Ellen Jensen Abbott  (Delco/Main Line workshop) has been working on a series for young adults that began in the workshop.  She teaches at Westtown School, and three of her students were finalists in The Autobiography Project in spring 2006.

Liz Abrams-Morley (Delco/Main Line workshop) who has recently made the move from suburbs (Wynnewood) to city (Queen Village), has published a chapbook, What Winter Reveals with Plan B Press of Philadelphia, www.planbpress.com.  A story, “Mitzraim,” can be found in the archives of Literary Mama, www.literarymama.com. She is teaching in the MFA program at Rosemont, and will be reading at Visions & Voices on October 21 and at the Free Library November 13.

Doug Arnold (Delco/Main Line workshop) has poems forthcoming in the Atlanta Review, The Literary Review, and the Sulphur River Literary Review. His essay, "Reading Kay Ryan's Poetry" appeared in the Fall 2007 edition of the Schuylkill Valley Journal. His second poetry chapbook, The Midas Plague, was published in January 2008 by FootHills Publishing (click here to preview/order).

(Charles) Geer Austin (Delco/Main Line workshop) has recent work in MIPOesias (.pdf document, page 16), Karamu, Queer Collection 2008, Origami Condom, and Ginosko Literary Journal.

Sharon Bisaha (Center City workshop) has a poem, “The Ironers,” inspired by the painting of the same title by Jacob Lawrence, forthcoming in the Artsbridge/River Poets Anthology 2007, titled, Eclectic Muse, A Journal Of Poetry/Prose/Art And Photography.

Mary Bolster (Delco/Main Line workshop) now spends much of her time in New York.  She’s taking a writing class at NYU and working with a writing coach. Her project is vignettes about her experiences as a modern-day pilgrim on the medieval Santiago Compostella in northern Spain.

Judilyn Brown (Center City workshop) has essays in the Spring 2007 issue of Philadelphia Stories (under the name Victoria Christian) and in the anthology Letters to Fathers from Daughters (www.lettersforhealing.com). A third essay, “The Witch and the Clown,” was awarded an Honorable Mention in the 24th New Millenium Writings competition.

Seetha Burtner, pen name Seetha Narayan (Delco/Main Line workshop) recently made a career switch from philosophy professor to writer. Last November she moved to Boston, where she works as a freelance journalist and copy-editor. Her work has appeared in the Boston Globe and Improper Bostonian magazine. Seetha also published her first book, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Long-Distance Relationships, in November 2005, and before that, won grand prize in the 2004 Memoirs Ink writing contest.

Corrie Ann Calderon, now Gray (Delco/Main Line workshop) lives in California and continues to work at Toyota but has started a resource organization for women with PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome), while fine- tuning the plan for a "Cookie Academy"  and working on her novel, Beth. 

Julie Compton (Delco/Main Line workshop) lives in Florida and is happy to report that her first novel, Tell No Lies, was released this year by Pan Macmillan in the UK (February '08) and by St. Martin's Minotaur in the US (May '08). A Netherlands release (translated into Dutch) is scheduled for September 2008. Som of you might remember the novel as Best Intentions; Julie wrote much of it while attending her Monday night workshop! Julie would love to hear from her former workshop buddies. Visit her at www.julie-compton.com for reviews, interviews, calendar of events, etc.

Eileen Cunniffe's (Delco/Main Line workshop) piece "Pilgrimages to the Edge," previously selected as a Silver winner in Travelers' Tales first-annual Solas Awards for travel writing, now appears in the print anthology A Woman’s World Again: True Stories of World Travel. You can read Eileen’s essay online (click here to view) and purchase the anthology here). In January, Eileen had a piece published by "400 Words" under the topic of "Work" (click here to view). In March, "Wild River Review" published Eileen's travel essay "The Great Butter Caper of Chartres" (click here to view).

Beverly Dale (Center City workshop) writes, "After years of collecting memoir stories and poems, I finally gathered them together to perform my first one-woman show at the Fringe Festival in Philly in September. The show is called "An Irreverent Journey from Eggbeaters to Vibrators." Through the experiences of ten women (including two little girls) I explored the sexual repression in our culture and specifically in Christianity. I used music, poetry and stories to express the poignancy and the humor of the topic. While looking for other venues to perform this body of work, I am now considering a sequel performance on the issue of the control of women's bodies and sexuality."

