Grisel Y. Acosta

Dr. Grisel Y. Acosta (she/they) is a full professor at the City University of New York-BCC. Their poetry collection, Things to Pack on the Way to Everywhere, was a 2020 finalist for the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize (Get Fresh Books, 2021). Her latest book, Wild, is forthcoming in 2026 from FlowerSong Press. She is the editor of Latina Outsiders Remaking Latina Identity (Routledge, 2019), Creative Writing Editor at Chicana/Latina Studies Journal, and a Poetry Editor at Women’s Studies Quarterly (WSQ). Select work is in Poetry Magazine; Poem-A-Day; The Baffler; Best American Poetry; Split This Rock; Paterson Review; Acentos Review; Inkwell Journal; and The Hopkins Review. They are a Geraldine Dodge Foundation Poet, a Macondo Fellow, and a VONA Fellow. Dr. Acosta was recently appointed to the CUNY Black, Race, and Ethnic Studies Ph.D. program faculty.

Laura Bower

Laura Bower is a kid lit writer and pre-school teacher, living in Westchester, NY with her husband, three kids and dog Clover. Her picture books include THE IMPOSTER illustrated by Kerisa Greene (Spring 2024), EMILY SNOOK, THE WORLD’S SMALLEST COOK illustrated by Rekha Salin (Fall 2024) — both from Gnome Road Publishing and the forthcoming HAIL THE TAIL, illustrated by Elisa Chavarri, Beach Lane Books/S&S, Spring 2027. When not writing or reading, she enjoys planning trips to new places, live theatre/comedy shows, taking long walks with Clover and baking.

Marcia Bradley

Marcia Bradley moved from LA to earn her MFA at Sarah Lawrence College in 2017 after attending Antioch University. She received a Bronx Council on the Arts/New York City BRIO Fiction Award, was a Pushcart nominee in 2022, and her writing has appeared in The Chicago Review of Books and The Capital Gazette, among other publications. She received scholarships to Ragdale, Community of Writers, and Eckerd College Writers’ residencies. A proud Chicagoan and breast cancer survivor, Marcia teaches at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, North Central College in Illinois, and was a 2025 guest teacher for the Drexel University MFA program. She lives in the Bronx. Her debut novel, The Home for Wayward Girls, was published by HarperCollins in 2023.

Patricia Brody

My Blazing World is Patricia Brody's second collection from Salmon Poetry. Her other books are American Desire (New Women’s Voices Award, Finishing Line, 2009) and Dangerous To Know (Salmon, 2013). Brody has an MSW (Columbia) and an MA of English Lit and Poetry (City College) where her mentors included Marilyn Hacker and Marie Ponsot. She taught English and American Literature at Boricua College in Washington Heights, and practiced as a psychotherapist for 30 years in New York City.

Brody resides on the East coast now, but lived and worked in the Bay Area way before tech, where she was an editor for Guitar Player magazine. She wrote the “first-woman-on-the-cover-story,” about guitarist-blues singer, and 2023 GRAMMY award winner, Bonnie Raitt.

Patricia now teaches an amazing group of women poets on Zoom – Seeking Your Voice: Women Writing Poetry & Memoir – which originated at Barnard College Center for Research on Women. She lives with her artist- photographer husband Tom Kostro and three vocal felines, 20 miles north of NYC. The poet’s three grown children will visit tomorrow.

Two sonnets in the new book, each called “Blue Hour,” won recent prizes from UK competitions. Brody’s poems and photographs have appeared in many print & online journals, and anthologies from Artemis , Barrow Street , BigCityLit , Bright Hills: 25 Years , Crosswinds , Glint , The Thomas Hardy Review , Levure Litteraire , Orbis , Raintown Review , Fire and Rain: Eco- Poetry of California , Junctures (NZ), Mom Egg Review , Moria , Paris Review , Western Humanities Review and others.

Heather Cabot

Heather Cabot is an author, award-winning journalist, podcaster, keynote speaker and former ABC News correspondent and anchor.

