Kathie Collins
Board President, Charlotte Lit Co-Founder & Creative Director
Poet & Mythologist
Kathie Collins, co-founder and creative director of Charlotte Lit and editor-in-chief of Charlotte Lit Press, is a poet, mythologist, and lifelong student of Jungian psychology—which, consciously and unconsciously, makes its way into her work. She earned her graduate degrees in mythological studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute, where she also served as adjunct faculty. Kathie is author of Jubilee (Main Street Rag). Her poems have appeared in Flying South, Immanence, Kakalak, Major 7th Magazine, Pedestal Magazine, and Santa Fe Literary Review. She’s a 2023 Pushcart nominee, and her poetry manuscript Grass Widow was named a finalist in both the Iron Horse Lit Review and Palette Poetry 2023 Chapbook competitions.
Contact: kathie@charlottelit.org
Learn More: charlottelit.org/kathiecollins
Paul Reali
Charlotte Lit Co-Founder & Executive Director
Writer, Editor, Coach, Instructor
Paul Reali is co-founder of Charlotte Lit, a nonprofit literary arts center in Charlotte, NC. He won the 2023 Doris Betts Fiction Award and is a past winner of the Elizabeth Simpson Smith Short Story and Ruth Moose Flash Fiction awards. His writing on creativity and business has been widely published, and his recent fiction can be found in the North Carolina Literary Review. He was awarded a Wildacres residency in 2022, and received a Regional Artist Project Grant from Charlotte’s Arts & Science Council in 2018. He earned an M.B.A. from Syracuse University and an M.S. in Creativity from Buffalo State University.
Contact: paul@charlottelit.org
Learn More: paulreali.com
Paula Martinac
Community Coordinator
Writer, Editor, Teacher
Paula Martinac is the award-winning author of seven novels and three nonfiction books. Her short stories and essays have been published in Raleigh Review, Main Street Rag, Minerva Rising, Hippocampus, Art & Understanding, and other places. She has received fellowships and grants from the Arts & Science Council, the North Carolina Arts Council, the Modern Language Association, and the Historical Novel Society, and was the recipient of the 2023 William F. Deeck-Malice Domestic Grant for an unpublished mystery novel. In 2020, she was inducted into the Saints & Sinners Hall of Fame, which recognizes individuals for their dedication to LGBTQ+ literature. Paula taught fiction writing at UNC Charlotte from 2015 to 2024. In addition to working as Charlotte Lit’s Community Coordinator, she is a freelance developmental editor and writing coach. Contact: pmartinac@charlottelit.org
Current Charlotte Lit Faculty & Speakers
Sarah Archer’s debut novel, The Plus One, was published by Putnam in the US and received a starred review from Booklist. It has also been published in the UK, Germany, and Japan, and is currently in development for television. As a screenwriter, she has developed material for MTV Entertainment, Snapchat, and Comedy Central. Her short stories and poetry have been published in numerous literary magazines, and she has spoken and taught writing to groups in several states and countries. She is also a co-host of the award-winning Charlotte Readers Podcast. saraharcherwrites.com.
Jan Beatty’s eighth book, Dragstripping, was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in Fall 2024. Her memoir, American Bastard, won the Red Hen Nonfiction Award in 2021. Other recent books include Jackknife: New and Selected Poems (2018 Paterson Prize), named by Sandra Cisneros on LitHub as her favorite book of 2019; and The Body Wars(University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020). In the New York Times, Naomi Shihab Nye said: “Beatty’s new poems in The Body Wars shimmer with luminous connection, travel a big life and grand map of encounters.” Poems have been published in The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, POETRY, Best American Poetry, and many other journals. Beatty has worked as a waitress, an abortion counselor, and in maximum security prisons. She is Professor Emerita at Carlow University, where she directed creative writing, the Madwomen in the Attic writing workshops, and the MFA program.
