Photography by Stephanie Orentas

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Shelagh Patterson is a poet, scholar and activist who teaches first-year writing at Montclair State University. Her recent projects include writing an afterschool theatre arts curriculum for the City of Newark, and her poems have appeared in anthologies, newspapers, magazines, journals, experimental theatre, bureaucratic documents and a feature film. Patterson has taught at Montclair State University and the University of Pittsburgh and has worked in the writing center at CUNY Hunter College. She focuses on late 20th and early 21st century American Literature and recently defended her dissertation which analyzes the socially transformative possibilities of literary collaboration. A former Scholar/Artist-in-Residence at the Urban Issues Institute, Essex County College, Prof. Patterson has a PhD in English: Critical and Cultural Studies from the University of Pittsburgh and an MFA in Creative Writing, Poetry from CUNY Hunter College. She lives in Newark, NJ.

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Christine Giancatarino is a theatre-maker who teaches first-year writing at Montclair State University. Her interests include the translation of theory into practice, the dramaturgy of the body in performance, devised performance, and how embodies experience can serve as a platform for writing. She is a certified Feldenkrais ATM teacher.