She is the host of The New Chardonnay podcast and the author of The New Chardonnay: The Unlikely Story of How Marijuana Went Mainstream, published in August 2020 by Currency, an imprint of Crown/Penguin Random House. The book has earned kudos from Kirkus, Booklist and Publishers Weekly for its deep reporting and entertaining storytelling. It was selected as a Good Morning America “must-read.”

She is also the co-author of the Wall Street Journal-acclaimed Geek Girl Rising: Inside the Sisterhood Shaking Up Tech, published by St. Martin’s Press in 2017. Heather has spoken widely about entrepreneurship, startup financing, and diversity in tech at events hosted by Google, Facebook, Audible, Accenture, BNY Mellon Bank, KBS, WeWork, Vimeo, and more as well as appearances at SXSW, the Texas Conference for Women, Forbes30Under30, Rutgers, Cornell, Propelify, Stylus Decoded Future, Arcview, Pitchforce and 36|86 Startup Festival.

She serves on the Alumni Board of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and was an adjunct professor at the school from 2012-17. She is a married mother of twins and resides with her family outside New York City.

David Browne

David Browne is a senior writer at Rolling Stone, where he has written cover stories on the Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Robin Williams and many more. He is the author of eight books, including "Talkin' Greenwich Village: The Heady Rise and Slow Fall of America's Bohemian Music Capital," and biographies of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, the Grateful Dead, Sonic Youth and Jeff and Tim Buckley. He was previously the music critic at Entertainment Weekly. Browne was awarded a National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards by the LA Press Club for his reporting in Rolling Stone on the 2023 attack on the music festival in Israel.

Photo credit - Maeve Browne.

Lee Carey

Lee is from Glasgow, Scotland, and moved to Rye in 2002. Many of you will know her as Lee Sandford, from her outdoor fitness classes at Rye Town Park and the Health and Fitness column she wrote for the Rye Record for fifteen years. As a Chartered Accountant in her twenties, she expressed a desire to write a novel, that has only taken thirty years to fulfill!

Publishing The Glass Pass has meant that 2025 has been ridiculously hard work, but very gratifying. She has been touched at how proud and supportive family and friends have been, in making her publishing dream come true.

Margot Clark-Junkins

Margot Clark-Junkins is a founder of the literary festival. She attended Mount Holyoke College and received a MA in Design & Curatorial Studies from the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. In 2024, she published “Following the Front: The Dispatches of WWII Correspondent Sidney A. Olson” (Bloomsbury). She writes a Substack column by the same name and is currently at work on a book of short stories.

Karen Dukess

Karen Dukess is the author of Welcome to Murder Week, which was an instant USAToday bestseller, and The Last Book Party, which was an IndieNext and Barnes and Noble Discover New Writers pick. She lives in Pelham, New York, and on Cape Cod, where she hosts the Castle Hill Author Talks for Truro Center for the Arts.

Pat Dunn

Patricia (T.M.) Dunn is an award-winning novelist. Her books include Her Father’s Daughter (2024 IPPY Gold medal winner), Last Stop on the 6, and Rebels By Accident. A dedicated teacher and coach, she mentors writers through personalized support, and leads retreats and workshops via Key to the Castle Workshop. She’s currently working on her next novel with her rescue pups, Blanqui and Cookie, at her side.

Avery Carpenter Forrey

Avery Carpenter Forrey is the author of Social Engagement, which was a GMA Buzz Pick and featured by Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Buzzfeed, and other publications. As Managing Editor at theSkimm, she cowrote the #1 New York Times bestseller How to Skimm Your Life. Her writing has also appeared in The Cut, GQ, and Lit Hub. She holds an MFA in fiction from NYU and lives in Connecticut with her husband and daughter.

Jackie Frederick-Berner

Jackie Frederick-Berner lives in Rye and is a contributing writer for The Rye Record. She’s the co-author of a book on childbirth, The Birth That’s Right for You (McGraw-Hill) and teaches mindfulness meditation classes in the community. She also writes personal essays and poetry which reflect her love of language, presence and lived experience. She brings her passion for storytelling and mindful awareness to both her writing and teaching.