Tara Campbell is a writer, teacher, Kimbilio Fellow, and fiction co-editor at Barrelhouse Magazine. She teaches flash fiction and speculative fiction, and is the author of a novel, two hybrid collections of poetry and prose, and two short story collections. Her sixth book, City of Dancing Gargoyles, is forthcoming from Santa Fe Writers Project (SFWP) in fall 2024. Online: taracampbell.com
Bryn Chancellor is the author of the novel Sycamore, a Southwest Book of the Year and Amazon Editors’ Best Book of 2017, and the story collection When Are You Coming Home?, winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize, with work published in numerous literary journals. Honors include a 2018 North Carolina Arts Council Artist Fellowship and the Poets and Writers Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award. She is associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Sarah Creech is the author of two novels, Season of the Dragonflies and The Whole Way Home. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in various publications, including The Cortland Review, Writer’sDigest.com, Story South, and Literary Mama. She lives in North Carolina with her husband and children and teaches at Queens University of Charlotte.
Abigail DeWitt is the author of three novels: Lili (WW Norton), Dogs (Lorimer Press), and News of Our Loved Ones (Harper). Her short fiction has appeared in Five Points, Witness, the Alaska Quarterly Review, the Carolina Quarterly, and elsewhere. She has been cited in Best American Short Stories, nominated for a Pushcart, and has received grants and fellowships from the North Carolina Arts Council, the Tyrone Guthrie Center, the McColl Center for the Arts, and the Michener Society.
DC Fidler has a background teaching cultural psychiatry, teaching acting and play writing, writing and producing videos for teaching health professionals, and leading academic psychiatry teachers to incorporate the arts into their teaching. He presently devotes himself fulltime to creating plays, novels, and short stories. His play Boogieban won the 2018 Cleveland Critics Circle Award for Best Premier of a New Play and moved onward in 2019 to be produced in St. Louis, Chicago, and Off-Broadway in NYC. Boogieban and his many other plays have been produced for universities, national societies, and local and professional theatres throughout the U.S., often being used for raising awareness of mental health issues.
Julie Funderburk is the author of The Door That Always Opens, a poetry collection from LSU Press, and Thoughts to Fold into Birds, a chapbook from Unicorn Press. She is the recipient of fellowships in poetry from the North Carolina Arts Council and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Her recent work appears in The Southern Review, Blackbird, Ecotone, Pleiades, and the anthology In the Tempered Dark: Contemporary Poets Transcending Elegy (Black Lawrence Press). She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Queens University of Charlotte.
Angelo Geter is an award-winning poet, educator, and teaching artist currently serving as the Poet Laureate of Rock Hill, S.C. His work touches on a variety of issues including social justice, grief, character and manhood. Geter is a 2020 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow, and a National Poetry Slam champion. He is a co-editor for the Kakalak Poetry & Art Anthology, serves on the Watering Hole Board of Directors, and is the founder and director of One Word Poetry Festival. His critically acclaimed debut poetry collection, More God Than Dead, was released in 2022. His work has appeared on All Def Poetry, Button Poetry, the Academy of American Poets “Poem a Day” series, and This Is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets.
Judy Goldman is the award-winning author of seven books—three memoirs, two novels, and two collections of poetry. Her new memoir, Child, was named a Katie Couric Media Must-Read Book for 2022. Her recent memoir, Together: A Memoir of a Marriage and a Medical Mishap, was named one of the best books of 2019 by Real Simple magazine and received a starred review from Library Journal. Her work has appeared in USA Today, The Washington Post, The Charlotte Observer, Real Simple, LitHub, and many literary journals and anthologies.
Patrice Gopo is an award-winning writer and author of essay collections and picture books. Her essay collections include Autumn Song, recipient of the inaugural Pattis Family Foundation Creative Arts Book Award, and All the Colors We Will See, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection. Her picture books include All the Places We Call Home and Ripening Time, both inspired by several of her essays. As the child of Jamaican immigrants who was born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska, Patrice writes stories steeped in themes of place, belonging, and home. Her essays have appeared in a variety of publications, including Catapult, Charlotte Magazine, Creative Nonfiction, and AFAR Magazine. Her essay “That Autumn” received a notable mention in the Best American Essays 2020 and earned a National City and Regional Magazine Association award for best essay, criticism, and commentary. In addition to other honors, Patrice is the recipient of a North Carolina Arts Council Artist Fellowship and a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award. When she’s not writing, Patrice hosts the podcast Picture Books Are for Grown-Ups, Too! because she believes in the power of stories to help build connections between people. Patrice lives with her family in North Carolina, where she enjoys walks just after dawn and thinks a perfect day ends with ice cream. Please visit www.patricegopo.com to learn more. Online: patricegopo.com.
