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Ibrahim Ahmad is the executive editor at Viking Press. Prior to 2020, he was the editorial director at Akashic Books. He leads frequent writers workshops, teaches at the Õý°ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½±Ö±²¥ Graduate Creative Writing Program and Literary Publishing M.A. Program, and is the cofounder of Brooklyn Wordsmiths, an editorial and consulting program. In 2015, he was named one of four finalists for the inaugural Star Watch prize by Publishers Weekly, awarded to "young industry professionals who have distinguished themselves as future leaders of the industry."

ReShonda Tate Billingsley, is the national bestselling author of over 50 books. She writes adult and teen fiction, and nonfiction. Her novel, Let the Church Say Amen, became a film directed by actress Regina King, and produced by TD Jakes and Queen Latifah. Her book, The Secret She Kept, was also made into a movie and aired on TV One.

ReShonda has received the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literature for Say Amen, Again and was nominated for Mama’s Boy and The Secret She Kept. She has received awards for journalism, fiction, and poetry, including an induction into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame and a Texas Top Author honor. Her books remain a staple on Bestseller’s lists and have been featured in USA Today, The Washington Post, Jet, People, Essence, and Ebony Magazines. ReShonda is the co-founder of the boutique publishing company, Brown Girls Books, with Victoria Christopher Murray. BGB’s subsidiary company, Brown Girls Entertainment, is producing content for film, TV and the web.

A graduate of The University of Texas at Austin, ReShonda is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority and Jack & Jill of America. She is the mother of three children.

Susan Cartsonis produced What Women Want, the highest grossing romantic comedy of all time at the time of its release. Her most recent films include are Sitting in Bars with Cake, Feel the Beat, True Spirit, The Descendants 3, Carrie Pilby, The Duff, Deidra & Laney Rob a Train, No Reservations, Beastly and Aquamarine. While she served as an executive at Fox in the 80’s and 90’s, she supervised the development and production of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Nell, For the Boys, Dying Young, Rookie of the Year and French Kiss.

In addition to serving as outside reader and faculty member of the Wilkes program, Cartsonis is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts, The Television Academy, Producers United, and The Producer's Guild of America. She teaches at USC and is cofounder of Resonate Entertainment, a film and television production company.

Maureen Corrigan, book critic for NPR's Fresh Air, is The Nicky and Jamie Grant Distinguished Professor of the Practice in Literary Criticism at Georgetown University. She is an associate editor of and contributor to Mystery and Suspense Writers (Scribner) and the winner of the 1999 Edgar Award for Criticism, presented by the Mystery Writers of America. In 2019, Corrigan was awarded the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing by the National Book Critics Circle.

Corrigan served as a juror for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. Her book So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came To Be and Why It Endures was published by Little, Brown in September 2014.

Corrigan's literary memoir, Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading! was published in 2005. Corrigan is also a reviewer and columnist for The Washington Post's Book World. In addition to serving on the advisory panel of The American Heritage Dictionary, she has chaired the Mystery and Suspense judges' panel of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

Photo credit: Nina Subin

Kristina Marie Darling is the author of over thirty volumes of poetry, essays, and fiction. An expert consultant with the United States Fulbright Commission and a twice-awarded Fulbright Scholar, Dr. Darling’s work has also been recognized with three residencies at Yaddo, where she has held the Martha Walsh Pulver Residency for a Poet and the Howard Moss Residency in Poetry, a 2024 Villa Lena Foundation Fellowship, a 2024 Civita Institute Fellowship, and eleven juried residencies at the American Academy in Rome. Dr. Darling has taught at Yale University, the American University in Rome, Stanford University, where she leads a workshop in professional empowerment through their Continuing Studies Division, the New School, the University of Cyprus, The Los Angeles Review of Books Publishing Workshop, Cedar Crest College’s Pan-European M.F.A. Program, and Webster University’s Geneva, Switzerland Campus, where she leads a biannual writing workshop for diplomats. She will serve as Visiting Researcher at Universidade do Porto and Visiting Fellow at the European Law and Governance School in Spring 2025, as well as Visiting Faculty at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid for the 2025-2026 academic year and Visiting Scholar the American Research Center in Sofia in summer 2026. Dr. Darling has served on juries for the Fulbright Specialist Award, the Corporation of Yaddo’s artist-in-residence program, the literature fellowship program at Millay Colony for the Arts, the Helene B. Wurlitzer Foundation’s artist-in-residence program, and many other awards in the United States and abroad. Born and raised in the American Midwest, she now divides her time between Greece, Rome, and the Amalfi Coast.

