2025 Washington Writers Conference Panelists & Speakers

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Liza Achilles is the author of Two Novembers: A Memoir of Love ’n’ Sex in Sonnets, published by Beltway Editions. Two Novembers was selected for DCTRENDING’s Summer Booklist 2024. It sold out before its publication date and sold out again one-and-a-half months later. Achilles’ nonfiction and poetry has appeared in the Independent, the Silent Book Club blog, and literary journals such as Exacting Clam and Tofu Ink Arts Press. Her blog for the discerning reader features great modern books. She lives near Washington, DC. Find Liza on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

Indran Amirthanayagam writes and translates in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. He has published 28 poetry books, including El bosque de deleites fratricidas, Seer, The Runner’s Almanac, Powet Nan Po A (Poet of the Port), The Migrant States, The Elephants of Reckoning (winner 1994 Paterson Poetry Prize), Uncivil War, and The Splintered Face: Tsunami Poems. In music, he recorded Rankont Dout. He publishes at Beltway Editions; edits Beltway Poetry; writes a blog and a weekly poem for Haiti en Marche and El Acento; and has received fellowships from the Foundation for the Contemporary Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the U.S./Mexico Fund for Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He is the 2022 IFLAC World Poet (Poeta Mundial) and also hosts the Poetry Channel on YouTube.

Emily Barrosse is the founder and CEO of Bold Story Press, a publishing company dedicated to amplifying the voices of women authors. With over 35 years of experience in the publishing industry, Emily has a proven track record in signing, developing, and publishing bestselling books. She honed her expertise while holding leadership roles, including vice president and editor-in-chief at McGraw-Hill, where she managed a $500 million digital and print publishing portfolio. Throughout her distinguished career, Emily recognized the significant barriers women authors face in traditional publishing. Today, she is passionate about empowering women to share their stories with the world through Bold Story Press. Outside of publishing, Emily is an enthusiastic dahlia grower and a student of bridge.

Louis Bayard, says the New York Times, “reinvigorates historical fiction,” rendering the past “as if he’d witnessed it firsthand.” His acclaimed novels include The Wildes: A Novel in Five Acts, The Pale Blue Eye, now a Netflix motion picture starring Christian Bale, the national bestseller Courting Mr. Lincoln, and Jackie & Me, The School of Night, and Mr. Timothy. A New York Times Notable author, Bayard has been nominated for both the Edgar and Dagger awards. His reviews and articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and Salon. Find Lou on Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky.

Andrew Bertaina is the author of the essay collection The Body Is a Temporary Gathering Place (Autofocus, 2024), the book-length essay Ethan Hawke & Me (Barrelhouse, 2025), and the short-story collection One Person Away from You (Moon City Press Award Winner, 2021). His work has appeared in the ThreePenny Review, New Letters, Prairie Schooner, Witness Magazine, and elsewhere. His work has been anthologized in The Best American Poetry and The Best Microfiction and was listed as notable in three editions of The Best American Essays and earned a special mention in the Pushcart Prize anthology. He has an MFA from American University, runs the 804 Lit Salon in Washington, DC, and is an editor for Night Ginkgo Press. 

Caroline Bock is the author of the forthcoming novel The Other Beautiful People (Regal House Publishing), a workplace love story. She is also the author of Carry Her Home, winner of the Fiction Award from the Washington Writers’ Publishing House, and the critically acclaimed YA novels LIE and Before My Eyes. Her short work has been published in SmokeLong, Brevity, Bethesda Magazine, Gargoyle, and the Grace & Gravity series, and she has new flash fiction forthcoming in the Hopkins Review. She is currently the co-president and editor of the Washington Writers’ Publishing House, a DC-area literary institution, and is working on an anthology of poetry and prose for 2025 entitled America’s Future.

Daniel de Visé is the author of five books. The latest, The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Film Classic, is a dual biography of John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd that explores their friendship and the genesis of an iconic film. It has been translated into Spanish, German, Italian, and the Queen’s English. Find Dan on X.

