Carrie's Clients

Michael Strecker is the author of The Young Comic’s Guide to Telling Jokes Books 1 and 2 (Sterling 2017) and Jokes for Crescent City Kids, (Pelican 2019). His fourth joke book for kids will be published by Scholastic in the fall of 2021. He also writes fiction for adults. His short story The Woman at the Well was selected as a finalist by the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival and his story A Lake Catherine Lesson appeared in The Critic, a literary journal that has published some of the country’s most highly regarded writers, including Walker Percy, Flannery O’Connor and Graham Greene.  In addition to his writing, Strecker is a stand-up comedian, who regularly performs at some of the top comedy clubs in the country. He lives in the New Orleans area with his wife Jillian and their sons Stephen and Joseph. 

Marissa Miller’s work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vogue, GQ, CNN Style, BBC Travel, Cosmopolitan, VICE, Teen Vogue, Allure, Women’s Health, SELF, The Huffington Post, Chatelaine, Reader’s Digest, The Frisky, The Montreal Gazette, The National Post and more. Cosmopolitan and BuzzFeed listed one of her tweets among the 100 most “hilarious” of 2016. Twice, The Huffington Post listed it among the funniest written by women in 2016 alongside Hillary Clinton and Aidy Bryant.

Miller's debut book, Pretty Weird is for sale now. 

Lindsey Steffes has an MFA in Fiction from University of California, Riverside and a background in publicity and film. She enjoys small towns, quiet moments, and stories that vibrate with tension. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, and is currently at work on her debut novel. Her stories and poems have been featured in Midwestern Gothic, Black Heart Review, and Atticus Review.

Kara Zivin is a writer and Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan and Research Career Scientist at the Department of Veterans Affairs. In addition to her publications in peer-reviewed medical and public health journals, her essays have appeared in Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, Essay Daily, Health Affairs, MedPage Today, Past Ten, Psychology Today, and STAT First Opinion.

Her science writing can be found here. 

Kara's social media: Twitter, Instagram.

Jessica Leibe is an asexual copywriter, lifestyle blogger, and creator of One Page a Day. Her mission is to inspire women to live their most intentional lives through means such as simple living, planning, and personal development. Her work has appeared in Craft Better Books, The Big Smoke, Writing and Wellness, the AAA (Asexual, Aromantic, Agender) Literary Magazine, Fangoria, and She Did What She Wanted. She is a Northern California Writers Retreat alumni and member of Quill & Cup, an all-female writing community. She lives in New Jersey.

Jessica will be working with Carrie and Victoria. 

Colleen Morrissey is an award-winning author, educator, and humanities scholar born in Omaha, Nebraska. A writer of prose, poetry, and criticism, her work can be found in The Southern Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Chicago Reader, BitchMedia, The Rumpus, Studies in the Novel, and other venues of note. She was awarded an O. Henry Prize in 2014 and has been a Best American Short Stories Notable. She is currently at work on her debut novel.

Photo Credit: Meghan Leigh Barnard

Find Colleen on Twitter and Instagram: @colleenmoz

Colleen will be working with Carrie, Victoria, and Zoe on her debut novel. 

Katya Lidsky writes novels and TV shows. She is working on Nonfiction, Young Adult Fiction, and Women's Fiction books. She also loves writing essays and can't stop making lists. Her work has been featured in Parents.com, Texas Monthly, VegNews, The Fix, The Dogington Post, The Bark, The Mighty, and more. Katya is a Life Coach for Dog People, co-host of The Animal That Changed You podcast, and an avid animal shelter volunteer and foster. Some of her other favorite things include Tina Turner's voice, e.e. Cummings poetry, and being a Russian-Cuban-Jew from Laredo, Texas. She's a graduate of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts and received her masters from Harvard University's Graduate School of Education. 

Instagram: @LifeCoachForDogPeople

Twitter: @KatyaLidsky

Chelsea Wakelyn’s debut novel is What Remains of Elsie Jane, forthcoming in March ‘23 (Rare Machines). She’s a good enough mother, a committed music snob, and neurodivergent maker of doom piles great and small and everywhere. She lives with her children in what is colonially known as Nanaimo, Canada as an uninvited guest on the unceded, ancestral, and living territory of the Snuneymuxw Nation. Chelsea is of mixed white settler and Red River Métis descent. Her current work-in-progress, Melinoë, is a speculative horror novel about doppelgängers, fraught mother-daughter relationships, and ketamine-infused VR.  

Madeline Dyer (she/her) writes young adult and adult fiction, memoir, and poetry, many with representation of asexuality, disability, and chronic illness. She teaches writing and is currently pursuing her MFA from Kingston University London. In 2020, Madeline founded YA Thriller Con, a yearly online celebration of everything thriller, crime, and mystery. She has a herd of Shetland ponies, loves anything ghostly, and can frequently be found exploring wild places. At least one notebook is known to follow her everywhere she goes. 

