Founder / Facilitator

Cheryl Buchanan is an attorney who learned the power of storytelling and silence-breaking when she worked for a decade on over 500 cases of childhood sexual abuse in Los Angeles. She has taught in a wide range of university and college classrooms, from law school to undergraduate Communication Studies and Creative Writing, as well as written for a variety of audiences from academic texts to network television. She earned her MFA at Emerson College. Cheryl has been the recipient of the Academy of American Poets Prize, the Boston Mayor’s Poetry Prize and the Naugatuck River Review Narrative Poetry Award as well as nominated for a 2016 Pushcart Prize and twice for Best New Poets. She was the recipient of the 2018 National Association for Poetry Therapy’s Social Justice Award. In 2022, she co-produced, In Their Shoes: Unheard Stories of Reentry & Recovery, available on major streaming platforms, and she currently serves as editor of Writers Without Margins: A Journal of Poetry and Prose

Facilitator

Amanda is a New England native with a personal and professional passion for exploring how the arts can serve as an avenue for healing, restoration, and personal enlightenment. She is a licensed mental health counselor and registered art therapist, trained and experienced in trauma-informed care and expressive arts therapy. Her philosophy is rooted in self-empowerment, curiosity, and aligning to values. She works from a place of honoring one's lived experiences, humanity, and capacity for change. Amanda has facilitated community groups within nonprofit settings, partial hospitalization and residential programs, shelters, and school-based environments. She is honored to connect, learn from, and witness transformative growth in others as part of her work.

Facilitator

Stratusfier is a soul-traveling artist that uses rap and poetry to condense light after exploring his own darkness. His work embraces his Bipolar Disorder and ADHD as a lens to capture the world and acknowledge his experience in it from a neurodivergent perspective. His work is featured in Boston’s Mayor’s Poetry Program Selections for 2021. He has been the featured poet at Stone Soup Poetry and Untitled Open Mic. His work has been published in Oddball Magazine, the Journal Writers Without Margins Volume VI: The Unlocked Edition, and the Journal F(r)iction #19: Arcana. His collection of self-published work can be found on the platform Vocal. Follow him on Instagram @thestratusfier or on Facebook as Arthur Stratusfier Williams.

Facilitator

Caitlin Thornbrugh is a writer and workshop facilitator originally from Kansas City. Her work has appeared in Parcel Literary Journal, The Paper Napkin,Portel del Sol, and Honest Noise, among others. Her piece, “Ahuacatl Agovago, Avocado: The Corrupt Alligator Pear” was a 2014 Notable Best American Essay. She has received support for her writing from The Vermont Studio Center, Dickinson House-Belgium, and was a 2011 Lambda Literary Fellow in creative nonfiction. Caitlin is passionate about her work in the Boston community. She teaches at Northeastern University and volunteers for an organization that brings women closer to nature: the Wilderness Heals-Elizabeth Stone House pledge hike, which raises funds for a domestic violence shelter in Roxbury, MA.  She is currently at work on a book of creative nonfiction about the disputed Owyhee Canyonlands in Eastern Oregon and their connection to her home rivers, the Kaw and the Muddy Mo.

Facilitator

Danielle Reuter is an educator and artist who specializes in using her art to document, communicate, express, and reflect human behavior. Her paintings and photography have been shown in various arts alliances in Hartford, Boston, and Cambridge, and she has been awarded Early Childhood Literacy Grants to present the varied benefits of photography in the classroom. Through mixed media and trust, Danielle helps unveil the beautiful essence that lives in all of us– evoking emotional shape and articulation, and making artists of the greatest skeptics. Most importantly, she lives and breathes and cries and laughs and hopes, desperate to remind everyone of humanity. Danielle has raised two young men who continue to impress, challenge, and fill her with infinite joy and pride. She is now illustrating a collection of the countless stories of silliness and happiness shared with her boys.

