More Than a Writer: How Other Roles Inform our Craft

Blair Glaser’s essays have appeared in Longreads, Shondaland, Oldster, Quartz, HuffPost, Inside Higher Ed, and others, as well as in literary magazines such as Brevity, Scoop, Rain Taxi, and The Mantlepiece. She is the author of This Incredible Longing: Finding Myself in a Near-cult Experience (Heliotrope, 2026). She lives with her husband and dog-ter, Vanna White, in Venice Beach, CA.

Jocelyn Jane Cox was a competitive figure skater who became a national-level coach, balancing this role with her writing for over 25 years. Along the way, she also became a parent, a caregiver for her ailing mother, and local activist. She is the author of Motion Dazzle: A Memoir of Motherhood, Loss, and Skating on Thin Ice (Vine Leaves, 9/25). She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Slate, The Offing, and the Colorado Review, among others.

Jacque Gorelick is an elementary school teacher turned writer who spent years helping students turn ideas into stories. Her essays about motherhood, health, education, and estrangement appear in The New York Times, Salon, Los Angeles Review of Books, Pithead Chapel, X-R-A-Y, The Kenyon Review, and others. Map of a Heart: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Finding the Way Home (Vine Leaves Press 2026) is her debut. She lives in Northern California with her husband, two sons, and a mélange of rescues.

Adiba Nelson is the subject of the Emmy-winning documentary, The Full Nelson. Her memoir Ain’t That a Mother (Blackstone, 2022), is being made into a TV series, for which Nelson is an executive producer. She has bylines in The Washington Post, Parents Magazine, Huffington Post, Kindred, Parents Latina, and others. Adiba is also a disability rights activist, literary activist, semi-retired burlesque performer, Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA candidate in creative writing, and very tired mom!

Rebecca Morrison was born in Iran and immigrated to the US in her teens. In 2020, after practicing law for over two decades, she decided to pursue writing. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Newsweek, The Independent and HuffPost, among others. Her debut novel, The Blue Dress, based on her childhood as an Iranian immigrant trying to fit into her family’s expectations and her American homeland comes out March 24, 2026, from Farrar Straus Giroux.