Who's at the table?
Before the pandemic took hold in March 2020, we met bi-weekly in restaurants near
Coolidge Corner and Fenway Park in Boston, and occasionally at the Writers’ Loft in
Sherborn, Massachusetts. We spent time catching each other up on life and writing projects,
enjoying a fantastic meal, and critiquing pages submitted. Frequently, we finished off
the evening with ice cream at J.P. Licks.
And now we meet on Zoom.
Gary Crespo
Gary’s professional work has ranged from freelance illustration, page layout, and book design to managing art and design at Houghton Mifflin and print production at EBSCO Publishing. Gary is a long-time member of SCBWI and the senior member the critique group. He writes for the Young Adult and Adult markets. While Gary has yet to win a literary award, he did win a watermelon at a county fair when he was six years old.
Gary's debut Young Adult novel, How to Ruin Your Life in 140 Characters or Less, is available now!
Erin Dionne
Erin Dionne writes picture books and humorous novels with heart for tweens. Her titles—which are very long—have been named to several state reading lists, ALA lists, and have received some nice attention. They include Models Don’t Eat Chocolate Cookies, The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet, and Moxie and the Art of Rule Breaking: A 14 Day Mystery. Her latest novel, Secrets of a Fangirl, is about how we hide what we love to impress people we don't really like. She spends an inappropriate amount of time on Facebook, is an Associate Professor at Montserrat College of Art, and lives outside of Boston with her husband, two children, and a very indignant dog.
Her nonfiction book, Bad Choices Make Good Stories: Conversations About Writing, is our inaugural publication and is available now!
Wendy M. McDonald
Wendy M. McDonald claims that, in the fourth grade, she once got in trouble for reading in class. She spent her childhood wishing she could be Turtle Wexler, Harriet M. Welsch, Meg Murry, or Lucy Pevensie.
Wendy freelances for educational publishers and pens darkish stories from the garret of her New England home. Her short stories appear in two anthologies: Chaosium’s Once Upon An Apocalypse Volume I (as Wendy Dabrowski) and FIRSTS: The Writers’ Loft Anthology, and her poetry is included in Friends and Anemones: Ocean Poems for Children. When not writing, Wendy watches science fiction, fantasy, dark comedy, and animated shows with her geeky husband, argues with her beagle, and knits socks. She is the supremely proud mom of twins who are both in art school in the Boston area.
Wendy's debut Young Adult novel, The Willow, will be released this coming August from Table for 7 Press.
Megan Mullin
Megan has wanted to be a writer since before she knew how to write, enlisting her mother to take dictation to accompany her lavish stick-figure illustrations. After learning to write for herself, she tackled everything from poetry and one-act plays to comic strips and novels—and received her Master of Arts in Creative Writing from UMass Boston along the way. She’s been a member of the writers’ group for 16 years and is currently working on an urban fantasy novel inspired by her Irish heritage and her unhealthy obsession with the movie “Jaws.”
Megan also has 20 years of experience as a professional copywriter and has been writing exclusively for a travel company for eight years. Speaking of which, when not writing, Megan loves traveling, action and fantasy movies, and staring moodily at the sea. She lives in Boston with her husband, two kids, and Teddy the golden-doodle.
Phoebe Sinclair
Among other identities, Phoebe Sinclair is a: writer, wanderer, friend, listener, bike-commuter, and community worker. She writes lyrical contemporary fiction featuring young people of color and recently sold her first novel. Voice is central to Sinclair’s work. She explores the methods through which people flourish in the margins, as well as themes of introspection, curiosity, and artistic expression. Her characters struggle with and cultivate identities that embody “both/and” rather than “either/or.”
Sinclair graduated with a BFA in Writing, Literature and Publishing from Emerson College; won the PEN New England Children’s Book Caucus Susan P. Bloom Discovery Award; and was the 2018 Ivan Gold Fellow at the Writer’s Room of Boston. Her writing practice thrives in concert with others; she’s an 18+ year member of the critique group.
Annette Trossello
After over a dozen years in the educational publishing industry where she worked her way from editorial assistant to copy editor to editor to senior editor, last year Annette stepped from behind the computer into the classroom. She is currently on haitus and working toward her Master of Education in Library Media Studies.
When she's not teaching fifth graders library media at the elementary school she works at, you can find her doing editorial freelance work, playing games with her family (she's a sore winner and a sore loser), binge watching shows on Netflix, stand up paddle boarding, reading or rereading books, and of course writing. Other favorites include both clever and cringe-worthy puns, pumpkin spice ice cream from JP Licks, and the Oxford comma. Annette joined the group in 2009 and is interested in screenwriting and romantic comedies. Her current project is a screenplay about the people we lose, the walls we build, and who's worth breaking them down for.