Jaki Shelton Green is Poet Laureate of North Carolina. She is a writer and poet, a North Carolina native whose publications include Dead on Arrival, Dead on Arrival and New Poems, Masks, Conjure Blues, singing a tree into dance, breath of the song, Blue Opal (a play), and Feeding the Light. Her work has appeared in publications such as The Crucible, Obsidian, Essence Magazine, Callaloo, and Black Gold: An Anthology of Black Poetry, among many others. In 2014 the North Carolina native was inducted into the state’s Literary Hall of Fame Among other honors, she received a 2007 Sam Ragan Award for Contributions to the Fine Arts of North Carolina and a 2003 North Carolina Award (literature), the state’s highest civilian honor for significant contributions to the state and nation in fine art, literature, public service, and science. Green has taught poetry and facilitated creative writing classes at public libraries, universities and community colleges, public/private schools, and literary organizations.
Robin Hemley has published fifteen books of fiction and nonfiction. His most recent books are the autofiction, Oblivion: An After-Autobiography (Gold Wake, 2022), The Art and Craft of Asian Stories: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology, co-authored with Xu Xi (Bloomsbury, 2021) and Borderline Citizen: Dispatches from the Outskirts of Nationhood (Nebraska, 2020; Penguin SE Asia, 2021). He has previously published four collections of short stories, and his stories have been widely anthologized. His writing text, Turning Life into Fiction, has sold over a hundred thousand copies and has been in print for 25 years.
AE Hines is the author of Any Dumb Animal, his debut collection which received honorable mention in the North Carolina Poetry Society’s 2022 Brockman-Campbell book contest, and was a da Vinci Eye finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. His poems have won numerous prizes, and are widely published in anthologies and literary journals, including more recently: The Sun, Rattle, The Southern Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Rhino, Ninth Letter, Poet Lore, I-70 Review and The Greensboro Review. He resides in Charlotte and Medellín, Colombia. Online: aehines.net.
David Hicks is an award-winning professor and Creative Writing Director at the nationally ranked Wilkes University MFA graduate program. He is also the author of two novels: White Plains (Bower House Books) and The Gospel According to Danny (forthcoming, Vine Leaves Press)—and an autobiographical children’s book, The Magic Ticket (Fulcrum Books, 2024), all of which were written based on this workshop lesson. An experienced developmental editor, David has helped more than sixty writers to be published for the first time. Online: david-hicks.com.
Lori Horvitz’s first collection of memoir-essays, The Girls of Usually, won the 2016 Gold Medal IPPY Book Award in Autobiography/Memoir. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in a variety of journals including South Dakota Review, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Hotel Amerika. In a starred review from Kirkus, the critic calls Horvitz’ latest book, Collect Call to My Mother: Essays on Love, Grief, and Getting a Good Night’s Sleep, “A scintillating collection, full of subtle wit and passionate yearning.” Professor Emeritus of English at UNC Asheville, Horvitz received a Ph.D. in English from SUNY Albany and an MFA in Creative Writing from Brooklyn College.
Zachary Jepsen is a poet who lives outside of Charlotte with his wife and daughter. He earned his master’s degree in poetry through Warren Wilson’s MFA Program for Writers. His work has been published in The Westchester Review. He is a veteran of the United States Marine Corps, and he loves syntax, but those two things are unrelated.
Dr. Zelda Lockhart is a Fulbright Specialist engaged in cross-cultural writing projects for generational healing. She holds a Ph.D. in Expressive Art Therapies and was the Lambda Literary Foundation 2024 Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist. She is author of four novels including Trinity (HarperCollins). Her other novels include Fifth Born, a Barnes & Noble Discovery selection and a Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Award finalist; Cold Running Creek, a Black Caucus of the American Library Association Honor Fiction award winner; and Fifth Born II: The Hundredth Turtle, a Lambda Lit Award finalist. Her writing methods are found in her book The Soul of the Full-Length Manuscript: Turning Life’s Wounds into the Gift of Literary Fiction, Memoir or Poetry.
