Guest Writers

Each year, the Institute is honored to have one local writer come and share his or her expertise with the students. Below is  a list of the writers who have been gracious enough to join us over the years.

Paul O’Brien (2025) Paul O’Brien taught English at Notre Dame and Notre Dame-Bishop Gibbons for forty-seven years.  In his retirement, he is a member of the Mohawk Valley Library Foundation Board and on the Board of the Dominican Retreat and Conference Center.  Paul serves on the Curriculum and Steering Committees of UCALL (Union College Academy for Lifelong Learning). He loves to read, write, and travel, especially up to North Point on Raquette Lake where his wife’s family has a home.  Paul lives in Niskayuna, New York, with his wife Deborah and their cat Casey.  His works include Musings on a Sunday Afternoon (2024), a book of poems that celebrate moments and experiences that speak of our better nature; Knowing the Place (2022), a book of poems and humorous dialogues; Onward (2021), a profile of eight students and the direction their lives took; Looking Back, Looking Beyond (2020), experiences that took on deeper meaning over time; CT, A Cat’s Story (2019), a life with illustrations of Paul and Debbie’s cat CT; Keys on the Road (2017), stories of growing up in a small town; and Voices from Room 6 ( 2015), a look back at his years of teaching.

Saadia Faruqi (2024) Saadia Faruqi is a Pakistani American author and interfaith activist. She writes the popular children’s early reader series “Yasmin” and other books for children, including chapter books, graphic novels, and picture books. Her middle grade novels include “A Place At The Table” co-written with Laura Shovan (a Sydney Taylor Notable 2021), “A Thousand Questions” (a South Asia Book Award Honor 2021) and “Yusuf Azeem Is Not A Hero”. Her first graphic novel “Saving Sunshine” was a Kirkus Best Book in 2023. Saadia is editor-in-chief of Blue Minaret, a magazine for Muslim art, poetry and prose, and was featured in Oprah Magazine in 2017 as a woman making a difference in her community. She lives in Houston, TX with her husband and children. 

James Preller (2023) James Preller is the author of more than 80 books for children of all ages. His titles include the picture books like All Welcome Here, A Pirate’s Guide to First Grade, and A Pirate’s Guide to Recess the choose-your-own-adventure story Fairy House; the middle-grade novels The Courage Test, Bystander, and Upstander, Six Innings, and Blood Mountain ; and the young adult novels The Fall and Before You Go. He’s also the author of three early chapter book series: the Jigsaw Jones mysteries, Scary Tales, and the Big Idea Gang. He holds a BA from Oneonta College.

Veera Hiranandani (2022) Veera Hiranandani is the award-winning author of several books for young people. Her most recent middle-grade novel, How to Find What You’re Not Looking For, received the 2022 Sydney Taylor Book Award, the 2022 Jane Addams Book Award, and was a finalist for the 2022 National Jewish Book Award. The Newbery Honor winning, The Night Diary, also received the 2019 Walter Dean Myers Honor Award, the 2018 Malka Penn Award for Human Rights in Children’s Literature, and several other honors and awards.

2020– Covid silenced us that summer.

Jennifer Roy (2019) Jennifer Roy is best known for fiction including Yellow Star, which won a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Award (2006), a National Jewish Book Honor Award, and many others. She has written 35 educational books for children ages 5–16, including the “You Can Write” series. Her latest book, Playing Atari with Saddam Hussein (February 2018), was inspired by the true story of a young boy growing up in Iraq under the first Gulf war.

Leslie Connor (2018) Leslie Connor is the author of several award-winning books for children, including Waiting for Normal, winner of the ALA Schneider Family Book Award, Crunch, Miss Bridie Chose a Shovel, and the young adult novels Dead on Town Line and The Things You Kiss Goodbye. Her latest novel, published in 2017, is The Truth As Told By Mason Buttle.

Tom Swyers (2017) Tom Swyers is the author of two works of fiction, his 2015 debut novel, Saving Babe Ruth, winner of two Benjamin Franklin Book Awards including “Best First Book: Fiction,” and 2017’s, The Killdeer Connection, which was a 2017 winner of Amazon’s Kindle Scout competition.  He’s also studied at the Summer Writer’s Institute at Skidmore College.

Barbara Ungar (2016)  Barbara Ungar is the author of four books of poetry. She is an English professor, and coordinator of the MFA program, at The College of Saint Rose. Her books include Immortal Medusa, Charlotte Brontë, You Ruined My Life, The Origin of the Milky Way, and Thrift.