Michelle Dotter is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Dzanc Books, a nonprofit press devoted to championing innovative and brilliant literary fiction. Since starting her career with noted San Francisco publishing house MacAdam/Cage, she has worked with New York Times bestsellers, Pulitzer Prize winners, National Book Award honorees, and some damn fine other people, too. She lives in Colorado with her wife.

Nicole Frail is a senior editor at Skyhorse Publishing, an independent publishing company based in New York City. She acquires mostly in the categories of cooking and lifestyle/hobby and children’s nonfiction, as well as occasionally adult fiction, memoir, and children’s fiction and picture books. She has acquired and published hundreds of titles during her eight years at Skyhorse, under many of the company’s imprints. Recent titles include the Celestial Trilogy, CBD and Hemp Remedies, Sometimes I’m Anxious, Believing in Me, Rental Style, Sensory Play for Toddlers and Preschoolers, and The Ultimate College Student Health Handbook, Kissing Ezra Holtz (and Other Things I Did for Science); award winners such as The Latin Table by Isabel Cruz, Pigs of Paradise by T.R. Todd, How to Build Your Baby’s Brain by Dr. Gail Gross, and An Impossible Distance to Fall by Miriam McNamara; and the national bestselling picture book Love the Earth by Julian Lennon. She also offers select freelance editorial services at . After living many years in New York City and then New Jersey, Nicole now works remotely from her home in Avoca, Pennsylvania.

Alyse Knorr is an associate professor of English at Regis University, co-editor of Switchback Books, and co-producer of the Sweetbitter podcast. Her most recent book of poems, Mega-City Redux, won the 2016 Green Mountains Review Poetry Prize, selected by Olena Kalytiak Davis. She is also the author of the poetry collections Copper Mother (2016) and Annotated Glass (2013); the non-fiction books GoldenEye (2022) and Super Mario Bros. 3 (2016); and four poetry chapbooks. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The New Republic, Poetry Magazine, Alaska Quarterly Review, Denver Quarterly, and The Georgia Review, among others. She received her MFA from George Mason University.

Albert LaFarge, PhD, founded the Albert LaFarge Literary Agency in Boston in 2003. He earlier worked as a book editor at Random House, Henry Holt, and Harcourt, and as deputy editor of DoubleTake magazine. He is the editor of The Essential William H. Whyte (Fordham University Press, 2000) and, with Robert Coles, Minding the Store: Great Writing About Business, From Tolstoy to Now (New Press, 2008). He has taught writing, editing, and publishing at Harvard College, Harvard Extension, and Boston University, and is currently a lecturer in the Department of Humanities Liberal Arts at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Vicki Marquette is a writer, filmmaker and Emmy Award winning documentary producer. With a long career in documentary feature films, non-fiction television and scripted independents, she co-produced ROADRUNNER: A FILM ABOUT ANTHONY BOURDAIN (Focus Features 2021), won a News & Documentary Emmy Award for REMASTERED: THE LION'S SHARE (Netflix 2019), and was the producer and writer of the critically acclaimed feature documentary HOW TO COME ALIVE WITH NORMAN MAILER (Zeitgeist/Kino Lorber 2024).

Raised in Las Vegas and educated at Vassar College, Vicki is a curious cinephile and a bonafide history nerd dedicated to crafting engaging character-driven narratives with nuance, compassion and humor. Vicki moved to Los Angeles in 2010 to work as a researcher and story-producer for the genealogy series WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? (NBC/TLC 2010 - 2014). Since then, she has contributed to over a dozen film and TV projects on a multitude of subjects. Her work has appeared on Netflix, CNN, A&E, HULU, DirecTV, CBS, National Geographic, Amazon Prime, HBOMax, TLC, NBC as well as in theaters and film festivals across North America. When not making documentaries, she writes screenplays, makes short films, paints and dances ballet. 

