On Saturday, June 3rd, Eve Bridberg, founder of Grub Street, a groundbreaking creative writing center was celebrated as the esteemed recipient of the 2023 WNBA Award. This accolade recognizes Eve Bridberg’s outstanding contributions to the literary community and is bestowed upon a “living American woman who derives part or all of her income from books and allied arts and who has done meritorious work in the world of books beyond the duties or responsibilities of her profession or occupation.” (WNBA website)
Eve Bridberg receives the WNBA award, from left to right, Serina Gousby, Diana Norma Szoklyai, Eve Bridberg, NC Weil, and Natalie Obando.
Coinciding with the WNBA National Meeting, the award presentation drew attendees from the Boston’s literary landscape, as well as WNBA Board members and presidents from all over the United States. The event showcased a diverse panel of writers who have not only flourished within the Grub Street Community but have also played a pivotal role in its growth, Serina Gousby, Namrata Patel, and Diana Norma Szoklyai. The panel was moderated by WNBA president, Natalie Obando and preceded the highlight of the evening—the presentation of the WNBA Award to Eve Bridberg.
Held at Porter Square Books, Cambridge, and organized by Deborah Norkin, President of WNBA Boston and their board, the award presentation and reception, were seamlessly executed. Thank you Deb and WNBA Boston!
WNBA Board members and volunteers from Boston were warm and welcoming and ensured that the event ran smoothly.
Congratulations to Eve Bridberg!
WNBA has been a leader & advocate for roles of women in the community of the book, for over a century. How do you see your work founding and guiding GrubStreet as continuing that tradition?
In the early days of GrubStreet, I started teaching the first classes with a writer named Julie Rold. We had both just graduated from an MFA program where the dominant culture was patriarchal. By teaching in a style that was less paternalistic, more supportive, and more open, we created a place where women thrived. It’s also true that women can find it harder to carve out the time to write, and programs like GrubStreet, which offer classes at night and on the weekends and provide affordable and flexible pathways to deepen one’s craft, work well for women writers. I’m really proud of how many wonderful woman writers have published novels, nonfiction books, essays, and poems with strong female characters and perspectives on everything from how our culture continues to tolerate sexual harassment and rape to important yet under-appreciated historical figures like Lucy Stone to the complexity of mothering and more.
Four seats out of six on our senior leadership team are occupied by women. I like to think that having so many women in leadership roles at GrubStreet has created a work environment that balances work and family, encourages collaboration, empowers early-career women, and creates a space that supports people of all backgrounds, gender identifications and sexualities, as well as leaders of color.
GrubStreet is a leader among non -academic writing centers nationwide. What next steps do you see for the organization, in increasing outreach and collaboration?
The future is so exciting. We have a new space on Boston’s beautiful waterfront with a podcast studio, a literary stage, a cafe and expanded community space and classrooms. Porter Square Books, a beloved local bookstore, is operating a second location in our space. With street-level presence and a stage, we look forward to amplifying the incredible range of diverse writing talent not only from Boston but from all over the country and world. Our Artistic Director, Dariel Suarez, has curated a vision for the stage that includes Writers’ Weekends that highlight the work of diverse communities within the writing world and explore how writing intersects with identity, culture, and society. The first weekend coming up in June is dedicated to celebrating and centering Latinx voices.
This summer, writers will take the stage to discuss how creative writing can make a difference on climate change and explore the impact on local communities. Last year, following the Supreme Court’s Dodd vs. Jackson decision, a group of our instructors and staff led by our Program Director, Erin Weiss, organized “Your Body, Your Story,” a series of free and low-cost workshops on nonfiction writing about pregnancy, abortion, miscarriage, and reproductive justice. We are working now to publish an anthology of student work to share these vital stories with the world.
What inspires you the most about GrubStreet as it has grown?
What inspires me the most is our multicultural and multigenerational community. The times we’re living in now make it hard to come together and deal with differences, nuance, and complexity. The voices online that gain traction tend to flatten people and issues. Good writing is an antidote to this. I’m proud of the way GrubStreet has grown into being a place where we can honestly grapple with differences, culture, identity, and complexity in our classrooms. We’re working every day to create a culture where writers from all backgrounds can bravely share their voices, experiences, and work, and where every member of our community commits to engaging across differences with curiosity and a desire to learn and grow together.
