StoryStudio Chicago is blessed with a talented, creative and encouraging faculty of instructors and an ambitious and helpful staff.
Scroll through Instructor bios for our Creative Writing Classes, Youth Tutoring and Instruction, and Business Writing Classes. (Interested in teaching at StoryStudio? Review our directions for Proposing a Class.)
Jill Pollack
Jill Pollack is the founder and director of StoryStudio Chicago and StoryStudio North Shore. Since founding the studio in 2003, Jill has focused her attention on teaching both fiction and creative non-fiction courses, and providing a wide variety of experiences in writing and publishing for StoryStudio writers. She is the also the founder of the Chicago Literary Alliance and has published three books for young adults: Shirley Chisholm, named a Best Book by Science and Film Magazine; Lesbian and Gay Families: Redefining Parenting in America; and Women on the Hill, a history of women in Congress. She was recently named #23 in the Newcity Lit Top 50 list of literary leaders in Chicago.
Prior to founding StoryStudio Chicago, Jill applied her affinity for technology, specializing in Internet/Intranet strategic planning and development. As an award-winning communications consultant, writer and editor, Jill created interactive training programs and large-scale Internet applications for Fortune 1000 clients including Motorola, McDonald's Corporation, Lands' End, Sears Roebuck and Co., Equity Office Properties, DePaul University, and the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Her work has appeared on the Internet, in newspapers, magazines, trade periodicals and political journals. She has extensive experience developing communications campaigns, large-scale Internet applications, print communications, public relations campaigns, marketing materials, and videos.
Jill began her career in advertising at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Her marketing talents and love for the arts took her to Chicago where she entered the non-profit arena leading development and marketing efforts for a regional theatre.
Jill is a Past President of Women in Communications, Inc. (Chicago chapter), and has been a member of the Association of Multimedia Communications, DigitalEve, ChicWIT, JUF High Tech division, National Writers Union, Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, and a Business Volunteer for the Arts with the Arts & Business Council of Chicago. She is the recipient of a Silver Trumpet Award from the Publicity Club of Chicago, a Silver Quill Award from the International Association of Business Communicators, and a Clarion award from Women in Communications (national).
When she is not running the studio or teaching, she is working on her novel.
Judith Adams
Judith Adams taught in the Glenbrook South English Department more than 30 years; she specialized in writing (all levels of composition and creative writing), AP English, and pioneered the Humanities and the Visual Arts course. She’s also taught fiction and non-fiction writing at Columbia College, Chicago. In addition, she leads writing workshops for adults and facilitates book discussion groups.
Kate Ancell
Kate Ancell is a writer and journalist, who has covered every topic under the sun and lived to tell the tale. While living in London Kate was a managing editor for Conde Nast, wrote an award-winning cookbook and argued for American Thanksgiving and Christmas Present for Britain's Food Illustrated. She also regularly covers Mind Body Soul, travel, home design and everything in between for magazines as disparate as Hallmark, Vogue and Brides. She is very excited to be a part of StoryStudio Chicago.
M. Molly Backes
M. Molly Backes has taught students of all ages and abilities. As an English teacher in a struggling rural New Mexico school, she designed and taught curricula to a wide spectrum of students, with a close consideration of state and national standards and benchmarks. In honor of National Novel Writing Month, Molly got 150 middle schoolers to write their own novels. As a teacher, she developed classroom writing workshops, pushed for greater emphasis on interdisciplinary writing in core classes, ran trainings for educators in writing workshop implementation, led her school’s Educational Plan for Student Success Goal Team and served as English Department Chair in 2007.
Her YA novel The Princesses of Iowa will be published in Spring 2012 by Candlewick Press. In addition to novels, Molly pens the "Writing Tips" column for The Prairie Wind (the newsletter of the Illinois Chapter of SCBWI), blogs at Bittersweet, has been a guest blogger at Puffery, Brood, and This Wasn’t in the Plan, and is a frequent contributor to StoryStudio’s own blog Cooler by the Lake. Her story "Teacher's Pet" appears in the anthology Good Dogs Doing Good (LaChance, 2009).
Molly is the Assistant Director at StoryStudio, where she’ll be happy to answer all your questions about life, the universe, and all our classes.
