Prose Writing Faculty
Last year’s information below. Sign up for our email list to receive updates for the 2025 conference.
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The Winter Getaway is well known for its challenging and supportive workshops led by accomplished writers and artists. Get to know our writing faculty by reading some of their work online, and then working with them in January.
Marina Budhos
Marina Budhos is the author of several books for young adults and adults. Her newest novel, We Are All We Have, was a Best Kirkus Book of 2022. Among her prior books are Watched, which received a Walter Award and an Asian Pacific American Honor, The Long Ride, Tell Us We’re Home and Ask Me No Questions, recipient of numerous honors. She has also published the adult novels The Professor of Light and House of Waiting, and three works of nonfiction, including Sugar Changed the World, an LA Times Book Finalist. She has received an NEA Literature Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Award for Women Writers, three Fellowships from the New Jersey Council on the Arts and has been a Fulbright Scholar to India. She is a professor emerita at William Paterson University. View her website and read an essay by Marina.
Marina will lead Tutorials in Prose and Stay the Course: A Novel Writing Workshop.
Roberta Clipper
Roberta Clipper has published two novels-in-stories under the name Robbie Clipper Sethi, The Bride Wore Red (Picador) and Fifty-Fifty (Silicon Press), as well as short stories in The Atlantic Monthly, Mademoiselle, the Philadelphia Inquirer and other literary magazines and anthologies. Her grants include an NEA in fiction, two grants from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and a Fulbright-Nehru Fellowship. Under the name Roberta Clipper, her most recent story appears in Waxing and Waning, issue 11. She serves as prose editor for the Kelsey Review, is a professor emerita at Rider University and teaches for Murphy Writing. Read a story by Roberta and visit her website.
Roberta will lead Tutorials in Prose and the Prose Round Table Workshop.
Judy Copeland
Judy Copeland was raised in Japan, the United States, and India. At age forty, she left a career as an international lawyer to backpack around Oceania, Asia and Africa, staying with families she met along the way. At age fifty, she began to write travel memoir, which led to an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from the University of Iowa. Her nonfiction has appeared in Best American Travel Writing and has won prizes from Florida Review, Hunger Mountain, Malahat Review, Water~Stone Review and other journals. She recently retired from Stockton University, where she taught creative nonfiction workshops. Read an essay by Judy.
Judy will lead The World in a Grain of Sand: Writing Creative Nonfiction.
John Cotter
John Cotter is the author of the memoir Losing Music and the novel Under the Small Lights. He has contributed essays, theater pieces and fiction to the New England Review, Raritan, Guernica, Prairie Schooner, Epoch, Commonweal, The New York Times Magazine and elsewhere. His personal essays receive frequent notable mention in Best American Essays. He’s been a resident artist at SPACE Gallery in Portland, ME and the James Merrill House in Stonington, CT. Read an essay by John and visit his website.
John will lead Tutorials in Prose and Tell It Slant: A Memoir Workshop.
Joe Costal
Joe Costal has five kids, so he’s just happy to be at the Getaway! His writing has appeared in Barrelhouse, Painted Bride, Pif and dozens of other magazines, journals and anthologies. He hosts/produces the show Every Month Madness and the official podcast of the Greater Egg Harbor school district, where he works as a content supervisor. He has been a Pushcart Prize nominee, and has earned fellowships and awards from Grubstreet, Wesleyan, Rowan and other places. He has been teaching writing at Stockton University for over 20 years. Visit Joe’s website and say hi on Instagram: @costaljoe.
Joe will lead Tutorials in Prose and co-host the Publishing Chat.
Hugo dos Santos
Hugo dos Santos is the author of Then, there (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019), a collection of Newark stories, and the translator of A Child in Ruins (Writ Large Press, 2016), the collected poems of José Luís Peixoto, a staff pick at the Paris Review Daily. Hugo’s poetry and fiction shine a light on the beauty, complexity and pain of the immigrant experience and of life in the inner city. In his translations, Hugo has celebrated contemporary Portuguese literature by publishing the poetry and fiction of Peixoto, Matilde Campilho, and João Tordo. Hugo lives in NJ with his wife and three children. Visit his website, and read a piece by Hugo.
Hugo will lead Tutorials in Prose and Short And Lasting: Exploring Flash Forms.