Facilitator

Eli is a writer, scholar, and scientist from Walnut Creek, California. He graduated summa cum laude from UC Davis in 2022, where he received several awards for his leadership, service, writing, and research. As an undergraduate, he served as the Editor-in-chief for the premier literary magazine at UC Davis, Open Ceilings, taught creative writing workshops at low-income K-12 schools and detention centers, designed and piloted an introductory neuroscience curriculum in Sacramento high schools, and investigated the nature of causal reasoning and memory at the UC Davis Center for Neuroscience, among other roles and projects. He is now the Project Manager for Boston University’s Child Cognition Lab, where he leads a multi-year effort to design an evolution curriculum for elementary schoolers. He is currently working on a book detailing our relationship and understanding of non-human primates throughout history.

Facilitator

Emily (they/she) is interested in work (and play!) at the intersection of entertainment, education, poetry/creative writing, the expressive arts, and individual and community healing. In addition to facilitating with Writers Without Margins, they are an actor-educator with Deana’s Educational Theater and ghost-tour guide in downtown Boston. In the past, they performed as a/n: ensemble member Chicago’s Green Mill; writer/performer with Riot X and Riot Improv in Roslindale, and; regular with the Boston Poetry Slam at the Cantab Lounge.

Facilitator

Faith Breisblatt is a social worker and writer who received her masters in social work from Boston University. She currently serves as the Clinical Director at Step By Step Supportive Services, a non-profit organization which supports adults with mental health diagnoses to live independently and reach their goals. She also is in private practice. She has facilitated many types of groups across a variety of settings including creative writing, poetry, expressive arts, photovoice, sobriety and peer support, self-esteem building, and interpersonal skills groups. Faith has also been a creative writing instructor at Brookline Adult Education. Her poetry can be seen in Unlost Journal, Found Poetry Review, Scripting Change, Toe Good Poetry, Boston Poetry Magazine, and elsewhere.

Facilitator

Jennifer Badot is the author of A Violet, A Jennifer (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2022). Her poems and reviews have appeared in the Boston Globe, the Boston Phoenix Literary Supplement, Studia Mystica, the Lily Poetry Review, the Poetry is Bread Anthology (forthcoming), and elsewhere. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Badot lives in Somerville with her plant, animal, and human family.

Facilitator

Kate Romain is an Anglo-American writer whose work has been published in Hinterland Magazine, The Closed Eye Open, and UEA Creative Writing Nonfiction Anthology 2018. Her writing is earnest and voice driven, often focusing on coming of age themes. In 2018 she earned her Master’s degree from the University of East Anglia. Outside of writing she paints portraiture, sings barbershop, and works in healthcare administration and communications. She believes wholeheartedly in the healing powers of art.

Facilitator

Kerem Basoglu is an undergraduate pre-med student at Northeastern University pursuing a Bachelor’s of Science in Behavioral Neuroscience. His extracurricular writing journey began when he won the Vermont Young Playwrights competition in 2017 and had his screenplay “Bedtime” performed at the Flynn Center for Performing Arts in Burlington, Vermont. Now mostly a writer of research articles, as well as a lover of human stories, Kerem is interested in working with disparaged and underrepresented populations to make them feel heard. Also a believer in wholistic healthcare, he hopes that his involved time spent with patients will have benefits to their healthcare experience both psychologically and biologically. Kerem hopes to pursue his medical degree after graduation and has interests in the fields of neurology, cardiology, and psychiatry. Outside of class, he can often be found somewhere deep in the mountains of his home state Vermont.

Facilitator

Kevin McLellan is the author of: the forthcoming full-length poetry collection, in other words you/ (2022 Hilary Tham Capital Collection winner judged by Timothy Liu); the book object Hemispheres (which resides in the Poetry Center at the University of Arizona and other special collections); the full-length poetry collection Ornitheology (2019 Massachusetts Book Awards recipient); the book object [box] (which resides in the Blue Star Collection at Harvard University and other special collections); the full-length poetry collection Tributary; and the chapbook, Round Trip. Kevin makes videos under the name, Duck Hunting with the Grammarian, and his video Dick won Best Short Form Short at the LGBTQ+ Los Angeles Film Festival and it also showed in the Flickers’ Rhode Island Film Festival, the Tag! Queer Film Festival, the Berlin Short Film Festival, and the Vancouver Queer Film Festival. Kevin received a CAMIT grant for Wojnarowicz in Cambridge, a series of photographic portraits, which are on exhibition at MIT’s Rotch Library Gallery from September 14, 2022 until October 26, 2022. https://kevmclellan.com/.

