Charlotte Lit is proud to be home to some of the area’s best writers and teachers. You can read all about them here. Elsewhere on the site, you can browse a list of courses, and sign up for a new money-saving course subscription.
Kathie Collins
Charlotte Lit Co-Founder, Co-Executive Director
Poet & Mythologist
Kathie Collins, Ph.D., co-founder of Charlotte Center for Literary Arts, earned her graduate degree in Mythological Studies with an emphasis in Depth Psychology at Pacifica Graduate Institute, where she is currently an adjunct professor. A poet and lifelong student of Jungian psychology, Kathie thrives in the in-between space from which dreams and creativity emerge. She’s happiest when she can share that space with others and one of her great passions is bringing words and people together for transformative conversations. Kathie’s poetry has appeared in Immanence, Kakalak, BibleWorkbench, and Between. Her chapbook Jubilee was published by Main Street Rag in 2011.
Paul Reali
Charlotte Lit Co-Founder, Co-Executive Director
Writer, Editor, Coach, Instructor
Paul Reali, co-founder of Charlotte Lit, is the co-author of Creativity Rising: Creative Thinking and Creative Problem Solving in the 21st Century. In addition, his work has been published in Winston-Salem Journal, InSpine, Office Solutions, Lawyers Weekly, and others. His fiction has been awarded first place in the Elizabeth Simpson Smith and Ruth Moose Flash Fiction competitions, and he received a Regional Artist Project Grant from Charlotte’s Arts & Science Council in 2018. Paul has an M.S. in Creativity from the International Center for Studies in Creativity at SUNY Buffalo State, where he also is an adjunct instructor and the managing editor of ICSC Press. Paul has been a trainer and facilitator for more than 25 years, in the areas of creativity, innovation, and business and writing skills.
Lisa Zerkle
Curator, 4X4CLT
Lisa Zerkle’s poems have appeared in The Collagist, Comstock Review, Southern Poetry Anthology, Broad River Review, Tar River Poetry, Nimrod, Sixfold, poemmemoirstory, Crucible, and Main Street Rag, among others. Author of the chapbook, Heart of the Light, she has served as President of the North Carolina Poetry Society, community columnist for The Charlotte Observer, and editor of Kakalak. She is the curator of 4X4CLT, a public art and poetry series of the Charlotte Center for Literary Arts.
Tony Abbott is the winner of the NC Award in Literature for 2015. He is the author of seven books of poems, two novels, and four books of literary criticism. He is the Charles A. Dana Professor of English Emeritus at Davidson College, where he has taught since 1964. He and his wife Susan live in Davidson. They have three sons and seven grandchildren.
Catherine Anderson, author of The Creative Photographer, knows the power of images to speak to us on a deep level. She has expanded this knowledge in her work as a SoulCollage Facilitator where imagery, imagination and intuition are used together to access our inner wisdom. Catherine teaches creativity, photography and book-making workshops in her studio in Charlotte, and at Ghost Ranch and John C. Campbell Folk School. She has published four books of collage imagery as well as Journaling the Labyrinth Path.
Bryn Chancellor’s first novel Sycamore (Harper, 2017) has been hailed as a “hypnotic debut” (O: The Oprah Magazine) and “a transporting vision of community, connection and forgiveness” (Publishers Weekly). Her story collection When Are You Coming Home? won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize, and her fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals. Honors include the Poets & Writers Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award. A graduate of Vanderbilt University’s MFA program, she is an assistant professor at UNC Charlotte.
Sarah Creech is the author of two novels, Season of the Dragonflies (William Morrow, 2014) and The Whole Way Home (William Morrow, 2017). Her short fiction and essays have appeared in The Cortland Review, WritersDigest.com, StorySouth, Literary Mama, and others. She lives in Charlotte with her husband and children and teaches at Queens University of Charlotte.
Axel Dahlberg is the author of the acclaimed Forever Hellos, Hard Goodbyes (endorsed by Make-A-Wish, National Institutes of Health, and Society of Pediatric Nurses). He has an MFA in creative writing from Arizona State University (where he taught for seven years) and a BA in English from the University of Minnesota. A professional ghostwriter for more years than he cares to remember, Axel has helped countless individuals conceptualize and complete their writing dreams and goals.
Janice Davin is a teacher and a professional storyteller who delights audiences with stories of lasting value. During 35 years in the classroom, Janice told stories to calm savage beasts, subdue mutinies, and make learning memorable. Janice has an MA in Oral Traditions, and presents workshops and retreats for children and adults. Janice is a past president of the North Carolina Storytelling Guild, and a board member of Charlotte Friends of Jung.
