFA program in creative writing. WORKSHOP: You Do Look Funny in Your Bathing Suit: Humor in Life's Dreadful Moments

Amanda Bostic has more than eighteen years of experience in publishing, including sixteen years with the Thomas Nelson fiction team. During that time, she held nearly every editorial title before beginning to serve as publisher in 2017. She has edited numerous bestselling and award-winning authors, including Patti Callahan, Charles Martin, Terri Blackstock, and Colleen Coble. PANELS Kerry D’Agostino is a literary agent at Curtis Brown, Ltd. She received her bachelor’s degree in English from Bowdoin College, her masters in Art in Education from Harvard Graduate School of Education, and her certificate in publishing from the Columbia Journalism School. She started at Curtis Brown in 2011 as assistant to Tim Knowlton and Holly Frederick in the Film and Television Department. After some time as a film and audio rights associate, she also began assisting Peter Ginsberg. In addition to her continued work with Peter, Kerry now represents authors of literary and commercial fiction, and select narrative nonfiction. She is particularly interested in work that is

voice driven, accessible, and authentic. Above all, she is drawn to work that either introduces her to someone, somewhere, or something new, or makes her see something old in a new way. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband. PANELS, CRITIQUES, PITCHES & QUERIES

Barbara Evers, author of The Watchers of Moniah trilogy, is an award-winning author and a Pushcart Prize nominee whose short stories and essays have appeared in several anthologies. In addition, she’s judged several writing contests, been a slush pile reader, and contributes to multiple blogs, including two of her own. Barbara is the chapter leader for the Greenville SCWA chapter and has served the Board of Directors multiple times, including as President of the Board in 2009. When she’s not writing, Barbara is a professional trainer, speaker, and freelance writer/editor who has taught and written customized training programs for multiple clients including three upstate colleges. Barbara

lives in Greer, SC with two of her grandchildren, her husband, Bruce, and a rescue dog named Roxy. For more information, visit her website, Eversworks.com, or her two blogs: AnEclecticMuse.blogspot.com and TheWorkbenchofFaith.wordpress.com. WORKSHOP: Short & Sweet & Oh So Hard: Crafting Your Pitch.

Jonathan Haupt is the executive director of the Pat Conroy Literary Center, the founding director of the annual Pat Conroy Literary Festival, and the former director of the University of South Carolina Press. In 2013, Haupt established USC Press’s acclaimed Story River Books fiction imprint, edited by the late Pat Conroy and named by Garden & Gun magazine as one of the top ten things to love about the South. He is coeditor (with Nicole Seitz) of the award-winning anthology Our Prince of Scribes: Writers Remember Pat Conroy. Haupt’s articles, book reviews, and author interviews have appeared in the Charleston Post and Courier, Beaufort Lowcountry Weekly, Beaufort Lifestyle magazine, Pink magazine, Savannah Morning News’s Beacon magazine, Fall Lines,

Southern Writers magazine’s Suite T blog, and the Conroy Center’s Porch Talk blog. He serves as an associate producer and consultant to the SCETV author interview program By the River, on the board of directors of the South Carolina Academy of Authors and the Friends of South Carolina Libraries, on the American Writers Museum affiliates steering committee, and on the South Carolina Humanities advisory committee. He was honored with the 2020 Doug Marlette Literacy Leadership Award by the Pulpwood Queens, the largest book club in the U.S. WORKSHOP: The Burning Man vs. the Tortoises: Turning Memories into Stories with Brooke McKinney

Patti Callahan Henry is a New York Times and USA Today best-selling author of fifteen novels, including the (Historical Fiction), BECOMING MRS. LEWIS—The Improbable Love Story of Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis (writing as Patti Callahan). In addition, she is the recipient of The Christy Award—A 2019 Winner "Book of the Year.”; The Harper Lee Distinguished Writer of the Year for 2020 and the Alabama Library Association Book of the Year for 2019. Patti’s books include Losing the Moon, Between the Tides; Where the River Runs; When Light Breaks; Between the Tides; The Art of Keeping Secrets; Driftwood Summer; The Perfect Love Song: A Holiday Story; Coming Up for

Air; And Then I Found You; The Stories We Tell; The Idea of Love, The Bookshop at Water’s End, Becoming Mrs. Lewis and The Favorite Daughter. Her upcoming historical fiction, Surviving Savannah will be released on March 9, 2021.

