Week Two

Dig If You Will a Picture… Book

Instructor: Marc Tyler Nobleman 

Picture books are movies on paper, a potent union of two of our greatest forces—words and pictures. In writing both gripping (indeed history-changing) nonfiction and hilarious fiction picture books, award-winning author Marc Tyler Nobleman has learned a riveting range of tips and tricks. Jaws will drop as Marc leads an interactive journey to dissect the art form, empowering you to break some rules and create new ones as you write in this generative workshop. | Ages 18+. 

Week 2, 6/30–7/4 | M, W, F | 8:30–10:30 a.m. | Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall Poetry Room 

Marc Tyler Nobleman is the award-winning author of books for all ages including Bill the Boy Wonder: The Secret Co-Creator of Batman, which changed history, inspiring the unprecedented Hulu documentary Batman & Bill. He has spoken in almost 20 countries across five continents at venues including the U.S. State Department, the Queen Mary 2 cruise ship, and a TED Talk. 

Mapping Memoir

Instructor: Deborah Miranda 

Memoir requires us to be transgressive cartographers, to travel deep into territories that are often scary, forbidden, or overlooked. This generative workshop provides you with alternative and challenging directions and structure for your work. These “maps” include writing exercises and practices, reading materials and craft examples, as well as guided free writes. This workshop will feed you and create jumping-off points for you to invent your own writing life, on or off the map. | Ages 18+. 

Week 2, 6/30–7/4 | M, W, F | 1:15–3:15 p.m. | Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall Prose Room  

Deborah A. Miranda is a writer and enrolled member of the Ohlone-Costanoan Esselen Nation in California, with Santa Ynez Chumash ancestry. Her hybrid project, Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir, won the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award; the 10th anniversary edition of Bad Indians was released in 2023 as a hardback with 50+ additional pages of material. Miranda is also the author of four poetry collections (Indian Cartography, The Zen of La Llorona, Raised by Humans, and Altar for Broken Things) and co-editor of the Lambda finalist Sovereign Erotics: An Anthology of Two-Spirit Literature. Her scholarship focuses on California Indian experiences within and after Missionization and California Indian storyteller and culture bearers such as Isabel Meadows. She is Thomas H. Broadus, Jr. Professor of English emerita at Washington and Lee University, where she taught Native American Literatures and Creative Writing, and was an affiliate of the Shepherd Poverty Studies Program and the Women and Gender Studies Programs. She and spouse Margo Solod now live in Eugene, Oregon. 

Week Three

Writing the Difficult and Finding Grace in Poetry

Instructor: Nicole Cooley 

Poet Lucille Clifton said she hoped her poems would “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” In this flexible workshop, we will investigate how to write such poems. We will explore how to tackle difficult subjects in our work. How do we find our way into the most crucial and challenging subjects of our lives and shape them into poems? We will write new poems, read and talk about poetry and poetics, and workshop poems. | Ages 18+. 

Week 3, 7/7–7/11 | M, W, F | 8:30–10:30 a.m. | Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall Poetry Room 

Nicole Cooley grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana.  Her most recent book is the collection of poetry Mother Water Ash (Louisiana University Press, July 2024) as well as the two poetry collections, Girl after Girl after Girl (Louisiana State University Press, 2017) and Of Marriage (Alice James Books, 2018).  She has published four other collections of poems, Breach, Milk Dress, The Afflicted Girls and Resurrection, as well as a novel, Judy Garland, Ginger Love, two chapbooks, Frozen Charlottes, A Sequence, and Vanishing Point, and a collaborative artists’ book (with book artist Maureen Cummins), Salem Lessons. 

Her awards include The Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, a Discovery/The Nation Award, an NEA, a Creative Artists fellowship from The American Antiquarian Society, and the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America. She is currently completing a non-fiction book project, Dollhouse: A Book of Miniature Histories, excerpts of which have appeared in The Guardian, The Atlantic, The Rumpus, and the Feminist Wire. She is also currently finishing a manuscript of poems, titled Trash. Poems from this collection have recently appeared in Blackbird, Poetry, and Tupelo Quarterly. She has taught at Bucknell University and the Stonecoast Low-Residency MFA program, as well in Merida, Mexico with US Poets in Mexico and at the Chautauqua Institution and at the Young Arts Foundation in Miami, Florida. 

