Members of the Working Writers Group (WWG)
Ann de Forest • Ann’s stories have appeared in numerous magazines, including Pif, Open City, Timber Creek Review, Hotel Amerika, and Cleaver, and have been presented in the Writing Aloud series at Philadelphia’s InterAct Theatre Company. She writes frequently about architecture, design, and the built environment for a wide range of magazines and newspapers, and she teaches narrative structure to graphic design students at the University of the Arts. Ann recently completed The Recollector's Map, a novel for middle-grade readers and the first book in a time-travel trilogy involving odd, historic maps. Her Twitter address is @Ann_de_Forest.
Louis Greenstein • Louis (http://www.louisgreenstein.com/) is the author of the novel Mr. Boardwalk from New Door Books. He is also the co-author of One Child Born, a cabaret based on the music of Laura Nyro, developed at CAP21 and performed at the Laurie Beechman Theatre and at Joe’s Pub (an adjunct of the Public Theater) in NYC. His one-act plays, Smoke, Interview with a Scapegoat, and The Convert, are published by Dramatic Publishing and have been produced in the United States and abroad. Louis is the co-author as well of With Albert Einstein, a one-man show about the great scientist. He is the recipient of a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts playwriting fellowship. His fiction has appeared in Margins Magazine, Philadelphia Stories, Muse Apprentice Guild, and Dream Forge and has been performed in the Writing Aloud series.
Sam Gridley • Sam’s novel The Shame of What We Are was published by New Door Books in 2010. He has also published another novel, The Big Happiness, as well as forty-odd stories (some of them very odd) and miscellaneous pieces of satire. In addition, he has written a number of pseudo-educational books under a pseudonym. Links to many of his works can be found at his blog, The News from Gridleyville. The recipient of several magazine awards and three fiction fellowships, Sam augments his literary existence by editing and designing books.
Mark Lyons • Mark’s story collection, Brief Eulogies at Roadside Shrines, published by Wild River Books in fall 2014, was named a finalist in the Eric Hoffer Awards. His fiction has also appeared in Whetstone (J. P. McGrath Memorial Award), Bucks County Writer, Sensations, the Schuylkill Valley Journal of the Arts, Piker Press, Wild River Review, and Cleaver and has been read in the Writing Aloud series at Philadelphia’s InterAct Theatre Company. He is a recipient of Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fellowships for 2003 and 2009 and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He is co-editor of Espejos y Ventanas / Mirrors and Windows: Oral Histories of Mexican Farmworkers and Their Families, which is published in Spanish and English by Syracuse University Press. He currently works as co-director of The Philadelphia Storytelling Project, in which immigrants produce audio stories about their lives. These stories are webcast, played on radio, and published in Wild River Review.
Nathaniel Popkin • Nathaniel (http://nathanielpopkin.net) is the author of three books, including the 2013 novel Lion and Leopard. He’s the fiction review editor of Cleaver Magazine, as well as a prolific book critic—and National Book Critics Circle member—focusing on literary fiction and works in translation. He contributes regularly to the Wall Street Journal, Public Books, The Millions, and the Kenyon Review, among other publications. As a keen observer of cities and lived places, Nathaniel has often turned his eye to the layers of history and life in his own city. He’s the founding co-editor of the Hidden City Daily, a web magazine that covers architecture, design, planning, and preservation in Philadelphia. He’s also the senior writer and story editor of the multi-part documentary film series “Philadelphia: The Great Experiment,” recognized with several Emmy awards. He has been a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fellow and a writer-in-residence at Philadelphia University. He’s currently at work on the 2017 title Finding The Hidden City (Temple Press).
