About Us
Patrick McCord, PhD: The Professor
Patrick is the Write Yourself Free workshop leader.
Patrick is a fugitive from Hollywood where he learned that his talents were more analytical than presentational. Putting his talents to work more constructively, he earned a PhD in Narratology (English) at the University of Georgia. As a college professor, he has specialized in story- and identity-cognition in film and literature Patrick was honored to win the prestigious Mitchell Marcus Award in 1991. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of The Editing Company and creator of the Write Yourself Free™ method. Read more >>
Tish Fried: The Manuscript Midwife and Director
Is the founder and President of The Editing Company and has lived in Westport for 19 years. Her collaborations have ranged from memoir to self-help to dramaturgy. She is currently working on bringing more storytelling events to Connecticut and is dedicated to supporting writers with new and unique services like The Writers’ Room. “Whether our writers are working on novels or non-fiction, listening to them tell stories and read at our Writers’ Read events is always exciting. The best stories are rooted in a personal sense of truth, and discovering that unique truth—whether it’s a based on a real experience or lives only in the imagination—shouldn’t be labor, but play.”
Contributors
Susan Bedsow Horgan: Resident Coach
Susie is co-facilitator of Write Yourself Free Women’s Writing Groups.
Susie spent twenty years in daytime television as a writer and a producer. Her career culminated in becoming Executive Producer of One Life To Live and winning an Emmy for her work as Associate Head Writer prior to becoming Executive Producer. In 2004, she became a professional co-active life coach. Available for consultations, Susie is our resident coach. www.getalifewithsusie.com
Marcia Logan: The College Essay
Marcia Logan has been a writer ever since she was ten years old and sent Random House her book about a horse that had duck legs and rabbit ears. An editor rejected it, but encouraged her to keep writing, and she did, publishing stories about everything from fires to talking gorillas to fist fights over food in the Israeli Knesset. She worked a range of newspapers and magazines including The Miami Herald, People magazine, and The Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, and won an award from the Florida Magazine Association for her investigation into a nursing home scandal. She re-located to London, Jerusalem and then Los Angeles, where she wrote and edited for California Business magazine. Next up was Washington, D.C. where she earned a master’s degree in teaching. She has taught English and writing at the high school and college levels, tutoring students along the way in the writing process.
A Westport resident for the past thirteen years, she has served as co-president of the Staples High School PTA, and has volunteered for many organizations. She currently works for the Westport Public Library, while revising her novel about college admissions in New England, inspired by the experiences of her three sons: a Kenyon College graduate, a senior at West Point and a senior at Staples High School.
Nina Sankovitch: The Book Reviewer and Resident Book Fanatic
Nina would like to set up a book swap at the Writers’ Collective. Nina read one book a day and reviewed it for 365 days. “I want to share my joy in reading and to encourage others to find in books the pleasures and knowledge and connections and inspiration that I have found all my life. I also seek knowledge through my 365 project: I’ve learned so much from all the books I’ve read and I need more. Both personally and in the world at large, I feel a little lost; what is my purpose in life, what is my place in the community, where is our country, the world, heading? And does any of this matter at all? Of course it does.” www.readallday.org
Annette Basalyga: Poetry
Annette Basalyga new book of poetry, LIFER, will be published in August. Her poems have been published in numerous journals and periodicals including Atlanta Review, Audience, Beloit Poetry Journal, Columbia: a Journal of Literature and Art, Commonweal, Compass Review, Comstock Review, Connotations, December Gargoyle, The Hollins Critic, Iconoclast, The New Orleans Poetry Review, Poetry Midwest, The Smith, Spoon River Poetry Review, Verbatim, Valparaiso Review and Windhover, and anthologized in The Borestone Mountain Poetry Awards The Denny Poems, The Palpable Clock, The Pater Yearbook of American Poetry, Arvon’s International Poetry Competition, and last fall, in Poem, Home; An Anthology of Ars Poetica. She lives in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Annette was a fellow at the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop where she received an Academy of American Poets’ Prize and an M.F.A. in poetry. She has taught at the University of Puerto Rico, in the New York City Public School System, at Penn State, Worthington campus, and as Lecturer of Distinction, Marywood University, also in Pennsylvania, Among the awards she has received are first and second poetry prizes in The Atlantic Monthly’s undergraduate poetry competition, an Individual Artist’s Grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a Duncan Lawrie Prize from the Arvon Foundation, London. She was visiting artist in SUNY Farmingdale’s Paumanok Poets Series with the responsibility of visiting classrooms and offering a public poetry reading. She was awarded first prize in the Chester H. Jones Foundation Poetry Competition judged by John Drury, Marie Ponsot, and Diane Wakoski. More recently, she was resident poet at The Island Institute in Sitka, Alaska, and guest poet in April, 2009 at The Robert Frost Poetry Festival in Key West, Florida.. She was vice president and later on the Board of Directors of Mulberry Poets in Scranton, PA, and for the Everhart Museum, also in Pennsylvania, producer of POETRY AND LIGHT, an appreciation of the sculpture of Christopher Ries.