Find your Muse: Creative Writing Inspired by Visual Art

Instructor: Mary Hall Surface 

This generative course invites writers of all levels and all genres to step into works of art to slow down, wonder, imagine, and write in new ways. Paintings by three fascinating American artists, Cecelia Beaux, Kenjiro Nomura, and Edward Hopper, will inspire our writing in both narrative and poetic forms. Discover how close looking at art can inspire characters, stories, and styles and how writing can connect you more deeply to art. Experience a rich scaffolded process that deepens your looking, unveils meaningful layers in the art, and fuels your imagination. | Ages 18+. 

Week 3, 7/7–7/11 | M, W, F | 1:15–3:15 p.m. | Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall Prose Room 

Mary Hall Surface is an award-winning teaching artist, playwright, theatre director, and museum educator. She has presented her art-inspired writing workshops at the National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Kennedy Center, Chautauqua Institution, Washington National Cathedral, Phoenix Art Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and Harvard’s Project Zero Classroom. Her “Write into Art” series is among the Smithsonian Associates most popular programs.  Her innovative approach to the writing-visual art connection was featured in The Washington Post in 2017. Her plays have been produced worldwide including 17 productions at the Kennedy Center. She has been nominated for nine Helen Hayes Awards, including four Charles McArthur Awards for Outstanding New Play, and received the 2002 award for Outstanding Director of a Musical. Her work was recently commissioned for two films and a stage production by Washington’s Arena Stage. Mary Hall has published fifteen plays, an anthology of her scripts, two collections of scenes and monologues, and three original cast albums.   www.maryhallsurface.com. 

The Stories You Need to Write

Instructor: Sejal Shah 

We all have stories we wish to tell, but where to begin? In this generative creative nonfiction workshop, participants will read short pieces and use prompts to find our way into our stories. We will bear in mind the words of William Zinsser: “Dare to tell the smallest of stories if you want to generate large emotions.” We will have the opportunity to write together, to share work, and to learn about craft by studying published writing. | Ages 18+. 

Week 3, 7/8–7/10 | Tu, Th | 1:15–3:15 p.m. | Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall Prose Room | $129 

Sejal Shah is a writer whose work crosses genres and disciplines. She is the author of the short story collection How to Make Your Mother Cry: Fictions and the award-winning essay collection, This Is One Way to Dance, an NPR Best Book of the year. Her stories and essays have appeared widely in print and online—including Brevity, the Guardian, Conjunctions, the Kenyon Review, Lit Hub, Longreads, and Poets & Writers, among others. Sejal is the recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in fiction and residencies or fellowships from Blue Mountain Center, the Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop, Kundiman, Millay Arts, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She was named an influential AAPI Leader by Good Morning America and ABC News in 2021. The daughter of Gujarati parents who immigrated to the United States from India and Kenya, Sejal lives in Rochester, New York. 

Week Four

Honoring the Ancestors

Instructor: Maritza Rivera 

This generative poetry workshop begins with a grounding exercise that enables participants to begin a journey inward with a common experience and connection. From this experiential starting point we will delve into individual, shared experiences, and personal memories by way of specific writing prompts. These prompts are intended to foster the inspiration to connect with and create work that honors our ancestors. Group discussions, writing prompts and writing time are expected to generate four poems. | Ages 18+. 

Week 4, 7/14–7/18 | M, W, F | 8:30–10:30 a.m. | Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall Poetry Room 

Maritza Rivera is a Puerto Rican poet and US Army veteran who has lived in Rockville, MD since1994. Maritza has been writing poetry for over 50 years; she is the creator of a short form of poetry called Blackjack and is the author of: About You; A Mother’s War; Baker’s Dozen; 21 Blackjack Poems; and the Blackjack Poetry Playing Cards. Her work appears in the public arts project: Meet Me at the Triangle, in Wheaton, MD. Her work has been featured in literary and online publications such as: Gargoyle Magazine, Poet Lore, O Dark Thirty, Sojourners, WordWrights Magazine, MilSpeak.org, LA Bloga, ArLiJo, PoetryXHunger.com, and DanMurano.com. She has also appeared on: The Coffee House/MCTV, Joe’s Place/WHUR; On the Margin/WPFW, The Poet and the Poem/Library of Congress and Leguizamo Does America/NBC. 

