Writers & Workshops
Poetry
Monica Lee Weatherly
Monica Lee Weatherly is a poet, writer, and Professor of English at Georgia State University (Perimeter College). She is the 2023 winner of Georgia Author of the Year for her chapbook of poetry, It Felt Like Mississippi, a 2023 Key West Literary Seminar Fellowship recipient, and the 2021 winner of the Willie Morris Prize for Southern Poetry. Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Tulane Review, Plainsongs Magazine, Nzuri Journal, Merge Literary Magazine, Obsidian, South Florida Poetry Journal, and Auburn Avenue. Her writing often focuses on the culture and experiences of women in the American South.
Kenneth Anderson
Ken Anderson founded and was Faculty Editor for The Old Red Kimono in the early 70s. Island of Wak-Wak Press (Orebro, Sweden) just released his The Ward at Twilight: Goth Poems and has submitted it to the Bram Stoker Awards. Red Ogre Review Books (L.A.) and Liquid Raven Media recently released his The Goose Liver Anthology (Mother Goose meets Spoon River Anthology). His first poetry book was The Intense Lover. Coffin Bell Journal nominated his poem “Blood Quartet” for the 2024 Best of the Net anthology. He was a Finalist in the 2021 Saints and Sinners poetry contest. His poetry manuscript A Sweet Oblivious Antidote was a Semifinalist for the 2024 Washington Prize.
Fiction
Ginger Eager (Virtual)
Ginger Eager nurtures the relationship between stories who wish to be written and the humans willing to write them. She has an MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and is a practitioner with Red Earth Healing’s Psychopomp Collective. Her first novel, The Nature of Remains, won the AWP Prize for the Novel and was selected as a Book All Georgians Should Read by the Georgia Center for the Book. Ginger lived most of her life in the Georgia Piedmont, an area that holds a few centuries worth of her people’s bones. Earlier this year, she relocated to southern Minnesota with her partner and their two cats. She’s pleased to report that the resilience she developed during Georgia’s summers is serving her well in the Minnesota winter.
Non-Fiction
McCracken Poston, Jr.
McCracken Poston, Jr. is a practicing criminal defense attorney and former
state legislator in the Georgia House of Representatives. He is a graduate of
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and received his law degree
from The University of Georgia. He gained national attention for his handling
of several notable cases that were featured on CNN Presents, Dateline
NBC, A&E's American Justice, and Forensic Files. He lives in Ringgold,
Georgia.
Visit him at McCrackenPostonJr.com
Podcast Writing
Zack Hudson
Zack grew up in Louisiana without encountering wild alligators until he was an adult.
During his journey, Zack found a hunger to grow as a leader and discovered there were many others out there that had that same fire.
Since then, he’s developed many leaders to land the job they haveve always wanted or ended up at their dream locations. One of Zack’s greatest joys is seeing others hit their personal goals. Today, Zack helps over 50,000 people across the US become the leaders that they were called to be. He also helps others across the globe reach their potential through the Passing the Baton Leadership Podcast and his personal website.
Screen Writing
Michael Lucker
Michael is a professional screenwriter and professor of screenwriting with 30 years of experience writing for major studios and 15 years of experience lecturing at major universities. He began his career writing and directing cable commercials while earning his undergraduate degree in broadcasting and film at Boston University’s College of Communication. Soon after, he landed in Los Angeles working in production for ABC, NBC, CBS, and HBO before taking a job as assistant to Steven Spielberg at Amblin Entertainment on the feature films Always, Arachnophobia, Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade, and Jurassic Park. He went on to serve in creative affairs on feature films Crimson Tide, Terminal Velocity, and Taking Care of Business at Hollywood Pictures before embarking on a career as a screenwriter for Paramount, Disney, DreamWorks, Fox, and Universal on such movies as Vampire in Brooklyn, Home on The Range, Mulan II, and Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, which was nominated for an Academy Award in 2002 as best animated feature. An opportunity to serve as executive producer at Turner Entertainment brought him home to Atlanta in 2007. He went on to work in television creating unscripted docuseries for Animal Planet, Cartoon Network, Travel Channel, History, Discovery, NBC, TBS, TNT, TLC, OWN, DIY, A&E, and MSNBC for which he won a CINE Golden Eagle Award.
More recently, he served as consultant on the feature films Fear of Rain starring Harry Connick Jr., A Wing and A Prayer starring Denis Quaid, The Curse of La Patasola starring Gillian Fitzgerald, Fight Night starring Kevin Hart, and Signing Day starring Mira Sorvino. The award-winning short 10-56, which Michael co-wrote and co-produced, is currently in development as a feature film with Riot Proof Entertainment. Over the last year, he was hired to adapt the award-winning children’s book series Freeing Freddie into an animated television series with Free the Mind Media, write the feature thriller Project 33 for Monument Multimedia, develop the provocative docuseries A Nation on Fire with Shoulderhill Entertainment, and pen the feature film The Diane Crump Story for Three Ring Pictures. A renowned instructor in screenwriting, Michael serves as senior lecturer at the University of North Georgia, mentor in Reinhardt University’s Creative Writing MFA program, and founder of Screenwriter School. In 2018 the Georgia Film Academy hired him to create a high school screenwriting curriculum, which has since been taught to more than 15,000 students in the state. His book on screenwriting, Crash! Boom! Bang! How to Write Action Movies (published by www.mwp.com), is available wherever books are sold.
