Join us at the Literary Cleveland offices on Saturday, October 25 from 6-9pm as we celebrate our graduating class of Breakthrough writers with a very special presentation of their work and recognition of their hard work as participants in the 2023-2024 LIT CLE Breakthrough Writing Residency.
Doors open at 6, then enjoy readings from all six residents from 6:30-8:30 followed by a mixer with snacks and drinks until 9pm.
RESIDENTS
Dante DelBene (Fiction) is a writer and cinematographer from Youngstown, Ohio. His professional writing experience includes ad copy and commercial scripts for regional and national brands, as well as a byline in Hypefresh,a news and pop-culture magazine out of Philadelphia. His short fiction has been published in SLAB, Olney Magazine, HASH Journal, Red Coyote, Volney Road Review, and Stoneboat. His career in the production industry inspired a novel about a filmmaker who stumbles upon a humanitarian tragedy that pulls the curtain on content creation.
Molly Gabriel (Fiction) is a writer and poet whose work has appeared in Gordon Square Review, Jellyfish Review, Hobart, and as the Flash Fiction Editor’s Pick in Barren Magazine. Her story, “XO Training,” was anthologized in the Best Small Fictions of 2020. She was the 2007 recipient of the Robert Fox Award for Young Writers. She read in the Jax by Jax Literary Festival in 2019. Currently, Molly lives in northeast Ohio with her husband and son where she is working on her first novel.
Maia White (Fiction) is a retired nurse and social worker living in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. After working for 24 years as a therapist, she returned to school for a degree in nursing, where she worked for another 17 years in roles that incorporated her social work background with nursing care. Working most of her career with people living in poverty, her work values are centered on providing care that is respectful and empowering. She has loved both reading and writing since she can remember and is working on her first novel.
Isabella Moreno (Nonfiction) is a Nuyorican proudly hailing from the Bronx; writing, gardening and blossoming in Cleveland, Ohio. Her personal writing explores, and gives testament to, memories, recollections and anecdotes influenced by her multi-generational (multi-hyphenated) familial experiences with an ever-changing historical background. She has 30 years of experience in education from K-12 classrooms to non-profit and college administration. For 15+ years she has created workshops for creatives of color. She is the founder of Illuminating Our Voices. She believes joy can always be found in collective spaces of shared creation. Her two adult children add the magical rhythm to her heart.
Ted Samuel (Nonfiction) is an educator and nonprofit director who centers storytelling in almost every aspect of his work. He earned a B.A. in International Studies from Kenyon College and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from American University. His career has spanned three continents where he has conducted ethnographic research, supported local social movements, and facilitated intercultural education. The youngest of five children, Ted grew up in an Indian American immigrant family that settled in northern Appalachia. He’s currently working on a collection of personal essays that explore how material culture—inanimate objects from broken clocks to globs of spit—has steered his navigation of race, heritage, sexuality, faith, and privilege in places that feel both perpetually foreign and intimately familiar.
Chelsea Daniel (Poetry) is an emerging poet born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. As a Black, queer, and disabled woman, Daniel’s work grounds itself in the mundane and extraordinary experiences of Black and LGBTQIA+ American life. In positions at Cleveland Rape Crisis Center and OAESV, Daniel led trauma-informed creative writing workshops for survivors interested in telling their stories through writing. A graduate of Cleveland State University with a Bachelor’s Degree in English and Creative Writing, Daniel was selected in 2015 as a non-fiction fellow for Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation (VONA)and mentored by Staceyann Chin and Junot Díaz. Working across poetic genres of drama, romance, and magical realism, Daniel is currently developing her first feature-length poetry manuscript.
Story Rhinehart (Poetry) is a writer, choreographer and artist. Her poem “The Day I Met St. Michael Sitting on the Steps of the Cuyahoga County Courthouse in Cleveland, Ohio” won the 2024 Robinson Jeffer’s TOR House Poetry Prize. Story has been published in The Caribbean Writer. This summer she collaborated with the poet Raja Belle Freeman on the Greek Chorus for Batrachomyomachia: The Battle Between the Frogs and the Mice: A Tiny Homeric Epic, which was presented by ARTFUL and Art Acts at the Brownhoist Ballroom. Story is a graduate of Wesleyan University and Hathaway Brown School.
