Who We Are

Jeff Parker, Co-Founder and Director, is the author of the novel Ovenman and the short story collection The Taste of Penny. His short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in American Short Fiction, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, Ploughshares, Tin House, The Walrus, and other magazines. From 2000 to 2008 he was the Russia Program Director for the Summer Literary Seminars in St. Petersburg, Russia, program. He co-edited the anthologies Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia and Amerika: Russian Writers View the United States. He has taught at the University of Toronto and Eastern Michigan University, and currently he is the Director of the Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Tampa.

Scott Laughlin, Co-Founder and Associate Director, did his graduate work in literature at NYU and undergraduate work in journalism and English at Boston University, where he studied with Alberto de Lacerda. He has lectured on Russian and American Literature in San Francisco and St. Petersburg, Russia, and his work has appeared in ZYZZYVA, The Poetry Conspiracy, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, and other publications. He has also translated poetry and interviews from Spanish, Portuguese, and French. He currently lives in San Francisco and is chair of the English department at San Francisco University High School.

Oona Patrick, Luso-American Liason, earned an MFA in nonfiction from the Bennington Writing Seminars and a BA from Brown. Her work has appeared in Margin, Post Road, Gulf Coast, Salamander, the Portuguese-Canadian journal Seixo Review, and elsewhere. Two of her publications have been listed as notable essays in Best American Essays 2003 and Best American Travel Writing 2005. She traveled to Portugal for residencies at the Footpaths Foundation in the Azores in 2006 and at Convento São Francisco de Mértola in the Alentejo in 2009.

Tanya Shavluik, Program Assistant, studied at St. Petersburg State University in Russia and received a Master of Arts in Portuguese Language and Culture. She did internships in France and Portugal and worked for the Summer Literary Seminars in St. Petersburg, Russia program. Currently she works for international cooperation in the field of information and communication technologies.