Daniel Hayes (2015) Dan Hayes currently teaches 11th grade English at Troy High School and creative writing for Hudson Valley Community College. He is the author of five books for young adults, including My Kind of Crazy, Flyers, No Effect, Eye of the Beholder, and The Trouble with Lemons.

David Klein (2014) David Klein is the author of the novels Clean Break (2012) and Stash (2010). He holds an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Buffalo and a M.S. in Communication from RPI, is currently working on a third novel, and runs his own marketing and consulting firm, Klein Marketing.

Dennis Mahoney (2013) Dennis Mahoney is a local novelist who is a graduate of the College of Saint Rose, where he earned his BA. His short stories have appeared in McSweeney’s, The Morning News, Paste, Opium, and Über.  His first novel, Fellow Mortals, was published in February 2013. He is currently working on his next novel, one that is set in 18^th century America.

Winnie Yu Scherer (2012) Winnie Yu Scherer’s writing career began at Syracuse University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in magazine journalism and psychology. After graduating, she wrote for The Wall Street Journal’s Pittsburgh bureau. Before returning home to upstate New York to become a newspaper reporter for the Times Union, She worked in New York City at American Photo and Seventeen magazine as both a writer and an editor. Today, she is a freelance writer and is the author and co-author of several books.

Tobias Seamon (2011) Tobias Seamon is author of the novel The Magician’s Study (Turtle Point Press) and a poetry chapbook Loosestrife Along the River Styx (Foothills Publishing). He also wrote and directed the short mockumentary “Amerikan Partizan” which premiered at the 2007 EdWood Filmfest. A collection of fiction The Emperor’s Toy Chest was recently released from the UK-based press PS Publishing, with a novella “The Fair Grounds” also forthcoming in 2011 from PS Publishing. Nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize, other work has appeared such places as the Mississippi Review, McSweeney’s, Strange Horizons, 3rd Bed, Cutbank, Smartish Pace, Chronogram, Rhysling Anthology, and the Santa Clara Review. A contributing writer with the online magazine The Morning News, he lives in Albany, New York.

Elizabeth Brundage (2010) Ms. Brundage holds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she received a James Michener Award. Before attending Iowa, she was a screenwriting fellow at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. Her short fiction has been published in the Greensboro Review, Witness magazine, and New Letters. Her first novel, The Doctor’s Wife, written in 2004, was considered “…a compelling read” by The Boston Globe, and her second novel, 2009’s Somebody Else’s Daughter, was a book that revealed Brundage, according to novelist Wally Lamb, as a “storyteller supreme.” Her third novel, A Stranger Like You, was released in August, 2010.

Hollis Seamon (2009) Hollis Seamon, who teaches literature and writing at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, is the author of the 2000 collection of short stories Body Work, and the 2005 mystery Flesh. Her short stories have appeared in many literary journals, including Calyx, 13th Moon, The Chicago Review, Fiction International, and The Hudson Review. Seamon is a recipient of a grant for fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts; her work has been noted in Best American Essays and The O. Henry Award: Prize Stories and has received a number of Pushcart Prize nominations.

Jack Rightmyer (2008, 2007) Jack Rightmyer has been an English teacher and a track and cross-country coach since 1980. His first book, A Funny Thing About Teaching was published in 2008, and was a memoir about his years as an educator and the importance of using humor in the classroom. His newest book, It’s Not About Winning, was published in May 2011, and is a sports memoir about coaching and being a father to athletic children. His writing has appeared in such national magazines as Highlights for Children, Poets and Writers and Writer’s Digest. He is a book reviewer and a frequent contributor to The Daily Gazette, a newspaper in Schenectady, New York. He lives in Burnt Hills, New York.

 Liz Funk (2007) Liz Funk’s writing has been published in USA Today, the Christian Science Monitor, Newsday, the Washington Post, New York magazine, AOL.com, CosmoGIRL!, the Huffington Post, the New Jersey Record, the Baltimore Sun, the Nation, Tangomagazine, Vibe Vixen magazine, the Times Union, and Girls’ Life, among other publications.  Her poetry and short stories have been published in the Rockland Review, the Georgetown Review, Peace and Freedom (UK), and Offerta Speciale (Italy), and her first book, Super Girls Speak Out, was published in 2009. Liz is a 2004 graduate of Clayton A. Bouton High School.