Minna Duchovnay (Center City and Delco/Main Line workshops) writes, "I am 'retired' now and have been able to spend more time writing and thinking about the process. More experimentation! Two poems, “On the MTA,” and “Last Day at Anne’s,” appear in the 2007 Mad Poets Review. I'm pleased especially because "On the MTA" is an older poem that was recently revised. It pays to save everything, even snippets. I'm also making good progress translating a 19-poem cycle from the 16th century from Latin into English. 

Liza Ewen (Center City workshop) and her partner and bought a house in Germantown two years ago now and spent the summer of 2004 gutting and renovating it. Liza continues to teach at Friends Central, where the son of Rosalind Kaplan (Delco/Main Line workshop) has been one of her students.

Marguerite Ferra (Center City workshop) marked her third year of writing with GPWS in October 2007. This summer she received a scholarship from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation to study memoir writing at the Fine Arts Center in Provincetown, MA, in addition to scholarships to the Artist Teacher Institute at Rutgers Camden. This school year she is teaching English as a Second Language to students ranging from Kindergarten to Grade Three in U.S. Wiggins and Lanning Square Elementary Schools in Camden, NJ. The third grade class enrolled in the NaNoWriMo Young Writers Program and she reports they are having fun with stories of adventures with aliens. In addition, the writing club she directs through her church for immigrant children is having a writing contest. She predicts many great young writers coming from Camden!

Ann Foster (Delco/Main Line workshop) is living and writing in Massachusetts, working on a masters in English with the Bread Loaf program. She recently completed a course in memoir.

Kathleen Furin (Delco/Main Line workshop) has an essay “Album” in the recent anthology, Operation Homecoming:  Iraq, Afghanistan and the U.S, Home Front in the Words of Soldiers and the Families.  Her story “Bridge,” drafted in the workshop, appears on the Philadelphia Stories website, www.philadelphiastories.org. Kathleen is the co-founder and co-director of the Maternal Wellness Center (winner of Best of Philly 2006). She is a regular contributor to the holistic parenting mag The Mother.  Her work has appeared  in Literary Mama, The Mother’s Movement Online, Mamazine, and other journals.

Adele Greenspun (Center City workshop) has completed a young adult novel, Promises.  Adele writes that many of the scenes were written in workshop.

Hanoch Guy (Center City workshop) received 12th place in the 2007 Mad Poets Review competition, judged by Kate Northrop. His poems have also appeared in Feile Feste, Schuylkill River Journal, Visions International and Poetry Motel.

Kim Hemminger (Delco/Main Line workshop) writes that she had a terrific summer traveling in China and Tibet for two and a half weeks.

Maurya Johnson (Center City workshops) has completed the Villanova program in theater.  Her play was read before an audience in Spring 2005.

Matt Jordan (Center City and Delco/Main Line workshops) has attended the Iowa Summer Writing Program for the past two summers, and is enrolled in the graduate writing program at Rutgers Camden.  He’s also on the nonfiction editorial board of Philadelphia Stories (see his essay, “Pierce Street” on the website, www.philadelphiastories.org), and teaches English at Holy Ghost Prep.

Rosalind Kaplan (Delco/Main Line workshop) attend the Goucher Creative Non-fiction Writers Conference this summer, where she attracted the attention of an agent interested in representing her non-fiction manuscript about her experiences contracting and treating Hepatitis C as a physician.

Sheldon Kleeman (Center City workshop) is working on poetry and short stories.  Maria Casale (Center City workshop) is working on her second novel, House Dreams.  Their joint project, Hannah Rose Kleeman, was born April 24, 2006, and has not yet identified a preferred literary form. 

Deborah Derrickson Kossmann (Delco/Main Line workshop) won the Short Memoir Competition at the 2007 First Person Arts Festival in Philadelphia. Her essay, "Why We Needed a Prenup With Our Contractor" was published as a "Modern Love" column in The New York Times on 10/28/07. As a result of this publication, she signed with a NY literary agent. When not overwhelmed with house renovation chaos, she is hard at work on a book proposal and a collection of essays. Other highlights this past year included a two-week artist residency at the Ragdale Foundation, and poems published in Runes: A Review of Poetry, and the Cape Cod Literary Voice.

