Maureen Buchanan Jones, an AWA Affiliate leading weekly workshops and retreats in Amherst, Massachusetts, is a freelance editor for fiction, non-fiction and memoir, and has led workshops with women who have experienced domestic violence. Maureen is the lead AWA Instructor, teaching the AWA method for nine years in MA, CT, CA, OR, NY, IL, NC, Ontario and Ireland. She holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Massachusetts and taught literature, creative writing and technical writing for 17 years at UMass, Holyoke Community College, Westfield State College and the Conway School of Landscape Design. Her poetry has appeared in 13th Moon, Peregrine, North Dakota Quarterly Review, Letters from Daughters to Fathers, WriterAdvice, Equinox and Calyx. Her book of poems, blessed are the menial chores, was published in 2012 by AWA Press.
Karen Buchinsky has been with AWA since 1994. Shes helped prepare hundreds to use our method in places where voices have been silenced. She is an original facilitator of Voices from Inside, a non-profit that provides AWA method workshops for incarcerated women, and continues with that work as lead trainer.
Jen Cross facilitates sexuality and sexual trauma survivors (and other) writing groups in Oakland, CA, and across the country. Certified an AWA/AWAI facilitator in 2002, Jen joined her first AWA training team in 2011. She holds an MA in Transformative Language Arts, and her writing has been widely anthologized. FMI: writingourselveswhole.orgJan Haag is an AWA affiliate who leads writing workshops in Sacramento. She is a full-time professor of Journalism and English at Sacramento City College. She came to the AWA method in 2004 through the Sutterwriters program at Sutter hospitals and worked with its founder, Dr. Lawrence Spann, to edit books published by the Literature, Arts and Medicine Program (LAMP) Press. Her own book of poetry, Companion Spirit, was published by LAMP in 2006; a revised version was published by AWA Press in 2012. She is also the editor of AWA Press, guided by publisher and AWA founder Pat Schneider.
Carol Henderson (CarolHenderson.com) is an author, teacher, and workshop leader. She has written for magazines and newspapers and has published two books. Under a State Department grant she taught writing (and published essayists) in the Middle East. She has also edited several essay and memoir collections in the US. Carol is currently under contract with Heartland Hospice, training support services staff all over the country to integrate restorative writing into the hospice environment.Kathleen Olesky has a MA in Counseling Psychology and an MFA in Creative Writing. She worked as a bilingual psychotherapist in a community mental health center in Boston for many years, serving both English and Spanish speaking adults and children. She left the field to pursue her MFA at Emerson College. Kathleen was certified in the AWA method in 2004 and has also been a writing coach for the Memoir Project, a collaborative project between the City of Boston and Grub Street Writing Center which has published three volumes of personal essays by seniors. She is also a leader for the northeast region of Soka Gakkai USA, a lay Buddhist organization promoting peace through culture and education, and is the East Coast bureau chief for their weekly newspaper, the World Tribune.
Sue Reynolds has been an AWA affiliate since 2002. She is a writer, teacher and psychotherapist and facilitates writing groups through workshops in the community, in college continuing education programs, and in social services settings. She has been leading writing workshops for female inmates for nine years and did her Psychology Honours thesis on that program. She writes and has won awards for her YA novel, short stories, poems and non-fiction. She is past president of the Writers Community of Durham Region (WCDR), a regional writers organization of 350 members, and also past vice-chair of the national organization Canadian Creative Writers and Writing Programs (CCWWP) (the Canadian version of the AWP).
Mary Tuchscherer MA, is the founder and CEO of VoiceFlame, a non-profit organization that is illuminating the voices of girls and women through writing and education. Mary has been an AWA-Trained workshop leader for over ten years and has been an instructor for AWA since 2011. Since childhood Mary knew the key to her own self-empowerment was through the authentic use of her own voice.
Aaron Zimmerman is the Founder and Executive Director of NY Writers Coalition, one of the nations largest community-based writing programs. Mr. Zimmerman is a former co-chair of the Board of Directors of Amherst Writers and Artists and has been leading creative writing workshops using the AWA method since 1997. Often these sessions include other instructors or workshop leaders who have experience with particular under-served populations.