Jacqueline Friedland

Jacqueline Friedland is the USA Today and Amazon bestselling author of both historical and contemporary women’s fiction. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and NYU Law School, she practiced as a commercial litigator for as long as she could stand it. She then returned to school to earn her Masters of Fine Arts in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College and has been writing ever since.

Jackie’s books have been awarded the 2020 and 2021 gold medals in fiction from Readers’ Favorite. Her novels have also been named the 2021 Kirkus Reviews Best Indie Book of the Year, the SheReads Best Book Club Pick of 2021, and the Women’s Fiction Writers Association Star finalist for 2022. She regularly reviews fiction for trade publications and appears at schools and other locations as a guest lecturer. Her fifth novel, Counting Backwards, was released by Harper Muse in March 2025.

Jackie lives in Westchester, New York with her husband, four children, and two dogs.

Paula Fung

Paula Fung lives in Rye, NY, along with her husband, and three daughters. She produces Writes & Bites in Rye, a reading salon in her hometown. She also produces a show on public access television, Rye Views, and co-hosts a podcast; Cook and the Comic. Her personal essays are on the things she knows, which are; cooking, sailing, and family life. Her work has been published at the blog Sailing Anarchy and Read 650; “The Kids are Alright”, “Holidays”, “ On Mothers”, and “Jew-ish. Paula is one of the directors of the Literary Festival.

Daisy Garrison

Daisy Garrison is an author and playwright based in New York City. Her first novel, Six More Months of June, was an Indies Introduce Selection, an Indie Next Pick, and a USA TODAY Best Beach Read. She is also an associate editor at Alloy Entertainment and a graduate of Northwestern University.

Libby Geist

Libby Geist: President, Words + Pictures

Libby Geist oversees all documentaries and docuseries as President of Words + Pictures, a premium unscripted content studio founded just over four years ago. Words + Pictures has quickly become a leader in the documentary space, having been nominated for 12 Emmys across several projects and winning a BAFTA award, among others, for "Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story" just this year.

Prior to joining W+P, Libby worked at ESPN as the vice president & executive producer of ESPN Films and Original Content. There she oversaw development, production, distribution and strategy of all projects under the ESPN Films umbrella, including "30 for 30", docuseries, podcasts and short films, as well as original content on ESPN+. During her 12 years at ESPN, she pushed the company’s long-form storytelling to new heights, launching "30 for 30 Podcasts," creating "Nine for IX," and serving as the executive producer of such groundbreaking projects as The Last Dance and O.J.: Made in America, which won an Academy Award in 2017.

A three-time Peabody Award winner, Libby has spent her entire career in documentary film, from the trenches at Shoot the Moon Productions to development executive, and now, executive producer at W+P.

Caren Osten Gerszberg

Caren Osten Gerszberg is a writer, certified positive psychology life coach, meditation teacher, and TedX speaker. For over two decades, she’s been contributing to The New York Times, Psychology Today, Travel & Leisure, and others, covering health, wellbeing, travel and parenting.

Currently working on a memoir, Caren is also the co-editor, and a contributor to, Drinking Diaries: Women Serve their Stories Straight Up.

A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Caren holds an MA from New York University, where she is a former professor at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.

Based in Larchmont, NY, when she’s not writing, coaching or teaching, Caren is likely hiking, doing yoga, cooking, playing pickleball, and spending time with her husband, dog, and three adult kids.

