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Writing Consultants
Jennifer Baker is a publishing professional of 20 years who also freelances, the creator/host of the Minorities in Publishing podcast, and faculty member of the MFA program in creative nonfiction at Bay Path University. In 2019, she was named Publishers Weekly Superstar for her contributions to inclusion and representation in publishing. Jennifer is also the editor of the BIPOC-short story anthology Everyday People: The Color of Life (Atria Books, 2018) and the author of the forthcoming novel Forgive Me Not (Nancy Paulsen Books, 2023). Her fiction, nonfiction, and criticism has appeared in various print and online publications. Her website is: jennifernbaker.com.
Chong J. Bretillon holds a PhD in French from the CUNY Graduate Center, where she also earned a Film Studies Certificate. She has taught courses in contemporary French cinema, cultural studies of the Francophone world, and French language at Pennsylvania State University-Erie, Hunter College, and Borough of Manhattan Community College. Her areas of consulting expertise include developing thesis statements, close reading, response/reaction writing, and peer review. Chong especially enjoys working with multilingual and international students, and has tutored students in both French and English in the United States and in France.
Victoria Cho writes fiction and nonfiction and has helped students from middle school to graduate school with their writing process. Her work can be found in the anthology Nonwhite and Woman (Woodhall Press 2022), The Offing, SmokeLong Quarterly, The Collagist, Perigee, Quarter After Eight, Word Riot, and Mosaic. She is a Kundiman Fellow and an alumna of VONA/Voices. Her previous roles alongside social workers, counselors, and teachers help her support students during individual sessions. Victoria holds an MFA from University of New Orleans and a Bachelor’s from Boston University.
Sasha Graybosch holds a BA in English from the University of Kansas and an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University. Her short stories and non-fiction have appeared in Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading and The Commuter, Hobart, Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly Journal, Failbetter, Canteen, and elsewhere. In 2008, she helped open the first writing center at the Fashion Institute of Technology, where she worked for ten years as a professional writing consultant and taught developmental writing courses. She’s also a writing consultant at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies. She has experience supporting students with diverse language backgrounds and learning needs, and she enjoys coaching writers to develop a reflective and confident writing process.
Anu Jindal is a fiction writer and educator. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and a BA in English and Film Theory from Dalhousie University. In addition to his work at Baruch, he currently teaches Creative Writing at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Gotham Writer’s Workshop, and has formerly served as a contributing editor at Electric Literature. His writing appears in Electric Literature, Joyland, The New Quarterly, Matrix, and elsewhere.
Leela Khanna is a PhD candidate in socio-cultural anthropology at NYU. She completed her MA in South Asian studies at Columbia University and a BA in political studies from Bard College. She has been working at writing centers in New York City and upstate New York for the last decade. Her areas of consulting expertise include thesis development, critical thinking, and close reading.
Sukie Kim is a PhD student at the CUNY Graduate Center’s English program, where she researches alternative, queer, and more just world-making practices in speculative fiction. Both her research and teaching is informed by Black feminist studies, women of color feminism, and queer-of-color critique. She is a bilingual Korean American who grew up in South Korea and holds a BA in English from Yonsei University (South Korea), and an MA in English Literature from Tufts University. She is open to working with writers at any stage, be it brainstorming, argumentation, organization, research, or more. In her free time she writes poetry and creative nonfiction, and practices yoga.
Dean Kritikos is a writer and educator. He received his MA in English from St. John’s and has taught composition there. He’s also worked in writing support roles there and at Queensborough Community College, Columbia School of Social Work, and the College of New Rochelle. His critical writing appears in The Quint, Talisman, War Literature and the Arts, Lehigh Valley Vanguard, and the collection Oceanic New York; his creative work is in ATOMIC, NYSAI, Walk Write Up, and anthologies from Great Weather for MEDIA and Crack the Spine.
Joss is a fiction writer and educator. He received his MFA in fiction from Columbia University and his B.A. in English Literature from Wesleyan University. He has taught writing across the city at programs and institutions including Columbia University, Catapult, 826 NYC, Behind the Book, and the School of the New York Times. His first novel, Future Feeling, was published by Soft Skull Press. He is particularly interested in working with students on literary analysis, building confidence in writing, personal narratives, research papers, and the brainstorming process.