Facilitator

Massiel is a Dominican writer and translator residing in Jamaica Plain. Massiel has published articles for Telemundo Boston, and three short stories, “El Cazador de Ciguapas” (2014), “El Arte de La Pesca” (2016), and “El Simulacro” (2017). In March 2016, Massiel was selected by SIN News Channel as one of the seven most notable Dominican women under 25. The committee sited her literacy activism and critiques of urban Dominican culture through her blog “Yo Soy Bau.” In August 2016, Massiel received an award from Mayor Walsh and the city of Boston for her leadership and academic excellence within the Dominican community in Boston.

Facilitator

Math Love 101, aka Mathematics, was born in Cambridge, Boston, detox holdings, halfway houses, and the state prison system. He has experienced the depths of hell, but with the application of the 12 steps and 12 jewels of life, he has been able to live in spiritual heaven, always striving for perfection, knowing progress is the goal. Math believes in the power of literature to promote awareness and understanding, even with respect to our most complex problems. He has read his poetry at the National Poetry Month Festival at the Boston Public Library and at Faneuil Hall’s widely publicized demonstration to protest the namesake’s ties to slavery. He has conducted workshops at the Boston Book Festival and hosted the Writers Without Margins  Annual Contributor’s Reading at the Old South Church for several years. Putting family, others, and spiritual choices first has given him a second chance at life.

Facilitator

Maya Doig-Acuña is a writer, a born-and-raised Brooklynite, and a PhD candidate in African & African American Studies at Harvard University. She writes about Black diaspora, family history, and migratory narratives in the Circum-Caribbean world. Her dissertation draws on Black feminist methods to examine Afro-Caribbean community memory and everyday life in 20th century Panama and New York City. You can find their published writing in Southern Cultures Journal, Remezcla, Guernica, and Lampblack Magazine. She currently lives in the Boston area.

Facilitator

MiJin Cho is a current medical student at Harvard with a background in English (B.A.) and creative non-fiction writing. For the past 5 years, she has led and facilitated multiple writing workshop programs, including in Richmond’s incarceration and addiction recovery homes and in Boston’s Nashua Street Jail. Her work has been awarded literary and social justice grants from the National Collegiate Honors Council, Phi Kappa Phi, and Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Law, Education & Justice. MiJin is committed to exploring the intersection of medicine and the arts through storytelling. She believes that such exploration aims to build empathy: the recognition of the hidden points of tension, subtext, and imagery within another person’s expressed and internalized language.

Facilitator

Olivia Kate Cerrone is the author of The Hunger Saint, a historical novella about the child miners of Sicily. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Psychology Today, Publishers Weekly, and many other publications. She teaches creative writing workshops at GrubStreet.

Facilitator

Senjuti is a writer, scientist, and hopeful, future physician. She graduated from Williams College with degrees in Biology and English, where she was an editor-in-chief of her college’s literary magazine. Presently, she is a research technician studying topics stem cell biology. Outside of the lab, she can be found working on her novel and trying out new recipes.

Facilitator

Skoot Mosby is a heavy-hitting poet. As the Poetry Club president and the face of Roxbury Community College, he has created many successful events, such as “No Filter,” “Man vs Police,” and “What That Mouth Do.” Skoot is taking the poetry world by storm with his freestyle abilities on the mic. Skoot has featured at Rapping With The Writers, Comic-Con, Roxbury Rocks, Art is Life Itself, Hope Inc, Verbalization, Lizard Lounge, and Stone Soup. In a major addition to his features, Skoot has been a 3-time Semi-finalist and a finalist for the Lizard Lounge National Slam Team.

Facilitator

Stephen was introduced to Writers Without Margins in 2017 through one of their many creative writing workshops. After experiencing first hand the energetic and uplifting atmosphere within the organization, he quickly jumped on board and has been involved ever since. For four years, he held the role of the non-profit’s Communications Manager, with day to day duties including website management and development, graphic design related to promotional and marketing efforts, social media outreach and expansion, event coordinating, workshop facilitating, and much more. He currently is pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in the field of Computer Science.

