Meet the Participating Writers for 2026

The Hobart Festival of Women Writers is proud to announce its fourteenth weekend of readings, workshops, art exhibition and special events dedicated to the celebration of women’s literary work. We’ve got a great mix of published women writers offering workshops across all genres.

Joining us for the first time in 2026

Jennifer Bartell Boykin is the Poet Laureate of the City of Columbia, South Carolina. She received an MFA and MLIS from the University of South Carolina. Her debut book of poetry is Traveling Mercy (Finishing Line Press, 2023) and her second book Only Believe (The Word Works, 2024) won the 2023 Hilary Tham Capital Collection Prize. An alumna of Agnes Scott College, Jennifer is an Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellow and has additional fellowships from Callaloo and The Watering Hole. She is a school librarian. She will present the workshop, Using Food Imagery in Poetry.

Christina Chiu is the grand-prize winner of the James Alan McPherson Award for her novel, Beauty. She is also the author of Troublemaker and Other Saints, published by G.P. Putnam’s Sons. Christina has published in magazines and anthologies, including Tin House, Charlie Chan is Dead 2, Not the Only One, Washington Square, World Wide Writers, The MacGuffin, the Asian Pacific American Journal, Acorn, Grandmothers: Granddaughters Remember, and Not the Only One. Her stories have won awards and honorable mention in literary contests such as Playboy, Glimmer Train, New Millennium, New York Stories, World Wide Writers, Explorations, and El Dorado Writers’ Guild. Chiu curates and co-hosts the Pen Parentis Literary Salons in New York City. She received her MFA in writing from Columbia University. She will offer the workshop, How to Use Discouragement as a Motivating Tool for Festival 2026

Sandi Dollinger is an Albany-based playwright. Currently, she is bringing Happy Birthday, Greta Garbo, to Senior Centers, Senior Housing, and Nursing Homes as a free staged reading. Dollinger was director of the Irish Heritage Museum, Albany, NY. She has an MA in Speech, a Theatre Arts Minor, a BA in English, and an Education Minor. Currently, Dollinger is working on a performance piece called Pokoj, which examines war and peace in daily life against a background of global chaos. Sandi Dollinger will offer the workshop, Streets and Alleys: Journey to Your Own10X10

Lyndsey Ellis crafts fiction and essays that explore regional history and/or intergenerational dynamics. She has appeared in The New York Times, Kweli Journal, Narratively, Shondaland, Catapult, The Rumpus, Literary Hub, and Electric Literature. Bone Broth, her debut novel, was published by Hidden Timber Books in 2021. Ellis has been a recipient of the Friends of American Writers Literature Award, San Francisco Foundation’s Joseph Henry Jackson LiteraryAwardAward, Barbara Deming Memorial Fund Washington University’s Inaugural Heartland Journalism Fellowship, and an artist support grant from the Regional Arts Commission St. Louis. Lyndsey Ellis will offer the workshop, Writing Real without Forfeiting Care

Blair Hurley is a writer, editor, and instructor of writing. Her first novel, THE DEVOTED, was published with WW Norton in 2018, and was longlisted for The Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. Her second novel, MINOR PROPHETS, was published with Ig Publishing in 2023. Her work is published in New England Review, Electric Literature, The Georgia Review, Guernica, Paris Review Daily, West Branch, and elsewhere. She is a Pushcart Prize winner and an ASME Fiction award finalist. Her story “The Telepathist” was listed as a Distinguished Story in Best American Short Stories 2022. Blair received her A.B. in English and Creative Writing from Princeton University and her M.F.A. in Fiction from New York University. She lives outside Toronto. She will offer the workshop, Finding Your Ending.

Kim Roberts is a American poet, editor and literary historian who lives in Washington, D.C. She is the editor of the anthologies By Broad Potomac’s Shore: Great Poems from the Early Days of Our Nation’s Capital and Full Moon On K Street: Poems About Washington DC and author of five books of poetry, including The Scientific Method,  Animal Magnetism, and The Wishbone Galaxy. Her work has been published in numerous anthologies and literary journals throughout the US, and internationally. She will offer the workshop, A Generative Session on Pantoums

Jo Salas is a New Zealand-born writer living in New York’s Mid-Hudson Valley. Jo’s second novel, Mrs. Lowe-Porter, was published by JackLeg Press in February 2024. Her short fiction includes the Pushcart Prize-nominated “After” in Facing the Change: Personal Encounters with Global Warming. Her first novel, Dancing with Diana, was published by Codhill Press in 2015. Jo has also authored nonfiction books including Improvising Real Life: Personal Story in Playback Theatre, now published in eleven languages. She’s currently working on a historical novel about immigration and motherhood. She will offer the workshop, What’s In A Name.

Writers who are returning for Festival 2026 are:

Esther Cohen will conduct her perennially popular Intensive Workshop, Good Stories, a six-hour immersive writing session. Cohen, recently named the first Poet Laureate of Greene County, New York, publishes a poem a day on the Substack newsletter, Overheard.

