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

Founder / Executive Director / Facilitator

Ainslie Cromar

Facilitator

Amanda Role

Amanda is a New England native who earned her Bachelor’s degree in psychology and studio art, exploring how the arts could serve as an avenue into oneself and others. She is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor and a Registered Arts Therapist. She also spent several years in Denver, serving as an AmeriCorps member gaining clinical experience working for individuals with developmental disabilities, which lead her to pursue a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling and expressive therapy at Lesley University.  Amanda has facilitated community groups within a nonprofit serving at-risk youth, worked as a clinical coordinator at a partial hospitalization program, and clinician at a residential treatment facility for women. Ultimately, these experiences helped her develop a therapeutic lens and passion for working with marginalized populations to encourage life expression through hybrid uses of the arts.

Facilitator

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.

Facilitator

Brynne O’Hare

Brynne, age 12, is a Chicago-based writer, and currently a rising seventh grader. Through her battle with OCD, she learned the power of what creative writing can inspire and heal in a positive, supportive environment, which led her to Writers Without Margins. In May 2020, she received a 2020 D181Foundation.org KIDS Grant for her project entitled, “Writing For a Purpose,” that aims to bring teens’ writing strengths and mental health struggles together. She donated this grant to Writers Without Margins and became actively involved with the mission at that time.  Brynne, who sometimes writes as, “BEcoming12,” is excited to help others share the joy of writing, and shed light on the therapeutic side of expressing feelings through written words. In her free time, she enjoys intense competitive swimming, baking, and traveling with her family.

Youth Advocate

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.

Facilitator

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.

Facilitator

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.

Facilitator

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.

Facilitator

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.

Facilitator

Kaylee Anzick

Kaylee is a graduate of Emerson College who grew up in Frederick, Maryland. While at Emerson, they worked on staff for three literary magazines and interned at Candlewick Press and the Horn Book. They aspire to work in children’s literature and are motivated by the idea that in order to create media for young people, one needs to write alongside them. This motivation led them to pursue youth programming work in various settings, through two AmeriCorps positions and through volunteer work. Most recently, they served and now work in Roxbury at 826 Boston as Volunteer Coordinator. Looking ahead, they are excited to find ways to use their editorial, marketing, and community organizing experience to elevate marginalized voices, especially those of young people.

Facilitator

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.

Facilitator, Editor, and Publication Specialist

Kevin McLellan

Kevin McLellan is the author of Hemispheres (Fact-Simile Editions, forthcoming), Ornitheology (The Word Works, 2018), [box] (Letter [r] Press, 2016), Tributary (Barrow Street, 2015), and Round Trip (Seven Kitchens, 2010). He won the 2015 Third Coast Poetry Prize and Gival Press’ 2016 Oscar Wilde Award, and his poems appear in numerous literary journals including American Letters & Commentary, Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, Kenyon Review, West Branch, Western Humanities Review, and Witness. Kevin lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Facilitator

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.

Facilitator

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.

Facilitator

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.

Facilitator

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.

Facilitator

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.

Communications Manager & Facilitator

Susan Cheever

Susan Donnelly Cheever has worked as an English teacher in both public and private schools for many years. She is the founder of Writing Lighthouse, a tutoring business helping middle and high school students with essay writing and AP/SAT preparation. In addition, she is the Fiction/Nonfiction Book Review Editor for the Colorado Review, where she is also a contributor.

Facilitator

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.

Facilitator

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.

Facilitator

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.

Facilitator

Walden McGee

Our special guest,Walden McGee, is a trained Therapy Animal, registered with Pet Partners, a national organization dedicated to positive human-animal interventions improving the physical, emotional and psychological lives of those it serves.  According to the extensive body of research that supports Pet Partners and in alignment with our mission, interactions with animals have been shown to decrease the perception of pain, lower blood pressure, promote care compliance, and minimize anxiety.  Walden is available to attend creative writing workshops, accompanied by a certified animal handler, in schools, hospitals, retirements homes, Hospice care facilities, and a variety of complex human services settings.

Everyone's Best Friend