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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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