Maritza is the creator and host of the weekly Mariposa Poetry Series in College Park, MD, which ran from 1999 to 2002. In 2012, Maritza was a recipient of a Book in a Day (BID) International Writing Fellowship in Bahia, Brazil; in 2013, she attended the Bread Loaf Writers Conference in Sicily; and in 2013 she was the recipient of a Montgomery County Executive’s Volunteer Award for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities. 

In 2022, Maritza co-edited Diaspora Café: D.C., an Afro-LatinX anthology with Jeffrey Banks that was published by Day Eight. Maritza has been a supporter of The Memorial Day Writers Project, co-facilitated the Warrior Poetry Project at Walter Reed Military Medical Center in Bethesda, MD with Dr. Fred Foote and Richard Epstein, and served on the Board of Directors of Split this Rock in Washington, DC. She has also collaborated and worked on several literary translation projects with Yvette Neisser, Joseph Ross, Hiram Larew, Brenardo Taylor and Grace Cavalieri. Her translation efforts include Inquilinos Mudos/Silent Tenants by Alberto Roblest published by Day Eight in 2023. Maritza’s work also appears in This is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets, edited by Kwame Alexander and published in January 2024. 

This is My Story, this is My Song

Instructor: Maritri Garrett 

In this flexible, songwriting workshop, we’ll address how to take your story from concept to song form. We will discuss the varied parts of a song and the dynamics of lyrics to bring your story to life in the form of music. | Ages 18+. 

Week 4, 7/14–7/18 | M, W, F | 1:15–3:15 p.m. | Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall Prose Room 

Maritri Garrett is a remarkable independent artist whose music reflects the depth of her diverse musical background. As a composer, multi-instrumentalist, singer, her songs tell honest stories of life, love, and loss, offering healing and solace to all who listen.

Maritri holds a unique blend of academic achievements, including a Bachelor of Arts in Biology from Fisk University, a Bachelor of Science in Composition, and a Master of Fine Arts in Jazz Studies from Howard University.

Her skillful versatility with instruments like the piano, guitar, bass, cello, and percussion sets her apart. Having performed with and opened for musical legends like Gladys Knight and Patti LaBelle and sung back up for Barbra Streisand. She has written for theater, ballet, apps, and film. 

Week Five

Writing Recovery for the Beginning Novelist

Instructor: Tempany Deckert-Donovan 

Were you born to be a novelist? But your path was blocked by a sensible career, critical parents or a disparaging instructor? Perhaps you managed to avoid all those, but not the voice inside your head that whispered you’re not talented enough…  During this generative workshop, you’ll write without fear or criticism and set up the elements for your first fiction novel. You’ll learn to not only love writing again, but your creative self. | Ages 18+. 

Week 5, 7/21–7/25 | M, W, F | 8:30–10:30 a.m. | Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall Poetry Room 

Tempany Deckert Donovan has eighteen middle grade novels published by Scholastic, Macmillan and Random House in her native Australia.  Now residing in the United States, she teaches novel writing for the Writers’ Program at UCLA.  An actress, author and playwright, she’s been nominated and won various awards in all mediums and loves nothing more than talking about story.  She specializes in zero criticism teaching, a technique that allows students to write fearlessly and with joy. 

Week Six

Listen to the Work: Writing Middle Grade

Instructor: Caroline Starr Rose 

The creative process is an exercise in listening and responding. In this generative workshop, we’ll explore what it means to listen to our writing and what it is trying to say. We’ll discuss writing from the inside out (character and story directed) rather than the outside in (author imposed); following a story’s direction in drafting and revision; listening to language, form, and sentence structure; and hearing the “words beneath the words” when receiving a critique. | Ages 18+. 