Marvin Espy, originally from Cincinnati, trained under Franklin M. Shands, and studied oils under Henry Koerner at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, where he earned an Associate’s in Visual Communication. After a break of nearly 27 years Marvin began painting again. He won “Best of Show” at Hart Witzen’s SHOWDOWN events in 2013 and 2016. His work has been featured at Art with Heart, Art Unleashed, and FABO Art Café. Marvin lives in Charlotte with his wife and daughter.
Julie Funderburk is author of the poetry collection The Door That Always Opens from LSU Press and a limited-edition chapbook from Unicorn Press. She is the recipient of fellowships from the North Carolina Arts Council and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and a scholarship from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Her work appears in Best New Poets, Cave Wall, The Cincinnati Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Ploughshares. She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Queens University in Charlotte, where she directs The Arts at Queens.
Judy Goldman is the author of Losing My Sister (finalist for both ForeWord Review’s and Southeastern Booksellers Alliance’s Memoir of the Year), two poetry collections, and two novels. Her work has appeared in Real Simple, The Southern Review, Kenyon Review, Gettysburg Review, Ohio Review, Prairie Schooner, and Shenandoah. Among her awards are the Sir Walter Raleigh Fiction Award, Mary Ruffin Poole Award for First Fiction, Gerald Cable Poetry Prize, Zoe Kincaid Brockman Poetry Prize, Hobson Award for Distinguished Achievement in Arts and Letters, Fortner Writer and Community Award, and Beverly D. Clark Author Award from Queens University.
Patrice Gopo is an essayist whose work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Gulf Coast, Full Grown People, Creative Nonfiction, and online in The New York Times and The Washington Post. Her radio commentaries have appeared on Charlotte’s NPR Station WFAE. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and the Arts & Science Council of Charlotte/Mecklenburg awarded her a Regional Artist Project Grant. Patrice lives in Charlotte, and is at work on a collection of essays about race, immigration, identity formation, and the search for a sense of belonging.
Maureen Ryan Griffin has taught the art and craft of writing for more than 20 years through a variety of venues, including Queens University, Central Piedmont Community College; the John Campbell Folk School, and the Chautauqua Institution. An award-winning poetry and nonfiction writer, Maureen’s work has appeared in Calyx, Chelsea, Cincinnati Poetry Review, The Texas Review, and others. She is the author of Spinning Words into Gold: A Hands-On Guide to the Craft of Writing, a grief workbook entitled I Will Never Forget You, and three poetry books. She offers individual coaching and critique, as well as retreats, workshops, and classes, through her business, WordPlay.
Jodi Helmer. Journalist. Author. Writing teacher. Doggie momma. Beekeeper. Veggie grower. Vintage needlework collector. Napper. Eater. Canadian. Jodi has many roles and has built a freelance career by writing about them—and a host of other things that pique her curiosity. Her work has appeared in Entrepreneur, Hemispheres, National Geographic Traveler, CNNMoney, AARP, Farm Life, Health, and others. She is the author of four books, including The Green Year and Farm Fresh Georgia. Jodi teaches writing workshops, offers one-on-one consulting and query critiques, and speaks at journalism conferences to help other writers achieve their goals.
Irene Blair Honeycutt’s fourth poetry book, Beneath the Bamboo Sky (Main Street Rag, 2017), sub-titled Poems and Pieces on Loss and Consolation, “is my attempt to honor life by giving voice to sorrow and joy. Much of the book is about the loss of siblings—a grief not often recognized in our culture.” Irene founded CPCC’s annual literary festival, now called Sensoria. Upon her retirement, the college established a Distinguished Lectureship in her name. Her work has been published in Nimrod, Southern Poetry Review, The Southern Poetry Anthology: VII, and Virginia Quarterly Review, and others. She lives in Indian Trail, and continues to teach and mentor poets.
Charles Israel, Jr., teaches creative writing at Queens University of Charlotte. His poetry chapbook, Stacking Weather, was published by Amsterdam Press. He’s also had poems and stories in Field, The Cortland Review, Crazyhorse, Nimrod International Journal, Zone 3, Pembroke Magazine, Eleven Eleven, Journal of the American Medical Association, Waccamaw Journal, Loud Zoo, and North Carolina Literary Review. He also likes playing tennis and urban bike riding.
Karon Luddy was born in Lancaster, SC, the fourth of six children of hardworking, salt of the earth parents, and moved to Charlotte in 1976. During a midlife renaissance, Karon resigned from Apple Computer to pursue her lifelong passion—literature. In 2005, she earned an MFA in Creative Writing in Fiction from Queens University, yet poetry has been a constant in her creative life. 2007 saw the publication of her first book of poetry, Wolf Heart (Clemson University Press) and her first novel, Spelldown (Simon & Schuster). Karon is currently working on a poetry collection, Circling God.
