Instructor: Annmarie Kelly is the author of Here Be Dragons, a memoir about the wonderful misery of raising children with someone you love. She also hosts Wild Precious Life, a literary podcast about making the most of the time we have. Annmarie teaches writing at Stanford, Tri-C, and Ashland University where she works with incarcerated students trying to obtain their degree. Her essays have appeared on NPR’s All Things Considered, in Today Parenting, and New York Observer among others, and her work has been staged with the Cleveland Humanities Festival and Listen to Your Mother Pittsburgh. She’s received support from the Ohio Arts Council, Tin House, and the Martha’s Vineyard Institute, and last year, Annmarie was named both an Erma Bombeck and Ernest Hemingway Writer-in-Residence. In her non-writing moments, Annmarie loves kickboxing, karaoke, hound dogs, ping-pong, books that make her laugh, movies that make her cry, and salads other people make her eat. She lives in Cleveland, Ohio, where she is currently writing a memoir with the ghost of her father.
Tara Pringle Jefferson is the author of Bloom How You Must: A Black Woman’s Guide to Self-Care and Generational Healing (Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins). A certified breathwork facilitator and wellness advocate, Jefferson is founder of The Self Care Suite, a digital wellness community for Black women. Over the last decade, Jefferson has brought her wellness expertise to corporate audiences including WW, SiriusXM, Wayfair, and Priceline. Her voice has been featured on New York magazine’s The Cut, Black Enterprise, and Essence. When she’s not writing, she finds peace among her houseplants and flowers. A Cleveland native, she lives in northeast Ohio with her husband and two children.