Jimin Han

Jimin Han is the author of A Small Revolution and The Apology, a Barnes and Noble Discover Pick; named a best audiobook of the year by Booklist, a best book of the summer by the LA Times, Vanity Fair, Shondaland, Apple Books and more. Additional writing of hers can be found in Poets & Writers, Literary Hub, and other publications. She teaches at The Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College and community writing centers. Her work has been supported by the New York State Council on the Arts. Dreamt I Found You, a contemporary re-telling of the Korean Romeo and Juliet story, her new novel, is forthcoming in April 2026

Andrea Atkins Hessekiel

Andrea Atkins Hessekiel is an editor at the Rye Record. She is a journalist working in both the newspaper and magazine industries, has freelanced for more than 30 years for national print and digital publications. Hundreds of her articles and essays have appeared under the byline Andrea Atkins in O, The Oprah Magazine; AARP, The Magazine; The Washington Post, Better Homes & Gardens, Woman’s Day, Good Housekeeping, NextAvenue.com and EverydayHealth.com to name just a few. Over the last decade, Andrea has taught personal essay writing to adults at the Scarsdale Adult School and coached hundreds of high school students on their college essays through her company My College Essay Coach.

Barbara Josselsohn

Barbara Josselsohn is a best-selling author of nine historical and contemporary novels. Her newest book is The Secret Orphanage (Bookouture, 2025), a multigenerational story about an American schoolteacher who becomes embroiled in the French Resistance and a present-day librarian intent on discovering her grandfather’s wartime secrets. Barbara teaches novel and memoir writing at the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College, Westport Writers Workshop, and Scarsdale Library, and has also published hundreds of articles and essays in major and regional publications about family, home and relationships. A member of the Women’s Fiction Writers Association, she helped found and now coordinates the Scarsdale Library Writers Center, which promotes and supports local writers. Other than writing, her biggest passion is her family: her husband, her three adult kids, and her rescue pup, a mini-schnauzer named Albie. She is currently at work on a new historical novel, with a touch of magical realism, that is scheduled for release in Summer, 2026.

Tom Junod

Tom Junod is senior writer for ESPN, where his work has won an Emmy and the Dan Jenkins Medal for Excellence in Sportswriting. He is a two-time winner of the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing, and a winner of the James Beard Award for essay writing. For Esquire’s 75th Anniversary, the editors of the magazine selected his 9/11 story “The Falling Man” as one of the seven top stories in Esquire’s history. In 2019, his story on beloved children’s TV host Fred Rogers, “Can You Say…Hero?,” served as the basis for the movie “A Beautiful Day in The Neighborhood,” starring Tom Hanks and Matthew Rhys. His memoir, In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man will be published by Doubleday this coming March.

Betsy Lerner

Betsy Lerner is the author of the recently released novel, Shred Sisters (Grove Press, October 2024). She is also the author The Bridge Ladies, The Forest for the Trees and Food and Loathing. With Temple Grandin, she is the co-author of the New York Times bestseller Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns and Abstractions. She received an MFA from Columbia University in Poetry where she was selected as one of PEN’s Emerging Writers. She also received the Tony Godwin Publishing Prize for Editors. After working as an editor for 15 years, she became an agent and is currently a partner with Dunow, Carlson and Lerner Literary Agency.

Nicole Graev Lipson

Nicole Graev Lipson is the author of the forthcoming memoir-in-essays Mothers and Other Fictional Characters. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Sun, Virginia Quarterly Review, Gettysburg Review, Creative Nonfiction, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe, among other publications. Her work has been awarded a Pushcart Prize and has been shortlisted several times for The Best American Essays. You can find her at www.nicolegraevlipson.com.

Ann Magalhaes

After completing her BA in Japanese Language and Literature and Spanish Studies at the University of Toronto, and an MBA from Ivey Business School in Canada, Ann spent time working in marketing and consulting. Since 2010 she has been working as a parent educator, most recently with the London-based The Parent Team. She is on the Board of 5 Steps to Five, is a Trustee for Wainwright House and has served on the Heard in Rye committee. She loves meeting with her writing group - The Ten - each week. Ann has lived in Rye since 2013 and is thrilled to be part of the Watershed organization team.

Tom McDermott

Tom McDermott contributed columns and reporting to Rye’s community newspaper, The Rye Record, before being named Editor in 2013. Prior to that, he roamed the globe as an administrative executive at Time Inc/Time Warner. He was raised in Forest Hills Gardens, NY and is grateful to his mother for weekly trips to the public library and a lifetime of reading.