Running Wild Writers Community
Instructors
Liz Chang
Donna Fletcher
Donna Fletcher is a USA Today bestselling author of twenty-seven historical and paranormal romances. She presently writes for HarperCollins Publishers and has worked for Kensington and Berkley. Her books have sold to Russia, Brazil, Germany and Thailand. She has presented numerous workshops and lectures on all areas of writing at libraries, bookstores and major writing conferences. She has also taught classes on writing at community night schools. She was a community relations coordinator for a Borders Bookstore in NJ handling all aspects of marketing including arranging author signings. She is a past present of New Jersey Romance Writers and as of January 2010 will be President-elect of Novelist Inc. a world-wide organization for published fiction authors.
Jack Hillman 
A lifelong Pennsylvania resident, Jack began a love of books sitting
amid the mystery of hospitals and medical paraphernalia. Mythology of
all cultures and a fascination with martial philosophies led to King
Arthur, the knights of the round table and an array of science fiction
and fantasy authors that had a strong impact on his life.
Real life got in the way of a writing career to start, but thirty years
in the life and medical insurance field led Jack to a job as a stringer
for local newspapers and writing for medical and insurance journals. In
addition to years in the insurance field Jack also has fifteen years
experience as a journalist and freelance writer, and has even won a
Keystone Press Award (1998) for his journalistic efforts. Jack has written on a wide variety of subjects and keeps his hand in medical and insurance matters on a daily basis. In addition to newspaper reporting and magazine articles, Jack has written articles for a variety websites--some under his own name and some as a behind-the-scenes contributor. Jack's first short fiction piece, a novella, was serialized in an old BBS site in 1992, with the first hard copy magazine story arriving in 1993. Four dinner theater plays written by Jack have been produced and performed for local theater in Eastern Pennsylvania.
His novels are now coming to light with the release of There Are Giants In This Valley published by Archebooks Publishing. With experience as a journalist, short story writer, playwright and novelist, Jack often speaks at writer's conferences, to writer's groups and to school gatherings. If you are looking for a speaker on esoteric subjects, Jack probably has something tucked away in a folder for the occasion.
Ron Hogan
Ron Hogan helped create the literary Internet by launching Beatrice.com in 1995. He is the director of e-marketing strategy for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s trade and reference division. He has also written about the business side of publishing as a senior editor for GalleyCat. He speaks frequently at book festivals and publishing conferences about how the industry can make the most of social networking tools and other transformative trends.
He is the author of The Stewardess Is Flying the Plane, a visual tribute to ’70s Hollywood, and a contributor to the New York Times bestseller Not Quite What I Was Planning. The free e-book of his “translation” of the Tao Te Ching has been downloaded in various formats by more than 25,000 readers a year for several years running.
Lisa Diane Kastner
Lisa Diane Kastner, fiction writer, creative non-fiction explorer, and former journalist writes fiction from Philadelphia and draws inspiration from her experiences. Kastner promises that her flaming red head tendencies will neither detract nor overly add to the commentary. If anything, it will bring a bit of flavor, like cinnamon.
A former correspondent for the Philadelphia Theatre Review and Features Editor for the Picolata Review, Kastner currently writes freelance and by invitation in literature and the arts. Her literary interviews include Charles Baxter (Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature 1997) and Lee Martin (Pulitzer Prize Nominee 2006).
Her short stories have been appeared in magazines and journals. In 2007 Lisa was featured among up-and-coming Philadelphia writers in Fresh Lines @ Fresh Nine, a public reading hosted by Gross McCleaf Art Gallery.
She is an alumna of The Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Squaw Valley Writers Workshop, Kenyon Writers Workshop, University of Pennsylvania's Conference for Writers, Chautauqua Institute, and the Rittenhouse Writers Group (RWG). She is the Founder of Running Wild Writers Community, LLC and President of Pennwriters, Inc. (www.pennwriters.com) , a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to assisting the novice to the award winning and multipublished writers to learn and succeed in the craft. She is the founder of the Pennwriters King of Prussia and Philadelphia Critique Groups, and can be found throughout the region leading workshops on business communications, and occasionally performing on the local stage or such theater companies as CelebrationTheater.