Rebecca McClanahan’s eleventh book is In the Key of New York City: A Memoir in Essays. Her work has appeared in Best American Essays, Best American Poetry, Georgia Review, Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review, Boulevard, The Sun, and in anthologies published by Simon & Schuster, Beacon, Norton, and Bedford/St. Martin, among others. Recipient of two Pushcart prizes, the Glasgow Award in Nonfiction, the Wood Prize from Poetry Magazine, the Carter Prize for the Essay, the Governor’s Award for Excellence in Education, and four fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council, McClanahan teaches in the MFA program of Queens University, Charlotte.
Randon Billings Noble is an essayist. Her collection Be with Me Always was published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2019, and her anthology of lyric essays A Harp in the Stars was published by the same press in 2021. Other work has appeared in the Modern Love column of The New York Times, The Rumpus, Brevity, and Creative Nonfiction. She is the founding editor of the online literary magazine After the Art and teaches in West Virginia Wesleyan’s low-residency MFA program and Goucher College’s MFA in Nonfiction program. Online: randonbillingsnoble.com.
Heather Newton’s novel The Puppeteer’s Daughters (Turner Publishing, 2022) was a finalist for the Forword INDIES Book of the Year Award and has been optioned for television. Her short story collection McMullen Circle (Regal House, 2022), was a finalist for both the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award and the W.S. Porter Prize. Her novel Under The Mercy Trees (HarperCollins, 2011) won the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award, was chosen by the Women’s National Book Association as a Great Group Reads Selection and named an “Okra Pick” by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance. She teaches creative writing for UNC-Asheville’s Great Smokies Writing Program and Charlotte Lit, and is co-founder and program manager for the Flatiron Writers Room writers’ center in Asheville. Online: heathernewton.net and flatironwritersroom.com.
Olivia Dorsey Peacock (she/her) is a family historian, poet, and tea maven based in Charlotte, North Carolina. She has received fellowships and support from The Watering Hole, the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, and the Arts & Science Council. She previously served as a 2025 Goodyear Arts Artist-in-Residence and is currently serving as Charlotte Lit’s 2025 GoodLit Poetry Fellow. She holds Bachelors and Masters degrees in Information Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Lucky Jefferson, poetry.onl, Shot Glass Journal, and Her Words.
Megan Rich has written two books, a YA novel and a travel memoir, and is seeking representation for her third, a literary thriller inspired by The Great Gatsby. She took part in the highly selective sub-concentration in creative writing at the University of Michigan, for which she completed a thesis of original poetry. She’s also a graduate of the selective Lighthouse Writers Workshop Book Project, and she is a 2022 recipient of the Arts & Science Council Charlotte’s Creative Renewal Fellowship. With 14 years’ experience as a creative writing teacher and mentor of students from ages 12 to 85, she is passionate about helping all writers find and refine their voices on the page.
C.T. Salazar is a Latinx poet and archivist from Mississippi. He’s the author of Headless John the Baptist Hitchhiking (Acre 2022), a finalist for the 2023 Theodore Roethke Memorial Award. His poems have recently appeared in Poem-A-Day, Poetry Northwest, Pleiades, West Branch, Denver Quarterly Review, and elsewhere.
Betsy Thorpe started in book publishing as an assistant at Atheneum, eventually becoming an acquiring and developmental editor while working at HarperCollins, Broadway Books (Random House), Macmillan, and John Wiley & Sons. She then started Betsy Thorpe Literary Services, which helps authors deliver their best work to the public, either through publishers or self-publishing. She is the co-author of numerous nonfiction books, including three featured in The New York Times, and is releasing three novels under the pseudonym of Hope Carolle with Dragonblade Publishing in 2023.