David Hallock Sanders • David is currently working on a novel called Busara Road, set at a Quaker mission in Kenya in the mid-1960s, shortly after the nation achieved independence. As part of the novel project, he writes the corresponding Busara Blog. David’s fiction has appeared in magazines that include Baltimore Review, The Laurel Review, Sycamore Review, Philadelphia Stories, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Bucks County Review, and Talking Stick Review, as well as in the anthologies Philly Fiction, The Best of Philadelphia Stories, and 2000 Voices. His novel-in-progress was shortlisted as a finalist for the 2013 William Faulkner–William Wisdom Prize; he is a winner of the Third Coast national fiction competition, the Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary Autobiography Project, and the Dwell/Glass House Haiku Competition; and he was a finalist for the Crescent Review’s Renwick-Sumerwell Prize, the SLS International Fiction Contest (twice), and the New Letters National Fiction Award. David was also the founding director and host of Writing Aloud, InterAct Theatre Company’s “Best of Philly” Award-winning reading series.
Debra Leigh Scott • Debra (www.debraleighscott.com) is an award-winning writer, playwright, and arts “edu-preneur.” Her collection of short stories, Other Likely Stories, is available from Sowilo Press, and her stories have also appeared in The Oxford American, The Chattahoochee Review, River City, Miranda, TPQ, The Ashen Eye, and The Abiko Quarterly in Japan. Through her organization Hidden River Arts, she conducts workshops and literary outreach programs, publishes books, and sponsors literary competitions.
Miriam Seidel • Miriam wrote the libretto for Violet Fire, an opera about Nikola Tesla, with score by Jon Gibson, which had its world premiere in Belgrade, Serbia, and its U.S. premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. She is also the librettist for the opera Judgment of Midas, with a score by Kamran Ince, developed with American Opera Projects and premiered in 2013 in Milwaukee; this libretto has been published by The Cooperage. Miriam’s work is also seen in magazines such as Exquisite Corpse, Washington Square, Phoebe, and First Intensity, in the book Meet Me at the Birdhouse (Brigid's House), and in the forthcoming anthology Asteroid Belt Almanac (The Head and the Hand Press). A three-time winner of the Fellowship in Art Criticism from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Miriam has written on the arts for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Art in America, and Dance Magazine. She is now at work on her third novel. She blogs on art, new opera, the future of books, and more at MiriamSeidel.wordpress.com.
Ann de Forest • Ann’s stories have appeared in numerous magazines, including Pif, Open City, Timber Creek Review, Hotel Amerika, and Cleaver, and have been presented in the Writing Aloud series at Philadelphia’s InterAct Theatre Company. She writes frequently about architecture, design, and the built environment for a wide range of magazines and newspapers, and she teaches narrative structure to graphic design students at the University of the Arts. Ann recently completed The Recollector's Map, a novel for middle-grade readers and the first book in a time-travel trilogy involving odd, historic maps. Her Twitter address is @Ann_de_Forest.
Louis Greenstein • Louis (http://www.louisgreenstein.com/) is the author of the novel Mr. Boardwalk from New Door Books. He is also the co-author of One Child Born, a cabaret based on the music of Laura Nyro, developed at CAP21 and performed at the Laurie Beechman Theatre and at Joe’s Pub (an adjunct of the Public Theater) in NYC. His one-act plays, Smoke, Interview with a Scapegoat, and The Convert, are published by Dramatic Publishing and have been produced in the United States and abroad. Louis is the co-author as well of With Albert Einstein, a one-man show about the great scientist. He is the recipient of a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts playwriting fellowship. His fiction has appeared in Margins Magazine, Philadelphia Stories, Muse Apprentice Guild, and Dream Forge and has been performed in the Writing Aloud series.
Sam Gridley • Sam’s novel The Shame of What We Are was published by New Door Books in 2010. He has also published another novel, The Big Happiness, as well as forty-odd stories (some of them very odd) and miscellaneous pieces of satire. In addition, he has written a number of pseudo-educational books under a pseudonym. Links to many of his works can be found at his blog, The News from Gridleyville. The recipient of several magazine awards and three fiction fellowships, Sam augments his literary existence by editing and designing books.
