Instructors
Meet Our Instructors
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Barbara Apoian
has had a home in Delaware County since 1962 and became a member of WIM when she moved to Roxbury permanently in 1994. As an active member of WIM since 1996, Barbara chairs the Teachers’ Committee. She was a travel writer and coordinator in London, Paris and New York, as well as a public relations/publicity writer in the field of Architecture and Interior Design in New York City. Barbara studied Creative Fiction Writing at NYU and for the past twelve years has taught the Critics Corner Class and recently added a Journaling to Memoir workshop. She is also the co-editor of the WIM publications, “In Our Own Words” and “Out of Our Minds.” Barbara teaches Memoir in the winter months at Life Long Learning Academy, University of Southern Florida, Sarasota. In addition, she presents her “People & Places” and “Among My Souvenirs” performance/readings at various Performing Arts Centers around the country.
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Lynn Domina
is the author of two collections of poetry, Corporal Works and Framed in Silence, and the editor of a collection of essays, Poets on the Psalms. Her recent poetry appears in The Southern Review, The New England Review, Prairie Schooner, and many other periodicals. She has earned an M.F.A. in poetry from the University of Alabama and a Ph.D. in American literature from SUNY Stony Brook. Since 1997, she has lived with her family in Delhi.
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Ev Ellsworth
is a remarkable “journalist” herself, and through her sensitivity and understanding, writers can expect an encouraging environment in her workshop. Ev taught English in Northern New Jersey for many years. She served as the Director of WIM for two years and remains active with the organization. Ev has lived in Roxbury for 12 years and enjoys her life immensely, especially being with her great-grandchildren. She leads WIM’s Introductory Journal Writing classes in the Winter and in the Summer.
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Ann Epner
is a founding member of the Writers in the Mountains. She has been writing since she could put letters together to form words. Ann has taught creative writing classes and facilitated critical thinking workshops in several contexts, including vocational training programs with refugees and women on public assistance, adult basic literacy classes and as a teacher of English as a second language in Italy and Turkey.
Her published work included a monthly column for the New York Business Women’s Newspaper as well as the Catskill Guide. Those who sign up for her workshop will greatly benefit from her wisdom and experience! She currently works as the Executive Director of the Pine Hill Community Center.
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Ellen Greene-Stewart
MA, ATR-BC, LCAT is a graduate of Goddard College’s Psychology and Counseling program. She is a licensed, board certified Art Therapist, and a certified school counselor. She has been in private practice for the past nine years. She has been a member of WIM since the beginning, serving on the Board of Directors for ten years. She is the author of two non-fiction books: Kaleidoscope, which is about the uses of art therapy with dementia patients, and Superheroes Unmasked, which is about using superheroes that kids create themselves to teach them about self-esteem, teambuilding, leadership and bullying. She has published numerous articles and reviews in Activities Director’s Quarterly, the American Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, and Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association. Her development of the Wild Mind class blends awareness of the creative and writing processes so each one enhances the other.
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Jennifer Kabat
moved to Margaretville recently from London. She works as a journalist and her writing has appeared in New York Magazine, Wired, Conde Nast Traveler, The Financial Times, Vogue, The Guardian, and also Metropolis. She’s been an editor at the British style magazine The Face and men’s magazine Arena as well as the American design magazine ED. She got her MFA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia and works closely with a lauded group of young British writers including Diana Evans, Tash Aw and Richard Benson. After her MFA she taught American high school students creative writing as part of the prestigious Oxbridge summer abroad program at Cambridge University. She recently participated in the advanced fiction group and the master class in the short story at the New York State Summer Writers Institute. She is currently putting together a short story collection.
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Dorothy Kubik
is a freelance writer living in Hamden, New York. Ever since she moved to the Catskills, she has enjoyed studying and writing about local history. She has written many articles and published two books on historical subjects: A Free-Soil – A Free People: The Anti-Rent War in Delaware County, New York and West Through the Catskills: The story of the Susquehanna Turnpike. Her most recent work, The Adventures of Elbert and Leopoldina is her first book for children.
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Helane Levine-Keating
has lived in New Kingston, New York since 1989. Since 1983, she has been a professor of Literature and Creative Writing at Pace University, New York.
Having written poetry and fiction since childhood, she took her first creative writing workshop with poet Anthony Hecht as an undergraduate at the University of Rochester. After receiving a PhD in Comparative Literature at New York University, where she studied with critic and poet M. L. Rosenthal and semiotician and novelist Umberto Eco, she studied poetry and fiction with Toby Olson, Edward Field, Sharon Olds, Galway Kinnell, and Richard Howard. Since 1971 her poetry has appeared in The New York Quarterly, The Malahat Review, Heresies, Central Park, and Graham House Review, and other journals; thirteen of her poems appear in Women and Stepfamilies: Voices of Anger and Love (Maglin and Schneidewind, eds., Temple University Press, 1988) as well as other anthologies. The recipient of several poetry prizes, she has given numerous poetry and fiction readings in the New York metropolitan area and upstate. Levine-Keating’s other writings include book reviews and scholarly articles on myth and poetry, and she is the co-author, with Walter Levy, of Lives Through Literature: A Thematic Anthology, 3e (Prentice Hall 2001). She is presently completing a novel, Nights of the Black Moon, the story of a labyrinthine female odyssey, and is working on a new collection of poems, Fractal Landscapes. Also a photographer, Levine-Keating is a member of the Longyear Gallery, Margaretville, and her work has appeared in Longyear shows and recent shows sponsored by the Roxbury Arts Group.