Join us at the Literary Cleveland offices on Saturday, October 25 from 6-9pm as we celebrate our graduating class of Breakthrough writers with a very special presentation of their work and recognition of their hard work as participants in the 2023-2024 LIT CLE Breakthrough Writing Residency.
Doors open at 6, then enjoy readings from all six residents from 6:30-8:30 followed by a mixer with snacks and drinks until 9pm.
RESIDENTS
Dante DelBene (Fiction) is a writer and cinematographer from Youngstown, Ohio. His professional writing experience includes ad copy and commercial scripts for regional and national brands, as well as a byline in Hypefresh,a news and pop-culture magazine out of Philadelphia. His short fiction has been published in SLAB, Olney Magazine, HASH Journal, Red Coyote, Volney Road Review, and Stoneboat. His career in the production industry inspired a novel about a filmmaker who stumbles upon a humanitarian tragedy that pulls the curtain on content creation.
Molly Gabriel (Fiction) is a writer and poet whose work has appeared in Gordon Square Review, Jellyfish Review, Hobart, and as the Flash Fiction Editor’s Pick in Barren Magazine. Her story, “XO Training,” was anthologized in the Best Small Fictions of 2020. She was the 2007 recipient of the Robert Fox Award for Young Writers. She read in the Jax by Jax Literary Festival in 2019. Currently, Molly lives in northeast Ohio with her husband and son where she is working on her first novel.
Maia White (Fiction) is a retired nurse and social worker living in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. After working for 24 years as a therapist, she returned to school for a degree in nursing, where she worked for another 17 years in roles that incorporated her social work background with nursing care. Working most of her career with people living in poverty, her work values are centered on providing care that is respectful and empowering. She has loved both reading and writing since she can remember and is working on her first novel.
Isabella Moreno (Nonfiction) is a Nuyorican proudly hailing from the Bronx; writing, gardening and blossoming in Cleveland, Ohio. Her personal writing explores, and gives testament to, memories, recollections and anecdotes influenced by her multi-generational (multi-hyphenated) familial experiences with an ever-changing historical background. She has 30 years of experience in education from K-12 classrooms to non-profit and college administration. For 15+ years she has created workshops for creatives of color. She is the founder of Illuminating Our Voices. She believes joy can always be found in collective spaces of shared creation. Her two adult children add the magical rhythm to her heart.
Ted Samuel (Nonfiction) is an educator and nonprofit director who centers storytelling in almost every aspect of his work. He earned a B.A. in International Studies from Kenyon College and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from American University. His career has spanned three continents where he has conducted ethnographic research, supported local social movements, and facilitated intercultural education. The youngest of five children, Ted grew up in an Indian American immigrant family that settled in northern Appalachia. He’s currently working on a collection of personal essays that explore how material culture—inanimate objects from broken clocks to globs of spit—has steered his navigation of race, heritage, sexuality, faith, and privilege in places that feel both perpetually foreign and intimately familiar.
Chelsea Daniel (Poetry) is an emerging poet born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. As a Black, queer, and disabled woman, Daniel’s work grounds itself in the mundane and extraordinary experiences of Black and LGBTQIA+ American life. In positions at Cleveland Rape Crisis Center and OAESV, Daniel led trauma-informed creative writing workshops for survivors interested in telling their stories through writing. A graduate of Cleveland State University with a Bachelor’s Degree in English and Creative Writing, Daniel was selected in 2015 as a non-fiction fellow for Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation (VONA)and mentored by Staceyann Chin and Junot Díaz. Working across poetic genres of drama, romance, and magical realism, Daniel is currently developing her first feature-length poetry manuscript.
Story Rhinehart (Poetry) is a writer, choreographer and artist. Her poem “The Day I Met St. Michael Sitting on the Steps of the Cuyahoga County Courthouse in Cleveland, Ohio” won the 2024 Robinson Jeffer’s TOR House Poetry Prize. Story has been published in The Caribbean Writer. This summer she collaborated with the poet Raja Belle Freeman on the Greek Chorus for Batrachomyomachia: The Battle Between the Frogs and the Mice: A Tiny Homeric Epic, which was presented by ARTFUL and Art Acts at the Brownhoist Ballroom. Story is a graduate of Wesleyan University and Hathaway Brown School.
