Damon DiMarco (CLA; creative non-fiction) is the author of several books including Tower Stories: an Oral History of 9/11, featuring a foreword by Tom Kean, Chairman of the Independent 9/11 Commission; The Actor’s Art & Craft with William Esper, featuring a foreword by Pulitzer Prize winner, David Mamet; My Two Chinas: The Memoir of a Chinese Counterrevolutionary with Tang Baiqiao, featuring a foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Damon has been a guest on national television and radio (FOX, CNN, The National Geographic Channel, the Premiere Radio Network, etc.), as well as a guest speaker at colleges, universities, and community groups across the country. A professional actor as well as a writer, Damon has appeared in primetime and daytime television programs on CBS, ABC, and NBC; commercials; independent films; regional theatres; and trade shows. He has written scripts for the stage, television, and screen, and taught acting on the faculties of Drew University in Madison, New Jersey, and the New York Film Academy in Manhattan. In the spring 2012 semester, he initiated the Public Humanities Writing Workshop in the CSGS’s Ph.D. program, History and Culture. 

Lecture: "The Art of Slaughtering Darlings or To Write is a Joy and To Edit: Divine."
Workshop: "More for Less: Condensing Your Prose for Maximum Power"

Tom Fowler (CLA; journalism) is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal based in Houston, where he writes about the energy industry. Prior to the Journal he was a business reporter for the Houston Chronicle, covering topics ranging from the rise of wind power to the downfall of Enron and the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. He’s walked the tightrope between ‘hard news’ and blogging by launching the Chronicle’s FuelFix site, learned a thing or two about oil traders with fetishes for old cars and reality TV stars, and can tell you why shooting wild animals from a helicopter is a bad idea. Tom has also held jobs as a sports writer, education reporter, an advertising copywriter, glorified typist and incinerator repairman. He lives in Houston with his wife, Clara Schaeffer Fowler (CLA) and two daughters.

Lecture: “Clicky-Buzzy-Newsy: Walking the Tightrope Between Print and the Web for News Reporting.”
Workshop: “Deadline: Making Order Out of Disaster at 40 Words Per Minute”

William Giraldi (CLA; fiction) is the author of a novel, Busy Monsters, published by W.W. Norton (2011). He teaches at Boston University, is Senior Fiction Editor for the journal AGNI, and is a regular contributor to The New York Times Book Review. He has been a finalist for a National Magazine Award in the category of Essays and Criticism, and has been a recipient of a Pushcart Prize. His nonfiction and fiction have appeared in The Daily Beast, Georgia Review, Bookforum, Salon, Southern Review, The Believer, Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, Yale Review, The American Scholar, The New Criterion, Salmagundi, and The Wall Street Journal, among others. Twice his work has been listed among “Most Notable Essays” in Best American Essays.

Lecture: “From Darkness to Light: Where Comedy and Tragic Collide in Fiction”
Workshop: “Two Faces: Laughing and Crying in Your Fiction”

Kathryn Grant (CSGS; drama) won the 2011 citation from the American Theater Critics Association for best American play produced outside of New York City.  The play, The Good Counselor, was a revised version of the play she submitted as her creative dissertation at Drew University.  She has also received the Premiere Stages Festival Award,  the Jerry Kaufman Award in Playwriting and the Berilla Kerr Award.  Her plays have been presented at  at the Actors Studio, Penguin Repertory Theater, the John Houseman Studio Theater, Ensemble Studio Theater, Provincetown Repertory and the Abingdon Theater.   Her most recent play, Handicapped People in Their Formal Attire, was an adaptation of a short story she conceived in Robert Ready’s fiction writing class.  It was recently presented at the Actors Studio.  She teaches writing for performance and acting at St. Francis College in Brooklyn and Drew University.

Lecture: “How Stanley Kowalski Can Make You a Better Writer”
Workshop: “Everything You Know is Wrong:  How Improv Can Make You a Richer, Better Looking, Wildly Prolific Writer” 

Laura Winters (CLA, CSGS; memoir) is Professor of English at The College of Saint Elizabeth, where she has taught since 1982.  She served as chairperson of the Department of English there for twelve years.  She has taught creative writing, literature, and film in the Caspersen School of Graduate Studies at Drew University since 1991.  She is the author of Willa Cather: Landscape and Exile, as well as essays on American literature.  Her areas of interest include twentieth- and twenty-first century literature, creative writing, film, and the literature of grief.

Lecture: "Humiliations of the False Self: The Sources and Contexts of Memoir"
Workshop: "What Is There About Us Always: The Home Place and Memory"