STAFF & MEMBERS
the founder .
the workshop .
Jess Bacon has a masters from Harvard in Publishing and Communications and a BA in Philosophy from the University of Delaware. She studies memory, the brain, quantum physics and does editing for professional businesses and blogs. She has also worked extensively on a business plan to establish a local vineyard and hops farm to promote sustainability issues and to be part of the green movement. Aside from managing at a company near Boston, Jess is writing a modern memoir based on memory, and regularly writes for blogs. She is available for editing projects and is looking to teach a "Blog Writing, Blog Marketing" class for people looking for avenues on how to make money as a writer.
Evan Coffey has a degree from Marymount Manhattan College in English and Theater. He is an avid collector of old books and tutors kids for reading, math and standardized tests including the SAT and GRE. He is a student and teacher of English and is available for tutoring or editing projects. He will be running the monthly book group that hopes to engage many of the classics as well as modern novels.
The Workshop Blog:
December, 2009
With the economy hurting the arts and literary community from all angles, The Workshop is proud to provide jobs to professional writers and instructors. One of the things that concerns me most is the need for intelligent thinkers and writers of all walks of life to help shape the social conversations going on around us in our communities. Writing well does not only help to address the need to construct accessible dialogues between the self and others, it also helps to promote a process of discovery. Whether you write poetry to access a side of yourself or essays that require research on a topic, it's my hope that with the skills provided at The Workshop, writers and thinkers will be able to sharpen their analytical skills, find a voice for their most pressing concerns and shape their work with a sense of purpose, much needed clarity and a transformative edge. We teach more than simply literary arts at The Workshop; we teach ways to strengthen voice and raise a cultural dialogue through writing essays, critical analysis, research, and inspiration. Now, more than ever, we need capable thinkers, writers and readers. Consider signing up for a class at The Workshop to get yourself started or to keep going with your work.
Best,
Donna Kirk
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October, 2009
We are currently in the process of creating our class schedule and list of choices. This is an engaging process that requires the voice of many great people. Once our list of classes are created, we will send out an e-mail as well makes pamphlets available. As always, check the website under our class heading to get more information when everythings posted.
Keep writing,
Donna Kirk
~
August, 2009
We are very excited about the launch of the workshop. Starting the workshop was, among other things, a dream to create a space devoted to the often underserved
work of writers. As writers know, or people who are friends with writers know, this is a colorful, diverse, serious, thoughtful, dedicated, smart, sometimes misunderstood group of people capable of becoming engaging speakers, lecturers and teachers. In other words, writers make excellent leaders if they are given a chance and the contribution they give to the seacoast, its community and
businesses is lively, honest, important, researched, impassioned, dangerous, insightful, and, well, amazing. The Workshop seeks to recognize and celebrate this because with an appropriate amount of study, dedication and discipline (whether its for an essay meant to change the world or a book of poems to highlight something difficult and important), if done well--this contribution to society sustains us as people. We honor this underserved group of movers and shakers by providing the best resources available at The Workshop and by offering writers a professional, legitimate space among a community to refine their talents, take their work to the next level and shoot for high quality.
The workshop feels like home, in other words, to those who have already visited us because, well, it's cozy, and also because it is a depot for all of the things writers and readers need to begin creating the best work they can.
Our long term goals involve even bigger things for The Workshop. But, like all things, big dreams start small. And while each one of us involved feels energized and ambitious about this undertaking, we don't expect big things to happen over-night. The hope is that when we look back in five years, we can see that the start of something promising became, over time, something more.
My final thought for now is that there is concern in the realm of publishing recently about how the medium for written expression has changed from print to digital, from books to kindle; which is an interesting challenge, indeed. However, I have a hunch that one thing remains the same for all writers regardless of the mediums we find ourselves adapting to: the fundemental urge to tell stories or to craft well thought out perspectives about the world and to share that message through language seems like it will always be part of the writer's experience. The Workshop hopes to provide a dynamic, creative, energetic (and at times quiet, meditative and focused space), so that anyone who wants to do just that, can; and to do it well.
