Our Leaders

Cheryl Buchanan

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 college 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 and serves as Editor of Writers Without Margins: A Journal of Poetry and Prose

Arthur Stratusfier Williams

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.

Brynne O’Hare

Brynne O’Hare is a teenage writer from Chicago, Illinois. She is Writers Without Margins first youth advocate. Through her D181 KIDS Grant she received and her work with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline You Matter Blog, she aims to inspire healing and destigmatization through writing. She has been published many times, most recently in Ms. Magazine as a featured youth columnist. Brynne focuses on creating change through literature, and is involved in a climate change panel and works with the Youth Civics Initiative. She hopes to pursue a career in justice and public service. Brynne enjoys competitive swimming, water polo, travelling, and participating in her local youth group. She has been a board member since 2019.

Caitlin McGill

Caitlin McGill’s work appears in Blackbird, The Chattahoochee Review, Indiana Review, Iron Horse, The Los Angeles Review, McSweeney’s, and other publications. She is a finalist for the 2021 Chautauqua Janus Prize, and winner of the 2020 Indiana Review Creative Nonfiction Prize and the 2014 Crab Orchard Review Rafael Torch Nonfiction Award. She has been a writer-in-residence at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Newnan ArtRez, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and is a 2016 St. Botolph Emerging Artist Award winner. She has also received scholarships and grants from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Emerson College, and the Somerville Arts Council. She’s writing a Miami-based, coming-of-age memoir about hiding the truth, for six years, about her abusive, drug-addled relationship with an older man and his tenuous tether to reality. One essay from her book was named a Notable in The Best American Essays 2016. You can find her on Twitter @caitlindmcgill, or at caitlinmcgill.com.

Caitlin Thornbrugh

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.

Eli Elster

Emily Duggan

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.

Evan Jymaal Cutts

Evan J. Cutts is a 25-year-old Boston-native, poet, writer, MFA Candidate, and Chancellor’s MFA Mentors Fellow at Rutgers University – Newark. Evan was a member of the Emerson College 2017 CUPSI Team and 2017 National Poetry Slam “Last Chance Slam” Team.  His poetry navigates Blackness, locality, mythology, and magic. His poetry is published or forthcoming in Apogee Journal, Jabberwock Review, Juked, The Offing, Lumina Journal, Wildness, and others.

Faith Breisblatt

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.

Kate Romain

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.

Kelsey Day Marlett

Kelsey Day Marlett is a writer, environmental activist, and mental health advocate from southern Appalachia. Her work is urgent, timely, and relentlessly vulnerable, and has been published in literary journals such as Stork Magazine, Catfish Creek Literary, and Our Shared Memory Collective. She is a recipient of the University of Chicago’s Young Memory Fellowship and is an honors student at Emerson College. She works with women from across the globe with the International Women’s Writing Guild, is a staff writer for Two Story Melody, and serves as the Head Poetry Editor for the Emerson Review.

Kevin McLellan

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/.

Massiel Torres

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.

Math Love 101

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.

Maya Doig-Acuña

Megan Li

Megan Li is a high school junior at the Boston Latin School. In middle school, she co-founded Learning Transfers, a non-profit organization tutoring students in the Greater Boston Area. Since then, she has worked at 826 Boston to facilitate writing workshops for Boston youth and been elected as a Neighborhood Liaison for the Boston Mayor’s Youth Council, helping to increase youth civic engagement. Megan writes poetry and has attended the Iowa Young Writers Studio. Her poetry has also been published in numerous literary magazines and received a national Silver Key from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. Furthermore, Megan was co-author of her first self-published children’s book, Henry and Cleopatra, in sixth grade, and self-published a collection of writing, Stepping Stones, as well. Outside of writing, her other interests include politics, crew, ornithology, singing, and hanging out with her two cats, River and Flock.

Olivia Kate Cerrone

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.

Skoot Mosby

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.

Stephen Crivellaro

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. He currently operates as the non-profit’s Communications Manager, but his day to day duties include 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.

Taylor Johnson

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.

Toni Bee

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.

Zachary Paul

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, due for release in Spring 2019.

Danielle Reuter

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.

Senjuti Gayen

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.

Kerem Basoglu

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.

MiJin Cho

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.

Jennifer Badot

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.