 

 

Eric Dezenhall is an award-winning author of 12 books of fiction and nonfiction, including Wiseguys and the White House: Gangsters, Presidents, and the Deals They Made and, with Gus Russo, Best of Enemies: The Last Great Spy Story of the Cold War, which is being made into a feature film. He founded one of the nation’s first crisis-management firms and worked in the White House, where President Reagan once called him “Derek.” His organizational skills were deemed insufficient for membership in organized crime, but he’s really trying. His novel False Light, about a reputation smear in the internet age, won the award for best novel from the Independent Book Publishers Association.

David Ebenbach is the author of 10 books of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction, including his new novel, Possible Happiness, which Booklist called “a beautiful coming-of-age novel with a highly empathic, multidimensional character who comes alive on the page” in a starred review. His books have won such awards as the Drue Heinz Literature Prize and the Juniper Prize, among others. He lives with his family in Washington, DC, where, at Georgetown University, he teaches creative writing and literature and works with faculty and graduate students to support their teaching. Find David on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.

Glory Edim is the founder of Well-Read Black Girl, a podcast and digital literacy platform that celebrates the uniqueness of Black literature and sisterhood. She edited the anthology Well-Read Black Girl, which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award and named a best book of the year by Library Journal. Her latest work, Gather Me: A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me, is a collection of groundbreaking short stories that explore the thin yet imperative line between Black girlhood and womanhood. The winner of the Innovator’s Award from the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, Edim worked as a cultural practitioner for over 10 years and serves on the board of Baldwin for the Arts. She resides in Washington, DC, with her son, Zikomo. Find Glory on Instagram, Facebook, and X.

Kathryn Fay (she/her) is the publisher and editor of Modern Artist Press, a new woman-owned indie press that looks to expand and explode the definition of a modern artist by publishing literary fiction. Kathryn has over 15 years of writing, editing, and publishing experience to include museum catalogues, biographies, memoirs, and fiction. Her interest in art and literature was inspired by her experience growing up in a foreign-service family that was posted in Brazil, South Korea, Morocco, Russia, Argentina, and the United States. She holds a B.A. in English and art history from the College of William & Mary and an M.A. in art history from American University. You can find Modern Artist Press on Instagram and Bluesky.

Melanie Figg is a poet, teacher, and writing coach who loves building good grant budgets. She has secured many grants and competitive residencies for her own creative work (from the NEA, MD State Arts Council, the McKnight and Jerome Foundations, the Arts & Humanities Council of Montgomery County, and others), as well as a full scholarship for her MFA. She’s also spent 30+ years as a grant writer for a variety of nonprofit organizations, securing funding for hundreds of creative-arts and community projects. She loves working one-on-one with writers and individual artists to get funding for their own projects. Find Melanie on LinkedIn.

Christine Koubek Flynn’s essays have appeared in the Washington Post, Electric Literature, Chautauqua, and Bethesda magazine, among others. Her work has also received awards from the American Society of Journalists and Authors and has been supported by residencies at Ragdale and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She holds an MFA in creative writing and enjoys working with writers to help shape their stories both one-to-one and in workshops she has led for literary centers and independently.

Lauren Francis-Sharma is the author of the critically acclaimed novels ‘Til the Well Runs Dry, Book of the Little Axe, and her latest, Casualties of Truth, inspired by her attendance at South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Amnesty Hearings. Find Lauren on Instagram, Bluesky, and Facebook.

 

 

 

Varun Gauri was born in India and raised in the Midwest. After studying philosophy in college and public policy in graduate school, he worked for more than two decades on global poverty and human rights, publishing academic articles and books on development economics and behavioral economics. He now teaches at Princeton University and lives with his family in Bethesda, Maryland. His short fiction was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and recognized in Best American Nonrequired Reading. He was a summer writer-in-residence at the Inner Loop in Washington, DC. For the Blessings of Jupiter and Venus is his first novel. Find Varun on Instagram and X.

Andrew Gifford, who was born and raised in Washington, DC, is the founder and director of the Santa Fe Writers Project, an indie press dedicated to craft writing. He is the grandson of the founder of Gifford’s Ice Cream and the author of We All Scream: The Fall of the Gifford’s Ice Cream Empire.

