| Give a Gift |
Read Poets & Writers Magazine on your iPad, Mac, or PC
Available for your Kindle or Kindle Fire
Get new issues downloaded to your NOOK automatically
Staff List
Meet the People of Poets & Writers
- Administration
- Editorial
- Advertising
- Readings/Workshops (East)
- Readings/Workshops (West) and California Office
- Information Technology and Web Development
- Galen Williams Fellowship Program
ADMINISTRATION
Elliot Figman – Executive Director
As an earlier admirer of Poets & Writers, Elliot came to the organization as a volunteer in 1977. Four years later he was appointed the organization’s executive director. Elliot graduated Phi Beta Kappa with Honors in English from Oberlin College in 1971 and earned an MA in Teaching from the University of Massachusetts in 1972. He has served on the Board of Directors of Oberlin College and The Corlears School. An accomplished poet, his book, Big Spring, was published by Four Way Books in 2003.
Melissa Ford Gradel, CFRE – Managing Director
Melissa joined the Poets & Writers staff in January 2010, bringing fifteen years of experience as a development director and consultant to a range of arts and cultural organizations. Early in her career, she assisted P&W in writing the initial grant proposals for pw.org. Melissa holds a BFA from New York University. She is a member of the Association of Fundraising Professionals and a Certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE), and completed a certificate course in Management & Supervision at the Support Center for Nonprofit Management. She is a beekeeper, gardener, sailor, and an avid reader.
William F. Hayes – Director of Finance and Accounting
Bill has been controller of Poets & Writers since 1999. He has been involved in the media industry for the past twenty-five years. Prior to joining Poets & Writers, Bill served as the controller of the Talman Company, a small press publisher and distributor located in New York City. Bill has also held the position of assistant to the treasurer/controller of Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI), and controller of United Artists Cablesystems, Inc., eastern division. He is a graduate of Rutgers University’s CPA emphasis program.
D. Sulaitis – Administrative Coordinator
D. has worked at Poets & Writers since 1991. Her short stories have appeared in Inkwell, New York Stories, and Painted Bride Quarterly, and one of her essays was included in My Father Married Your Mother (Norton, 2006). In 2006, D. won the Boston Review’s annual fiction contest, and she has been a finalist in both the New Letters and Zoetrope fiction contests, and for the Flannery O’Connor award for a collection of short stories. She is the recipient of two fiction fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and holds a BA in English/Creative Writing from the University of Hartford.
Rachel Schuder – Development & Marketing Manager
Rachel joined Poets & Writers in 2011. She has significant experience in the arts sector, having worked for the Creative Capital Foundation and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, both artist service organizations based in New York City. Rachel is a visual artist and holds a BA in Studio Art from Bowdoin College and an MFA from Hunter College. She has been a visual arts fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, an AIM fellow at the Bronx Museum's Artist in the Marketplace program, and has shown her work in museums, galleries, and alternative spaces in New York City, Boston, Seattle, and Mexico City.
EDITORIAL
Kevin Larimer – Editor in Chief
Kevin has been with Poets & Writers since 1999; he became editor in 2009. He holds a degree in journalism and received his MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was the poetry editor of the Iowa Review. He has also been the sports editor of a daily newspaper, an editorial assistant for a science book publisher, and a proofreader for a university press. His poems have appeared in Fence, Pleiades, Verse, and a dozen other literary magazines. He has written book reviews for American Letters & Commentary, American Book Review, Chelsea, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
William Smyth – Production Editor
With years of experience in national consumer magazines, newspapers, trade publications, and web editing, William joined the Poets & Writers staff in October 2012. He is an editor by trade and holds a BA in English from the State University at Buffalo and is certified in all Adobe desktop publishing platforms. After growing up on Long Island and living in Manhattan for many years, William now resides in lower Westchester County with his wife and daughter, while dreaming of one day moving them all back to the city he loves.
Melissa Faliveno – Assistant Editor
Melissa was Poets & Writers’ 2011 Diana & Simon Raab Editorial Fellow before joining the staff full-time in 2012. She received her BA from the University of Wisconsin and her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. She has worked as an editorial assistant for a fiction publisher and an editor for Trails Books, a small nonfiction press based in the Midwest; she is also a freelance writer and book reviewer, and has taught creative writing to high school students and incarcerated men in New York City. Her fiction and nonfiction has appeared in DIAGRAM, Din, Isthmus, and Lumina. She lives in Brooklyn.
