Visiting Professionals Series

In addition to publishing panels offered at each residency, the MFA in Creative Writing Program has recently begun inviting Industry Professionals to share expertise with students and to offer tools and resources for career development issues. Visiting Industry Professionals have included agents, editors, producers, publishers, and literary managers.

Gary Garrison - Teaching at the Fall 2008 Plainfield, Vermont Residency

Gary Garrison was recently appointed Executive Director of the Dramatist Guild of America – the national organization of playwrights, lyricists and composers. For the past ten years he has filled the posts of Artistic Director, Producer and fulltime faculty member in the Department of Dramatic Writing at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. He has produced the last eighteen Festivals of New Works for NYU, working with hundreds of playwrights, directors and actors. Garrison’s plays include Verticals and Horizontals, Storm on Storm, It Belongs on Stage (and Not in My Bed), Crater, Old Soles, Padding The Wagon, Rug Store Cowboy, Cherry Reds, Gawk, Oh Messiah Me, We Make A Wall, The Big Fat Naked Truth, Scream With Laughter, Smoothness With Cool, Empty Rooms, Does Anybody Want A Miss Cow Bayou? and When A Diva Dreams. This work has been featured at the Boston Theatre Marathon, Primary Stages, The Directors Company, Manhattan Theatre Source, StageWorks, Fourth Unity, Open Door Theatre, African Globe Theatre Company, Pulse Ensemble Theatre, Expanded Arts and New York Rep. He is the author of the critically acclaimed, The Playwright’s Survival Guide: Keeping the Drama in Your Work and Out of Your Life, Perfect Ten: Writing and Producing the Ten Minute Play, two volumes of Monologues for Men by Men (all Heinemann Press), and the KCACTF’s Best Student Plays of 2006. He is a the program coordinator for the Summer Playwriting Intensive for the Kennedy Center, the former National Chair of Playwriting for the Kennedy Center’s American College Theater Festival and recipient of the Outstanding Teacher of Playwriting from the Association of Theatre in Higher Education. 

Joseph Bednarik

Joseph Bednarik is the marketing director at Copper Canyon Press and a regular book reviewer for The Oregonian newspaper.

Susan Jonas

Susan Jonas is a relentless dramaturg, by day masquerading as a civil servant or arts analyst in the Theatre Program at the New York State Council on the Arts, where she apologizes for not being able to give bigger grants to worthy artistic organizations. She also teaches at whatever university will have her-- most recently New York University, and in previous years Princeton University, Connecticut College, Brooklyn College, S.U.N.Y. Purchase, etc. ad nauseum. She has written for various theatre periodicals, including American Theatre and Theatre, and co-authored the internationally read Report on the Status of Women in Theatre, as well as editing Dramaturgy and American Theater, the standard text in the subject in this and several other countries. She has worked as a resident dramaturg for The Acting Company, Classic Stage Company and Rushmore Theater Festival, and freelanced for many other New York and regional theatres. Her adaptations and translations have been performed at the Manhattan Theatre Club and Williamstown Theatre Festival and toured nationally with the Lincoln Center Institute and The Acting Company among other companies. She was the Managing Director of the Ensemble Studio Theater and the Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of the Knickerbocker Theatre Festival which produced the work of Paul Selig, among other now celebrated playwrights. Dr. Jonas has also worked in film development for a variety of studios and agencies. She received her B.A. in Comparative Literature and Creative Writing from Princeton University and her M.F.A. and D.F.A. in Dramaturgy and Dramatic Criticism from Yale School of Drama. She is currently working on a really great secret project.

Linda Villarosa

Linda Villarosa is a freelance writer and editor. Formerly, she edited the health pages for the New York Times, where she redesigned and expanded health coverage for Science Times and for the newspaper at large. Linda was also both the executive editor and senior health editor of Essence Magazine, where she wrote or edited a number of award-winning articles. Earlier this year, she sat in as the magazine’s acting editor-in-chief for four months. As a reporter, Linda has written hundreds of articles for the Times, several of which ran on the newspaper’s front page. She has also contributed articles, profiles and reviews to a number of national publications, including Glamour, Health, Latina, the New York Times Book Review, O Magazine, Vibe and Woman’s Day. She has won awards from several organizations, specifically The Arthur Ashe Institute, the American Medical Writers Association, Lincoln University, the New York Association of Black Journalists and the National Women’s Political Caucus. Linda has also provided editorial consulting to a number of companies and organizations. For American Express Publishing, she conceived and launched a newsletter for television host Dr. Phil, focusing on mental and emotional health. For the Kaiser Family Foundation, she has trained journalists from around the world to better cover the international HIV/AIDS epidemic. Linda is the author of Body & Soul: The Black Women’s Guide to Physical Health and Emotional Well-Being. A Blackboard Bestseller, there are more than 200,000 copies in print. She is the coauthor of both Finding Our Way: The Teen Girls’ Survival Guide and The Black Parenting Book. She has also worked behind the scenes as a “book doctor,” helping other authors complete proposals and package and write their books. A graduate of the University of Colorado, Linda also spent a year at the Harvard School of Public Health as a journalism fellow. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Michael Wiegers

Michael Wiegers is the Executive Editor of Copper Canyon Press and has worked in Literary publishing for nearly two decades. He has edited books by Ted Kooser, W.S. Merwin, Ruth Stone, C.D. Wright, Alberto Ríos, Karen Tei Yamashita and many others. His own books include, Reversible Monuments and This Art.