Paula Martinac is the author of a book of short stories and four novels, including 2017’s The Ada Decades – set in Charlotte from 1947 to the present – and the Lambda Literary Award-winning Out of Time. Her fifth novel, Clio Rising, about a young woman who becomes the companion to a writer of the “Lost Generation,” will be published by Bywater Books in 2018. Her short stories recently appeared in The Raleigh Review, Main Street Rag, and Minerva Rising. She also has written and published three nonfiction books; authored a handful of plays that were produced in Pittsburgh, New York, and other places; and co-wrote a full-length screenplay. She teaches in the undergraduate creative writing program at UNC Charlotte and is a writing coach with the Charlotte Lit’s Authors Lab.
Rebecca McClanahan’s ten published books include The Tribal Knot, Word Painting, and The Riddle Song and Other Rememberings, winner of the Glasgow Award in nonfiction. Her work has appeared in Boulevard, The Sun, Kenyon Review, Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, Best American Essays, Best American Poetry, the Pushcart Prize series, and in anthologies published by Beacon, Norton, Doubleday, St. Martin’s, Putnam, and Penguin, and others. Rebecca received the Wood Prize from Poetry Magazine, the Carter Prize for the Essay, and five literary fellowships from New York Foundation for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council. She teaches in the MFA programs of Queens University of Charlotte and The Rainier Writing Workshop.
Ruth Moose was on the creative writing faculty at UNC Chapel Hill for 15 years. Her first novel, Doing it at the Dixie Dew, won the St. Martin Press Malice Domestic Award and was published in 2014, with its sequel, Wedding Bell Blues, following in 2016. Previously published are three short story collections, The Wreath Ribbon Quilt, Dreaming in Color, and Neighbors and Other Strangers, with individual stories in The Atlantic and other places; six collections of poetry, most recently, The Librarian and Other Poems. She lives in Pittsboro, NC.
Cathy Pickens’ first mystery, Southern Fried, won the coveted St. Martin’s Press Malice Domestic Award for Best Traditional Mystery. She’s written five books in the series, as well as Charleston Mysteries (History Press), an essay on historic crime cases in 27 Views of Charlotte, a regular column for Mystery Readers Journal, and articles on writing craft and on business. She served as national president of Sisters in Crime and on the national board for Mystery Writers of America. As a long-time professor in the McColl School of Business at Queens, she won numerous teaching awards.
Diana Pinckney is a popular writing teacher, an award-winning poet, and author of Fishing with Tall Women (Persephone Press Book Award, 1996), Green Daughters (Lorimer Press, 2011), Alchemy (Main Street Rag, 2013), and The Beast and the Innocent (Main Street Rag, 2015). Her poems have been published in prestigious journals and anthologies throughout the country. Her awards include prizes from Atlanta Review, Broad River Review, EKPHRASIS, Persimmon Tree, and the East Coast States Poetry Competition. Diana is the recipient of the 2013 Irene Blair Honeycutt Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Literary Arts at CPCC’s Sensoria Festival.
David E. Poston taught in public schools, at UNC Charlotte, and at Charlotte’s Young Writers’ Workshop. Now retired, he volunteers extensively, edits a poetry column for the Friends of the Gaston County Public Library newsletter, and teaches occasional writing workshops for Hospice and other venues. His poetry collections are My Father Reading Greek, Postmodern Bourgeois Poetaster Blues, and Slow of Study, and his work has appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies. His interest in Frankenstein and Paradise Lost goes back to his graduate school days at UNCC, and his article on teaching the texts concurrently appeared in English Journal.
David Radavich’s poetry collections have often revolved around political themes: America Bound: An Epic for Our Time (2007), Middle-East Mezze (2011), and The Countries We Live In (2014). His plays have been performed across the U.S., including six Off-Off-Broadway, and in Europe. A cycle of plays called On the Verge focuses on various aspects of violence in our time. He has published numerous informal and scholarly essays and performed in a variety of countries, including Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, and Iceland. David has served as president of the Thomas Wolfe Society, Charlotte Writers’ Club, and North Carolina Poetry Society.
Amy Rogers is contributing editor for NPR station WFAE’s food blog, “WFAEats: All Things Food and Culture.” Her books include Hungry for Home: Stories of Food from Across the Carolinas. She has been a contributor to Cornbread Nation I: The Best of Southern Food Writing, The Food Network, and many other publications. Raised in Michigan, New York, and Florida, she lives in Charlotte, where she considers herself “Southern by choice.”
Kathryn Schwille’s short stories have appeared in New Letters, Memorious, Printer’s Row, Crazyhorse, West Branch and other magazines. Her stories have twice won honorable mention in the Pushcart Prize and in 2013 she was awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship from the NC Arts Council. Her novel-in-stories, What Luck, This Life, is forthcoming from Hub City Press in 2018.
