Meet our talented family of teachers—each an accomplished writer and trustworthy guide. Leaf through our faculty bios, profiles, book excerpts, and writing advice articles. You’ll like the people you meet.
Benjamin Obler

Faculty Profile

Meet Benjamin Obler

Someone has to write all those interesting facts about emperor penguins in your grade school text books, and for a while, that someone was Ben Obler. Ben’s been cozied up with the writing world for his entire life, whether he was writing those factoids in the education side of publishing, or writing his novel Javascotia, or writing the closed captioning for movies.

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Dan Lopez

Faculty Profile

Meet Dan Lopez

For Gotham teacher, Dan Lopez, sailing is kind of like writing. “I like the angles. I like the precision. It doesn’t allow for a lot of gray area,” he says and then adds, “At the same time it allows you to do a lot of wandering and a lot of introspection.”

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I'm 63, and with teachers of this caliber I could look forward to a lifetime of learning wherever I reside.

Marc Kouffman, student

Faculty Excerpts

The Beekeeper's Daughter<em></em>

The Beekeeper's Daughter

Jessica Sticklor
Lorelei“It is no night to drown in:/A full moon, river lapsing/Black beneath bland mirror-sheen.” I hear Plath again. That poem my mother used to half sing before bed, at the dinner table, any time her mind wandered. I hear it...
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<em>The Removes</em>

The Removes

Tatjana Soli
Tom CusterMy Brother’s ObsessionHe took us out weeks too long, to the most barren desert prairie, drove us to the point that the bone-wracked horses fell over from exhaustion and lack of food. Far from considering this a loss we...
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Faculty Articles

Melissa Petro

Four Steps to Publishing Articles and Essays

Melissa Petro
Having worked as a full-time freelance writer for just shy of a decade, I often find friends reach out to ask me how I do it, hoping that they, too, can get published.A part of me wants to take umbrage—after...
Barbara DeMarco-Barrett

Breaking the Dry Spell

Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
I love the desert—the minimalist environment, how your eyes can stretch for miles, the hardly traveled roads that go on and on. But I didn’t want my writing life to resemble a desert, and lately it had felt as if...