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Carol Little
holds a Master’s degree in Counseling, and is a clinical member of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. She has extensive experience working with groups, and with the use of writing for personal expression. Before returning to this area in 1994, she had a private practice in Santa Rosa, and Mill Valley, California, and taught graduate students at J.F. Kennedy University, Orinda, CA. She continues with a private practice, and has written numerous columns on topics related to emotional well-being.
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Bethany Lyttle
holds an MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts. A recipient of several literary scholarships, honors and awards, her teaching experience includes adjunct work at Columbia University and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. In addition, she has mentored private students and served as both a freelance writer and editor since 1995. She lives in Brooklyn and Roxbury.
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Philip Potak
a member of Dramatists Guild, has had productions at a number of theaters in New York, including The Producers Club, Circle Repertory Company, Polaris Theater North, H.O.M.E. for Contemporary Theater & Arts, and the Samuel French Annual One-Act Play Festivals. His most recent New York productions were NO ONE’S HOME and THINNESS OF BLOOD, presented at 13th Street Repertory Company. He has had productions at Albany University, Adelphi University, SUNY Cobleskill, and University of Nevada, Las Vegas. LIES WITHIN THE SILENCE, a play about high school students, merited his second Individual Artist Grant from the New York State Council on the Arts and was produced by a number of high schools upstate New York and on Long Island. He has been commissioned to write for Open Eye Theater, Adelphi University, and NYPA and to write a play for the Town of Jefferson, Schoharie County, New York celebrating its bicentennial. ANOTHER SATURDAY NIGHT AT CAFÉ BISON premiered in 2004 at Actors Anonymous Theatre Company in Buffalo, New York. His plays have been presented at numerous regional theaters including Colonial Little Theater, Depot Lane Theater, as well as many clubs, Arts Councils, Community Theaters, colleges and performance spaces throughout the states. His plays include MY SKY BLUE, INCOMPLETE STRANGERS, THE FIFTH SEASON, THE BACK ROOM, SAFE HARBOR, FERN & OLDIE, and numerous short plays. WHAT COMES AROUND is his newest full length play. Mr. Potak directed his one act play, “Worn Wooden Benches,” for the Theatre Project of Schoharie County in January 2009. In March 2009, Colonial Little Theater in Johnstown, NY presented a staged reading of his full length play CROSSING THE BLUE LINE.
After receiving his B.F.A. and Master’s of Arts in Theater Education from Adelphi University, Mr. Potak went on to write, act, direct and wait on tables in New York. After moving upstate, he has directed many of his plays at the Depot Lane Theatre. He has been the recipient of many grants from the NYS Council on the Arts to write and direct, including its inaugural Individual Artist Grant.
Mr. Potak directed both “Incomplete Strangers” and “The Fifth Season” for the Schoharie Theatre Project in April 2010.
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Bethany Saltman
received her MFA in poetry from Brooklyn College, where Allen Ginsberg was her advisor, in 1992. She has published poems in many national journals such as Witness, Nimrod, New York Quarterly, and Spoon River, and her non-fiction appears in many national magazines, such as The Sun and Buddhadharma, and in a monthly column in our very own regional, Chronogram. In addition to being an award-winning editor, Bethany has been teaching writing since 1992 to high school students, college students, graduate students, and “disadvantaged” inner-city girls. Her many years as a Zen student inform her teaching style, creating an intuitive and very beginner-friendly approach. You can visit her web site at www.bethanysaltman.com.
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Barry Seiler
is the author of four volumes of poetry. His most recent book, Frozen Falls, published in 2001 by the University of Akron Press, was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize. He has received three grants from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, including being named Distinguished Artist in Poetry. He has also received a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Among his other awards and prizes are the Ann Stanford Poetry Prize of the University of Southern California and the Capricorn Poetry Prize. Until recently he taught in the English Department of Rutgers University, Newark where he also directed the Rutgers University Newark New Jersey High School Poetry Contest. He is an editor of American Book Review. He lives very happily in Roxbury, New York with his cats Cooper, Cody, Conrad, and Cornell; his cockatiel Bella, and his wife Dian.
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Melora Wolff
is an essayist and prose poet whose work appears regularly in journals and anthologies, most recently in The Best American Fantasy 2007 (June), The Southern Review, Green Mountains Review, The Chronicle Review, Cimarron Review, Fugue and West Branch. She has taught creative writing in colleges and for arts organizations for the past 17 years, including her three years at WIM. Currently, she teaches nonfiction and poetry at Skidmore College, where she is a full-time lecturer in English. She is the recipient of an Artists’ Fellowship in Nonfiction Literature from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Philip Roth Residency in Poetry awarded by the Stadler Center for Poetry at Bucknell University.