Junious “Jay” Ward is a poet, teaching artist, and Charlotte’s inaugural poet laureate. He is the author of Sing Me a Lesser Wound (Bull City Press, 2020) and Composition (Button Poetry, 2023), and is also a National Poetry Slam champion (2018) and an Individual World Poetry Slam champion (2019). Jay currently serves as a program director for BreatheINK and vice chair on the board of The Watering Hole. He has attended Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Callaloo, The Watering Hole, and Tin House Winter Workshop. His work can be found in Columbia Journal, Four Way Review, Diode Poetry Journal, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere.
Luke Whisnant is the author of six books and chapbooks, including In the Debris Field, which won First Prize in the 2018 Bath Flash Fiction International Novella-in-Flash competition, and the novel Watching TV with the Red Chinese, made into an independent film in 2012. His most recent novel, The Connor Project, came out in 2022. Luke’s work has been published in over 50 different journals and anthologies, with three appearances in New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best, and three of his stories have made the Best American Short Stories Distinguished Stories list. He is Emeritus Professor of English at East Carolina University, where he was a three-time recipient of the department’s Excellence in Teaching Award.
Kim Wright is the author of five novels—Love in Mid Air, The Unexpected Waltz, The Canterbury Sisters, Last Ride to Graceland, and The Longest Day of the Year. She is also an experienced nonfiction writer who has won awards in the field of food and travel writing. She teaches in Charlotte Lit’s Authors Lab, as well as at other regional programs including the Flatiron Writers Room in Asheville. As the Story Doctor she specializes in the developmental editing of novels.
Charlotte Lit Faculty & Guests Through the Years
Poets Laureate
United States: Joy Harjo (4X4CLT), Ada Limón, Tracy K. Smith (4X4CLT)
North Carolina: Joseph Bathanti, Jaki Shelton Green, Shelby Stephenson
Charlotte: Junious “Jay” Ward
Other States & Cities: Linda Pastan (Maryland), Beth Ann Fennelly (Mississippi), Chelsea Rathburn (Georgia), Laure-Anne Bosselaar (Santa Barbara, CA), Angelo Geter (Rock Hill, SC)
Anthony S. “Tony” Abbott, John Amen, Catherine Anderson, Umayal Annamalai, Sarah Archer, Tina Barr, Sandra Beasley, Jan Beatty, Erin Belieu, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Nickole Brown, Shelia A. Bumgarner, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Tara Campbell, Wiley Cash, Bryn Chancellor, Jennifer Chang, Chen Chen, Erin Rose Coffin, Morri Creech, Sarah Creech, Tracy Curtis, Axel Dahlberg, Tyree Daye, Abigail DeWitt, Melissa Febos, Julie Funderburk, Richard Garcia, Judy Goldman, Patrice Gopo, Ashley Harris, Robin Hemley, David Hicks, Stephanie Elizondo Griest, Maureen Ryan Griffin, Christine Hale, Jennifer Halls, Lola Haskins, Cathy Hasty, Terrance Hayes, Jodi Helmer, Racquel Henry, Dustin M. Hoffman, Irene Blair Honeycutt, George Hovis, Jenny Hubbard, Charles Israel, Jr., Kathy Izard, Jessica Jacobs, A. Van Jordan, Surabhi Kaushik, Tarik Kiley, Karon Luddy, Maurice Manning, Paula Martinac, James May, Rebecca McClanahan, Meghan Modafferi, Zeba Mehdi, Heather Newton, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Randon Billings Noble, Matthew Olzmann, Cecily Parks, Amy Paturel, Gail Peck, Malin Pereira, Tracey Perez, Jessica Peterson, Cathy Pickens, Diana Pinckney, Jaime Pollard-Smith, David Poston, Rick Pryll, David Radavich, Ron Rash, Megan Rich, Emily Sage, C. T. Salazar, Kathryn Schwille, Martin Settle, Sam Shapiro, Kristin Donnalley Sherman, Melinda Sherman, Larry Sorkin, Jyotsna Srikant, Gilda Morina Syverson, Jeffrey Thomson, Tommy Tomlinson, Paul Tran, Landis Wade, Elizabeth West, Luke Whisnant, Timothy Winkler, Kim Wright