Kate McGrath
Kate is a playwright, performing artist and teaching artist. She conducts workshops for youth and adults, specializing in playwriting through improvisation. Workshops involve participants in writing for the theatre using on-your-feet writing and acting exercises, and group or individual playwriting and revision techniques. Kate has worked for Philadelphia Young Playwrights as a teaching artist for the past eighteen years, leading workshops in dozens of schools, including those participating in their Stagewrite, Anti-Violence, and cross-discipline programs, and was a co-recipient of the Adele Magner Memorial Award.
She currently serves as teaching artist for PYP at a variety of schools, including J.R. Masterman School, The Science Leadership Academy, and Elkins Park Middle School. Kate has taught Theatre and Playwriting at The Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, PA, The Walnut Street Theatre School, the Pennsylvania Performing Arts Academy, Wolf Performing Arts Center, and the Montgomery County Cultural Center’s Heart of the Arts program (nine years as their Theatre/Playwriting teacher). Other Educational Outreach work has included dramaturgy for American Music Theatre Festival’s Rainbow Connection, actor/facilitator with Interact Theatre Company’s outreach program InterAction, and educational performances for the Franklin Institute and NJ State Aquarium.
She worked for several years as dramaturg and actress for Women’s Ensemble Action Via Education (WEAVE). In addition to teaching young people, she has led playwriting workshops for adults at the University City Arts League in Philadelphia. Kate received her Bachelors in Theatre and Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she was a Morehead Scholar, and her Masters in Theatre from Villanova. Further training: the National Theatre Institute, The London Theatre School, The Folger Theatre Conservatory, Playwrights' Circle at the Walnut Street Theatre School, and Arden Continuing Training (Acting and Playwriting).
Kate is a founding member of New Plays Rising in North Carolina, a past member of Playwrights Platform in Boston, and has served as a script reader for American Repertory Theatre, Philadelphia Festival Theatre for New Plays, and The Wilma Theatre. As an Arts Administrator she has served as a Samuel Fels Intern at the Wilma Theatre, Marketing Director for Venture Theatre, and Executive Associate at The Independent Eye. She is a lifetime and founding member of the Philadelphia Dramatists Center, and produced their Playwriting Conference at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Center. She is currently a member of Secret Room Theatre’s Playwriting Group. Kate’s numerous plays have been performed locally, nationally and internationally. WHAT WANDA WANTS was featured as a co-production by the City Paper and the Philadelphia Dramatists Center at the 2004 Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Other Philadelphia area productions: Walking Fish Theatre’s Fresh Fish 2.0, St. Joseph’s University’s Women’s Place Theatre, The Ritz Theatre in Oaklyn, NJ, The Theatre Guild of NJ, Theatre Under the Stars, PlayWorks, The Brick Playhouse, Fictitious Theatre Company, and three times at Community Education Center’s ‘Holiday Tales’ program. NOVEMBER WOMEN was a finalist at the Lovecreek Festival, NYC. SEAFOOD, with music by Charles Pettee, was selected as Best Play of North Carolina and produced by the Perihelion Theatre Company, and was a finalist at Boston’s Theatre In Process National Playwriting Competition. WAITING FOR RAIN was produced by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Kate is a co-author of MELTING, a play created through the collaboration of seven playwrights from all over the U.S. Her one-acts NOVEMBER WOMEN and GETTING SASHA were previously published on-line (Theaterwords.com) and have received innumerable international and U.S. productions from Canada (Edmonton Fringe Festival) to Ireland, Kazakhstan, Russia, and beyond. Recent readings of her newer plays have included such venues as Hedgerow Theatre (FALLING OFF) Primary Stages (THE BLANKET) The Blue Grotto Series (THE PLAYDATE) and The Painted Bride (FUNNY MAN.) Her one-act MOTHER’S DAY is published on line at YouthPlays.com. As a creator of original solo pieces, Kate has performed throughout the region. Her one-woman show THIS IS MY PLACE was featured in the Women’s Theatre Festival at The Painted Bride, and she has performed other solo original work (BELOVED, UNPACKING) at the Women in Performance Festivals produced by Women Theatre, Inc., Glue Performance Series, the Delaware 10 Minute Play Festival produced by City Theatre, and the CEC. At Villanova she performed five of her solo pieces under the title THRESHOLDS.
