2019 Kettle Pond Writers' Conference Staff
Director & Founder: Virginia Zech
Associate Director: Katie Rice
Associate Director: Kevin Bertolero
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Staff: Kim Bell, Deirdre Coyle, Amber Rambharose, Ashley Mayne, Jack Bachmann, and Nicole Roché.
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Virginia Zech
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.
Director
Katie Rice is currently a candidate for an MFA in Creative Writing at University of Virginia. Before beginning her graduate degree, she worked at Penguin Random House as a marketing manager. While there, she worked with authors like Richard Russo, Jay McInerney, and Jodi Picoult. While living in New York, she started The Writers' Salon, a monthly reading and writing event at LIC Bar in Queens. For the past eight years, she's been part of the team putting on the Colgate Writers' Conference. She recently spent a month as a resident at Pocoapoco in Oaxaca, Mexico, where she was at work on a novel.
AssOCIATE Director
Katie Rice
AssOCIATE Director
Kevin Bertolero
Kevin Bertolero is the founding editor of Ghost City Press. He holds a BA in Literature from Potsdam College and is currently a graduate student at the University of New Hampshire studying American fiction and film. He is the author of From the Estuary to the Offing, Modern Thought, and Soft Boy. Kevin’s work was long-listed for the 2018 Peach Gold Prize and his poems and essays have been published in Maudlin House, PNK PRL, Reality Beach, OUT/CAST, Tenderness Lit, Sea Foam Mag, and elsewhere. He tweets @KevinBertolero.
Amber
rambharose
conference designer & ASSISTANT DIRECTOR
Amber is a designer, digital content creator, and an editor at YesYes Books. Before going freelance she spent six years as a print and digital editor in NYC, most recently as Glamour Magazine's beauty editor. She has written and worked for brands including Refinery29, Teen Vogue, Marie Claire, and Cosmopolitan. Her poetry and fiction can be found online and on paper in Rattle Magazine, Tupelo Quarterly, PANK, Whiskey Island, and elsewhere.
Deirdre Coyle
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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.
Staff Member
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.
Staff Member
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.
Staff Member
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.”
Staff Member
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.