Work by Jenny Lentz (Center City workshop) has recently garnered the following honors: third place in the Baltimore Review 2006 Short Fiction Competition (click here to view); Honorable Mention in ReadMyWords.com (a division of Cedar Hill Press) Short Fiction Contest (story and bio here ); and 15th place in the Writer's Digest Short Short Story Competition.

Galen Longstreth (Center City workshop) and Katie Mather (Delco/Main Line workshop) are enrolled in Vermont College’s MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults.

Jim Mancinelli’s (Center City workshop) latest chapbook of poems, In Deep came out from Plan B Press in 2004.  Jim is a frequent reader in the Philadelphia area; catch him at the 215 Festival in October.  He also writes that he has recently resumed playing the guitar, so possibly a multi-media performance may be in the offing. Jim can be heard reading with four other Plan B Press poets on the air on Monday, November 20 at 8 pm at 88.5 on WXPN Live! hosted by Michaela Majoun.

Joyce Meyers (Delco/Main Line workshop) writes, “Although I have found it difficult to attend Monday night workshops, I have tried to continue writing.  I have attended two week-long retreats with Patricia Lewis, one in Costa Rica and one in Yelapa, Mexico.  She is a wonderful inspiration, and I recommend these retreats to anyone who writes.  More recently, I have been attending Saturday poetry workshops with Leonard Gontarek and have had the pleasure of working with Alison in that group.  I have had some of my poetry published in various journals, including White Pelican Review, Mad Poets Review, Endicott Review, Philadelphia Poets, Mobius, and others. High points in my writing over the past couple of years have been receiving an International Merit Prize from Atlanta Review in 2004, winning a $100 prize for a sonnet in the Margaret Reid Traditional Verse Contest, and having a chapbook submission make it to the finals in the Blue Light Press Chapbook Competition last year.  In between I have amassed a large collection of rejections.  Currently, I have poems forthcoming in Pearl, Mad Poets Review, and Schuylkill Valley Journal of the Arts.”

Donna Miceli (Delco/Main Line workshop) continues her career as a freelance medical writer, and since moving to Florida has ghost written four books, on such topics as breast cancer, preventive cardiology, substance abuse, and sleep disorders, and contributed a chapter on Childhood and Adolescent Anxiety Disorders to another book. An essay started in workshop, “Speaking of Sex” has just been published in the American Medical Writers Association Journal.

Pauline Michel’s (Delco/Main Line workshop) essay "Grief Walking" appears in the anthology Voices of Breast Cancer published by LaChance Publishing LLC. Information on this and other anthologies in the Healing Voices series can be reached at www.thehealingproject.org.

Pam Nagy (Center City workshop) writes, “I'm still defending criminals in Connecticut (while living in Philly) and I still love doing it.  As someone who has never liked to run, I had the crazy idea that I wanted to run one marathon in my lifetime, which I did this past January in Phoenix.  My husband Joe and I have been in the process of adopting a baby from China for 14 months now, and hope to go to China next January or February to get her.  As for writing?  I'm still hoping that one day I'll become disciplined enough to write on a consistent basis, but it hasn't happened yet.”

Nehru Nelson (Center City workshop) has three poems in the on-line journal The Tookany Review, Vol. III Summer 2007, and sends his greetings to fellow Wordshop veterans.

Maggie Nerz (Center City workshop) has left her job advising at Temple University and has finally fulfilled her goal of being a high school English teacher. She is teaching 10th and 11th grade English at CHAD, The Charter High School for Architecture and Design at 7th and Chestnut. Teaching has put writing on a backburner for now, but as soon as she comes up for air Maggie hopes to resume her short story writing.

Clare Novak (Delco/Main Line workshop) published her book, Never Rule Without a Magician, a Sage, and a Fool with XLibris in Spring 2006, a wise and witty take on leadership.  Alison read and commented on early drafts. See here or www.novakassoc.com.
 
Amy Popp (Center City workshop) is currently pursuing an MS in Information and Library Science at Drexel University.

