WRITERS
Kris Spisak
With degrees from the College of William & Mary and the University of Richmond, Kris Spisak began her career as a college writing instructor; however, after six years in the classroom, she transitioned to professional writing and editing. Helping writers sharpen their craft was the driving force behind her book, Get a Grip on your Grammar: 250 Writing and Editing Reminders for the Curious or Confused (Career Press, 2017), and the creation of her writing program, Grammartopia. Kris is on the board of directors of James River Writers and is also the co-founder of Midlothian Web Solutions, a web company that merges the space where tech and text meet. |
Michele Young-Stone
Michele Young-Stone is the author of three novels: Lost in the Beehive (April, 2018, currently available for pre-order), Above Us Only Sky, which is this year's Common Freshman Read at Virginia Wesleyan College in Norfolk, and The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors. Michele earned her Master of Fine Arts in fiction writing from VCU. A native Richmonder, she currently resides in the Outer Banks of North Carolina with her son, husband, dog, cat, and bearded dragon. |
Bird Cox
Bird Cox is the executive director of Richmond Young Writers, a creative writing organization for ages 9-17. She writes fiction and screenplays, bosses people around, and collects spores, molds and fungus (just kidding, but one of her favorite movie characters does). |
Amy Tudor
Amy Tudor is the author of two collections of poetry, Studies in Extinction (2016) and A Book of Birds, which won the Liam Rector First Book Prize for Poetry in 2008, as well as a number of essays, short stories, and song lyrics. Her honors and awards include individual artist grants from the Kentucky Arts Council and the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the James Baker Hall Prize for Poetry, and inclusion of her essay “War of the Ashes” as a Notable Essays or Literary Nonfiction piece in Best American Essays 2016. She holds both a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Humanities and a M.F.A. in Creative Writing, and she has worked or studied with such writers and songwriters as Larry Levis, Emily Saliers, Mark Chadwick, and Jamie Freeman. A former ARGS Literary Arts teacher, she is currently Assistant Professor of English at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky. |
Ron Smith
Ron Smith is the author of four books of poetry, Running Again in Hollywood Cemetery (1988), Moon Road (2007), Its Ghostly Workshop (2013), and The Humility of the Brutes(2017). He has taught graduate and undergraduate courses with such titles as “The City of Rome,” “American Literature & the Visual Arts,” “Edgar Allan Poe,” “Creative Writing,” and “Modern American Poetry” at the University of Richmond, Virginia Commonwealth University, and the University of Mary Washington. He is currently Writer-in-Residence at St. Christopher’s School and Poetry Editor for Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature. Ron Smith has been a presenter at international conferences for Edgar Allan Poe, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, the Sport Literature Association, and Associated Writing Programs. He has given many readings of his work in the US, and in Canada, Ireland, England, and Italy. Recently, he has read his poems about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson at Mount Vernon and Monticello, poems about Virginia’s history and landscapes on the floor of the Virginia House of Delegates and the Virginia Senate, as well as his Italy-inspired poems at the Keats-Shelley House (in the rooms where Keats died) and the American Ambassador’s Official Residence in Rome. In October he was the Bingham Reader at Milton Academy in Massachusetts, where he also conducted poetry workshops. |
Valley Haggard
Valley Haggard has been a Waffle House waitress, a stewardess on a cruise ship, a cabin girl on a dude ranch, a board member of the James River Writers and the Book Editor for Style Weekly. The founder of Richmond Young Writers, Valley now leads creative nonfiction marathons, workshops and retreats for adults in Virginia and surrounding areas and curates the online literary magazine lifein10minutes.com, publishing beginning and experienced writers from all around the world. The recipient of a 2014 Theresa Pollak Prize and a 2015 Style Weekly Women in the Arts Award, Valley helped open a dedicated writing center in the heart of the fan in January 2017. She is the author of The Halfway House for Writers and the co-editor of Nine Lives: A Life in 10 Minutes Anthology published by Chop Suey Books Books in June 2017. |
David Coogan, Ron Fountain (not pictured), Terence Scruggs, Kelvin Belton, and Dean Turner David Coogan is an associate professor of English at Virginia Commonwealth University and the founder of Open Minds, which enables college students to take courses in the arts and the Humanities with prisoners at the Richmond City Justice Center. Terence Scruggs, Kelvin Belton, and Dean Turner are returning citizens and co-authors with Coogan of Writing Our Way Out: Memoirs from Jail, the creative culmination of a writing class in which ten men explore the conditions, traps, and turning points on their paths to imprisonment as well as the redemptive power of memoir. |