Zefyr Lisowski is a poet, interdisciplinary artist, and educator from North Carolina. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Hunter College and has been the recipient of fellowships from Tin House Writers Workshop, the Center for the Humanities’ Adjunct Incubator Grant, and more. Zefyr’s the author of the short poetry collection Blood Box (Black Lawrence Press, 2019) and is a poetry co-editor at Apogee Journal. She’s especially excited about trans and queer competency in higher education; de-colonial and anti-oppressive practices; writing across disciplines; and issues of accessibility in writing center spaces, among other topics.
Kimberly Y. Liu is a writer, translator, and educator from Beijing. She holds an MFA in Fiction Writing and Literary Translation from Columbia University, where she also taught creative writing, and a BA in English Literature from Smith College. Her work has appeared in Gulf Coast, Four Way Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, and elsewhere.
Holly Melgard is a poet, book designer, editor and holds a PhD in English from SUNY Buffalo. She has taught Introduction to Writing Composition, Introduction to Research Writing, Literature, and Creative Writing at the college level for the last 12 years. Her research interests include contemporary poetry, poetics, philosophy, computation and digital textuality. When consulting with students, she especially enjoys working on problems in research writing, integrating sources, brainstorming ideas, thesis development, reframing with topic and transition sentences, as well as spicing up introductions and conclusions.
Jono Mischkot received his MA in English from San Francisco State University and his MFA in Fiction from New York University. He is a Senior Lecturer in the Expository Writing Program at New York University and the Pedagogical Coordinator for Curriculum and Staff Development at NYU Poly. He has received several awards for teaching, including the Outstanding Teacher Award from NYU in 2008. His areas of expertise include literary interpretation, essay organization, developing an argument, and writing in the sciences.
Nathaniel Rosenthalis is a singer, actor, and poet. He made his Off-Broadway debut in 2021. He is the author of three forthcoming full-length collections of poetry, including The Leniad (Broken Sleep Books, 2023) and Father Figures (Broken Sleep Books, 2024). He lives in New York City, where he occasionally teaches at Columbia University and NYU.
Rebekah Smith is a writer, editor, translator, and PhD candidate in Comparative Literature at NYU, where she writes about women poets from Buenos Aires, provincial Russia, and New York in the 1970s–80s. Her translations include Ova Completa by Susana Thénon (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2021) and The Sea by Victoria Cóccaro (DoubleCross Press, 2023). She has taught ESL, Russian language, literature, and composition courses for over ten years.
Monroe Street Schostal makes work that moves between text, music, and psychoanalysis (clinical and applied). Psychoanalytic writing has been featured or is forthcoming in Senses & Society, The Candidate Journal, and Division/Review, while recent poetry has appeared in No, Dear. Street Schostal teaches writing at CUNY and psychoanalysis at the Institute for Expressive Analysis.
Yousef Tehrani is a writer, musician, and teacher with a master’s in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and a bachelor’s in dance. He has been teaching and consulting with writers since 2009 and has presented at national and regional writing center conferences. His specialties are non-native and non-traditional students, blocked or anxious writers, creative process, and grammar. He writes in English and Persian and speaks Spanish and Turkish. His own creative process is an integration of dance, mountaineering, music, and language.
Joshua Weber holds a BA in English Literature from Southern Methodist University, and received an MFA from New York University. He has taught creative writing and is currently a Lecturer in Expository Writing at NYU. His areas of consulting expertise are in literary interpretation, essay structure, brainstorming ideas, and critical reading. Other interests are history, film, and fiction.
Carin Jean White is a theatre director and visual artist. Her work explores the intersections and porous boundaries between the roles of spectator and performer, while emphasizing how space can act both as an intermediary and active participant. Recently, she collaborated with Spanish artists Itsaso Iribarren and Germán de la Riva on a site-specific, physically-distanced theatre piece, The Art of Walking, for Artpark in Western New York. She has worked with Performance Workshop (Taiwan), California Shakespeare Theatre Company, Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, Artpark and Sundance Theatre Lab amongst others. Carin’s large scale paintings and installations have been shown throughout NY and the Bay Area. She is co-artistic director of Excellent Creature Theatre Company (Garrison, NY) and founding director of Kingston STEP, a free theatre-training program for teens. She holds an MFA in Theatre Directing from Columbia University.