Danielle Matta is a Junior Agent at the Robin Straus Agency. She graduated from NYU with a BA in English, specializing in Creative Writing and Post-Colonial Literature, and joined RSA in May of 2020 after her internships at McIntosh & Otis and Writers House. She gravitates towards inclusive fiction and non-fiction with distinct, lyrical storytelling and—being first-generation herself—underrepresented voices of diasporic and immigrant communities. She also loves an unorthodox ghost story or psychological thriller. Although Danielle has lived in NYC since 2015, she grew up in Virginia, and therefore has a life-long love for farmers markets, cornbread, and green spaces.

Robert May, an advisory board member and founder of SenArt Films, is a producer of independent films whose projects have collectively garnered more than 40 awards including the Oscar, Bafta, Independent Spirit Awards and Human Rights Award. May produced

• The Station Agent, directed by then first-time director Tom McCarthy, which starred Peter Dinklage, Patricia Clarkson and Bobby Cannavale,
• The Fog of War (Errol Morris)
• Stevie (Steve James)
• The War Tapes (Deborah Scranton)
• Bonneville (Chris Rowley), starring Jessica Lange and Kathy Bates.

Recently, May released his directorial debut, the documentary Kids for Cash, a film about greed, corruption and kids. Quotes like "Riveting," "Shocking," and "Gifted Storyteller" from the likes of The New York Times, The Hollywood Reporter and Variety have been used to describe the film. May's projects have been distributed by Miramax, Sony, Lions Gate, 20th Century Fox and Comcast/Universal. May is currently in active development on a number of projects and is in production on an adventure film, Lust for Gold: A Race Against Time. May is currently in development on a number of TV and film projects.

Rebecca Hart Olander's poetry has appeared recently in Bracken, Crab Creek Review, Jet Fuel Review, The Massachusetts Review, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and other journals and anthologies, and her collaborative visual and written work has been published in multiple venues online and in They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing (Black Lawrence Press, 2018). Rebecca is a winner of the Women’s National Book Association poetry contest and the Mass Poetry Ekphrastic Gallery contest and was granted a Straw Dog Writing residency at Patchwork Farms.

Her poetry books include a chapbook, Dressing the Wounds (dancing girl press, 2019), and a full-length collection, Uncertain Acrobats (CavanKerry Press, 2021). She holds an MAT in English from Smith College and an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Rebecca teaches writing at Westfield State University and is editor/director of Perugia Press.

Molly Pisani is a freelance editor and copy editor based in New York. Her eight years in the publishing industry span two literary agencies and two publishers, predominantly Simon & Schuster. In 2014, she formed Star-Splitter Editorial Services, where she has worked with authors including Roxanna Elden, Kirkland Hamill, Byron Lane, Steven Rowley, and Nemat Sadat. She loves working closely with authors on memoirs, character-driven fiction, and narrative nonfiction that explores cultural studies, social justice, food, travel, humor, history and psychology. A graduate of Smith College and the Columbia Publishing Course, Molly is a member of the Editorial Freelancers Association and contributes to the group's internal diversity initiative.

Kiele Raymond is an agent at Thompson Literary Agency. She began her publishing career at Simon & Schuster in 2009, contributing to multiple New York Timesbestsellers at both Touchstone and Gallery Books. Kiele received her B.A. in Anthropology and English Literature from Johns Hopkins University and her M.A. in the Humanities from the University of Chicago. She joined TLA in 2017 to seek out bold new voices in literary fiction and select narrative non-fiction. Her clients include Peace Adzo Medie, Ari Braverman, Nichole Perkins, Tana Wojczuk and Courtney Emerson, among others.

Rebecca Rodd is an associate agent at Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary Agency, where she represents fiction (children through adult) and select nonfiction. She’s particularly interested in speculative fiction and romcoms, as well as narrative nonfiction and women’s issues, with an overall commitment to uplifting underrepresented voices. Prior to joining the agency in 2020, Rebecca was a librarian for Brooklyn Public Library. Rebecca holds a Bachelor’s degree in English from (the illustrious) Spelman College and holds a Master’s degree in Library Science from CUNY Queens College. Some of her clients include Arushi Avachat, Paige Classey, and Maytal Eyal.

