Our Teaching Artists
The Adirondack Center for Writing has hosted classes, workshops, readings, and other events for all ages since our founding. Learn more about the teaching artists we’ve worked with below.
Are you a writer interested in working with ACW? Please contact us!
Mahogany Browne
HS Writing Retreat, Online classes
Mahogany L. Browne, selected as Kennedy Center’s Next 50 and Wesleyan’s 2022-23 Distinguished Writer-in-Residence, the Executive Director of JustMedia, and Artistic Director of Urban Word, is a writer, playwright, organizer, & educator. Browne has received fellowships from Arts for Justice, Air Serenbe, Cave Canem, Poets House, Mellon Research & Rauschenberg. She is the author of recent works: Vinyl Moon, Chlorine Sky, Woke: A Young Poets Call to Justice, Woke Baby, & Black Girl Magic. Founder of the diverse lit initiative Woke Baby Book Fair, Browne’s latest poetry collection Chrome Valley is a promissory note to survival and available from Norton in Spring 2023. And she readies for her stage debut of Chlorine Sky at Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago, Illinois. She is the first-ever poet-in-residence at the Lincoln Center and lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Website: https://mobrowne.com
DeMisty D. Bellinger
Online classes
DeMisty D. Bellinger is the author of the novel NEW TO LIBERTY and the poetry collection PECULIAR HERITAGE. She is a poetry editor at Malarkey Books, an alumni reader at Prairie Schooner, and a professor at Fitchburg State University. DeMisty lives in Massachusetts with her husband and twin daughters.
Website: https://demistybellinger.com/
Felicia Cade
HS Writing Retreat
Felicia Cade is an International Poet, Author, and Activist, named one of LA County’s most prominent Poets and a millennial voice to be reckoned with. Felicia’s work raises humanity to a new and inclusive space of thought, Unity, and Love. She has a powerful yet graceful stage presence that captivates her audience along with a unique and immersive style. Along with teaching and performing poetry internationally throughout Europe and Africa, She is the first Poet Laureate for BWW. Felicia has two published books “Collected Pieces & Shed Skin” and “Hallway Confessions”, and is currently working on her third book which is set to gain major publication next fall.
Learn more: https://artslb.org/artists/felicia-cade/
Adam Falkner
HS Writing Retreat, Online classes
Dr. Adam Falkner (he/him) is a poet & musician, educator and race & equity strategist. His work focuses on intersectional themes of race, gender, queer life and social justice education. He is the author of The Willies (Button Poetry, 2020) and Adoption (Winner of the Diode Editions Chapbook Award).
Website: http://www.adamfalknerarts.com/
Nicole Helget
Online classes
Nicole Helget (she/her) is the author of The Summer of Ordinary Ways (Borealis Press/Minnesota Historical Society), The Turtle Catcher (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), Stillwater (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), Horse Camp (Egmont), Wonder at the Edge of the World (Little, Brown and Company), The End of the Wild (Little, Brown and Company), and the forthcoming essay collection, Love on the Wintry Prairie (University of Minnesota Press). She is a New York Times Editor’s Pick and People Magazine’s Critic’s Choice writer. She has dozens of starred reviews and writing grants for her work in nonfiction and fiction, especially about climate change and water quality. She has written dozens of children’s nonfiction picture books, published under various pen names. She also ghostwrites books for clients. She is the editor-in-chief of Minneopa Valley Press, an independent publishing company devoted to diverse voices from rural America launched in 2018 by Helget and her partners. She is a longtime teacher, editor, and manuscript consultant. She lives in southern Minnesota with her children and husband and dogs.
Jose Hernandez Diaz
Online classes
Jose Hernandez Diaz is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He holds degrees in English and Creative Writing from the University of California, Berkeley, and Antioch University Los Angeles. He is the author of a collection of prose poems: The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020) and the forthcoming collection: Bad Mexican, Bad American (Acre Books, 2024). He has been published in The American Poetry Review, Colorado Review, Huizache, The Iowa Review, The Missouri Review, The Nation, Poetry, The Southern Review, The Yale Review, and in The Best American Nonrequired Reading. He teaches creative writing online for various literary organizations, including: Beyond Baroque, Hugo House, Lighthouse Writers Workshop, Litro Magazine, and elsewhere.