Best Wishes,
Donna Kirk
Our Partners
click on them to see their webpages
Sara Erdmann received a BA from Hamilton College and an MFA from the University of New Hampshire, both with a concentration in writing fiction. She has taught First-Year Writing and Creative Non-fiction at UNH, Fiction and Memoir for Upward Bound, and will be teaching Business Writing at Daniel Webster College in the spring. Her work, which involves women and men living complex lives in a half-changed world, has been published in Red Weather, Barnstorm, Adbusters and Of(f)course. She lives in Rye, NH where she surrounds herself with everything ever written by Alice Munro.
Carla St. Gelais received her BA in English Teaching and her MAT in Secondary Education from the University of New Hampshire. She taught high school for five years, completing a one year internship at Oyster River High in Durham, and then teaching four years at Somersworth High School, where she focused on Creative Writing. Her first published poem appeared in English Journal. She has worked with all age groups, from elementary age children to adults seeking their Associates Degree. She recently lived abroad for nine months in Prague, Czech Republic, where she obtained her TEFL Certificate and made some incredibly amazing friends. She writes regulary, following her new motto "A Page A Day." She currently lives on the beach with her husband of fourteen years, giant dog, and cuddly cat. She raised two beautiful and creative kids who now live on their own, and she plans to run her first half marathon soon. 
Emma Catherine Perry graduated from Kenyon College with a B.A. in Art History. Predominantly interested in contemporary art, she has presented papers on artists such as Lygia Clark and Sol LeWitt, and has written expository essays and press releases for shows exhibited in North Adams, Massachusetts and Florence, Italy. Recent creative projects include a chapbook of poems exploring family relationships during unplanned pregnancies in commercial fishing towns, an excerpt of which received an Academy of American Poetry Prize in 2009. She is currently collaborating with a visual artist on an illustrated work of fiction that twines an examination of obsessive compulsive behavior with the history of early aviation. Emma lives in Newfields, New Hampshire, and will be moving to Marfa, Texas in January to work in an art museum.
M.F. Bloxam’s novel of psychological suspense, The Night Battles, was a finalist for the 2008 ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Award. She is the author of prize-winning short fiction and historical nonfiction, and is a recipient of an Individual Artist Fellowship grant from the NH State Council on the Arts.
Ms. Bloxam holds a BA in Theater and English and an MA in Anthropology, with some side trips into graduate work in English and playwriting. She has taught college English and Anthropology to American servicemen and women in Sicily, worked as a museum educator, and studied fine bookbinding with an eccentric couple in Berkeley, California. She lives in Portsmouth.
Ivy Page graduated from Plymouth State University with a BA in English and minor in Medieval Studies, and went on to complete her MFA in Creative Writing at New England College.
She taught creative writing for Plymouth State University's Community Education program, and currently teaches a creative writing workshop at D Acres in Dorchester New Hampshire, and is an adjunct professor at New Hampshire Technical Institute.
Her work has appeared in Cantarville, Snow Monkey, Oak Bend Review, The November 3rd Club, Night Train. and forthcoming in the September issue of The Houston Literary Review, the fall issue of the Boston Literary Magazine, and New Plains Review. Her first book review will be out in the New Southerner in the winter '09.
Erik P. Kraft received his BA from UMass Amherst and his MFA from Vermont College. He has taught for Grub Street Writers, Gotham Writers Workshop, and Columbia University. He works for the art department at Harvard, published several books, his most recent book Miracle Wimp and also does something he considers comedy once a month with the Union Square Round Table.