In 2013, we started working on diversity and inclusion, recognizing that we weren’t representative of our city or the country at large. In recent years, that work coupled with our new headquarters has driven our growth with the establishment of a robust scholarship fund, fellowships for emerging writers, fully funded writing programs throughout Boston’s neighborhoods, and the growth of our teen programs. We also grew over the pandemic with our online Zoom classes reaching students all over the globe.
For the full interview with Eve Bridberg: Click HERE!
Thursday, July 27, 12 P.M. PDT- A FREE Virtual Event
Peter Rubie has been in New York publishing as an agent, editor, and published writer for nearly forty years. He is the CEO of FinePrint Literary Management, an NYC-based literary agency with 5 active agents, and began in publishing working as a freelance reader and freelance editor for major “Big Six” publishers (as they were then) before becoming the adult fiction editor at Walker & Co. from 1985 to 1991. He became an agent in 1992 and formed his own agency in 1998.
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Brenda Knight, author of Women of the Beat Generation, will read new work and a tribute to “Beat Goddess” ruth weiss. Brenda began her publishing career at HarperCollins. An author of ten books, she won the American Book Award for “Women of the Beat Generation.” In 2015, she was named Indiefab Publisher of the Year. She is Editorial Director at Mango Publishing and is President of WNBA-SF Chapter.
Elise Marie Collins has consulted with small businesses, authors, and alumni associations on social media marketing and believes that a social media plan should be intuitive, fun, and seamless. Helping students and clients form healthy lifestyle patterns is Elise Collins’ passion and life purpose. She has taught yoga for the past 20 years and is the author of several books on healthy living, including her latest, Super Ager: You Can Look Younger, Have More Energy, a Better Memory, and Live a Long and Healthy Life. Elise enjoys sharing yoga wisdom and current scientific research.
Ellen McBarnette is a life-long writer whose nonfiction work has been published as testimony, fact sheets and opinion pieces for organizations that include the Sierra Club and the American Bar Association. A professional storyteller, she is a recent transplant from Washington, DC where she ran the Arlington Creative Nonfiction Writers Group. She now runs the Beta Readers and Writers Group and is an active participant in critique groups in the Bay. She lives in Hayward with her partner Ben and their cat Java.
Randy Peyser, agent, sells non-fiction manuscripts in all genres and speaks nationally about how to earn book deals. She also serves as faculty for CEO Space International, where she teaches about writing book proposals. She is the author of The Write-a-Book Progra; Crappy to Happy as featured in the move Eat, Pray, Love; and The Power of Miracle Thinking. Her clients’ books have appeared in Oprah, Time Magazine, the bestseller lists of the Wall Street Journal and USA Today, in airport bookstores, 
Rachel Hiles is a Senior Editor at Chronicle Books in San Francisco. She acquires and edits a wide-range of visually-driven Lifestyle titles, including books on personal growth, nature, mindfulness, parenting, women’s empowerment, and gardening.
Natalie Obando is a graduate from California State University, Long Beach with a BA in journalism emphasizing public relations and a minor concentration in creative writing. For nearly two decades, she’s worked in the world of books as a book publicist. Natalie is the founder of Do Good Public Relations Group and the grassroots organization, Women of Color Writers Podcast and Programming. She is the current national president of the 105 years old non-profit, the Women’s National Book Association (WNBA), overseeing all eleven chapters across the nation. As the first Latina president of the national organization, her goal has been promoting diversity in publishing via strategic grassroots efforts. Her dedication to promoting diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in the book world led her to found and chair Authentic Voices—a four-month long program that immerses people from marginalized communities in a master class of writing, editing, marketing, and publishing.
Viveca Shearin is a co-publisher of Not a Pipe Publishing, an indie publishing house based in Oregon (though she lives and works in NYC). An avid reader since childhood, her tastes in books have changed throughout the years. However, she is still a lover of fantasy, magic, and all things dark and mysterious. As she searches for her new talent, Viveca is looking for YA and Adult fiction projects in these genres: fantasy, speculative, paranormal, supernatural, mystery and thriller, science fiction, and retellings of fairy tales and mythology (Greek and Japanese). Viveca is especially interested in BIPOC representation and acquiring BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ voices. She’s drawn to stories that feature strong female characters (lead and secondary), stories with a diverse and eclectic cast of characters that all shine in their own ways, stories that feature found families, and stories that stay with her long after the last page is turned. She will not read stories that feature Black trauma, abuse, or anything of that vein. So please do not send these to her. Aside from working for Not a Pipe, Viveca also works as a sensitivity reader.
