Kettle Pond Writers' Conference

KETTLE POND STAFF

Virginia Zech, Director

Before founding Kettle Pond, Virginia worked for the Colgate Writers’ Conference for ten years, most recently as the conference’s Associate Director in 2018. She holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Montana, where she curated the Second Wind reading series and taught writing for four years (and then some). She has received a writing fellowship from VCCA. Her journalism and reviews have appeared in The Onion AV Club, Seattle Weekly, The Reykjavik Grapevine and Ski Racing Magazine; her fiction has appeared in Monkey Bicycle and the science flash fiction anthology Gigantic Worlds. She currently lives in New Hampshire.

Katie Rice, Associate Director

Katie Rice is currently a candidate in the University of Virginia MFA program. Before moving south of the Mason-Dixon line, she grew up in Ohio, earned a BA from Colgate University and worked in the marketing departments of both Random House and Knopf in New York. She received the Balch Prize for best short story by a graduate student at UVa in 2018. That same year, she was selected to be a resident at Pocoapoco in Oaxaca, Mexico. Katie has received support from Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, where she was in the last class of work-study scholars. She is currently at work on a novel.

Kevin Bertolero, Associate Director

Kevin Bertolero is the founding editor of Ghost City Press. He holds degrees in literature from Potsdam College and the University of New Hampshire, as well as an MFA from New England College. Kevin is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently Love Poems (Bottlecap Press, 2020), as well as a nonfiction book on gay cinema, Forever in Transition (Another New Calligraphy, 2021).

Jack Bachmann

Jack Bachmann is a writer currently living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A graduate of St. Olaf College, Jack works as a museum and outdoor educator.

Deirdre Coyle

Deirdre Coyle is a writer and goth living in Brooklyn. She has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the MacDowell Colony, the Kerouac Project, and the Antioch Writers' Workshop. She is the author of the chapbook How to Talk to Writers at Parties, and her fiction and essays have appeared in Electric Literature, Lit Hub, The New Republic, Hobart Pulp, Joyland, and elsewhere. Her essay, “Men Recommend David Foster Wallace to Me,” was named one of the Best Stories by Women in 2017 by Bustle, translated into Italian for Corriere della Sera, and covered by Paste, Esquire Italia, and The Guardian. She lives online @DeirdreKoala.

Kim Bell

Kim Bell is a native of the South Shore of Massachusetts who currently lives, works, and writes in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Montana, where she taught writing and was the Nonfiction Editor at CutBank. Professionally, Kim writes about beer for The Lowlands Group in Milwaukee, and leads classes on all things beer-related: pairings, chemistry, hangover-remedies, and how the magic of fermentation led to the first human civilizations. When she’s not writing or teaching, Kim illustrates cartoons she publishes on Facebook, Twitter, and the wall next to her boss’s desk, working predominantly in what she describes “both affectionately and hesitantly” as “Cancer Comedy.”

Ashley Mayne

Ashley Mayne is the author of two novels, Tiger and Mankiller. Her work has appeared in Post Road, Juked, Fish And Game Quarterly, The Doris, Metambesen, and elsewhere.

Nicole Roché

Nicole Roché is a writer, reporter, and self-archivist currently based in northern New York. She has taught writing and literature at the University of Kansas, where she earned her B.A. in journalism and an M.A. in English Literature/Creative Writing, and at the University of Montana, where she earned her M.F.A. in Fiction in 2017, and where she worked as a fiction editor and online managing editor for CutBank. She now teaches classes on storytelling and identity at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, where she is also a writer and editor for Weave News.

A. Harding

A. Harding is currently on the faculty at a girls' boarding school, where she teaches everything from classics to contemporary novels. She holds a Ph.D. in English literature from Cornell University, specializing in 20th century fiction and architecture. She previously worked for the Colgate Writers' Conference for nine years.

Will Georges (In Memoriam)

Will Georges is the author of It’s You I Like, published posthumously by a group of writers affiliated with the Creative Writing Program at Syracuse University, where he was an MFA candidate in poetry. His interests included, “surrealism and millenial drama”. He was a member of the inaugural Kettle Pond staff, where he will always be greatly missed.