Mark Lyons • Mark’s story collection, Brief Eulogies at Roadside Shrines, published by Wild River Books in fall 2014, was named a finalist in the Eric Hoffer Awards. His fiction has also appeared in Whetstone (J. P. McGrath Memorial Award), Bucks County Writer, Sensations, the Schuylkill Valley Journal of the Arts, Piker Press, Wild River Review, and Cleaver and has been read in the Writing Aloud series at Philadelphia’s InterAct Theatre Company. He is a recipient of Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fellowships for 2003 and 2009 and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He is co-editor of Espejos y Ventanas / Mirrors and Windows: Oral Histories of Mexican Farmworkers and Their Families, which is published in Spanish and English by Syracuse University Press. He currently works as co-director of The Philadelphia Storytelling Project, in which immigrants produce audio stories about their lives. These stories are webcast, played on radio, and published in Wild River Review.
Nathaniel Popkin • Nathaniel (http://nathanielpopkin.net) is the author of three books, including the 2013 novel Lion and Leopard. He’s the fiction review editor of Cleaver Magazine, as well as a prolific book critic—and National Book Critics Circle member—focusing on literary fiction and works in translation. He contributes regularly to the Wall Street Journal, Public Books, The Millions, and the Kenyon Review, among other publications. As a keen observer of cities and lived places, Nathaniel has often turned his eye to the layers of history and life in his own city. He’s the founding co-editor of the Hidden City Daily, a web magazine that covers architecture, design, planning, and preservation in Philadelphia. He’s also the senior writer and story editor of the multi-part documentary film series “Philadelphia: The Great Experiment,” recognized with several Emmy awards. He has been a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts fellow and a writer-in-residence at Philadelphia University. He’s currently at work on the 2017 title Finding The Hidden City (Temple Press).
David Hallock Sanders • David is currently working on a novel called Busara Road, set at a Quaker mission in Kenya in the mid-1960s, shortly after the nation achieved independence. As part of the novel project, he writes the corresponding Busara Blog. David’s fiction has appeared in magazines that include Baltimore Review, The Laurel Review, Sycamore Review, Philadelphia Stories, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Bucks County Review, and Talking Stick Review, as well as in the anthologies Philly Fiction, The Best of Philadelphia Stories, and 2000 Voices. His novel-in-progress was shortlisted as a finalist for the 2013 William Faulkner–William Wisdom Prize; he is a winner of the Third Coast national fiction competition, the Benjamin Franklin Tercentenary Autobiography Project, and the Dwell/Glass House Haiku Competition; and he was a finalist for the Crescent Review’s Renwick-Sumerwell Prize, the SLS International Fiction Contest (twice), and the New Letters National Fiction Award. David was also the founding director and host of Writing Aloud, InterAct Theatre Company’s “Best of Philly” Award-winning reading series.
Debra Leigh Scott • Debra (www.debraleighscott.com) is an award-winning writer, playwright, and arts “edu-preneur.” Her collection of short stories, Other Likely Stories, is available from Sowilo Press, and her stories have also appeared in The Oxford American, The Chattahoochee Review, River City, Miranda, TPQ, The Ashen Eye, and The Abiko Quarterly in Japan. Through her organization Hidden River Arts, she conducts workshops and literary outreach programs, publishes books, and sponsors literary competitions.
Miriam Seidel • Miriam wrote the libretto for Violet Fire, an opera about Nikola Tesla, with score by Jon Gibson, which had its world premiere in Belgrade, Serbia, and its U.S. premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. She is also the librettist for the opera Judgment of Midas, with a score by Kamran Ince, developed with American Opera Projects and premiered in 2013 in Milwaukee; this libretto has been published by The Cooperage. Miriam’s work is also seen in magazines such as Exquisite Corpse, Washington Square, Phoebe, and First Intensity, in the book Meet Me at the Birdhouse (Brigid's House), and in the forthcoming anthology Asteroid Belt Almanac (The Head and the Hand Press). A three-time winner of the Fellowship in Art Criticism from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Miriam has written on the arts for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Art in America, and Dance Magazine. She is now at work on her third novel. She blogs on art, new opera, the future of books, and more at MiriamSeidel.wordpress.com.