Hannah Grieco is a writer and editor in Washington, DC. She edits novels and prose collections at the local independent press Alan Squire Publishing, where her recent anthology, Already Gone: 40 Stories of Running Away, was released in November 2023. Her own writing can be found in the Washington Post, the Independent, Al Jazeera, Brevity, Craft Literary, Poet Lore, Shenandoah, Fairy Tale Review, and elsewhere. She is the editor-in-chief of two literary journals, the ASP Bulletin and Porcupine Literary. Find her on Facebook, Instagram, and Bluesky.

Trudy Hale is a poet, writer, teacher, and editor-in-chief of Streetlight Magazine, a digital and literary arts journal. She earned an MFA from Antioch Los Angeles. In 2004, she moved to Nelson County, Virginia, renovated a 19th-century farmhouse overlooking the James River, and opened the Porches, a writers’ retreat that supports and encourages writers and artists of all stripes. The Porches offers uninterrupted time for writers to concentrate on their projects. The Porches also offers workshops, residences, and fellowships. Many writers have had creative breakthroughs at the Porches and published chapbooks, poetry and essay collections, memoirs, novels, and plays.

Aaron Hamburger is the author of four books, the story collection The View from Stalin’s Head, winner of the Rome Prize in Literature, and the novels Faith for Beginners (a Lambda Literary Award nominee), Nirvana Is Here (winner of a Bronze Medal in the 2019 Foreword Indie Awards), and Hotel Cuba (winner of the 2024 Bridge Book Award in American Fiction). His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, Tin House, Crazyhorse, Boulevard, Poets & Writers, O, the Oprah Magazine, and elsewhere. He is the winner of the 2023 Jim Duggins, PhD Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize from Lambda Literary. He has also won fellowships from Yaddo, Djerassi, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and the Edward F. Albee Foundation. He teaches writing at George Washington University and the Stonecoast MFA Program. Find Aaron on Facebook, X, Instagram, and Bluesky.

Jennifer Harris is the author of the novel Pink (Harrington Park Press). Her creative essay “Why I Am Not a Buddhist Monk,” from Monk Girl, is forthcoming in Gargoyle magazine. Her work has previously appeared in several issues of the New York Quarterly, HLLQ, and Fish Stories Collective and in the anthology Power Lines (Tía Chucha Press). She is the publisher and director of JackLeg Press.

Virginia Hartman’s novel, The Marsh Queen, has been translated into five languages. Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in the Hudson Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Washingtonian, Redux, Delmarva Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Sligo Journal, and Gravity Dancers: Even More Fiction by Washington Area Women, among others. Her writing has been supported by the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre. She holds an MFA from American University and teaches creative writing at George Washington University and at the Writer’s Center.

Dave Housley is the author of four novels and five story collections, most recently the novel The Other Ones and the collection Looney. His work has appeared in Booth, Mid-American Review, McSweeney’s, Split Lip, and other places. He is one of the founding editors and all-around do-stuff people at Barrelhouse and the primary organizer of the Barrelhouse conference Conversations and Connections: Practical Advice on Writing. He is also the director of web strategy at Penn State Outreach and Online Education. Find Dave on Bluesky, Instagram, and Facebook.

Kathryn Johnson (aka Mary Hart Perry/Nicole Davidson) has authored over 40 novels with HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, MacMillan, and other traditional publishers. Her books have been nominated for the prestigious Agatha Award and won the Heart of Excellence and Bookseller’s Best Awards. Kathryn teaches popular writing workshops for the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland, and has spoken at the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, and many regional writers’ conferences. She is CEO and founder of WriteByYou.com, a writers’ coaching and editorial service. Her most recent book is The Extreme Novelist: The No-Time-to-Write Method for Drafting Your Novel in 8 Weeks, based on her live Zoom course.

Kelsea Johnson is the co-founder of indie publishing house Stirred Stories, which has been recognized by the Children’s Book Council, Reading Is Fundamental, and the Washington Post for its diverse collection of books and refreshing approach to publishing. Prior to Stirred Stories, Kelsea earned a degree in political science from Elon University and worked as a communications and advocacy professional for marginalized communities at the local and national level. A native and current resident of Washington, DC, Kelsea is committed to using storytelling as a tool for positive social change.

