Authors

Wickham Boyle

Wickham Boyle

Wickham Boyle, known as Wicki, wears many hats: journalist, writer, finance consultant and theater producer. She writes about the arts, finance, parenting and travel for The New York Times, Savoy, National Geographic, Budget Travel, and Downtown Express. She was one of the founders of CODE Magazine, and editor-in-chief of THRIVE. Her short story, “Don’t Think You’re Calling Too Much,” appeared in HSE’s Voice from the Planet. Her essays can be heard on the AARP radio stations during their Prime Time show.

Boyle was executive director of La MaMa Theater and produced over 60 shows during her tenure there. Her 2001 book, A Mother’s Essays From Ground Zero garnered excellent reviews and raised over $20,000 for schools closed downtown. It was adapted to an opera, titled CALLING: an Opera of Forgiveness. She has lived in TriBeCa since 1977 and holds an MBA from Yale University. For more info: www.wickworld.com.

Ben Mattlin

Ben Mattlin is an NPR commentator, a contributing editor at Institutional Investor magazine, and a frequent contributor to other financial and general-interest publications. His short story, “Learning to Crawl” was first published in HSE’s Voice from the Planet. His credits also include Newsweek and Self magazines, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and USA Today. Mattlin has written for the Mark Taper Forum, Blonde and Brunette Productions, and the children’s television program Biker Mice From Mars. He has appeared on ABC’s Prime Time Live, CNN, and E! Entertainment Network; been interviewed on radio stations KKFI and KPFK, Los Angeles, and KSLC, Salt Lake City; and been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, Penthouse, and USA Today.

Born in New York City in 1962, Mattlin graduated cum laude from Harvard University in 1984. He lives with his wife, two daughters, and a cat in Los Angeles.

Maria Pavlova

Maria Pavlova was born in the second largest city in Bulgaria, Plovdiv. Her short story, “The Fire Dancer,” was first published in HSE’s Voice from the Planet. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been published in Cezanne’s Carrot, Forge, Yellow Medicine Review, and Etchings. She has a degree in Slavic studies and has worked as a journalist for various Bulgarian newspapers. Maria writes essays, poetry, short stories, and novelettes, some of which have been published in the press. When she started working on her first novel, The Rival, Maria took a leave of absence so she could concentrate on the process of writing. The novel tells the story of a blind girl who simultaneously discovers love, life and the feeling for colors.

Maria works as a graphic designer and is finishing her second novel, The Dual Life of a Witch. Maria is married and has one daughter. 

Paula Brancato

Paula Brancato is an award-winning fiction writer, poet and filmmaker, and is on faculty at the University of Southern California. Paula was a May Swenson and Holland Prize finalist and has won the Robinson Jeffers Tor House Prize for Poetry, the Brushfire Poet Award, first prize Chester H. Jones Foundation, the Karlovy Vary film festival award, National Screenwriters Award, Pacific Northwest Writers Association and the Organization of Black Screenwriters, SCIFF Family Focus and WINFEMME awards. She has been a Sundance finalist twice. Paula has been published in HSE’s Voice from the Planet, Mudfish, Georgetown Review, Litchfield Review, Southern California Anthology, Rattle, and Natchez Anthology, among others.

Finishing Line Press published her second chapbook Painting Cities in  2010. Poet Ilya Kaminsky selected Paula’s first chapbook, Dar a Luz, for publication by the Pacific Reveiw. Paula has studied with poets Mary Stewart Hammond, Jill Hoffman and Philip Schultz in NY. She earned her MBA from Harvard Business School and is a graduate of the Los Angeles Film School and Hunter College.

Tom Dolembo

Tom Dolembo, Harvard ’67 English cum laude, MBA ’71, David McCord writing scholar. An excerpt of his novel The Grapes and the Fox appears in HSE’s Above Ground anthology. Tom lives on a farm and bird sanctuary in the village of Kewadin in Northwest Michigan. A native Hoosier born in Michigan City, Indiana, he is the author of numerous tracts, novels, poems, and articles. He can be found near lakes, rivers, streams, and low marshy places often looking for wildlife who are effortlessly avoiding him. His recent writing projects have included an enormous Civil War Trilogy, a shorter book of children’s poems, and filler articles for rural newspapers on raising chickens and astronomy.

His occupation varies with the season and need. Tom is a persistent vehicle driver, farmer, cook, photographer, security consultant for major universities, disaster consultant, former manufacturer of mechanical widgets and complex medical devices, and former due diligence investment company managing director.