Anjali Singh is an agent at Ayesha Pande Literary, a Harlem-based boutique literary agency. She began her career in publishing as an international book scout in 1996 and went on to have a career as an editor at Vintage Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Simon + Schuster and Other Press.

Among the literary authors she currently represents are Bridgett Davis (The World According to Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life in the Detroit Numbers), Susan Abulhawa (Against the Loveless World, winner of the Palestine Book Award), Nawaaz Ahmed (Radiant Fugitives, a PEN-Faulkner Finalist), Mai Al-Nakib (An Unlasting Home), Rachel M. Harper (The Other Mother), Padma Viswanathan (Like Every Form of Love) and Praveen Herat (Between This World and the Next, winner of the 2023 Restless Books Immigrant Fiction Prize).

She is on the lookout for character-driven fiction or non-fiction works that reflect an engagement with the world around us and graphic novels for all ages.

Victoria Skurnick is an agent at the Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary Agency, where she represents both fiction and nonfiction. Among her clients are writers of literary fiction – e.g., David Hicks and Caroline Angell – Suspense authors – e.g., Susan Elia MacNeal, Jennifer Hillier and Harry Dolan – and writers in the fields of history, politics and current affairs – e.g., Mary Louise Kelly, Kermit Roosevelt and Scott Greenberger.

Victoria has been the editor-in-chief of The Book-of-the-Month Club and senior editor at St. Martin’s Press and Pocket Books/Simon and Schuster. She is also the co-author of seven novels written pseudonymously by Cynthia Victor.

Johnny Temple, a Õý°ÄÃÅÁùºÏ²Ê¿ª½±Ö±²¥ Creative Writing Program advisory board member, is the publisher and editor-in-chief of Akashic Books, an award-winning Brooklyn-based independent company dedicated to publishing urban literary fiction and political nonfiction. He won the 2013 Ellery Queen Award and the American Association of Publishers' 2005 Miriam Bass Award for Creativity in Independent Publishing. Temple is the editor of the anthology USA Noir, which was selected as a New York Times Editors' Choice and includes stories from Dennis Lehane, Jonathan Safran Foer, Joyce Carol Oates, and others. Temple has taught courses on the publishing business at Wilkes University, Wesleyan University, and Pratt Institute; and is the Chair of the Brooklyn Literary Council, which works with Brooklyn's borough president to plan the annual Brooklyn Book Festival. He also plays bass guitar in the band Girls Against Boys, which has toured extensively across the globe and released numerous albums on independent and major record companies. He has contributed articles and political essays to various publications, including: The Nation, Publishers Weekly, AlterNet, Poets & Writers, and BookForum.

Chris Tomasino has been agenting since 1975, when she joined RLR Associates, Ltd and developed their literary division. Her clients have included Civil War historian and novelist Shelby Foote, former baseball manager and now MLB executive Joe Torre, talented international book packagers and corporate clients Angel Records and The Professional Golf Association. She is as comfortable with commercial fiction as she is with highly produced full color books; with the unconventional Anti-Coloring Books as she is with translating the content of the world's foremost online wedding resource, The Knot, and its offspring The Nest and The Bump, into best-selling book franchises. She shepherded through the publishing process Sarah Ban Breathnach's ground-breaking daybook for women, Simple Abundance (two and a half years on the New York Times bestseller list, with 27 foreign editions) and its spin-offs, as well as its new 25th anniversary update for 21st Century readers, published in November, 2019. Ever ahead of the trends, she was in on the boon in young adult fiction series in the 1970s and 1980s, the cookbook and lifestyle rage in the 1980s and 2000s, and the blossoming of spirituality and esoterica in the 1980s and 1990s. Having started her own boutique-sized agency in 2000, she specializes in memoir, self-help, lifestyle, health, women's issues, commercial and literary fiction, and works that celebrate diversity in culture, origins and ideas. Even though non-fiction is a staple of her list, Chris loves fiction and is always on the lookout for the novel that will envelope, entertain, and enrich. She is the proud agent of a number of Wilkes faculty members, graduates and friends who collectively have sold 16 titles to trade publishers, with more in the pipeline. In June 2017, after more than a decade as a visiting faculty member at Wilkes residencies, Chris joined the Advisory Board of the Maslow Family Graduate Program in Creative Writing.