Ellen Blum Barish
Ellen Blum Barish is a personal essayist whose work has been published and syndicated in national newspapers and blogs and has aired on WBEZ’s Chicago Public Radio. Ellen’s award-winning column on women and family issues was published in an Ohio-based newspaper for more than a decade. A collection of these were published as Views from the Home Office Window: On Motherhood, Family and Life, in 2007. Ellen teaches personal essay and life story classes at StoryStudio and has facilitated writing workshops at Ragdale, Off Campus Writer’s Workshop, New Trier Extension and Writer’s Workspace. Since 2004, she has been teaching writing at Northwestern University, working with graduate students at the Medill School of Journalism and first-year engineering students at the McCormick School of Engineering on technical, business and academic writing assignments. From 2004-2007, she edited the alumni magazine of The Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern where she earned her masters degree in journalism. She edits and contributes to the Jewish spirituality blog Torat Chayeinu: Our Stories, Our Journey, and Creative Space,
a women’s interfaith web publication. Ellen is currently at work on a collection of spiritual essays.
Kelley Clink
Kelley Clink has a BA in Literature from the University of Alabama and an MA in Literature from DePaul. She started out as a student at StoryStudio Chicago four years ago, and since then her nonfiction has appeared in The South Loop Review, Under the Sun, flashquake.org, The Prose-Poem Project, and The Gettysburg Review. When she isn’t writing (or reading), she co-manages a nationwide, freestyle dance program for women called Dance Dance Party Party.
Eugene Cross
Eugene Cross’s stories have appeared in American Short Fiction, Narrative Magazine, Story Quarterly, Guernica, Callaloo, TriQuarterly, and The Pinch among others. His work has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize as well as being shortlisted in The Best American Short Stories 2010. He earned his MFA in fiction from the University of Pittsburgh and was the winner of the 2009 DZANC Prize for Excellence in Literary Fiction and Community Service. Prior to moving to Chicago he taught creative writing for five years at Penn State Behrend. He has received scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Chautauqua Writers’ Festival. He currently teaches writing at Columbia College Chicago. His first collection of short stories, Fires of Our Choosing, is forthcoming in February 2012 from DZANC Books.
Annette Gendler
Annette Gendler is a creative nonfiction writer. Her work has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Under the Sun, South Loop Review and on flashquake.com and is forthcoming in Natural Bridge and Kaleidoscope. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte. In addition to teaching memoir at StoryStudio, she works as an English instructor at two community colleges, and does PR/advertising work for her children’s school. She lives in Hyde Park with her husband and three children.Kate Harding
Kate Harding has written for web publications including Salon.com, Jezebel.com, and the L.A. Times online. Until 2010, she ran the successful body acceptance blog, Shapely Prose, which helped to spawn a book (co-authored with Marianne Kirby) called Lessons from the Fat-o-Sphere. She's published fiction, non-fiction, and really embarrassing poetry in literary magazines, and personal essays in anthologies about body image, female sexuality, and most recently, Madonna. Kate's currently at work on The Book of Jezebel, a collection of essays about reading classics for the first time, and a top secret project she hopes to complete while in residence at StoryStudio. A graduate of University of Toronto and Vermont College of Fine Arts, she lives in Rogers Park with her husband, Al, and their devil puppy, Murray.
Baird Harper
Baird Harper’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Tin House, Mid-American Review, CutBank, Best New American Voices 2009 and 2010, and The Chicago Tribune. His stories have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and have won the 2009 James Jones Award and the 2010 Nelson Algren Award. He holds an MA in English from the University of Montana and an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.Jack Helbig
Jack Helbig is a theater critic, arts writer, and essayist for various publications. He regularly writes for the Chicago Reader and the Daily Herald. He is also a playwright; his musical adaptation, The Girl, The Grouch, and The Goat, written with songwriter Mark Hollmann has been produced in Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago, Kansas City, and Orem, Utah. His musical, Hotel d’Amour, written with Gregg Opelka (and based on Georges Feydeau’s farce A Flea in Her Ear), was first produced by the Buffalo Theatre Company in Chicago and has since been done around the U.S. He has written two plays, Thinking of Her Made Him Think of Her, an autobiographical piece first produced by the Talisman Theatre in Elgin, Illinois. He has been keeping a journal since he was in Mr. Kramer’s ninth grade English class at St. Louis U. High. He now working on his 66th journal.Scott Onak
Scott Onak holds an MFA from the University of Idaho and has stories published and forthcoming in Mid-American Review, cold-drill, and Quick Fiction. He has taught English and creative writing at the college level in Chicago and elsewhere. His connection to StoryStudio Chicago began years ago as a student in the Short Story Workshop, and he is thrilled to return now as a staff member and instructor and sometimes friend of the studio mascot, Zia the Greyhound.Erin O'Neill
Erin O’Neill has published more than 200 pieces in publications including ELLE, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Sun Times and Military.com. She holds a BA in English and Sociology from Georgetown University and an MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has worked as a writer, editor and proofreader for magazines, e-learning companies and corporate clients around the nation including a number of Fortune 500 companies and the U.S. Marine Corps. She currently resides in Oak Park with her husband Sonny, daughter Lucy and their dog Finley.