In addition to being a Writing Consultant at Baruch’s Writing Center, Melinda Wilson is Assistant Professor of English at Manhattan College and adjunct faculty at LIM College. She also participates in the Florida State University Business Writing mentor program, and she is currently working on an English Composition textbook for Kendall Hunt Publishing. She is author of Amplexus, a chapbook from Dancing Girl Press, published in 2010. A graduate of The New School’s MFA program and the doctoral program at Florida State University, she has published poems in Diner, Burnside Review, Valley Voices, Agriculture Reader, Verse Daily, The Cincinnati Review and The Wisconsin Review among many others. She co-curates the Poor Mouth Reading Series in Riverdale. In her limited spare time, Melinda enjoys reading novels, particularly those with a semi-historical lens, and spending time outdoors with her three dogs, Margie, Baldwin, and Claude. Melinda lives in the Bronx.
Joey Yearous-Algozin holds a Ph.D. in English from the University at Buffalo. He has 12 years of experience teaching Composition, Creative Writing and Literature for multiple institutions. He is currently an adjunct professor in the Liberal Studies program at New York University and a member of the Language and Thinking faculty at Bard. Additionally he is a the author of multiple books of poetry, including A Feeling Called Heaven (Nightboat, 2021). He is a founding editor of the publishing collective, TROLL THREAD.
Front desk team
Misheel Bayasgalan is a BBA student majoring in Economics at the Zicklin School of Business, with a double minor in Political Science and Business Law. On-campus, she is a Third Editor and a Contributing Writer for The Ticker. In her spare time she enjoys reading books, going to concerts and visiting museums.
Ali Darwish is currently a sophomore at Baruch College majoring in Computer Information Systems. He is an Egyptian-American. Off campus, he is a volunteer for Rotary Act International which humanitarian service to advance goodwill and peace around the world. In his spare time, Ali also enjoys marvel films, video games and swimming.
Hadiatou Jalloh is a Senior at Baruch College majoring in Political Science with a minor in Black and Latino Studies. On campus, she is involved in the Muslim Student Association and off campus, she is a tutor helping high school students with their assignments and helping them matriculate into their post secondary plan. She was also selected for the SEEK awardee for receiving the highest GPA in the entire SEEK sophomore class. Hadiatou enjoys reading, journaling and writing poetry. She is very organized, detail-oriented, and motivated.
Amy Liu is a senior at Baruch College majoring in Human Resource Management, with a double minor in Communication Studies and Business Law. On campus, she is part of the Women In Business Club, where she held many of its leadership roles. Amy believes that success comes from consistency and she is always open to exploring new things. She enjoys arts like photography and calligraphy, and you can win her smile with food.
Michelle Martinez is currently a sophomore at Baruch College majoring in Communication in Corporate Business and minoring in Spanish. She is Mexican-American and yes, her favorite food is Mexican food. Michelle enjoys going to museums, camping, and basically exploring everything.
Administrative
Diana Hamilton, Director, received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Cornell University, where she taught First-Year Writing and served as an Assistant Director of the Writing Walk-in Service. Her research focused on style and subjectivity in “experimental” writing. She has published three books of poetry—most recently, God Was Right Ugly Duckling Presse—and her critical and creative writing appears in Art in America, frieze, Triangle House, Amodern, and BOMB, among others.
Rachel Rys, Assistant Director, received her Ph.D. in Feminist Studies from UC Santa Barbara with an interdisciplinary emphasis in Writing Studies and a Certificate in College and University Teaching. Her doctoral research focuses on visual and multimodal communication, particularly how the comics medium can be used to share academic feminist theory and pedagogy with diverse audiences both within and beyond the university. She has worked in a range of teaching and instructional development positions across high school, community college, and 4-year university contexts.
Hannah Brenner-Leonard, Administrative Coordinator, received her MS in Education and BFA in Art and Design Education from Pratt Institute. Over the past decade she has worked in various capacities throughout the arts education field, as both a teaching artist and administrator, developing an interest in creating opportunities for student-centered growth. Throughout her career in the arts education field she has maintained a robust art practice, which encompasses drawings, paintings and mixed media pieces exploring concepts of home and place. In her spare time she enjoys baking bread, sewing and exploring museums.
Writing by the center’s staff