Karl Michael Iglesias
HS Writing Retreat
Karl Michael Iglesias a Puerto Rican actor, director, and author originally from Milwaukee, WI. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin and First Wave Hip Hop Theater Ensemble, he continues his exploration of verse and heightened language in theater as a part of The BARS Workshop at The Public Theater in New York, where writers/performers develop new verse for the stage.
Website: https://www.karlmichaeliglesias.com/
Roya Marsh
HS Writing Retreat
Roya Marsh is a Bronx, New York, native and a nationally recognized poet, performer, educator, and activist. She is the Poet in Residence at Urban Word NYC and she works feverishly toward LGBTQIA justice and dismantling white supremacy. Marsh’s work has been featured on NBC, BET, Button Poetry, Write About Now Poetry, Def Jam’s All Def Digital, and in Poetry magazine, Flypaper Magazine, Frontier Poetry, The Village Voice, Nylon, Huff Post, Lexus Verses and Flow, and The BreakBeat Poets Volume 2: Black Girl Magic (Haymarket 2018).
Learn more: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/roya-marsh
Aram Mrjoian
Online classes
Aram Mrjoian is a visiting assistant professor in creative writing at Pacific Lutheran University and an editor-at-large at the Chicago Review of Books. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Electric Literature, Boulevard, Gulf Coast online, The Rumpus, The Millions, Longreads, and many other publications.
José Olivarez
HS Retreat, Performances, Online workshops
José Olivarez is the son of Mexican immigrants. His debut book of poems, Citizen Illegal, was a finalist for the PEN/ Jean Stein Award and a winner of the 2018 Chicago Review of Books Poetry Prize. It was named a top book of 2018 by The Adroit Journal, NPR, and the New York Public Library. Along with Felicia Chavez and Willie Perdomo, he co-edited the poetry anthology, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT. He is the co-host of the poetry podcast, The Poetry Gods. In 2018, he was awarded the first annual Author and Artist in Justice Award from the Phillips Brooks House Association and named a Debut Poet of 2018 by Poets & Writers. In 2019, he was awarded a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Paris Review, and elsewhere.
Website: https://joseolivarez.com/
Jive Poetic
HS Retreat, performances, online workshops
Jive Poetic is a writer, organizer, and educator based in Brooklyn, New York. He received his BA in Media Studies from the State University of New York at Buffalo, and his MFA in Writing and Activism from Pratt Institute. In 2017 Jive was the first recipient of the John Morning Award for Art and Service. He is the founder of Insurgent Poets Society, Carnival Slam: Cultural Exchange, and the co-founder of the Brooklyn Poetry Slam. Currently, Jive is the Friday night poetry slam curator and host at the Nuyorican Poet’s Café. When he is not on tour, he teaches poetry and hip – hop workshops to at risk youth in New York City and the surrounding area.
Website: http://www.jivepoetic.net/
Jon Sands
HS Retreat, Pop up events, Performances, Online workshops
Jon Sands is a winner of the 2018 National Poetry Series, selected for his second book, It’s Not Magic (Beacon Press, 2019). He is the facilitator of the Emotional Historians workshop, a series of generative writing workshops that you can find out more about on Instagram at @iAmJonSands. His work has been featured in the New York Times, as well as anthologized in The Best American Poetry. He teaches at Brooklyn College, Urban Word NYC, and for over a decade has facilitated a weekly writing workshop for adults at Baily House, an HIV/AIDS service center in East Harlem. He tours extensively as a poet, but lives in Brooklyn.
Website: https://jonsands.com/
Ellen Santasiero
Online workshops
Ellen Santasiero’s work has appeared in The Sun, 7×7, Northwest Review, Marlboro Review, The Stay Project, Oregon Humanities, High Desert Journal, and in Going Green, an anthology from the University of Oklahoma Press. She taught literature and writing at Oregon State University-Cascades from 2007-2021, and currently teaches at The Forge, a 10-month online creative writing program she founded in 2021. She is co-editor of PLACED: An Encyclopedia of Central Oregon, Vol. 1.
