Catherine Maryse Anderson is a poet, essayist, playwright, performer, and longtime educator. Her work bubbles up around themes of grief, intimacy, lineage, queer identity, and mother(ing). Her debut chapbook, “Mother, Unboxed” was written in collaboration with her mother, posthumously. She lives in Providence, RI with lots of fur and an emptying nest.
Charmian Dewey is a uniquely self-made woman. Trained as a nurse she joined the Peace Corps in Ethiopia in 1972 before returning to Michigan for a short career in mental health arts therapy and then sailing with her husband and two sons to St. Thomas. Charmian spent twenty years in the Virgin Islands where she owned a boutique and real estate, before settling in Florida to build her property portfolio. Now retired in Jacksonville, near her two grandchildren, Charmian revisits her adventures in memoir form thanks to classes with Suze Allen at Manuscript Mentor.
Sara Diamond is a life-long student of meditation and spiritual paths. In the 1980s and 1990s, she was a journalist, sociologist, and authored four books about right-wing movements in the U.S. Since 2004, she’s worked in her own solo law office in the east bay. She’s also a practicing astrologer and a contributing writer about astrology and other occult subjects for a variety of on-line publications. Sara is currently hard at work revising her memoir, Awake at Dawn: The Making of a Life-Long Spiritual Seeker.
Eric Starkey is Co-Executive Director of The Silence Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and teaching the contemplative arts. He’s recently retired from co-owning a coffee roasting business with his wife Kari. Eric spent most of his working career in the construction accounting industry and in his spare time was fortunate to get to work on a few television and movie projects. Throughout it all, Eric has continued to write and intends to spend this next chapter researching and writing about ways to save humanity. https://thesilencefoundation.org
Lisa Stathoplos is an author, professional stage, voice, film actor, and audiobook narrator with a second career as high school special education teacher/case manager specializing in emotional and behavioral disability. Her book, Chimera A Shapeshifter’s Journey is an Editor’s Pick and a Semi Finalist for the BookLife/Publisher’s Weekly Prize in Memoir: “…Stathoplos’s bluntly lyrical memoir… is equal parts humorous and heartbreaking, brilliantly illustrating how life can challenge, break, and rebuild us—sometimes in the course of one afternoon. The result is an astonishing, brutal, funny, scary, lovely work that fans of all genres will find riveting.” BookLife/Publisher’s Weekly Lisa’s first memoir, Make Me, was praised by Publisher’s Weekly/BookLife: “These vignettes offer flashes of insight….blending her exuberant commentary with finely etched detail…”
Her third book, — a children’s book for children of all ages! — Forsythe, The Forlorn Firefly is in prepublication. lisastathoploswriter.com
Roland Tec has been an award-winning filmmaker, playwright, and composer for more than 30 years. His late father, Leon Tec was the prominent psychiatrist and author of the groundbreaking book, The Fear of Success. And his late mother, Nechama Tec, was a Holocaust scholar and the author of several books on rescue and resistance to Nazi oppression including, Defiance, the story of the largest armed rescue of Jews by Jews during WWII. With the help of Suze Allen, Roland has recently been looking back and digging around to see if maybe there’s a memoir in there somewhere. On April 5th, he read some of his latest efforts in this realm. As a producer, Roland’s been on a lifelong mission to remind everyone that curious and ambitious writers are at the heart of a thriving culture and they deserve our love and respect even if they sometimes do things we do not understand. For all things Roland Tec on the WWW, visit RolandTecUmbrella.com.
Peter Welch completed his MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing at Bay Path University in 2024, at the age of sixty-three. His writing can be found in River Teeth Journal, Multiplicity Magazine and in the anthology Ten Piscataqua Writers 2026. He’s working on a memoir, As I Kiss the Ground: Boyhood, Belonging, and the Kinship of Nature. Peter is also a watercolor painter, a cog in the animal transport wheel where he has met extraordinary people, primarily women, who care about other sentient beings as he does and a volunteer at the Kittery Freebie Barn. The natural world is both balm and muse in his life, trees being some of his most revered teachers and companions. Peter lives in Kittery Point, Maine with his partner Michael and their sweet (rescued) pup Dasher. peterwelch@weebly.com
Suze Allen is the host of Memoir Church and Writers’ Resistance and
Creative Director and Founder of Manuscript Mentor
Suze wears many artistic hats, all of them cut from the cloth of shared stories. She is an author, poet, memoirist, writing coach, editor, teacher, dramaturg, theatre professional, ghostwriter and life coach for LivingWriteNow, which offers life coaching through a writing modality. Her classes and workshops include Memoir Writing, Writing Through Grief and Sorrow, Unearthing Your Story ~ Connecting to Nature, Self & Story, Mining the Depths ~ Memoir & Monologue. Suze is a storytelling and story board consultant at ShadowPower. https://www.shadowpower.org
Suze’s company, Manuscript Mentor https://manuscriptmentor.com has been helping folks turn their dreams, ideas and narratives into effective, vibrant writing in any genre, for over 20 years. She is the host of Memoir Church on the first Sunday of every month, which features memoirists in conversation and reading from their work. (Memoir Church YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTHq-rUyRcMqzle7F8G8nUg) Suze is currently hard at work on her memoir Exploding Heart.
Register for Workshops and Classes
Suze and Roland Tec have two Mining the Depths ~ Memoir, Monologue & Your Deepest Treasure coming up: Mining the Depths OKC on Memorial Day weekend in collaboration with Kari Hirst Starkey and Eric Starkey and The Silence Foundation https://thesilencefoundation.org The east coast Mining the Depths – All Under One Roof on Labor Day weekend in Westport, CT. Early Bird Specials are available for both.
WRITERS’ RESISTANCE: STORIES ON
LIVING IN THIS AMERICA
Every other month Memoir Church features memoir writers, poets, and essayists for Writers’ Resistance to illuminate the times in which we are living. In challenging and changing times, artists must shine a light on the inequities, horrors and injustices and offer bridges to beauty, hope and light so we do not have to hide in the shadows and succumb to misguided power and principles.
Every First Sunday
A Celebration of Shared Stories
Compelling first-person stories, full of inspiration, passion, and truth.
Suze interviews authors who read from their memoirs, plus a moderated Q & A.
No Reservations Necessary ~ Just Hit the Button and Arrive at Memoir Church.
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We need stories. We need stories to understand ourselves. We are the only creature that does this unusual thing of telling each other stories in order to try and understand the kind of creature that we are. When a child is born, the first thing the child requires is safety and love – the next thing that the child asks for is – tell me a story…
Salman Rushdie