Melanie D.G. Kaplan is an independent journalist who covers travel, science, and animals. She has written more than 100 travel stories for the Washington Post and has also contributed to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, USA Today, People, and National Parks. She is a 2021-22 MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellow and 2022 Vermont Law School Media Fellow. Her book, Lab Dog: A Beagle and His Human Investigate the Surprising World of Animal Research, will be published later this year. When she’s not on the road, Melanie lives in an 11-foot-wide house in Washington, DC. 

Debbie Levy is the author of more than 30 books for young people, including the New York Times bestselling I Dissent: Ruth Bader Ginsburg Makes Her Mark; A Dangerous Idea: The Scopes Trial, the Original Fight Over Science in Schools; This Promise of Change (with Jo Ann Allen Boyce); The Year of Goodbyes; and Becoming RBG. Debbie is the recipient of a Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Honor, Sydney Taylor Award, and the National Jewish Book Award, among other honors. Before she started writing books for young people, she worked as a newspaper editor and a lawyer. Find Debbie on Instagram and Facebook.

Jeffrey Dale Lofton is a senior advisor at the Library of Congress, where he’s surrounded by books and the people who love them. Red Clay Suzie is a fictionalized memoir written through his lens of being gay and living with a disability in a conservative family in the Deep South. It was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, awarded the Seven Hills Literary Prize for Fiction, and named an Indie Next List Pick by the American Booksellers Association. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of Red Clay Suzie go to support the important work of the Trevor Project and the Born This Way Foundation. Find Jeffrey on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Bluesky, and X.

Fernando Manibog, a memoirist and essayist, is a recent entrant into creative writing. He was well into his career as an energy economist when his old love of writing hit hard. After many short courses, he completed American University’s MFA program in 2024, where he was awarded the Literature Department’s Richard McCann Prize for Prose Writing. He has several publications in literary magazines and has won the Columbia Journal’s Nonfiction Prize. He also completed the full curriculum of the Studio Acting Conservatory, where he learned to bridge theater and the writing craft. He has decided to focus on memoir and personal essays upon realizing he had already spread a lot of fiction in his previous work as an economist. His fondest dream is to write obsessively on a white sand beach in his native Philippines until he uses up all the fancy pens, rainbow inks, and artsy notebooks he accumulated while aspiring to become a writer. He is currently working on a memoir.

Nevin Martell is a writer-photographer based in the DC area who focuses on food, travel, and foraging. His work regularly appears in the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, USA Today, National Geographic, and many other publications. He is the author of eight books, including Red Truck Bakery Cookbook: Gold-Standard Recipes from America’s Favorite Rural Bakery, The Founding Farmers Cookbook: 100 Recipes for True Food & Drink, and the travelogue-memoir Freak Show Without a Tent: Swimming with Piranhas, Getting Stoned in Fiji and Other Family Vacations. Find him on Instagram.

 

E. Ethelbert Miller is a literary activist and author of two memoirs and several poetry collections. He was given a 2020 congressional award from Congressman Jamie Raskin in recognition of his literary activism, awarded the 2022 Howard Zinn Lifetime Achievement Award by the Peace and Justice Studies Association, and named a 2023 Grammy Nominee Finalist for Best Spoken Word Poetry Album. In 2024, Miller was awarded the Furious Flower Lifetime Achievement Award. Find Ethelbert on Instagram.

Randon Billings Noble is an essayist. She has two books published by the University of Nebraska Press: her collection Be with Me Always and her anthology of lyric essays, A Harp in the Stars. Other work has appeared in the “Modern Love” column at the New York Times, Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere. She is the founding editor of the online literary magazine After the Art and currently teaches in West Virginia Wesleyan’s Low-Residency MFA Program and Goucher’s MFA in Nonfiction Program. Find Randon on Facebook and X.

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental story editor, workshop facilitator, and writing mentor. She is the author of The Story Within: New Insights and Inspiration for Writers, which was published by Penguin Random House and has been reprinted eight times. Her fiction and nonfiction appear in national magazines, newspapers, and literary reviews. She taught at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College, and her popular weekly newspaper column is featured every Wednesday as “This Is How the Story Goes” on NPR member station WHCP. Oliver has won a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction and an Anne Arundel County Literary Arts Award. Find Laura on Instagram, X, and Facebook.