Cecilia Pinto
Cecilia Pinto has had her prose and poetry published in a variety of journals, including Diagram, Quarter After Eight, Fence, and Rhino. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize for poetry and won the Esquire short fiction contest. Her work is forthcoming in The Seneca Review and Triquarterly and can be found online at Qartsilunini and The Mississippi Review. She is a 2009 CAAP grant recipient. Cecilia has associations with a several fine educational institutions in Chicago, StoryStudio Chicago is one of them.Sarah Terez Rosenblum
A freelance writer with an MFA in Creative Writing from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Sarah Terez Rosenblum has published with Ignavia Press, Fictionatwork.com, The Chicago Sun Times, The Windy City Times, The Shepherd Express, Venus Magazine and more. In addition, she blogs twice weekly for The Chicago Sun Times. Sarah’s novel “Herself When She’s Missing" is forthcoming from Counterpoint Press. To learn more about Sarah's work, visit her website.Ranjit Souri
Ranjit Souri is an essayist, comedian, and teacher. His essay "Fireworks and Beethoven" was named a Notable Essay in The Best American Essays 2007. He teaches at StoryStudio Chicago (creative non-fiction writing), The Second City Training Center (improvisation and comedy writing), Northwestern University's Center for Talent Development (programs for gifted children), and The Academic Approach (GMAT and LSAT prep). Ranjit is a columnist for India Currents magazine and a member of the comedy groups Cupid Players, Stir-Friday Night!, and Siblings of Doctors. A native of Barnesville, Ohio, Ranjit has an MBA from Columbia University and a B.S. in Accounting from Case Western Reserve University.Lee Strickland
Lee Strickland’s fiction has appeared in Gettysburg Review, Sou’wester, Other Voices, StoryQuarterly, River Oak Review, Summerset Review and other places. Her short stories have won Illinois Arts Council grants and a “100 Distinguished Stories of the Year” notation in Best American Short Stories. Lee has just finished a memoir, an excerpt of which appeared in The Sun and won a “Notable Essay of the Year” accolade from Best American Essays 2011. Lee has an MFA from Warren Wilson College, teaches at North Park University and StoryStudio, and, having recently fallen back in love with short stories, is at work on a novel-in-stories about a Chicago family struggling through the turbulent years after September 11th.Mariana Swallow
Marianna Swallow is a former journalist-turned-instructor. She's been the head of M. Runge & Associates Training since 1999, teaching business skills such as Effective Business Writing and Powerful Presentations. In addition to her business writing and endless emails, she blogs about modern day etiquette and party planning. When she's not speaking by day, she's the host with the most at night. Marianna writes for www.examiner.com/chicago.Elizabeth Wetmore
Elizabeth Wetmore is a 2002 graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a 2006-2007 recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as several grants from the Illinois Arts Council. A recent story—“Listening for Grace”—appeared in the journal Salt Flats Annual and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Other stories have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Black Warrior Review, Crab Orchard Review, and other journals. She is currently at work on a novel set in West Texas and a collection of short stories set in Phoenix, Arizona.
Academic Tutors and Instructors
Fraser Coffeen
Fraser Coffeen is a Staff Writer for Bloody Elbow, a part of Sports
Blog Nation. He has previously been a writer and editor for other
sports websites, and is the author of multiple plays and screenplays.