A finalist in the Townsend Prize for Fiction, an Indie Next Pick, an OKRA pick, and a multiple nominee for the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance (SIBA) Novel of the Year, Patti is published in numerous languages. Her articles and essays have appeared in Southern Living, PINK, Writer’s Digest, Garden and Gun, Portico Magazine, Love Magazine (UK), Red Magazine (UK), Atlanta Journal, Birmingham Magazine, and more.

Her essays can also be found in anthologies and collections such as Our Prince of Scribes: Writers Remember Pat Conroy; Southern Writers Writing, and State of the Heart. Patti is a frequent speaker at luncheons, book clubs, and women’s groups. KEYNOTE, WORKSHOP: The Soul of Story

Len Lawson is the author of Chime (Get Fresh Books, 2019), the chapbook Before the Night Wakes You (Finishing Line Press, 2017), and co-editor of Hand in Hand: Poets Respond to Race (Muddy Ford Press, 2017). His poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. He has received fellowships from Callaloo, Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Weymouth Center for the Arts, and others. His poetry appears in Callaloo, African American Review (forthcoming), Ninth Letter, Verse Daily, Mississippi Review, and elsewhere. Len is also a Ph.D. candidate in English Literature and Criticism at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, earning the 2020

IUP Outstanding Doctoral Student Award. He has taught English in South Carolina higher education for ten years. ROUNDTABLE OR PANEL, WORKSHOP: Love Thy Self: A Poetic Approach

Brooke McKinney is a poet and writer from South Georgia where she grew up on a farm and was raised by bulldogs. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in English from Valdosta State University and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. She is the recipient of two Academy of American Poets Awards, and her work was a finalist in the Key West Emerging Writer’s Contest and the World’s Best Short-Short Story Contest. Brooke’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in New South, Salt Hill Journal, Potomac Review, The Southeast Review, RHINO Poetry, Columbia Poetry Review, Artemis and Kestrel. WORKSHOP: The Burning Man vs. the

Tortoises: Turning Memories into Stories with Jonathan Haupt

Ray McManus’s poems and prose have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. His first book, Driving Through the Country Before You Are Born, was selected by Southern poet Kate Daniels and published by USC Press in 2007. Since then he has gone on to publish three more books: Left Behind (published by Stepping Stones Press in 2008), Red Dirt Jesus (selected by Alicia Ostriker for the Marick Press Poetry Prize and published by Marick Press in 2011), and Punch. (published by Hub City Press in 2014, and winner of the 2015 Independent Publishers Book Award). McManus has recently co-edited an anthology with USC Press called Found Anew. IN CONVERSATION, POETRY ROUNDTABLE

Marly Rusoff began her career as a bookseller in Minneapolis while a student at the University of Minnesota. The store became a gathering place for writers and it was upstairs that she and a number of them formed the Loft, a nationally recognized nonprofit organization whose mission is to foster a writing community and audience for literature. She has worked with the following authors as a publicist and/or marketing director: Margaret Atwood, Thomas Cahill, Pres Jimmy Carter, , Pat Conroy, Peter Jennings, Tim O’Brien, Dennis Lehane, Bill Moyers, Sena Jeter Naslund, Cokie Roberts and Paul Theroux. While at Doubleday, Rusoff created the first publisher’s Reading Group Guide aimed at book groups, a popular marketing tool now widely used. In 2001, she opened the Marly Rusoff Literary Agency. She has placed fiction and memoir to publishers for many authors, including, Jeffrey Blount, Meg Waite Clayton, Pat Conroy, Patti Callahan Henry, Garrison Keillor, Cassandra King Conroy, Robin Oliveira, Ron Rash, Daren Wang and others. PANELS

