Member Directory
Jess Phillips Lorenz is a playwright, essayist, and childhood cancer advocate. She has performed several original solo plays throughout New York City including Drawn about her family connection to cartoon icon Betty Boop. Jess's work has been featured in many publications including Chalkbeat, Insider, Romper, Real Simple, Parents.com, MUTHA Magazine (Pushcart nominee), and a theatre festival for babies in Northern Ireland. Most recently, her monologue, Permission, was selected for the upcoming PlayGround Experiment’s Faces of America Monologue Festival #5. In 2023, Jess was awarded a writers’ residency with The Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, Illinois and her latest play, BEST PARTY EVER! was granted a workshop production with Piper Theatre's Playwright Spotlight Series. Jess is a member of Emerging Artists Theatre, Piper Theatre, The American Childhood Cancer Organization, and Momcology. Jess lives in Brooklyn with her children, husband, and pet snail. jessphillipslorenz.com IG @playpracticenyc
Sarah Pape teaches English and works as the Managing Editor of Watershed Review at California State University, Chico. Her poetry and prose has recently been published in The Rumpus, The Adirondack Review, The California Prose Directory, California Northern, The Superstition Review, The Southeast Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and others. She is currently working on a full-length poetry manuscript and collection of essays.
Charlie M. King-Miller is a butch dad, an avid cook, and an occasional freelance writer. Charlie works in technology for a local museum and lives in Denver, Colorado with a wonderful partner, the world's most marvelous baby, and two supremely spoiled cats.
Ms. Yawson is co-founder of Joojos, an artisanal children's shoe company that aims to inject love, fun and play into the children's shoe making business. Additionally, Ms. Yawson hopes to publish her first children's book, Sunne's Gift, with funds generated through a Kickstarter campaign. Sunne's Gift is about a magical creature with spirally hair that grows toward the sun named Sunne. Sunne's three straight-haired siblings, who also have magical powers, poke fun of Sunne's hair. Sunne starts beating the spirals of hair to fit in, but as a result...
With this story, she hopes to promote a culture of acceptance in which we see that celebrating diversity is not just "nice to do," it is essential for our survival. Ms. Yawson earned a BA from Harvard University, an MBA from the Wharton School and a JD from the University of Pennsylvania Law School. She works as a securities lawyer and lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband and two sons.
My latest EP, "Everything to Me" marks a courageous and exhilarating step toward a more exposed and authentic sound. All five songs represent different facets of my faith in life, in humanity and in love. Putting these songs out into the world required the perfect collaboration, and I'm infinitely grateful that Jay Nash, a long time friend and musical peer, teamed up with me to produce this EP with such care and sensitivity. Jay has aimed to pare down the extraneous harmonies, effects and solos so that my voice, lyrics and fiddle playing can be wholly revealed, inviting you into a more intimate experience of me and my songs. Taking away the extra vocal and string harmonies made me feel naked at first, but now that the recording is complete, it feels just right. As if Jay teased the song down to its essence. Needless to say, I'm also grateful that I mustered the courage to jump back into music after a few years of being a mom, a yoga teacher, and an explorer of ministry studies (yes, life is rich).
Meilan Carter-Gilkey is a wife, and mother of two sons sixteen years apart. She became a poet and writer at seven, a single mother at twenty, a college graduate at thirty-two, a caretaker of her dying father at thirty-three, a recipient of an MFA at thirty-four, a wife at thirty-five, a mother again at thirty-six and a caretaker of her mother at thirty-eight. She very recently turned forty and renewed her goal to make writing a true priority and created a blog, 2nd Life: Balancing Motherhood, Writing and Sanity. Her work has been published in the anthology Who's Your Mama?: The Voices of Unsung Women and Mothers, the Womanist and Shield Magazine. To read more of Meilan's work please visit mcartgilk.tumblr.com.
Jenny lives in Las Vegas and Omaha with her geriatric poodle and lovely partner. She's a doctoral student in sociology and a kind-of-former sex worker. She (very) infrequently blogs for Sheri's Ranch, a brothel in Nevada, and has written for Tits and Sass, Nerve, and some academic journals here and there. She's also a preggo lady who is very much looking forward to her kid's angsty teenage years.
