Our team

Whitney Scharer holds a BA in English from Wesleyan University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington. Her first novel, The Age of Light, was a Boston Globe and IndieNext bestseller, People Pick, Amazon Book of the Month selection, Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Pick, and was longlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award. Internationally, The Age of Light won Le prix Rive Gauche à Paris, was a coups de couer selection from the American Library in Paris, and has been published in over a dozen other countries. Whitney has been awarded a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fiction Fellowship, Ragdale and VCCA residencies, a St. Botolph Emerging Artists Grant, and a Somerville Arts Council Artists Fellowship. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in numerous publications including Vogue, The Telegraph, and The Tatler. She lives with her husband and daughter in Arlington, MA, where she is at work on her second novel. To find out more, visit www.whitneyscharer.com.

Sonya Larson’s short fiction and essays have appeared in Best American Short Stories, Ploughshares, American Short Fiction, American Literary Review, Poets & Writers, Writer’s Chronicle, Amazon Originals, Audible.com, West Branch, Salamander, Memorious, The Harvard Advocate, Pangyrus, Solstice Magazine, Del Sol Review, Red Mountain Review, The Hub, and more. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts 2020, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Vermont Studio Center, Ragdale, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the St. Botolph Club Foundation, and more. For 17 years she served as Director of GrubStreet‘s Muse and the Marketplace writing conference and other roles, and as an organizer for the Boston Writers of Color Group. She received her MFA in fiction from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She lives in New York City and is writing a novel.

Our volunteers

Fallon Masterson is the co-founder and producer of Stranger Stories, a reading series dedicated to personal essays and memoir in Rhode Island. Launched in 2018, Stranger Stories has won multiple awards, including a 2024 Best of Rhode Island for best storytelling event. She has been awarded a Rhode Island State Council of the Arts grant, a residency at Linden Place, and named Best Personal Storyteller by Motif Magazine. She holds her BFA from Emerson College and is currently completing her MFA at Lesley University. She lives in Providence with her husband and daughter.

Jen Chang is an extroverted book nerd. With a curious background in international relations, law, and technology, she has dabbled in many things, but her passion is connecting with people and helping others achieve their goals efficiently and effectively. Did we mention that she is also a librarian? And she lives on a boat part time.

Kendall Bousquet is a Rhode Island–based writer whose work explores girlhood, rage, and how these forces manifest within patriarchal societies. She holds dual degrees in Creative Writing and Graphic Design from the University of Rhode Island, where she received several awards for her fiction. She is currently querying her debut novel, a Coming-of-Rage YA speculative story, and actively seeking literary representation. Kendall shares her creative process with over forty thousand followers across social media at @Kendall_Bousquet. To find out more, visit KendallBousquet.com.

Hannah Crowley is a freelance publishing assistant and fiction writer. She holds degrees in English with a Writing Concentration and Classical Studies from Gettysburg College in 2024, and is a part of the Denver Publishing Institute Class of 2024. When she’s not writing, she loves creating social media content for authors and helping them at every stage in their publishing journey.

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