Martin Settle is a poet and an assemblage artist living in Charlotte. As a poet, he has published three books: The Teleology of Dunes (Main Street Rag, 2015), Coming to Attention: Developing the Habit of Haiku (Main Street Rag, 2016), and The Backbone Alphabet (Xlibris, 2017). In 2016, Martin won The Poetry of Courage Award (North Carolina Poetry Society), the Nazim Hikmet Poetry Award, and the Griffin-Farlow Haiku Award. As an assemblage artist, Martin likes to build habitats for ideas, using found objects. He has shown his work at Ciel Gallery, McColl Center, Elder Gallery, Gallery C3, Hart Witzen, Quincy University, and UNC Pembroke.
Sam Shapiro is a manager and programmer for Charlotte Mecklenburg Library. For 30 years, he has programmed the popular, award-winning film series at Main Library and ImaginOn. In addition to presenting hundreds of classic and contemporary films to the public, Sam has also been an Instructor of Film Studies at UNC-Charlotte for 25 years. Sam is a regular contributor of book reviews to the Charlotte Observer and Raleigh News & Observer.
Kristin Donnalley Sherman lives in Charlotte, where she works as a writer, editor, and writing coach. She’s published both fiction and nonfiction, and is currently at work on two novels. Her work has appeared in Brevity, Barrelhouse, Silk Road, Main Street Rag and Flashquake, and she has won or been a finalist in numerous contests, including Elizabeth Simpson Smith Short Fiction, the Writers Workshop Memoirs, the Reynolds Price Fiction, River Styx Micro-fiction, and the Press 53 Open Awards for Short Short Fiction.
Brenda Sorkin is a Feldenkrais Practitioner and Senior Trainer for Movement Intelligence. She has had a practice in movement education for more than 30 years, working individually with clients, guiding classes open to the public, and offering certification programs. Her career has emphasized the value of movement in every area of our lives. An additional benefit to bringing attention to subtle movements is that it enhances receptivity to our creative process. Brenda is also a student of mythology, dialoguing with the myths in prose, and offering experiential mythological seminars.
Gilda Morina Syverson, writer, poet, artist, educator, and speaker, is the author of the memoir My Father’s Daughter, From Rome to Sicily. Gilda’s story was a Novello Literary Award Finalist, a 2015 Nominee for the Ragan Old North State Award for Nonfiction, a 2016 Nominee for Author of the Year for the Artist Guild Award, a 2016 Honorable Mention for the New England Book Festival, and the 2017 Runner-Up for Autobiography in the Great Southeast Book Festival. Gilda has been a long-time memoir instructor in Charlotte, including 15 years at Queens University of Charlotte.
Betsy Thorpe has been in the publishing business since the 90’s, when she started at Atheneum Publishers. Since then, she grew her way into the role of editor at HarperCollins, Broadway Books, Macmillan, and the trade division of John Wiley & Sons. She started Betsy Thorpe Literary Services when she had her first child, and has been running it as a full-time business for more than 11 years. She is the co-author of numerous non-fiction books, including three that have been written about in the New York Times, and has a literary agent for her first novel, The Thin Place.
Ed Williams was editor of The Charlotte Observer’s editorial pages for 25 years before his retirement in 2008. He majored in history and edited the student daily newspaper at the University of Mississippi. In 1967, after two years in the Army, he became a reporter for Hodding Carter’s Greenville (Miss.) Delta-Democrat Times. In 1972-73 he was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. He joined The Observer as an editorial writer in 1973. His writing was part of Observer projects that won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1981 and 1988. In 2011 he was inducted into the North Carolina Journalism Hall of Fame. Lorimer Press published a collection of his writing, Liberating Dixie: An Editor’s Life, from Ole Miss to Obama.
Becca Worthington, since receiving her BA in Playwriting in 2002, has had 12 of her plays performed in four states, two countries, and in three languages. She received a playwriting scholarship to Sewanee Writer’s Conference in 2006, and was a finalist for the Mark Twain Prize for Comic Playwriting at the KCACTF Festival. She served as Literary Manager and Playwriting Instructor of award-winning off-Broadway theatre company The Barrow Group from 2010-2015; recently served as a teaching artist specializing in playwriting for the Children’s Theatre of Charlotte; and is currently a lead librarian at ImaginOn. Recent stage performances include Seminar with Three Bone Theatre, and Stupid F-ing Bird with Actors Theatre of Charlotte.
Kim Wright is the author of Love in Mid Air, The Unexpected Waltz, The Canterbury Sisters and her latest novel, Last Ride to Graceland, which has just been announced as the 2017 recipient of the Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction. For the past three years she has been a developmental editor through The Story Doctor, helping writers with issues of story arcs, structure, and pacing.
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