Facilitator

Taylor is a fiction writer living in Denver/Los Angeles. He received his MFA in English & Literature with a screenwriting focus from Southern New Hampshire University. In addition to managing bars and restaurants, using his creativity to craft drink menus, he also runs a creative writing consulting service. In his free time, he enjoys reading sci-fi, fantasy, non-fiction, and poetry novels, honing his writing skills, and brushing up on older pieces of literature. Taylor has co-facilitated many workshops with Writers Without Margins and believes literature has the power to heal and the potential to change the world.

Facilitator

Thomas H. McNeely teaches literature and composition in the Honors Program at Emerson College and fiction writing in the Stanford Online Writing Studio.  He has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Wallace Stegner Program at Stanford University.  His short stories have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares, Epoch, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and other magazines and anthologies. Ghost Horse, his first novel, was published in 2014.

Facilitator

Toni Bee is a poet, educator, and freelance journalist raised in Dorchester, MA and educated in Roxbury. In 2011, she was elected Poet Populist of Cambridge, the first woman to grace that position.  She led the Black Lives Matter march of Cambridge in 2015 and the following year was selected as the city’s Poetry Ambassador. Toni has been a teaching artist for The Wang Theatre, and she is a graduate of Simmons University. 22 Again is the title of her recently published first book of poetry. Bee has featured at: Lizard Lounge, The Boston Poetry Slam, New England Poetry Club, The Boston National Poetry Month Festival, the Boston Poetry Marathon, and has been awarded by YWCA Cambridge.

Facilitator

Zachary Paul is a recovering heroin addict and convicted felon, but don’t judge a book by its cover. After being released from state prison, while in a six-month reentry program, he picked up writing and enjoys it very much as it helps him expand his mind and has been a good outlet to aid in his recovery. Zachary has also served as a Primary Trainer for New England Assisted Dog Services for people with PTSD, special needs, and disabilities; a member of Prison Voices, speaking to high school students; and a Lead Facilitator with the Correctional Recovery Academy addressing drug abuse and violence. Look for him in the documentary, In Their Shoes: Unheard Stories of Reentry and Recovery, launched on major streaming platforms in 2022.

Facilitator

Shilpa is a writer and researcher with a passion for exploring the therapeutic quality of the creative arts. A 2023 graduate of Brown University, Shilpa developed her literary foundation through courses in creative nonfiction, historical fiction, and cultural writing, with a particular focus on the Asian American experience. By day, she works as a Business Development Analyst, where she translates complex technical capabilities into compelling narratives. As a facilitator with Writers Without Margins, she hopes to develop workshop curricula that blend mindfulness practices with observational writing techniques. Her writing interests span experimental nonfiction, interview-based storytelling, oral histories, and cultural narratives. When not writing, she can be found exploring ceramics studios, testing new baking recipes, or running along the Charles River.

Facilitator

Brendan is from Springfield and has resided in different parts of Massachusetts for most of his life. He is passionate about teaching and learning. Writers as distinct as Arundhati Roy, Ernesto Sabato, Olive Schreiner, and Audre Lorde have enabled him to imagine other, and better, frameworks for building and maintaining community; and they have emboldened him to labor to construct such deep, rich, nourishing social groups wherein all members are welcomed, valued, and cared for.

Facilitator

Will earned an MFA from Emerson College, where he taught in the EmersonWRITES program for local high school students, and a BA from Middlebury College, where he received the Mike Wilson Trophy (“awarded, when merited, to the athlete, who, while overcoming personal challenge, has shown such spirit, enthusiasm, and unselfish devotion to the members of the team that it has been an inspiration in creating team morale.”). His work—professionally and creatively—is interested in how personal expression welcomes larger belonging, where joyful play builds and sustains connection. His essays have appeared in Catamaran, Tupelo Quarterly, Moon City Review, and elsewhere. He spent years doing documentary photo work (instagram.com/bostonbeings) and currently writes about what's making him laugh at: https://makegibbonslaugh.substack.com/.