Find Madeline on Twitter and Instagram: @MDyerAuthor

Meg Frances is a Texas born Brooklyn based writer. Her recent works have been featured in Outlook Springs, Las Odiosas’ A Very Feminist Zine, The Chachalaca Review, Love Like Salt Anthology, RaceBaitr, We the Women Collective’s Digital Wake Series, The Heart Podcast, the Cid Pearlman Performancehome(Body) project, and a forthcoming short story in Augur Magazine. In 2020, like many, she adapted her performances to suit online audiences.

Find Meg on Twitter: @Keisha_Belle

Eva Jurczyk is a writer and librarian living in Toronto. She has written for Jezebel, The Awl, The Rumpus, and Publishers Weekly. Her first novel, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, was published in 2022 by Sourcebooks/Poisoned Pen Press.

Catherine Yu writes dark speculative fiction. She was born in Nanjing and is now based in New York. She is a graduate of Odyssey Writing Workshop. Direwood  (Page Street, September 2022) is her debut novel.

Laura Garrison is working on some middle grade horror-comedy novels. She earned a PhD from Catholic University in Washington, DC, with a dissertation on spiders and webs in American literature. Currently, she teaches creative writing and literature at Roanoke College in the Blue Ridge Valley, where she lives with her husband, son, daughter, and cat. She edits Jersey Devil Press (an online magazine of weird fiction and poetry) and tweets occasionally @pickleboots.

Taylor got to writing late. After spending his early years performing in L.A. rock clubs, he founded a digital agency and a software company for the advertising and entertainment industries. He's created designs that have traveled to space, written songs for film, played bit roles in bad movies, and occasionally does dumb things like rocketing down the Olympic bobsled track. He lives in a 1750 farmhouse outside Boston with his wife, two daughters, and a very busy miniature Australian Shepherd. Taylor's debut middle grade novel, Clara Poole and the Long Way Round, will be published in spring 2023 by Pixel+Ink with a second book to follow in spring 2024.

Elizabeth Kilcoyne is an author, playwright, and poet, born and raised in Kentucky. She currently lives in Lexington, Kentucky. Her first novel, Wake the Bones, a YA Southern Gothic, is forthcoming from Wednesday Books in Summer 2022. Elizabeth uses she/her pronouns.

Sandra Knisely Barnidge is a writer from Wisconsin with a passion for small towns and overlooked places. Her fiction leans speculative and has appeared in Barren, Nimrod, The Fiddlehead, Reckon Review, Reservoir Ridge, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the University of Alabama. 

Meg Ripley was born in Ontario and raised in Newfoundland, Canada, surrounded by whales and icebergs. After an MFA in illustration from SVA, NYC, she worked as an illustrator for a decade before realizing her love of writing fiction could no longer be ignored. 

She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, two kids, and two dogs.

Find Meg on Twitter at @ripley_meg

Robert C. DeLena lives in Sudbury, MA, where he runs a recruiting company, Legal Staffing Solutions, which he founded over twenty years ago to advise law firms, lawyers, and students. He spends time skiing all over the world with his son, Ryan, and the great friends he’s made during his journey from beginner to reluctant adventurer. 

Ryan C. DeLena is widely known in the outdoor community through his social media presence as “Extreme Ryan.” He has conquered many of the world’s signature ski runs and is an enthusiastic rock climber, ice climber, and hiker. He recently completed the “Hundred Highest” hiking peaks in New England. Ryan has earned advanced certifications from the American Mountain Guides Association and the Professional Ski Instructors of America. 

Rob and Ryan’s debut, WITHOUT RESTRAINT, a memoir in two voices, is forthcoming from Falcon Guides in spring 2023. 

Elisa Faison is a PhD candidate in English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill studying twenty-first century speculative climate fiction. She is also the Book Review Editor for the Carolina Quarterly and an editorial intern at Algonquin Books. She attended the Sewanee Writers' Conference in 2012 as the Sewanee Scholar in Playwriting. She returned as a member of the Sewanee Writers' Conference Staff in 2014 and 2015. She has published essays and book reviews in the Carolina Quarterly, the Women’s Review of Books, and Ethos Review. She has an article of literary criticism forthcoming in Extrapolation. She is currently working on her debut novel.  

Erica McKeen is a Canadian fiction writer. Her debut novel Tear is forthcoming with Invisible Publishing in fall, 2022. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, longlisted for the 2020 Guernica Prize, and shortlisted for The Malahat Review 2021 Open Season Awards. Her stories have been published or are forthcoming in numerous literary journals, including PRISM international, filling Station, and The Dalhousie Review, among others. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Find Erica on Twitter and Instagram: @emckeenwrites

Tyrel Hunt is a writer, filmmaker and cultural worker from Queens, New York. He is the founder of Grittyvibes.com, one of the premiere independent platforms for black arts and culture. As a filmmaker, he wrote, edited and directed the feature film "April Again", which won several awards including "Best of the Fest" at The Peoples Film Festival and "Best Feature film" at the Baltimore Black Film Festival. 

Tyrel works full time as the Director of Marketing and Communications at Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning where he produces the annual "JCAL Ten Minute Film Festival.”