Minnie Reichek, aka Minati Singh (Center City workshop) is living in San Francisco and is enrolled in the MFA program at California College of the Arts.  Her poem, “Ode,” first drafted in the workshop, won the Second Prize in the Rhino Editors’ Awards for 2005. (see here).

Valerie Reynolds (Center City workshop) is working on her novel, renamed Portions.  Valerie writes that its first chapter and premise began in the workshop.

Ilana Stanger-Ross (Center City workshop) has moved to Victoria, BC, Canada, where she is training to become a midwife, continuing her writing and caring for her daughter Eva. She has received grants from the Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, and Money for Women Foundation.

Christy Schneider (Center City workshop) has written with GPWS since 1999 when she wrote with the bright colors and large alphabet of the Unitarian Church Day Care Center (Wednesday workshop.  She appreciates the encouragement of Alison and the friends she has met in GPWS.  Recently she wrote CHAPBOOK in black Sharpie marker on the tab of a red file folder that she is filling with poems and prose for a collection called Fabrications, to be completed in 2006.

Trish Szuhaj (Center City workshop) has three short-short stories posted on Scribes Valley Publishing’s U-Write-It Challenge, in which the writer completes a short-short of 150 words or less from a given opening (http://scribesvalley.com/uwriteit.html, weeks 233, 234 and 254). In addition to writing short-shorts with a thriller/mystery twist and submitting to contests, journals and online publications, Trish is working on a thriller novella which she plans to complete by fall 2008.

Sallie Warden (Center City workshop) writes, “My spring and summer were paved with good intentions and we all know where that gets us.    My daughter-in-law had given me the most beautiful book with blank pages of lovely thick sort of textured blank paper for Christmas.   Perfect, I thought.    And this was going to be a big year - lots to write about, in a journaling way, at least.    A big move from the house on Pine St that we’ve loved to an apartment not far away.  AND a grandchild due at the end of October. An exciting (probably last) big vacation to Turkey in July.  Somehow instead of all this inspiring me to write it has had me bewildered, exasperated, and exhausted and I CERTAINLY didn't want to defile that beautiful paper with immature, whining complaints.  .      Well, of course it's just what I should have done. Might have made for some interesting tales. . . I write a lot of LETTERS.  I love the process of writing (pen to paper, not word processor).  Maybe I should put that energy into writing for me.  I hope to rejoin the workshop in January.” 

Jennifer Williamson (Center City workshop) recently quit her boring day job to pursue acting and writing ful- time.  She’s supporting herself as a freelance commercial writer and was cast in a Fringe Festival play, “The Shrink,” in summer 2006. On the writing end of things, she reports “toying with a novel for a while now.”

In spring 2006, 15 GPWS participants and alumni participated in The Autobiography Project:  The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin is the most widely published autobiography of all time, and in honor of Franklin’s 300 birthday, Philadelphians were invited to submit 300-word autobiographical pieces to the Project, presented by the Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary and One Book, One Philadelphia.

A panel of judges, including GPWS alumna and current participant Sonia Arora (Center City workshop) and myself, selected twenty autobiographies to appear on posters at bus shelters throughout the city.  All autobiographies are posted online at www.theautobiographyproject.com.

Phyllis Mass’ (Center City workshop) piece, a longer version of which was initially drafted in workshop, was selected for a poster, as were the works of three students of Ellen Jenson Abbott (Delco/Main Line workshop), a teacher at Westtown School, and one student of Marguerite Ferra, who teaches ESL at Lannon Square School in Camden. In addition, Marguerite’s mother, Marguerite Wunsch, was also chosen.  Marie Field (Delco/Main Line workshop), chair of One Book, One Philadelphia served as a key cheerleader.

Many other entries from GPWS folks were finalists and in contention until the bitter end (to avoid conflict of interest, I did not officially rate or cast deciding votes on GPWS entries—though it now can be revealed that I was secretly pulling for all of you.)

Since December 2005, I’ve been privileged to be a fellow student at a poetry workshop, Making Poems that Last, led by Leonard Gontarek, with Hanoch Guy, Christy Schneider, Minna Duchovnay and Janet Spangler (Center City workshop), and Joyce Meyers (Delco/Main Line workshop).

I hope you will enjoy reading about what your friends and compatriots from workshop are up to.  Keep in touch!

--Alison