Stephanie Cotsirilos is the author of the novellaMy Xanthi, essayist in Beacon Press’ award-winning anthology Breaking Bread: Essays from New England on Food, Hunger, and Family, and a  finalist in The Sewanee Review’s 2024 Fiction, Poetry & Nonfiction Contest (publication forthcoming). She was also Story of the Week author and finalist in Narrative Magazine’s Fall 2022 Story Contest, and published finalist in Mississippi Review’s 2019 Prize in Fiction. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, her work has appeared in print and online venues including McSweeney’s, The New Guard, and various media. Stephanie will offer the workshop, Writing Later in Life: Secrets and the Sacred

Margot Farrington is a poet, writer, and performer. Trained in theater—her earliest love—she has read and performed widely as poet and as storyteller, garnering praise both for her work and for dynamic readings and performances. Farrington is the author of four full – length collections, most recently “The Blue Canoe Of Longing” (Dos Madres Press, 2019).  Other writing includes essays, interviews, and reviews of poetry and art. Margot will present the workshop, Deep Gaze: Painting and Sculpture as Helpmates

Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Miho Kinnas is a writer, poet and translator. Her poems are collected in various anthologies including Best American Poetry 2023, and The Coast Lines. She teaches Poems of All Sizes: Japanese Poetic Forms at Writers.com and New York Writers Workshop. She contributes to World Literature Today (University of Oklahoma) and The American Book Review. Kinas will offer the workshop, Introduction to Japanese Poetic Forms

Linda Lowen is a nonfiction book reviewer for Publishers Weekly and a theater reviewer for the Syracuse Post-Standard. Lowen is familiar to many after years on-air at local NPR and PBS stations. Her work has been published in the New York Times and in Tiny Love Stories: True Tales of Love in 100 Words or Less (Artisan Books, 2020). A writing instructor and editor, her writing advice has appeared in The Writer and Writer’s Digest magazines. Lowen’s two travel/tourism books about her hometown —100 Things To Do in Syracuse Before You Die and Secret Syracuse: A guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure — have sold over 5,000 copies. She’s currently researching a third book, Unique Eats and Eateries of Syracuse, forthcoming in Spring 2026. Linda Lowen will offer the workshop, Scene and Done: Four Elements of Scene.

Ellen Meeropol is the author of six novels: Sometimes an Island, The Lost Women of Azalea Court, Her Sister’s Tattoo, Kinship of Clover, On Hurricane Island, and House Arrest and is the guest editor for the anthology, Dreams for a Broken World. Her work has been honored by the Sarton Women’s Prize, The Women’s National Book Association, and the Massachusetts Center for the Book. She will present the workshop, Innovative Structures for Politically Engaged Fiction

Stephanie Nikolopoulos is a writer and editor based in New York City. She is the coauthor, with Paul Maher Jr., of the biography Burning Furiously Beautiful: The True Story of Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road. Afar animated her flash travel story “Seeing the Light in Sweden” for their Travel Tales series in 2019, and the Albany International Airport Gallery selected her “Essay after Visiting the Thomas Cole National Historic Site, Written from a Skyscraper” for their Landmarks exhibit in 2018. She currently writes the column A Byte Out of the Big Apple for Thomas Insights. Nikolopoulos also wrote introductions to the reissues of the travel classic A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella Bird and adventure classic Hunting the Grisly by Theodore Roosevelt. As well, she contributed to Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia. Stephanie will offer the workshop, Marketing Your Book in a Crowded Marketplace.

Bertha Rogers, named First Poet Laureate of Delaware County, New York, in March 2005, is a poet, translator, visual artist, and master teaching artist. She is the founding director of Bright Hill Press and Word Thursdays, a nonprofit organization in New York’s Catskill Mountain Region. More than 250 of Bertha Rogers’s poems appear in journals and anthologies, and the collections Heart Turned Back, Even the Hemlock: Poems, Illuminations, Reliquaries; The Fourth Beast; A House of Corners; Sleeper, You Wake. Her translation of Beowulf, the Anglo-Saxon epic poem, was published in 2000, and her translation of the riddle-poems from the Anglo-Saxon Exeter Book, Uncommon Creatures, Singing Things, was published in 2010. Bertha Rogers will again offer a special workshop for kids and their families, The Family Poetry/Art Project.

Lisa Wujnovich writes poetry and farms at Mountain Dell Farm in Hancock, NY; mountaindellfarmny.com. She has written two chapbooks, Fieldwork, 2012 and This Place Called Us. She also co-edited the anthology, The Lake Rises, poems to and for our bodies of water, 201. Lisa hosts the poetic collaborative series, Bringing it to the Field, on-site farm performances honoring farms, in collaboration with poets, musicians, dancers, performance artists, sculptors, culinary artists, and healers. She holds an MFA in poetry from Drew University. Lisa will offer the workshop, Love Poetry Through The Ages.

The Hobart Festival of Women Writers has, since 2013, celebrated and recognized women‘s literary work. We’ve brought together writers who work in all genres to read, present workshops exploring writing craft, participate in panel discussions, and sell their books. We also exhibit artwork by local women artists. Our three-day weekend dedicated to women writers is open to all readers, writers, and lovers of language. All are welcome.

Note: The administrative staff of the Hobart Festival of Women Writers are all volunteers. We rely upon the generous support of the people of The Hobart Book Village. Please stop by for a visit.

Hobart landscape photos are by Julie Rockefeller, proprietor of The Hobart Exchange

Read our online magazine NOW which features the work of our Participating Writers

www.hobartfestivalofwomenwriters.com

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