Stan Duncan

Stan G. Duncan (HDS, ‘90) has published a book on human rights in El Salvador, four books on economic development in the Third World, and a collection of devotional writings, plus numerous articles, essays, and National Public Radio commentaries. An excerpt of his first work of fiction—a novella written for his collection of short fiction, The Fire on Poteau Mountain—appears in HSE’s Above Ground. Stan is a Huffington Post blogger and has worked as a protestant pastor, campus minister, college instructor, jazz pianist, and development economist. He has lived in five states and six countries and speaks broken English in three languages. He has three children and four grandchildren.

Charity Shumway

Charity Shumway’s writing has appeared in HSE’s Above Ground anthology, Glamour, Oregon Coast Magazine, on glamour.com, LadiesHomeJournal.com, FitnessMagazine.com, SocialWorkout.com, Soon Quarterly, and Slice Magazine. She has held jobs as a speechwriter, lawn care expert, night janitor, LSAT tutor, tuxedo shop girl, farm worker, restaurant hostess, and reader for the blind. She grew up in Centerville, Utah and lives in Brooklyn. Charity holds an MFA in creative writing from Oregon State University and a BA in English from Harvard University. She’s a graduate of the Columbia Publishing Course and has a certificate in horticulture from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

Geoffrey Fox

Geoffrey Fox’s story “On a Page from Rilke” appears in HSE’s Above Ground anthology. He has published a novel and many stories including the short-story collection Welcome to My Contri. His nonfiction books include Hispanic Nation: Culture, Politics and the Constructing of Identity (U. Arizona Press); The Land and People of Argentina (HarperCollins); The Land and People of Venezuela (HarperCollins); Working Class Émigrés from Cuba (Ph.D. dissertation and book); and Gabriel García Márquez’s 100 Years of Solitude (Monarch Notes).

Born in Chicago, Geoffrey graduated from Harvard in 1963, and then worked in Venezuela and elsewhere in Latin America as a community developer and researcher/writer. He earned a Ph.D. in sociology, Northwestern University, 1975, and taught at universities in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Since September 2006. He advises his Venezuelan colleague and alter ego Baltasar Lotroyo on his fiction in Spanish and lives in Spain with his compañera, Argentine-born architect Susana.

Maya Levantini

Maya Levantini

Maya Levantini was born and raised in Bucharest, Romania. She is the author of several short stories and has completed two novel manuscripts, The Naked and the Nude and The Ideology of Love, excerpted in the Above Ground anthology. The novel examines the last year of Nicolae Ceausescu’s reign in Romania through the eyes of a woman drawn into the entrails of a plot to topple the dictator.

After a brief stay in Strasbourg, France she relocated to the United States. She currently lives in Pittsburgh, PA where she practices the challenging art of daily living.

Alan Swyer

Alan Swyer

Alan is an award-winning filmmaker whose recent documentaries have dealt with Eastern spirituality in the Western world, the criminal justice system, diabetes, and boxing www.elboxeothemovie.com. His fiction has appeared in Irish, English, German, Indian, and American publications. He teaches screenwriting at Chapman University. He received the Imagen Award (2009) for “Beisbol” — best feature-length documentary; the Golden Microphone Award for “Diabetes: Challenges & Breakthroughs” — best documentary; Multiple festival awards for “Spiritual Revolution.”

Jonathan Facelli

A native Ohioan, Jonathan Facelli received a BA from Ohio State and a JD from Harvard Law School. He spent a year in Argentina, working as a volunteer in the slums of Buenos Aires and writing in his spare time. His short story, “La Criada’s Guide to Stain Removal” first appeared in HSE’s Above Ground. He is currently putting the finishing touches on a travel memoir, excerpts of which have been published, and is also working on a novel. Since returning from Argentina, Facelli’s work has appeared in the Humanist, Haruah, South American Explorers Magazine, and BiblioFiles, and is slated to appear in the book Global Issues: Local Perspectives.

Jorge Contreras

Jorge Contreras collects and writes about nineteenth-century art and literature. He won the prestigious Pre-Raphaelite Society’s John Pickard Essay Prize for his essay “The Best of the Brethren.”  His story “The Widow Interview” was first published in Above Ground. His regular column “Works and Days” appears in the Review of the Pre-Raphaelite Society, and his short story “The Enduring Specimen” appeared in the May 2009 issue of the Historical Novel Society’s magazine Solander. He also occasionally practices and writes about law.

Jorge was born in New York, grew up in south Florida and Texas, and has since lived in Boston, London, Mexico City and, most recently, Washington, DC.