Cassie Premo Steele, Ph.D. is a six-time Pushcart Prize-nominated author of 16 books and audio programs of fiction, nonfiction and poetry, as well as a TEXx speaker, a blogger for the Huffington Post blogger, and a columnist for Literary Mama. As Andi Buchanan, the author of the memoir, The Beginning of Everything, attests, “Cassie Premo Steele writes with poetry and power, managing to enlighten and educate even as she explores emotional depth. As insightful as it is lyrical, her work is not to be missed.” She works as a writing coach with people from around the world, combining mindfulness and innovative stress reduction techniques for a unique coaching experience, and she also offers an affordable weekly audio coaching program called

JOYWORK at her website, www.cassiepremosteele.com WORKSHOP: Memoir as a Way of Writing and Being Whole

Arthur Turfa has called the Midlands home since 2004. His native Pennsylvania and other places where he has lived are never far from his mind or his writing, Four books of his poetry have been published, most recently Saluda Reflections, ©2017 Finishing Line Press. He has two collaborations with award-winning artist Carol Worthington-Levy. Additionally, he has been published in US and international print and on-line publications, including the Petitgru Review, SC English Teacher, and the Pangolin Review, where he was in the Top 20 of its 2019 Poetry Prize. Currently he is editing the manuscript for his first novel. WORKSHOP: Sonnets Aren’t So Stuffy

Susan Zurenda After teaching literature, composition, and creative writing to thousands of high school and college students for 33 years, Susan turned

her attention to putting a novel in her heart on paper, the genesis of which started with a short story that won a fiction prize some years ago. She is delighted to present her debut novel, Bells for Eli, to readers on March 2, 2020. During her years of teaching at Spartanburg Community College and then as an AP English teacher at Spartanburg High School, Susan published short stories and won numerous regional awards such as the South Carolina Fiction Prize (twice), the Porter Fleming Competition, The Southern Writers Symposium Emerging Writers Fiction Contest, The Hub City Hardegree Contest in Fiction, Alabama Conclave First Novel Chapter Contest, and The Jubilee Writing Competition (twice). Since 2018, she has published six stories in literary magazines.

Susan received her undergraduate and graduate degrees in English from Converse College and now works as a book publicist managing media relations for Magic Time Literary Publicity. WORKSHOP: Family Stories: Evoking Emotion in Your Characters

YEMASSEE JOURNAL EDITORS Melanie Walker is a third-year fiction writer at the University of South Carolina. She is originally from Boston, Massachusetts. She is interested in writing that explores the influences of politics and history on our individual lives. Melanie is the current Managing Editor of Publication and Design. Marcus Jamison is a poet and writer who hails from the backwoods of Hamlet, North Carolina. While his passion lies with poetry, he also dabbles in fiction, nonfiction, and drama. Marcus is the current Managing Editor of Website, Communications, and Outreach for Yemassee Journal. Katarina Merlini is a writer and poet born and raised in Michigan. She has earned distinction from both the University of Michigan and the University of South Carolina, where she is a completing a MFA in poetry. She is most interested in writing that challenges hegemonies and pays appropriate homage to place. Katarina is the current Managing Editor of Finance. SLUSHFEST, WORKSHOP: Submission Strategies FALL LINES EDITOR & MUDDY FORD PRESS DIRECTOR Cindi Boiter is a six-time winner of the SC Fiction Project, winner of the Piccolo Fiction Project, the Porter Fleming Award for fiction, the 2014 recipient of the Elizabeth O’Neill Verner Governor’s Award for the Arts, and the 2018 recipient of the Lucy Hampton Bostick Award. She is the founder and editor of Jasper Magazine, The Limelight volumes I and II, A Sense of the Midlands, Art from the Ashes, and Marked by the Water, Setting the Supper Table and editor and founder of the literary magazine Fall Lines – a literary convergence, author of Buttered Biscuits, and literary author of Red Social. Cindi is the executive director of The Jasper Project and is married to Dr. Bob Jolley, with whom she founded Muddy Ford Press in 2011. SLUSHFEST, PANEL