His blog http://erikpkraft.tumblr.com
J.E. Seymour lives in a small town in seacoast NH and has had short stories published in three anthologies of crime fiction by New England writers - “Windchill,” “Deadfall,” and “Quarry,” in Thriller UK Magazine, and in numerous ezines, including Shots, Mouth Full of Bullets, Beat to a Pulp and Shred of Evidence. J.E. has a degree in English, writing option, from Plymouth State College. In 2002, she was selected to attend the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. She has finished three novels and is working on a fourth. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America and Sisters In Crime and is the markets coordinator for the Short Mystery Fiction Society. J.E. Seymour's debut novel, “Lead Poisoning” is slated for release in December of 2010 from Mainly Murder Press.
Tim Horvath received his MFA from the University of New Hampshire and his MA from Teachers College Columbia University. He is the author of the novella Circulation, published by Sunnyoutside Press (2009), and stories published in Conjunctions, Fiction, Puerto del Sol, Alimentum, and many other journals online and in print. In 2006, he won the Raymond Carver Short Story Award, judged by Bill Henderson, the founder of the Pushcart Prize. At Chester College of New England, he teaches Advanced Fiction Workshop and Unruly Fictions: Surreal, Experimental, and Unclassifiable Narratives, and at Grub Street Writers in Boston, he has taught Fiction 1 and "Cortiscrawl," a class connecting neuroscience with creative writing. Before his return to graduate school, Tim taught high school for nine years. He is a formidable ping-pong opponent, although relying on his backhand to an almost pathological degree. He has been known to go without prepositions for up to 72 hours.
Jessica Purdy holds a MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College where she also taught writing and was a reader for Ploughshares. She is the Poetry Instructor for the course picture Poets", a combination Photography & Poetry class for teenage girls. Above the bookstore in Exeter, she runs a poetry workshop for anyone who wants feedback and an audience. The workshop's website: www.exeterpoetry.com functions as a showcase for student work and includes a "workshop journal". She currently has poems in "Halfway Down the Stairs," an online literary journal. Her poetry has appeared in "Literary Mama" and "What is Home", (the 2007 Portsmouth Poet Laureate programs publication), "Ethereal Dances", "Analecta", "The Beacon Street Review", and "Main Street magazine". She has also been an Art instructor and looks forward to combining poetry and painting in her workshops. She lives in Exeter, New Hampshire with her husband and two children.
Donna Kirk has a BA from the University of New Hampshire where she studied writing, editing and social and political philosophy. She received the Richard M. Ford Award For Excellence In Writing and interned at New Hampshire Public Radio as an assistant producer. She was an editor and staff writer for The Writ, an online journal, for many years and later co-founded The Seacoast Writers Circle, a group for academic or creative writers looking for help with drafts. She's edited essays, articles, reports, novels, and creative non-fiction.
Currently, Donna is the publicist for Jazzmouth Poetry and Jazz Festival, a literary festival that meets in
Currently, Donna is the publicist for Jazzmouth Poetry and Jazz Festival, a literary festival that meets in
Portsmouth every year. She is also the moderator for RiverRun Bookstore's social and political discussion group "The Socrates Exchange," an extension of New Hampshire Public Radio's State wide show, The Exchange with Laura Knoy. Donna's interests include writing, political theory and art.
She has written essays on art, social issues, and politics, has written numerous short stories and poems, is published in Six Sentences Volume 2, Sardines and Oranges Magazine and is working on her first novel. Her poetry and writing has been edited or critiqued by writers such as Donald Hall, Billy Collins and Charles Simic.
Donna is the founder of The Workshop, is really quite ridiculous, funny and approachable in person and is inspired to help people write.
She is available for consulation on any writing projects and will regularly be teaching classes.
She has written essays on art, social issues, and politics, has written numerous short stories and poems, is published in Six Sentences Volume 2, Sardines and Oranges Magazine and is working on her first novel. Her poetry and writing has been edited or critiqued by writers such as Donald Hall, Billy Collins and Charles Simic.
Donna is the founder of The Workshop, is really quite ridiculous, funny and approachable in person and is inspired to help people write.
She is available for consulation on any writing projects and will regularly be teaching classes.