Week 6. 7/28–8/1 | M, W, F | 8:30–10:30 a.m. | Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall Poetry Room 

Caroline Starr Rose is a middle grade and picture book author whose books have been ALA-ALSC Notable, Junior Library Guild, ABA New Voices, Kids’ Indie Next, Amazon’s Best Books of the Month for Kids, and Bank Street College of Education Best Books selections. In addition, her books have been nominated for almost two dozen state award lists. Caroline was named a Publisher’s Weekly Flying Start Author for her debut novel, May B. She spent her childhood in the deserts of Saudi Arabia and New Mexico and taught social studies and English in four different states. Caroline now lives with her family in her hometown, Albuquerque, New Mexico. 

Young at Heart: How to Write YA (Teen) Fiction at Any Age

Instructor: Sharon Flake 

Young adult readers can spot an interloper, an adult who writes for teen audiences but clearly does not show up on the page as with authentic, credible, realistic teen characters. This flexible workshop will help you leave the trite jargon and stereotypes about teens on the proverbial floor by teaching you to craft authentic teen voices infused with personality and realistic dialogue. You will also mine your life for stories and themes from your teen years to develop YA centered storylines and plots with writing prompts we will use in class.  Participants will read and critique one another’s work. | Ages 18+. 

Week 6, 7/28–8/1 | M, W, F | 1:15–3:15 p.m. | Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall Prose Room  

Sharon G. Flake is the author of the groundbreaking novel, The Skin I’m In, which brought a bold dimension to literature for young readers.  Now considered a modern classic, the book is used in classrooms worldwide and studied by experts in education and literature. Flake has authored over a dozen books, with more than 1.5 million in print globally. Her work has been translated into multiple languages including Korean, Italian, French and Portuguese. Her work has been recognized with several Coretta Scott King Author Honors; an NAACP Award Nomination; the YWCA Racial Justice Award, and numerous top ten best books for teens citations by libraries and industry organizations. Flake is a Kirkus Prize Award finalist. She has mentored aspiring authors for years virtually with the Virginia C. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University.  The Family I’m In, her much anticipated YA novel, is due out April 1, 2025. 

Week Seven

Adaptation–A Singular Art (Film/TV)

Instructor: Valerie Woods 

Literary classics, novels, articles, even toys, and video games have inspired films and television shows. Crafting a screen adaptation is indeed an art. In this flexible workshop, students learn the language and tools of screenwriting with a primary focus of adapting source materials to film and television. Students will experiment with translating the interior world of prose to the visual canvas of the screen, utilizing an excerpt from a novel in the public domain. | Ages 18+. 

Week 7, 8/4–8/8 | M, W, F | 8:30–10:30 a.m. | Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall Poetry Room 

Valerie C. Woods is the Emmy winning Co-Executive Producer/writer for the Disney+ series The Crossover (2023). She was also a Co-Executive Producer/writer for the AppleTV+ mini-series, The Big Cigar (May 2024) and Co-Executive Producer/writer on Season 2 of the Netflix drama series Sweet Magnolias (2021-22). She also worked in the same position for Season 4 (2018-2019) of the critically acclaimed television drama series Queen Sugar, airing on Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN). Ms. Woods is in development, through her MCV Productions banner, on the television adaptation of A Cowboy to Remember, the Cowboys of California trilogy of novels by Rebekah Weatherspoon. Also in development is a television adaptation based on Wrapped in Rainbows – The Life of Zora Neale Hurston, the award-winning biography written by Valerie Boyd. 

All Stories True

Instructor: Marita Golden 

This generative workshop is open to fiction and nonfiction writers in the early stages of developing a narrative. The workshop is designed to support the generation of new ideas and new perspectives on in-progress work. In the workshop writers will write in response to a series of custom-designed prompts relating to their narrative. Free writing in class and discussion of the writing, discussion of narrative, its role and power, and revision as a central part of the writing process are important aspects of the workshop. | Ages 18+. 

