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.
Rachel Simon

Faculty Profile

Meet Rachel Simon

“Pickleball became a big pandemic pastime.” That’s what Gotham teacher Rachel Simon found, anyways. For Rachel—the Deputy Editor of Hello Giggles and a freelance writer for publications including the New York Times, Glamour, and Vulture—writing is about finding the unexpected connections. “The first story I wrote in the pandemic, which was for the New York Times, was about pickleball.

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Teresa Wong

Faculty Profile

Meet Teresa Wong

“I didn’t pick up a pencil or anything until I had kids,” says Gotham teacher Teresa Wong. “No child is going to let you sit there and write for even twenty minutes. But drawing, kids can sit alongside you or they can watch you and be interested.”

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The instructor pushed us to do more than we believed we could and gave us the benefit of both the breadth and the depth of her knowledge.

Anne Woods, attorney

Faculty Excerpts

December 2021, <em>Destroyer of Light</em>

December 2021, Destroyer of Light

Jennifer Marie Brissett
Chapter 1Smokeless black flames burn her skin ice-cold with memory. She sloughs and becomes all muscle and sinew, bone and blood. The fire surrounds her and drifts up her body, engulfing toes, ankles, knees, her waist, her stomach, her heart,...
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<em>Maggie Dove and the Lost Brides</em>

Maggie Dove and the Lost Brides

Susan Breen
Chapter 1Maggie Dove had never believed that a wedding was the happiest day of a woman’s life. Happiness, she thought, like grief, could not be scheduled. Her husband’s touch one long-ago night when they danced under a full moon. The...
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Faculty Articles

Josh Sippie

Writing Horror That Lingers

Josh Sippie
There’s a certain art to writing pulpy horror. You create a monster, the monster terrorizes everyone, maybe one person survives. Only maybe. But as the literary horror landscape changes and grows and reinvigorates as it’s doing now, the tropes of...
Josh Sippie

The Benefit of Humor in Fiction

Josh Sippie
For many, being a serious writer may mean writing deep, dark explorations of the human consciousness. No laughter need apply.The venerable Martin Amis, in his book Inside Story, blames this on “the intellectual glamour of gloom…the idea that sullen pessimism...