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Alice O'Neill
CREATING THE TV SERIES
Alice O’Neill is a New York-based screenwriter. She wrote for Billions on Showtime for three seasons, and has created and developed series for ABC Signature, Freeform, and Paramount Television. Recent film projects include Twist of Fate for Sony Pictures (dir. Stephen Chbosky), Shoot Like a Girl for Sony/Tristar (based on the war memoir by MJ Hegar), and The Overdue Life of Amy Byler for No Trace Camping Productions. Her original script The Stevedore is in development at Miramax, and Buttercup, which was featured on the Blacklist, is in development at Groundswell Productions. As a playwright, she’s had work produced at theaters in Manhattan and elsewhere: New Georges, Ars Nova, Backhouse, Bank Street Theater, Naked Angels, The Culture Project, Dixon Place, and The American Living Room Festival at HERE. Alice also serves as a mentor for the Writers’ Guild Initiative. She has been teaching Screenwriting at Columbia University School of the Arts the last two years.
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Taylor Larsen
Fiction: Short Story
Taylor Larsen is a graduate of Columbia University’s MFA program in fiction writing and the author of the debut novel, Stranger, Father, Beloved (Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster, 2016) which received a starred Kirkus review and was names as one of the “hottest books for the Summer” by The Huffington Post. Taylor has taught fiction writing for Catapult, The Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop, Columbia University, and Pace University. She currently teaches novel writing at Stanford University Continuing Studies. Her stories, essays, and interviews have appeared in BOMB, LARB, The Brooklyn Review, The Huffington Post, Bustle, Literary Hub, The Negatives, and Women Writers, Women’s Books. Taylor was EJ Levy’s Peter Taylor fellow at The Kenyon Review Writers Conference in the summer of 2018 and a visiting author for Nancy Zafris in 2016. Originally from Alexandria, Virginia, Taylor currently resides with her husband and four children in the Hudson Valley.
https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Taylor-Larsen/545458298
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Cynthia Weiner
Class: Felonies + Fictions
Cynthia Weiner has had a long career writing and teaching fiction. Her short stories have been published in Ploughshares, The Sun, and Epiphany, and her story “Boyfriends” was awarded a Pushcart Prize. She is also the assistant director of The Writers Studio in New York City.
A Gorgeous Excitement, her first novel, was inspired by her upbringing on New York’s Upper East Side in the 1980s, and particularly by the notorious “Preppy Murder” of 1986. The novel has been featured in The New Yorker, Town & Country, Oprah Daily, and PeopleMagazine, among others.
Weiner now lives in New York’s Hudson Valley.
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Mesha Rain Fogel
Manager, Workshops
Mesha Rain Fogel is a graduate of the MFA program at Columbia University School of the Arts. She holds a BA in English from SUNY, New Paltz. She is working on her debut novel, parenting her tween, and working to build a writing community and workshop in Upstate New York. She is from Portland, Oregon. After time in New Orleans, Chicago, Austin, Brooklyn, and the Village, she made her way to the Hudson Valley, where she has made her home with her daughter and dog for the last seven years.
(See more in the “about” section)
Find me on Instagram @thelineassembly
https://www.columbiajournal.org/articles/writing-what-you-know-an-interview-with-kristopher-jansma
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Kristopher Jansma
Reads New Work, Lecture 8/27
Kristopher grew up in Lincroft, New Jersey. He received his B.A. in The Writing Seminars from Johns Hopkins University and an M.F.A. in Fiction from Columbia University. He is the author of the critically-acclaimed novels, OUR NARROW HIDING PLACES (Ecco/2024) WHY WE CAME TO THE CITY (Viking/2016) and THE UNCHANGEABLE SPOTS OF LEOPARDS, (Viking/2013). His book of essays on the creative process is REVISIONARIES: WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM THE LOST, UNFINISHED, AND JUST PLAIN BAD WORK OF GREAT WRITERS (Quirk, 2024).
He writes a column for Electric Literature about Unfinished Business, and the fates and afterlives of authors’ incomplete works. His writing has also been published in The New York Times, ZYZZYVA Magazine, The Sun, Prairie Schooner, Chicago Quarterly Review, Slice Magazine, Salon, Real Simple, The Millions, and elsewhere.
He is an Associate Professor of English and Director of Creative Writing at SUNY New Paltz College. He lives in New York with his wife and children.
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James Cañón
Reads New Works, Lecture 8/6
James Cañón was born and raised in Colombia. He received an MFA from Columbia University, where he now teaches fiction writing. His critically acclaimed debut novel, Tales from the Town of Widows & Chronicles from the Land of Men, has been translated into eleven languages and published in over twenty countries, and was made into a film. It was also selected as one of the “Ten Best Books of the Year” by the American School Library Journal. James has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Prix du Premier Meilleur Roman Étranger, and the Prix des Lecteurs de Vincennes, as well as fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. His short stories and essays have appeared in literary journals and anthologies in the US, Mexico, France, Belgium and Colombia. He's currently working on a new novel and a memoir.
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Marshall Karp
Reads New Work, 7/9
Marshall Karp is a #1 New York Times bestselling author, screenwriter, documentarian, and playwright. He co-created the NYPD Red series with James Patterson—a blockbuster franchise that has sold millions of copies—and now continues the high-octane thrillers on his own.
His latest novel, Don’t Tell Me How to Die, starts as a poignant family drama and turns—quietly, ruthlessly—into a psychological thriller driven by buried truths and gasp-worthy reveals. Readers are calling it one of the twistiest, most addictive thrillers of the year.
The Rabbit Factory, Book 1 in the fan-favorite Lomax and Biggs series, was Marshall’s breakout crime novel. Its mix of suspense, razor-sharp dialogue, and deeply human characters launched a franchise that helped define his voice as a storyteller and earned him a loyal following of thriller fans.
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Michael J Siedlander
Reads New Work- Wednesday Salon 8/20
Michael J. Seidlinger is the Filipino-American author of On Submission, The Body Harvest, Anybody Home?, and other books. He has written for, among others, Wired, Buzzfeed, Polygon, The Believer, and Publishers Weekly. He taught creative writing at Portland State University and has led workshops at Catapult, Kettle Pond Writers’ Conference, and Sarah Lawrence.
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Marc Scheff
Featured Artist, Works now showing! Lecture: Bring in the Coach, Lecture + Meet the Artists Gallery Reception (Jazz and Cocktails) JULY 23rd
6pm Doors, CraftLecture
6:30 pm Jazz Band + Reception
Marc Scheff is an award-winning professional Artist, Curator, and Coach. He challenges the myth that creativity should be clean, controlled, and flawless from the start. Instead, he teaches that growth, success, and innovation can not only occur when you make a mess, but they also rely upon your willingness to do so.
He was born and raised in Boston, MA. He attended Harvard University, where he studied Computer Science. He moved to San Francisco during the tech boom of 1999 and subsequently earned a degree in Illustration from the Academy of Art University. After many years spent working in the creative field, he turned his skills to coaching creatives to fulfill their potential.
He is currently showing his work at The Line Assembly’s residence at Park Theatre in Hudson, New York.