Rich Rubin
Rich's work has been published in such magazines as National Geographic Traveler, Caribbean Travel & Life, Islands, Bride's, Modern Bride, Garden Design, Passport, Endless Vacation, Delta Sky, WA Ambassador, Midwest Airlines My Midwest, Air Tran GO!, Where Magazine, Diversion, Odyssey, American Way, Saveur, Cooks' Source, Eating Well, Chile Pepper, and such newspapers as the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Washington Post, Dallas Morning News, and Newsday, and a series of cooking stories for the Weight Watchers website.
He has won the Cacique Award (given by the government of the Bahamas annually to a travel writer) and the Marcia Vickery-Wallace award given by the Jamaica Tourist Board, as well as being a finalist for the Bedford Pace writing award of Visit Britain. He has taught English composition at the University of Washington.
Mecca Jamilah Sullivan
Mecca Jamilah Sullivan is a writer from Harlem, New York. Her fiction has appeared and is forthcoming in a number of journals and anthologies, including Best New Writing 2010, Crab Orchard Review, Bloom, Lumina, Philadelphia Stories, What I Know is Me (Harlem Moon/Doubleday), Baby Remember My Name (Carroll & Graf), X-24 Unclassified (UK, Lubin & Kleyner), Amistad (Howard University), Woman’s Work (Girlchild Press), Black Ivy (Yale University), Roots and Culture (Columbia University), In/Vision (Temple University), Homeboy Review, and Baobab South African Journal of New Writing.
She has also published nonfiction pieces and critical reviews in American Visions and GLQ. A 2006 Best New American Voices nominee, Mecca has several received honors and awards for her fiction, including Crab Orchard Review’s 2008 Charles Johnson Student Fiction Award for her short story, “A Strange People,” the Future Faculty Fellowship in Fiction and the 2005 William Gunn Fiction Award from Temple University, as well as a noted writer distinction from the Boston Fiction Festival for her fiction excerpt “She Woke Up With the Words in Her Mouth” (later re-titled “Saturday”).
Most recently, her short story, “Wolfpack,” was shortlisted for the 2009 Eric Hoffer Award from Best New Writing. Her short fiction collection manuscript, Blue Talk and Love, was named a finalist for the 2009 Sol Books Prose Series award. Mecca’s one-act plays have been staged at the Hallie Flannegan Theatre and Theatre 14 at Smith College in Northampton, MA., and at the New World Theatre in Amherst, MA, where her play “Peel Away” won the 2001 James Baldwin Memorial Playwriting Award. In 1999 she won the National Gold Medal in Playwriting in the NAACP ACT-SO competition for her play “Lovely Day,” and in 2002 she was awarded a Smith College Praxis Grant to stage her longer one-act, “Love Coming Soon” at the Harlem Theatre Company in New York City.
Most recently, her first full-length play, “Two Rings,” which explores the intersections of race, sexuality, spirituality, and class on contemporary relationships and imaginations, was named a finalist for the 2009 Downtown Urban Theatre Festival in New York City.
Winner of Temple University’s 2005 “Rookie of the Year” award for Critical Writing instruction, as well as Temple’s 2006 Certificate of Merit in Teaching, Mecca has designed and led courses in Critical Writing, Fiction Writing, and Poetry Writing at Temple University, the Community College of Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania, and TreeHouse Books in North Philadelphia. Focusing on the inter-genre and interdisciplinary aspects of writing, her writing courses encourage students of all ages to consider the connections between reading and writing of various kinds.
Mecca has been invited to read with and participate in several writing communities, including the Bread Loaf Summer Writers Conference, the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania, the Key West Literary Seminars, the Pan-African Literary Forum in Ghana, and the New York State Summer Writers Institute, where she received a 2005 Smith-Shonubi Scholarship in fiction.
She holds a B.A. in Afro-American Studies from Smith College and an M.A. in English and Creative Writing from Temple University. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in English Literature at the University of Pennsylvania, where her dissertation research focuses on the connections between identity and literary form in black women’s fiction, poetry, drama and film.
She is also completing edits on her first novel, tentatively titled She Woke Up With the Words in Her Mouth. Set largely in Harlem in the 1980’s and 1990’s, the novel explores the relationships between race, class, body image, and love in contemporary American families.
Mecca loves good music, good food, and hearty conversation. You can reach her at meccajamilah@gmail.com.