Week 7, 8/4–8/8 | M, W, F | 1:15–3:15 p.m. | Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall Prose Room 

Marita Golden is an award-winning author of over twenty works of fiction and nonfiction. Her books include the novels The Wide Circumference of Love, and After, and the memoirs Migrations of the Heart, Saving Our Sons, and Don’t Play in the Sun: One Woman’s Journey Through the Color Complex. Her most recent work of nonfiction is The New Black Woman: Loves Herself, Has Boundaries, Heals Every Day, a sequel to her book The Strong Black Woman: How a Myth Endangers the Physical and Mental Health of Black Women. In February 2025, Mango Publishing will release How to Become a Black Writer: Creating and Honoring Black Stories that Matter. 

She is the recipient of many awards including the Writers for Writers Award presented by Barnes & Noble and Poets and Writers, an award from the Authors Guild, and the Fiction Award for her novel After awarded by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association.  She has lectured and read from her work internationally. She has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, been featured as a question on Jeopardy, and is a two-time NAACP Image Award nominee. She has been frequently interviewed on NPR.   

Co-founder and President Emerita of the Zora Neale Hurston/ Richard Wright Foundation, Marita Golden is a veteran teacher of writing. She taught at the University of Lagos, in Nigeria and has served as a member of the faculties of the MFA Graduate Creative Writing Programs at George Mason University and Virginia Commonwealth University and in the MA Creative Writing Program at John Hopkins University.  She has served as a Distinguished Writer in Residence at the University of the District of Columbia. As a literary consultant, she offers writing workshops, coaching, and manuscript evaluation services. 

Week Eight

The Poem’s Architecture

Instructor: Joy Priest 

In this flexible workshop, we will be thinking through a poem’s design or construction, and such questions as: What is the relationship between obsession and the recursive mode? For what other reasons might we choose repetition? How can fragment and caesura be useful in writing about trauma? We’ll begin by looking at our own lines of poetry and follow that by reading the poems of others and generating new work. | Ages 18+. 

Week 8, 8/11–8/15 | M, W, F | 8:30–10:30 a.m. | Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall Poetry Room 

Joy Priest (she/her) is a writer from Louisville, KY. She is the author of HORSEPOWER (Pitt Poetry Series, 2020), selected by the 19th U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey as the winner of the Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, and the editor of Once a City Said: A Louisville Poets Anthology (Sarabande, 2023). Priest is the recipient of a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a 2019-2020 Fine Arts Work Center fellowship, the Imprint Paul Verlaine Prize in Poetry, and the Stanley Kunitz Memorial Prize from the American Poetry Review.

Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Atlantic, Boston Review, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among others, as well as in commissions for the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Her essays have appeared in The Bitter Southerner, Poets & Writers, ESPN, and The Undefeated.  

Priest received her bachelor’s in Print Journalism from the University of Kentucky, her MFA in Poetry with a certificate in Women & Gender Studies from the University of South Carolina, and her doctorate from the University of Houston where she was an Imprint MD Anderson Foundation fellow.

Joy has facilitated poetry workshops with incarcerated juvenile and adult women, and she is a member of the Affrilachian Poets. She is currently an Assistant Professor of African American / African Diaspora Poetry in the University of Pittsburgh’s MFA Writing Program, and the Curator of Community Programs & Practice (CCPP) at the Center for African American Poetry & Poetics (CAAPP). 

Writing Your Cultural Heritage

Instructor: Shonda Buchanan 

“Tell me where you’re from and I’ll tell you who you are” (Wallace Stegner, American Places). Culture and heritage can be found in our rituals, roles, upbringing, sayings, in memory and non-memory, in religious practices or ceremonies your family kept, or in some cases, ignored. Heritage can be found in how we interact with spouses, loved ones and society, and what we’ve been taught and/or what we teach our children. Using the senses and sensory details, this advanced workshop will help you unearth these hidden memories and produce writing that sings of your family heritage and inheritance. | Ages 18+. 