Zeynep Sen graduated from Sarah Lawrence College with a B.A. in Literature and Creative Writing. Following graduation, she honed her skills as an agent at the Jennifer Lyons Literary Agency. A few years later, Zeynep moved to WordLink Literary Agency, where she now works as a senior agent and foreign rights agent. At WorkLink, Zeynap represents her own lists of authors..
Peter Rubie has been in New York publishing as an agent, editor, and published writer for nearly forty years. He is the CEO of FinePrint Literary Management, a NYC based literary agency with 5 active agents, and began in publishing working as a freelance reader and freelance editor for major “Big Six” publishers (as they were then) before becoming the adult fiction editor at Walker & Co. from 1985 to 1991. He became an agent in 1992 and formed his own agency in 1998.
Leland Cheuk is a MacDowell and Hawthornden Castle Fellow and award-winning author of three books of fiction, most recently the novel NO GOOD VERY BAD ASIAN (2019). Cheuk’s work has been covered in Buzzfeed, The Paris Review, VICE, San Francisco Chronicle, and has appeared or is forthcoming in publications such as NPR, The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, among other outlets.
Georgia Hughes is editorial director at 
Aya de León is an award-winning author of nine novels and a creative writing teacher at UC Berkeley. She is the acquiring editor for Fighting Chance Books, the new climate justice fiction imprint at She Writes Press. Fighting Chance will published novels for adults by writers of all genders that tell stories of people taking collective action in the here and now to solve the climate crisis. She is currently acquiring titles for their 2023/24/25 lists and is eager to take pitches from both agented or unagented authors.
Michael Larsen co-founded Larsen-Pomada Literary Agents in 1972. For over four decades, the agency sold hundreds of books to more than 100 publishers and imprints. The agency has stopped accepting new writers, but Mike loves helping all writers. He gives talks about writing and publishing and does author coaching.
Becky Parker Geist is CEO of 
Eric Lincoln Miller is the founder of 3ibooks Literary Agency in Reno, Nevada. 3ibooks is a different kind of literary agency that solely focuses on authors and their needs. Their agency looks for fiction of any genre (romance, horror, mystery/crime, women’s fiction, erotica, science fiction, historical, and fantasy).
Camille Kantor is an agent at Kimberley Cameron & Associates. She completed her master’s degree in evolutionary biology and graduated from the renowned Columbia Publishing Program at Oxford.
Kat Georges is co-director of Three Rooms Press, a trade publisher based in New York City driven by diversity, dada, punk, and passion. Founded in 1994, it has more than 100 titles currently in print, including LGBTQ+ young adult fiction, genre fiction, especially literary-leaning mystery and science fiction by diverse authors, biographies of significant women and people of color that history has overlooked. In addition, the press publishes an annual journal of contemporary dada writing and art. Three Rooms Press welcomes authors of all ages and career points; its youngest author was 16 at the time his book came out; its oldest author is nearing 90. Kat is currently looking for LGBTQ+ fiction and young adult fiction that deal directly with current anti-queer attitudes, mystery that centers on bold and daring diverse main characters, and riveting women of history who need to have more attention given to them. An author and poet, as well as graphic designer and editor, Kat welcomes voices that have something different to say, that inspire readers, and that show the power of innovative, compelling writing. To see the latest Three Rooms Press releases, visit 
Johanna Maaghul, a two decade career as a technologist and business analyst, Johanna continues to dedicate her time to her real childhood passion of reading and (now later in life) midwifing into the world non-fiction books. Her deep ability to recognize value in new concepts and quickly sift out meaning in today’s vastly growing sea of non-fiction are skills she has refined through her many years of reading, writing and coaching successful writers and artists. With deep industry experience in online marketing, web content development and digital publishing, Johanna combines her career expertise to help promote authors as well as assist them in navigating the rapidly changing worlds of traditional and digital publishing. While Johanna’s primary focus is on non-fiction, she has been known to take on works of fiction when she can’t put them down. Visit her agency: 
Would I do Great Group Reads again? In a heartbeat. I am gearing up for my third year!
I will always be incredibly grateful to WNBA-SF for the Pitch-O-Rama. Several years ago, I was struggling to get an agent. I had a toddler at home, and I was sure I had missed the boat. Here in the Bay Area, there are many talented writers, but very little of the literary industry is local. There were big pitch conferences in New York and other parts of the US. But at the time, I couldn’t travel because I had such limited time and money as a new mom. I was pining away on my computer, querying agents and drowning in the isolation. 