His work has been published in One Night Only magazine, and performed
throughout Chicago and the Midwest. Fraser has a B.A. in English from
Northwestern, a M.A. in Teaching from the National College of
Education at National Louis University, and is an English teacher at
Roycemore School in Evanston. He is currently working on a non-fiction
book detailing the history of Mixed Martial Arts.
Business Writing Instructors
StoryStudio founder and director Jill Pollack is an award-winning communications consultant, writer and editor. A published author with 15 years experience in corporate communications, Jill teaches creative writing and leads customized seminars for businesses and professionals.
Prior to founding StoryStudio Chicago, Jill specialized in digital communications, and strategic planning and development for large-scale online platforms. Representative clients include Motorola, McDonald's Corporation, Lands' End, Sears Roebuck and Co., Equity Office Properties, Lyondell Chemical Company, DePaul University, and the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Her work has appeared on the Internet, in newspapers, magazines, trade periodicals and political journals. She has extensive experience developing communications, marketing and public relations campaigns, websites, and print communications. Jill has authored three books for young adults: Shirley Chisholm, named a Best Book by Science and Film Magazine; Lesbian and Gay Families: Redefining Parenting in America; and Women on the Hill, a history of women in Congress.
Erin O’Neill has published more than 200 pieces in ELLE, The Washington Post, The Chicago Sun Times, The Red Eye, SPACE Magazine, Modern Home + Living, and Military.com. She holds a BA in English and Sociology from Georgetown University and an MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has worked as a staff Editor at SPACE Magazine in California, a trainer with the U.S. Marine Corps in Virginia and as a freelance journalist, writer and researcher all around the nation. She is an editor and proofreader for a number of corporate clients and e-learning companies.
Kate Ancell holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia in England, where she studied under former poet laureate Andrew Motion. She has taught writing in preparatory schools and colleges in both England and America; she also spearheaded an English-as-a-Second-Language business writing program in Prague. As a journalist, she worked for Conde Nast for many years as a managing editor; her work has appeared in Tatler, Vogue, Brides, Food Illustrated, CS and many local, regional and national magazines and newspapers. Her cookbook, California Sol Food, won a Tabasco Award. She has written and edited many corporate publications, including advertisements, web content, B2B stories and non-profit annual reports and newsletters.
Jackie Loewe (networking and relationship building) is the founding partner of Sheridan Park Consulting, which provides networking training and business development consulting within the professional services arena. Jackie is a sales and marketing executive with over 25 years of experience. She is a recognized authority on marketing professional services and she has spoken nationally on matters related to marketing and communications. Jacqueline has served on numerous philanthropic and professional association boards. Currently, Ms. Loewe serves the following organizations: Friends of the Chicago River, Uptown United, Saint Joseph Hospital, and Lambda Alpha International – Ely Chapter. She is a member of StoryStudio Chicago’s Words at Work faculty.
Ellen Blum Barish (business writing coaching) is an award-winning writer, editor and project manager for magazines, newsletters, newspapers and the Web for corporations, non-profit organizations and foundations. She has contributed news and feature stories to Newsweek, Self and The Chicago Tribune and Chicago Public Radio/WBEZ magazine and her monthly column on women and family issues led to syndication and a book. Her corporate communications projects have included content and editorial direction for McCormick Tribune Foundation and St. Francis Hospital's annual reports; interactive online profiles of McDonald's Corporation employees and broadcast and web interviews with Northwestern University professors. She has also transformed technical material into consumer-friendly content for Harvard Medical Letter and Premier Hospitals Alliance and edited articles for American Bar Association’s Law Practice Management, an American Medical Association book on diabetes and a National Textbook Corporation college text on play production. Currently, Ellen is a faculty member of StoryStudio Chicago, a university writing instructor, and writing coach for adult learners.
StoryStudio Staff
Jill Pollack
Founder and Directorjill@storystudiochicago.com
M. Molly Backes
Assistant Directormolly@storystudiochicago.com
Scott Onak
Program Managerscott@storystudiochicago.com
Allyson Kendall
Managing Editor--Onlineallyson@storystudiochicago.com
Jen Coffeen
Marketing Assistantallyson@storystudiochicago.com