R.G. Evans
R.G. Evans’ debut collection of original songs, Sweet Old Life, was released in 2018. His original music has been featured in the poetry documentaries All That Lies Between Us and Unburying Malcolm Miller. He has performed his songs at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, at the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival, in Los Angeles for RATTLE magazine, at the Smithsonian Institution and all over the state of New Jersey. Also a poet, Evans’ books include Overtipping the Ferryman, The Holy Both and Imagine Sisyphus Happy. He teaches creative writing at Rowan University. Learn more on his website and YouTube channel.
R.G. will lead Tutorials in Songwriting and Poetry and Hitting the Right Note: A Songwriting Workshop.
L M Feldman
L M Feldman is a queer, feminist, GNC playwright. She has been nominated for the Venturous Award, Herb Alpert Award, Wasserstein Prize, Steinberg Award, Blackburn Prize and New York Innovative Theatre Award. An alum of the Yale School of Drama and the New England Center for Circus Arts, L is also an educator, a circus dramaturg, a MacDowell fellow, a New Georges Affiliated Artist, a Playwrights’ Center Core Writer and a Shakespeare’s New Contemporaries winner. She has lived in seven cities and is currently based in Philadelphia, PA, where she writes, collaborates, dramaturgs, consults, advocates, teaches (all over the place) and handstands (also all over the place). Her plays can be found on the New Play Exchange. See L’s plays and visit her website.
L will lead Tutorials in Playwriting and Playwriting Tools for Writers of All Genres.
Juliet Fletcher
Juliet Fletcher has worked as a reporter and editor for more than twenty years. Her reportage, narrative features and criticism have appeared in The Herald (Glasgow, U.K.), Philadelphia City Paper, The Record of Bergen County and elsewhere, and have been syndicated nationwide in dozens of US news outlets. Her narrative reporting has received awards from chapters of the Society for Professional Journalists and the Pennsylvania News Association. She has contributed personal essays most recently to TueNight.com and her fiction has been published in the recent volume, Words After Dark: A Lyrics, Lit & Liquor Anthology (Lucid River Press). For five years, she stewarded the internship program at City Paper, helping young journalists to write their way to publication. You can follow Juliet on social media, especially Instagram and Threads: @juliet_fletcher. Read a selection of her reporting on politics and culture here.
Juliet will co-host the Publishing Chat.
Anndee Hochman
Anndee Hochman is a journalist, essayist, storyteller and teaching artist. In addition to her weekly column, “The Parent Trip,” in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Anndee’s work has appeared in Poets & Writers, Purple Clover, Broad Street Review, the Moravian University magazine and numerous anthologies, including the recent Best Short Stories of Philadelphia. She is the author of Anatomies: A Novella and Stories (Picador) and Everyday Acts & Small Subversions: Women Reinventing Family, Community and Home (The Eighth Mountain Press). She is also a six-time Moth Story Slam winner and appeared last fall in This Is My Brave, an ensemble performance about experiences with mental health and illness; her story was about panic attacks. For more than 25 years, Anndee has taught writing to people of all ages in schools, senior centers and a small fishing village on Mexico’s Pacific coast. Visit her website and read an essay by Anndee.
Anndee will lead Tutorials in Prose, The Heart and Craft of Memoir and Out Loud: Storytelling for the Page and Stage.
Marissa Johnson-Valenzuela
Marissa Johnson-Valenzuela is a writer, activist, DJ and teacher. Her work has appeared in publications including American Poetry Review, Foundry, Prism International, The Baffler and Make/shift. Fiction is her primary means of artistic expression and she is currently working on her first novel. She is the founder of Thread Makes Blanket Press. An assistant professor of English at the Community College of Philadelphia, she holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Wyoming. She has received grants from the Velocity Fund and Leeway Foundation. With Leeway, Marissa has organized writer networking and also started a quarterly series of literary salons. She is currently instructing a college course on Prison Literature while also working on a project through Books Through Bars Philadelphia.
Marissa will lead Tutorials in Prose and A Novel Approach: Beginning Your Novel.
Tom McAllister
Tom McAllister is the author of the novel How to Be Safe, which was named one of the best books of 2018 by Kirkus Reviews and The Washington Post. His other books are the novel The Young Widower’s Handbook and the memoir Bury Me in My Jersey. His short fiction and essays have appeared in numerous publications, including Best American Nonrequired Reading, Hobart, The Rumpus, Buzzfeed, The Millions, Juked, JMWW, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Washington Post and Pithead Chapel. He is the co-host of the weekly podcast, Book Fight!, and nonfiction editor at the literary magazine Barrelhouse. He is an Associate Professor at Temple University and lives in New Jersey. Learn more on his website.
Tom will lead Making the Personal Universal in Creative Nonfiction.
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