Karen Outen’s fiction has appeared in Glimmer Train, the North American Review, Essence, and elsewhere. She is a 2018 recipient of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award and has been a fellow at both the Institute for the Humanities at the University of Michigan and the Pew Fellowships in the Arts. She received an MFA from the University of Michigan. She lives in Bowie, Maryland. Dixon, Descending is her first novel. Find Karen on LinkedIn.

Tina Pohlman spent nearly 25 years as an editor and publisher before moving to the agenting side of the business, first at Union Literary in New York and then at Ross Yoon (recently acquired by William Morris Endeavor) in Washington, DC, where she now lives. Tina has acquired and edited a wide range of critically acclaimed and bestselling authors over the course of her career, including Colson Whitehead, Patrick deWitt, and Christine Schutt in fiction, and Temple Grandin and Arika Okrent in nonfiction. As an agent, she represented notable fiction and nonfiction authors, including Mateo Askaripour, author of the New York Times bestselling novel Black Buck; John Lee Clark, National Book Award finalist and author of How to Communicate: Poems and Touch the Future: A Manifesto in Essays; and Dr. Kwane Stewart, CNN Hero of the Year and author of What It Takes to Save a Life: A Veterinarian’s Quest for Healing and Hope. Tina currently enjoys working as an independent editor, writing coach, and publishing consultant. 

Zach Powers is the author of the forthcoming novel The Migraine Diaries (JackLeg, 2026), the novel First Cosmic Velocity (Putnam, 2019), and the story collection Gravity Changes (BOA Editions, 2017). His writing has been featured in American Short Fiction, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. He serves as artistic director for the Writer’s Center and marketing director for Poet Lore, America’s oldest poetry magazine. Originally from Savannah, Georgia, he now lives in Arlington, Virginia.

Brigid Schulte is a journalist, keynote speaker, and author of Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life and the New York Times bestselling Overwhelmed: How to Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time. She was an award-winning journalist for the Washington Post and part of the team that won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize. She is the director of the Better Life Lab, the work-family justice, care, and gender-equity program at New America. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times, Harvard Business Review, the Financial Times, and others.

Bernardine (Dine) Watson is a nonfiction writer and poet who lives in Washington, DC. She has written on social-policy issues for major foundations, nonprofit organizations, and for the Washington Post Health and Science section and the She the People blog. Dine’s memoir, Transplant, won the 2023 Washington Writers’ Publishing House prize for nonfiction and appeared on National Public Radio’s 2023 list of “Books We Love.” Dine was selected by Poets & Writers as one of their “5 over 50” debut authors for 2023. Her poetry has been published in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Bourgeon/Mid-Atlantic Review, and Dark House Books. In 2023, two of her poems were nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Dine is a member of the 2015 class of the DC Commission on Arts and Humanities’ “The Poet in Progress” program and the 2017 and 2018 classes of the Hurston/Wright Foundation’s Summer Writers’ Workshop for Poetry. She is a member of the Washington Writers’ Publishing House. 

Laura Weiss has served as program director for arts services at the Maryland State Arts Council since 2019. Previous to MSAC, Laura has 13 years of nonprofit arts-management experience as a longtime staff member at Everyman Theatre in Baltimore. During her tenure at Everyman, she served in multiple roles, including associate director of marketing and media relations, special assistant to the artistic and managing directors, and development operations manager. Laura holds a Bachelor of Music degree in musical theatre from the Catholic University of America. She is a Baltimore-area native, having grown up in Towson and attended Carver Center for Arts and Technology for high school.

Tim Wendel’s books include Summer of ’68, Cancer Crossings, Castro’s Curveball, and his new historical novel, Rebel Falls, winner of the 2025 W.Y. Boyd Literary Award, given to the best novel set in a period when the United States was at war. A longtime writer-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University, his honors include a New York Times Editor’s Selection, Latino Literary Award, Publisher’s Weekly Top 10, and an Indie Book Award. His work has appeared in the New York Times, USA Today, Washington Post, Gargoyle, National Geographic, GQ, and Esquire. Find Tim on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram.