WritopiaLab

Rebecca Wallace-Segall
Executive Director, Writing Instructor
Rebecca @ WritopiaLab.org

Teaching History
Rebecca founded WritopiaLab in April 2007, currently directs the national organization, and teaches writing workshops in New York City and occasionally in Greenwich, CT. Rebecca has won multiple teaching awards including the 2008 National Gold Apple Teacher Award for "submitting the most outstanding group of submissions on the national level" in the Scholastic Art & Writing event. Previously, Rebecca established the creative writing program at the Abraham Joshua Heschel Middle School on the Upper West Side of Manhattan as a consultant. While she was there, the program outperformed every other school in the city (including every elite public and private institution) in Scholastic's prestigious Art & Writing Awards competition. She was awarded recognition from The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards as an "outstanding educator" in 2006 and 2007. (Writopia won Scholastic's official endorsement in 2007.) Rebecca was also nominated by students and selected to be entered into the 11th Edition of Who's Who Among American Teachers.

Rebecca has taught at SUNY Albany, New York University, The Katherine Gibbs School, and at Gotham Writers’ Workshop. In 2002, she had the pleasure of working with young writers in New York City public schools for the first time as a resident writer with the Teachers & Writers Collaborative. By 2003, she was working at the Heschel School, planting the seeds for a unique and successful creative writing program there. She also participates in the judging of several national youth writing competitions (in which her students are not involved).

Writings
Rebecca began writing for publications in 1997 as an intern at The Village Voice. Over the next ten years, she contributed five cover stories (and other pieces) to the Voice, served as Senior Editor at Psychology Today Magazine, contributed op-eds and thought pieces to The Wall Street Journal, The Huffington Post, The Nation, and New York Newsday, and contributed to dozens of other magazines and newspapers including New York Magazine, Salon.com, and Spin. She won Salon's "Best People Story of the Year Award" for "Love Labor’s Flossed" and received recognition for other pieces as well. In 1999, she became a Journalism Fellow at Brandeis University. In 2003, she entered the world of comedy writing, and began writing and performing sketch comedy around NYC. She won a “Best Sketch” competition at the Upright Citizens Brigade in 2006. A full-length comedic screenplay she co-wrote is currently being represented by The Dorothy Palmer Agency.

Sheree Renée Thomas
Science Fiction/Fantasy Writing Instructor
Sheree @ WritopiaLab.org

Sheree Renée Thomas (Sheree R. Thomas) teaches summer Science Fiction/Fantasy Workshops at Writopia Lab. Sheree was awarded the 2003 Ledig House/LEF Foundation Prize for Fiction for her novel, Bonecarver. Her anthology, Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction, from the African Diaspora won the 2001 World Fantasy Award for Year's Best Anthology and the Gold Pen Award. The volume was also honored as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, received a Washington Post Editor's "Rave," and was named an Amazon.com "Essential Book." Her second anthology, Dark Matter: Reading the Bones, was published in 2004 and won the 2005 World Fantasy Award for Year's Best Anthology. She is also co-publisher of the literary journal Anansi: Fiction of the African Diaspora, and founder of Wanganegresse Press.

There's more: Sheree has also written book reviews and articles for publications including The Washington Post Book World, VIBE, Upscale Magazine, and Black Issues Book Review. Her poetry and short stories have appeared in So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction and Fantasy (Arsenal), MOJO: Conjure Stories (Warner Books), The 2006 and 2003 Rhysling Award anthologies (Science Fiction Poetry Association), MYTHIC, STRANGE HORIZONS, storySOUTH, ROLE CALL: A Generational Anthology of Social and Political Black Literature & Art (Third World Press), BUM RUSH THE PAGE: A Def Poetry Jam (Three Rivers Press/Random House), 2001: A Science Fiction Poetry Anthology (Anamnesis), as well as Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire (NYU), Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism (Smith College), Drumvoices Revue, Obsidian III (NCSU), Voices: The Wisconsin Review of African Literatures, and Ishmael Reed's KONCH. A Cave Canem Fellow and recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, she teaches fiction at the Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center in Manhattan. Look for recent short fiction and poetry in BRONX BIANNUAL, No. 2: The Literary Journal of Urbane Urban Literature edited by Miles Marshall Lewis (Akashic Press, 2007), THE RINGING EAR: Black Poets Lean South edited by Nikky Finney (University of Georgia Press, 2007), and in COLORLINES: The National Magazine on Race and Politics (March/April 2008 and November/December 2006). Thomas is currently editing a third volume of DARK MATTER on Africa. Sheree has taught numerous teen writing workshops with as part of the Teachers & Writers Collaborative and with other New York City organizations.

Deborah Siegel, Ph.D
Writing for Newspapers & Magazines Instructor
Deborah @ WritopiaLab.org

Deborah teaches blogging and journalism writing workshops year-round at Writopia Lab. She is the author of Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) and co-editor of the literary anthology, Only Child: Writers on the Singular Joys and Solitary Sorrows of Growing Up Solo (Random House, 2007). She has also recently written op-eds and articles about contemporary families, women, and popular culture for many publications including The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Huffington Post, The American Prospect, Psychology Today, and on her blog, Girl with Pen. Deborah is co-founder of the webjournal, The Scholar & Feminist Online, which she launched while a Fellow at the Barnard Center for Research on Women in 2003. She received her doctorate in English and American Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2001. We are so excited to have Deborah with us!

Jill Santopolo
Fiction Writing Instructor
Jill @ WritopiaLab.org

Jill Santopolo leads special Long-Form Fiction Workshops at Writopia Lab. Jill is the author of the Alec Flint, Super Sleuth series, published by Scholastic Inc., which is launching in July 2008 with The Nina, The Pinta and The Vanishing Treasure. She is also a Senior Editor at HarperCollins Publishers where she edits teen novels and more. Jill earned a BA in English from Columbia University and is currently pursuing her MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults at Vermont College. You can visit her online at jillsantopolo.com.

Courtney Zoffness
Fiction and Memoir Writing Instructor
Courtney @ WritopiaLab.org

Courtney Zoffness teaches fiction and memoir workshops year-round at Writopia Lab. Courtney also teaches undergraduate and graduate creative writing at the University of Pennsylvania. A former journalist who served as Managing Editor of the United-Nations-sponsored Earth Times, Zoffness went on to receive two graduate degrees in fiction: an MA from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University, where she held a Teaching Fellowship, and an MFA in fiction from the University of Arizona, where she received the Minnie M. Torrance Scholarship in Creative Writing and the UA Foundation Award. Her fiction has appeared in several journals and anthologies, including Washington Square, Tampa Review, Saint Ann’s Review, Redivider, and the international Fish Prize Stories. It was also nominated for inclusion in Best New American Voices 2007. Her nonfiction has appeared in publications that include Ladies’ Home Journal, Our Town, The Earth Times Monthly, and New York’s daily Metro. A finalist in the 2008 Danahy Fiction Prize, Zoffness has held residency fellowships at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Vermont Studio Center. She lives in Brooklyn.

Daniel Ajl Kitrosser
Playwriting and Screenwriting Instructor
Dan @ WritopiaLab.org

Daniel Ajl Kitrosser teaches screenwriting and playwrighting year-round at WritopiaLab. A graduate of NYU, his screenplays include "Old Days" directed by Matt Shapiro, starring Brad Oscar (Tony Nomination, The Producers) and Mary Beth Piel (Dawson's Creek) and "Bodybuilder Island" directed by Matthew Kliegman. Dan has been a final committee judge for the Philadelphia Young Playwrights Festival for four years (this coming summer will be his fifth) after having won the festival himself for his play "Be Here Now." (That play went on to be a finalist in Stephen Sondheim's National Playwriting Competition.) Dan was a Summer, 2007, Teaching Fellow with the Philadelphia Young Playwrights organization and is currently at work on a children's murder mystery musical. Rebecca and Dan met three years ago in an improvisational comedy class at the Upright Citizens Brigade and have been friends and collaborators ever since.

Heather Duffy-Stone
Fiction and Memoir Writing Instructor
Heather @ WritopiaLab.org

Heather Duffy-Stone teaches fiction and memoir workshops year-round at Writopia Lab. Heather has designed and taught creative writing workshops for Los Angeles public schools, upstate New York classrooms and Manhattan community centers. Heather served on the founding staff of an organization called Writegirl, Los Angeles—a mentoring and creative writing organization for teenagers, where she developed the mentoring program and taught Saturday writing workshops. She has been a Program Director for PEN USA, an international writers’ organization and an editor for react magazine for teenagers and PEN America: A Literary Journal. Her first novel, This is What I Want to Tell You, will be published by Flux in Spring 2009. Her short stories have been published in Bold Ink and Pieces of Me, collections of women’s writing. She graduated from Bard College and has an MA in School Counseling.

Rachel Ephraim
Fiction and Memoir Writing Instructor and Writopia Brooklyn Outreach Coordinator
Rachel @ WritopiaLab.org

Rachel Ephraim teaches fiction and memoir at Writopia Lab year-round and is spearheading the establishment of Writopia Brooklyn. Rachel's fiction, "Please Send a Published Copy to 101 Harris Road," has been published in the Fall 2008 edition of the Apple Valley Review. She has earned an undergraduate degree in creative writing, screenwriting, and film production at Boston University and is currently writing a young adult novel. She has worked on the PBS children's show, "Zoom," and regularly contributes articles to online publications on food, music, and nightlife. We are especially thrilled by the plethora of fun, inspiring, and useful writing exercises Rachel brings to Writopia Lab's writing workshops.

Jeremy Wallace-Segall
Director of Operations
Jeremy @ WritopiaLab.org

Jeremy Wallace-Segall is the Director of Operations for Writopia Lab. Jeremy oversees technology and back-office functions, contributes to the organizational literature, recruits new students and new schools, and does light housekeeping.

Jeremy has built and implemented databases and websites for 15 years. For the past six years he has run a consulting business, ABCDataworks, that brings database, website, and communications strategy to non-profits and socially minded corporate ventures. Jeremy spent a few years in the corporate world, but most of his work experience has been focused on making the world a better place by helping non-profit organizations manage their data collection and dissemination. Jeremy has written corporate policy documents, software documentation, branding copy for websites, tutorials, and recently published a featured article of the month on Idealware.org.