Website: https://www.ellensantasiero.com/
Mary Sanders Shartle
Anne LaBastille Women’s Writers Retreat leader, Workshops
Mary Sanders Shartle is a poet, fiction, and essay writer. Her novel about a woman living alone in the Adirondacks: The Truth and Legend of Lily Martindale, is available from SUNY Press. Shartle has been very involved in Great Camp Sagamore in Raquette Lake, hosting programs like book groups for Road Scholar historical residencies and an annual women’s writing workshop for the Adirondack Center for Writing through the Community Foundation for Herkimer and Oneida Counties, and the Estate of Anne LaBastille . She has also hosted book groups for the Galway Public Library in Galway, New York, through the New York State Council on Humanities.
Julia Shipley
Online classes
Julia Shipley is a recent graduate of Columbia Journalism School’s Arts & Culture M.A. program where she was awarded the Nona Balakian Prize for Literary Journalism. She also received the prize for the Best Thesis; a briefer version appeared in Grist and Rolling Stone. Currently, she’s a reporting fellow with Columbia Journalism Investigations, part of the team that, in partnership with NPR and Texas Newsroom, focused on rising worker heat deaths.
Website: https://writingonthefarm.com/
Alina Stefanescu
Online classes
Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania and lives in Birmingham, Alabama with her partner and several intense mammals. Recent books include a creative nonfiction chapbook, Ribald (Bull City Press Inch Series, Nov. 2020) and the poetry collection Dor, which won the Wandering Aengus Press Prize (September, 2021). Her debut fiction collection, Every Mask I Tried On, won the Brighthorse Books Prize (April 2018). She serves as poetry editor for several journals, reviewer and critic for others, and Co-Director of PEN America’s Birmingham Chapter. Alina’s poems, essays, and fiction can be found in Prairie Schooner, North American Review, World Literature Today, Pleiades, Poetry, BOMB, Crab Creek Review, and others. She is currently working on a novel-like creature.
Chris Tebbetts
Online Workshops
Chris Tebbetts is the co-author of the #1 New York Times bestselling MIDDLE SCHOOL series with James Patterson, as well as the bestselling STRANDED series with Jeff Probst from TV’s “Survivor.” Chris is also the author of two YA novels: ME, MYSELF, AND HIM and M OR F? (with Lisa Papademetriou); the bestselling adult thriller 1ST CASE (also with James Patterson); and the middle grade fantasy-adventure series, THE VIKING. His work has received children’s choice awards in Oregon and Hawaii, as well a Sunshine State Young Readers Award nomination, and a nod on the New York Public Library’s annual list of Books For the Teen Age. He offers author talks and writing workshops for any age from fourth grade through adult, online and (when feasible) in person. Chris has visited schools around the country and taught for the Antioch Writers’ Workshop, Highlights Foundation, Adirondack Center for Writing, and others.
Website: https://christebbetts.com/
Kim van Alkemade
Online Workshops
Kim van Alkemade earned a PhD in English from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and was a professor at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania before becoming a full-time writer living in Saratoga Springs. Her debut novel, Orphan #8, about medical experiments in a Jewish orphanage in the 1920s, was published in 2015 by William Morrow and appeared on the New York Times bestseller list, the Indies Next List, was a Target Club Pick, an Indigo Pick of the Month, a Woman’s National Book Association Great Group Reads selection, and has been translated into eleven languages. Her second novel, Bachelor Girl, about a mysterious bequest to an unknown actress by the millionaire owner of the Yankees baseball team in 1939, was published in 2018 by Touchstone and was a Toronto Star bestseller. Her third novel, Counting Lost Stars, about a pioneering woman computer programmer in 1960 who helps a Holocaust survivor discover his mother’s fate, will be published by William Morrow in 2023.
Website: https://www.kimvanalkemade.com/