Evan Smith Rakoff – Associate Web Editor
Evan earned a BA in English from the
ADVERTISING
Tim O'Sullivan – Advertising Director
Tim O'Sullivan joined Poets & Writers in 2008. He has published novel excerpts in A Public Space, one of which was re-published in the 2012 Pushcart Prize Anthology; another excerpt received special mention in the 2008 Pushcart Prize Anthology. He has been a Teaching-Writing Fellow at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a Residential Fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and he is a 2012 Center for Fiction Emerging Writers Fellow. He is at work on a novel.
Jeff Simpson – Advertising Coordinator
Jeff Simpson grew up in southwestern Oklahoma and received his MFA from Oklahoma State University. He is the author of Vertical Hold (Steel Toe Books, 2011), which was a finalist for the National Poetry Series. His poems have recently appeared in Prairie Schooner, Cimarron Review, Harpur Palate and others. He lives in Brooklyn where he also edits The Fiddleback, an online arts and literature magazine. He joined Poets & Writers’ staff in 2012.
Katie Bloom – Advertising Assistant
Katie Bloom joined the Poets & Writers staff in 2012. A west coast apologist, she grew up just north of Seattle and attended Pomona College in southern California, where she received her BA in philosophy in 2011. Her short stories have not appeared anywhere yet, but her parents are sure they will all be published very soon.
READINGS/WORKSHOPS (EAST)
Bonnie Rose Marcus – Director of Readings/Workshops (East) and the Writers Exchange
Bonnie joined Poets & Writers in July 2000, bringing more than twenty years of experience in the field of arts education. Bonnie has conducted theatre and writing workshops at numerous community-based organizations in New York City and created a model program, Project VIP (Voice, Identity, Power), a theatre writing initiative for adolescent girls, which continues at New Settlement Apartments in the Bronx. A writer and performer, Bonnie has presented her poetry at venues including ABC No Rio, Boricua College, Cornelia Street Café, the New School for Social Research, and Playwrights Horizon. Her theatre credits include a three and a half year run in the Off Broadway show, “Tony ‘n Tina’s Wedding.”
Cathy Linh Che – Program Assistant, Readings/Workshops (East)
Cathy Linh Che was the inaugural Joseph F. McCrindle Foundation Readings/Workshops Fellow at Poets & Writers in 2010. She has received fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown, Poets House, Hedgebook, and The Center for Book Arts. She co-edits the online journal Paperbag and is working on an anthology of writing by the children of Vietnam War veterans. She holds an MFA from New York University, and her first book, winner of the 2012 Kundiman Poetry Prize, is forthcoming from Alice James Books. .
READINGS/WORKSHOPS (WEST) and CALIFORNIA OFFICE
Cheryl Klein – Director, California Office and Readings/Workshops (West)
Cheryl Klein joined Poets & Writers in 2002. Her first book, The Commuters: A Novel of Intersections (San Diego City Works Press, 2006), won City Works Press’ Ben Reitman Award. Previously, she coedited the online queer fiction magazine Blithe House Quarterly and taught creative writing to homeless youth, high school girls, and teen boys in the criminal justice system. She received a BA in English from UCLA, and an MFA in writing from California Institute of the Arts.
Jamie Asaye FitzGerald – Associate Director, California Office and Readings/Workshop (West) and Associate Web Editor
Jamie has worked for Poets & Writers since 2005. While an undergraduate at the University of Southern California, she received an Academy of American Poets College Prize and the Edward W. Moses Poetry Prize. She has taught creative writing, composition, and literature at San Diego State University where she received an MFA in poetry. She also has extensive experience as a copywriter. Her poetry has appeared in Ariel, Fulcrum, LORE, Poetic Diversity, Speechless, and Snow Monkey, as well as the King County Poetry on the Buses Project. Jamie is originally from Hawaii.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND WEB DEVELOPMENT
Jason Chapman – Director, Information Technology and Web Development
Jason has worked in the IT industry for over twenty years, and joined Poets & Writers in 1997. His diverse experiences include mainframe operations for the Georgia Institute of Technology, application development for a military contractor, and Web development for a variety of businesses. He is also the author of the novel, The Heretic, an early success in the still-developing arena of electronic publishing.