Take a look at our 2027 tentative faculty below. Stay tuned for more! Sign up for our email list to receive updates for the 2027 conference.
Prose Writing Faculty
The Winter Getaway is well known for its challenging and supportive workshops led by accomplished writers and artists. Get to know our writing faculty by reading some of their work online, and then working with them in January.
Tyrese L. Coleman
Tyrese L. Coleman is the author of How to Sit, a 2019 Pen Open Book Award finalist published with Mason Jar Press in 2018. She is also the writer of the forthcoming book, Spectacle, with One World, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Writer, wife, mother, attorney and writing instructor, she occasionally teaches at American University. Her essays and stories have appeared in several publications, including Black Warrior Review, Literary Hub, The Rumpus and the Kenyon Review, and noted in Best American Essays and the Pushcart Anthology. She is an alumni of the Writing Program at Johns Hopkins University. Read a piece by Tyrese and learn more on her website.
Hugo dos Santos
Hugo dos Santos is the author of Then, there (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019), a collection of Newark stories, and the translator of Homecoming (Arquipelago Press, 2024) and A Child in Ruins (Writ Large Press, 2016), a staff pick at the Paris Review Daily. Hugo’s poetry and fiction shine a light on the beauty, complexity and pain of the immigrant experience and of life in the inner city. In his translations, Hugo celebrates contemporary Portuguese literature. Hugo lives in New Jersey with his wife and three children. Visit his website, and read a piece by Hugo.
R.G. Evans
Poet, songwriter, and educator R.G. Evans is the author of Overtipping the Ferryman, The Holy Both, and Imagine Sisyphus Happy. His albums of original songs, Sweet Old Life, Kid Yesterday Calling Tomorrow Man, and Haunted, are available on most streaming platforms. Listen to a song by R.G. and learn more on his website.
Dionne Ford
NEA creative writing fellow Dionne Ford is author of the memoir Go Back and Get It, a 2024 finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and an NPR book of the day. Her work has won awards from the National Association of Black Journalists, the Newswomen’s Club of NY and the New Jersey State Council of the Arts and has appeared in The New York Times, The Virginia Quarterly Review, LitHub, The Boston Globe, and Ebony among other publications. She co-edited the anthology Slavery’s Descendants: Shared Legacies of Race and Reconciliation and served on the NJ Reparations Council. She holds an MFA in creative writing from NYU and teaches creative writing at Fordham University and Drew University. Read a piece by Dionne and learn more on her website.
Sam Heaps
Sam Heaps is the author of the essay collections Proximity (2023) and Slug Sex and the Touching of Souls (forthcoming 2026), as well as the novella The Living god (2025). Their work has been featured places such as The Brooklyn Rail, Bomb, and Coma, and is part of Zona Motel’s forthcoming anthology as one of the magazine’s founding contributors. Heaps has lived and worked all over the world, currently teaches writing at Temple University in Philadelphia, and studies philosophy at NYU. Read a piece by Sam and learn more on their website.
Anndee Hochman
Anndee Hochman is a journalist, essayist, storyteller and teaching artist. Her newest book is Parent Trip: Unexpected Roads to Form a Family, a compilation of personal essays and profiles drawn from her long-running “Parent Trip” column in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Her other books include Anatomies: A Novella and Stories (Picador USA) and Everyday Acts & Small Subversions: Women Reinventing Family, Community and Home (The Eighth Mountain Press). Anndee is a 12-time Moth Story Slam winner; she tied for first place in Philadelphia’s 2022 GrandSlam. Visit her website and read an essay by Anndee.
Marissa Johnson-Valenzuela
Marissa Johnson-Valenzuela’s writing has been recognized by The Leeway Foundation, Hedgebrook and others. Her work has been published in Make/shift, The Rust Belt Rising, Apiary, Aster(ix) and is forthcoming in All About Skin: An Anthology of Short Fiction by Award-Winning Women Writers of Color. She is the founder of Thread Makes Blanket press, which most recently published Dismantle, an anthology of work from VONA, an annual workshop for writers of color. As part of her teaching at Community College of Philadelphia, Marissa teaches in Philadelphia jails, develops Latino courses, and tries hard to get her students to love reading and writing. She is working on her first novel. Read a piece by Marissa.
Catherine Pierce
Catherine Pierce is is the author of the memoir-in-essays Foxes for Everybody: Twenty-Four Hours of Early Motherhood (Northwestern University Press, 2026), as well as of five books of poems, including Dear Beast (Saturnalia, 2026). Her essays and poems have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, The Nation, The Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. From 2007-2024, she was professor of English and co-director of the creative writing program at Mississippi State University. She recently moved with her family to her home state of Delaware and founded Studio & Craft, an online poetry community through which she teaches workshops and offers manuscript consultations. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Academy of American Poets, Catherine served as Poet Laureate of Mississippi from 2021 to 2025.
Nathaniel Popkin
Nathaniel Popkin is a writer and editor of fiction, nonfiction, film, criticism and journalism. He is the author of three novels and four works of nonfiction, and is the co-editor of the anthology, Who Will Speak for America? His work has been published by The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Gulf Coast, Kenyon Review and Public Books. He is a writer and producer of history film documentaries. Read a piece about how Nathaniel approaches fiction, and learn more on his website.