Week 8, 8/11–8/15 | M, W, F | 1:15–3:15 p.m. | Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall Prose Room 

Kalamazoo, Michigan native Shonda Buchanan is a twice Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Oxfam Ambassador and a PEN Emerging Voices Fellow and PEN America Mentor. A professor in the Department of English at Western Michigan University and Alma College’s MFA Program in Creative Writing, Shonda is the author of three collections of poetry, Who’s Afraid of Black Indians?, Equipoise: Poems from Goddess Country and the forthcoming, The Lost Songs of Nina Simone, as well as the award-winning memoir, Black Indian, chosen by PBS NewsHour as a “Top 20 books to read to learn about institutional racism.” Former Board President for Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center and Board member of the Kalamazoo Poetry Festival and the Kalamazoo Arts Council, Shonda has published in The Mississippi Review, the Los Angeles Times, the LA Weekly, LA Times Magazine, AWP’s The Writer’s Chronicle, Indian Country Today, Red Ink Journal, LA Parents Magazine and freelanced for the International Review of African American Art, Westways, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Daily Press and Sisters of AARP.  

Shonda’s forthcoming essay collection, Children of the Mixed Blood Trail, explores mixed-race migration in North America. An English Language Specialist with the Department of State, Shonda is currently shopping a Black Lives Matter book of poetry, America’s Bloodflowers: Poems, as well as Artificial Earth: Poems and Essays, about the first founding mixed race “settlers” of Los Angeles and California Indians. Descendant of the African Mende nation of Sierra Leone, and in North America, the Coharie, Choctaw and Eastern Band Cherokee, and Europeans, Shonda writes on Chumash/Tongva lands in Los Angeles and in the Midwest on Ojibwe/Anishinaabe, Ottawa and Potawatomi lands. Shonda has taught creative writing, research and BIPOC/American literature for the past 24 years. 

Week Nine

Creative Alchemy with Object Magic

Instructor: Alan King 

Get ready for a week of creative mischief! Dive into a metaphor game, put a wild twist on classic fairytales, and explore the secret lives of everyday objects through fresh personas. This generative workshop is all about fun, exploration, and breaking the rules of storytelling. By the end, you’ll have works-in-progress that are ready to be shaped into your next masterpieces. Let’s sprinkle some magic on those ideas! | Ages 18+. 

Week 9, 8/18–8/22 | M, W, F | 8:30–10:30 a.m. | Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall Poetry Room 

Alan King is a Caribbean American poet, husband, father, and award-winning documentary filmmaker. The son of Trinidadian immigrants, he has published two poetry collections, Point Blank (Silver Birch Press, 2016) and Drift (Willow Books, 2012), as well as the chapbook Crooked Smiling Light (Plan B Press, 2021). His work delves into themes of family, identity, and social justice and has earned multiple nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net awards. 

King’s poetry caught the attention of former U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, who remarked, “Alan Kingis one of my favorite up-and-coming poets of his generation. His poems are not pop and flash, rather more like a slow dance with someone you’re going to love forever.” 

A Cave Canem graduate fellow, King holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the Stonecoast Program at the University of Southern Maine. He was the 2018/19 Writer-in-Residence for the Howard County Poetry and Literature Society. King lives with his family in Bowie, Maryland. 

Writing Your Mystery Novel: Howdunnit

Instructor: Ellen Crosby 

This practical, hands-on, flexible workshop focuses on the tools you need to write your thriller/suspense/mystery novel. We’ll discuss plot structure, creating believable characters, dialogue, setting, POV, voice, avoiding writer’s block, and much more. Bring ideas and first chapters if you have them; expect homework. By the end of this seminar, you’ll be ready for NaNoWriMo in November when you can put it all together and finish a draft of your book.  | Ages 18+. 

Week 9, 8/18–8/22 | M, W, F | 1:15–3:15 p.m. | Literary Arts Center at Alumni Hall Prose Room 

Ellen Crosby is the author of 18 mystery novels; Deeds Left Undone, her most recent book, is the 13th book in a mystery series set in a vineyard in Virginia and will be out in August 2025. She also wrote four mysteries about an international photojournalist and a standalone, Moscow Nights. Her books have been nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award and the Library of Virginia People’s Choice Award. Before writing fiction full time, she was a freelance regional reporter for The Washington Post, Moscow correspondent for ABC Radio News, and an economist at the U.S. Senate. She is on the national board of Mystery Writers of America and is also a member of the Literary Society of Washington, Sisters in Crime, and International Thriller Writers.