Workshop Leader

Madeleine Blais is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, professor emerita of the University of Massachusetts, and has served as writer in residence at Florida International University, Warren Wilson College and the American University in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria. She is the author of The Heart is an Instrument; In These Girls, Hope is a Muscle; Uphill Walkers; To the New Owners; and Queen of the Court: The Many Lives of Tennis Legend Alice Marble. Her new work, One More Winter: A Memoir of Miami in the Eighties, explores what it was like to be a young journalist in what was then considered the most dangerous place on earth.

Reader

Annie Deppe is the author of three books of poetry, Sitting in the Sky and Wren Cantata (2003 and 2009, Summer Palace), and Night Collage (2021, Arlen House). She is the recipient of writer’s grants from the Irish Arts Council and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. Her work has appeared in The Forward Book of Poetry 2004, Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, Sojourners, and On the Seawall. For many years, she was Associate Coordinator of Stonecoast in Ireland, and she and her husband Ted co-directed four writer’s weeks for Curlew Writing Conferences.

Workshop Leader

Theodore Deppe worked as a registered nurse for many years before becoming a full-time writer and teacher. He has published eight full-length collections, most recently Impossible Blackbird  (2024, Arlen House). Deppe has received a Pushcart Prize and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2023, his “Lullaby Before Leaving” was one of four poems shortlisted for Poem of the Year in the Irish Book Awards. Deppe taught in graduate programs in Ireland, the U.K. and the U.S., including the Stonecoast MFA program. He and his wife, the poet Annie Deppe, have lived in Ireland since 2000.

Workshop Leader

Published in more than 25 languages, Andre Dubus III’s nine books include the New York Times’ bestsellers House of Sand and Fog, The Garden of Last Days, and Townie. His most recent novel, Such Kindness, was published in 2023, and the essay collection Ghost Dogs: On Killers and Kin in 2024. He is also the editor of Reaching Inside: 50 Acclaimed Authors on 100 Unforgettable Short Stories. A finalist for the National Book Award, Andre has won a Guggenheim Fellowship, The National Magazine Award for Fiction, three Pushcart Prizes, and an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. He teaches at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

Co-Director & Workshop Leader

Ann Hood is the author of over a dozen novels, including the bestsellers The Knitting Circle, The Obituary Writer, and The Book That Matters Most. Her debut novel, the bestseller Somewhere Off the Coast of Maine, has been in print since 1987. She has also written five memoirs, including Comfort: A Journey Through Grief, which is the story of her five-year-old daughter Grace dying from a virulent form of strep in 2002. The book was a NYT Editors’ Choice and was named one of the top ten non-fiction books of 2008 by Entertainment Weekly.

Workshop Leader

Nuala O’Connor lives in Galway, Ireland. Her sixth novel, Seaborne, about Irish-born pirate Anne Bonny, was published in April 2024 by New Island. Her novel Nora (New Island), about Nora Barnacle and James Joyce, was a Top 10 historical novel in the New York Times. She won Irish Short Story of the Year at the 2022 Irish Book Awards and is the editor at flash e-journal Splonk.

Reader

Michael Ruhlman is a New York Times best-selling author and three-time James Beard Award winner. He has written 11 works of fiction and non-fiction, 9 cookbooks, and 12 cookbook collaborations with chefs. He has written for The New York Times, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Gourmet Magazine, Food & Wine, Condé Nast Traveler, and other publications. He lives in New York City with his wife, Ann Hood.

Co-Director & Workshop Leader

Suzanne Strempek Shea’s 11 books include novels set in Polish America, the West of Ireland and a dead mall, and nonfiction on her cancer experience and bookstore clerking, plus a bio of the founder of a Malawian medical clinic. She’s been featured on NBC’s “Today” and National Public Radio, and has freelanced for publications including The Boston Globe, The Irish Times, Yankee, and Golf World. Suzanne has taught in the MFA programs at Emerson College and the Universities of Southern Maine and of South Florida. She’s co-director of Iota Short Forms Writing Conference, which celebrates and furthers brevity in all genres.

Reader

Over a 39-year career at the Springfield (Mass.) Newspapers, Tommy Shea’s beats included the Boston Red Sox, religion, everyday heroes and pedophile priests. He most recently was senior foreign editor at The National in Abu Dhabi. Tommy has received the New England Associated Press News Executive Award for best local New England column, and has been nominated for a Pulitzer. He’s co-author of Dingers: The 101 Most Memorable Home Runs in Baseball History (Skyhorse Press) and 140 Years of Providential Care: The Sisters of Providence of Holyoke, Massachusetts. He’s freelanced for Sports Illustrated and Baseball America and taught at Springfield and Elms Colleges, and Bay Path University.