Board of Advisors

Frederick Barthelme is the author of twelve books of fiction, most recently of Elroy Nights, and the co-author with his brother, Steven, of the memoir Double Down: Reflections on Gambling and Loss. He directs the writing program at the University of Southern Mississippi and edits the literary journal Mississippi Review.

Lauren Cerand is an independent public relations representative and consultant in New York. Her clients are a purposefully eclectic mix of creative professionals and organizations, and she specializes in generating initial buzz and building sustained attention for individuals and projects such as Barnes & Noble's "Upstairs at the Square" series. Lauren currently serves on the board of directors of both Girls Write Now and The Writers Room.

Christian Crumlish is the curator of Yahoo!'s pattern library and a director of the Information Architecture Institute. He is the author of The Power of Many and co-author of Designing Social Interfaces. In 1994, Christian co-founded Enterzone, one of the first purely Web-based literary magazines on the Internet, focusing on experimental electronic writing and art. He was publisher of Enterzone until it ended in 1998. He lives in Oakland with his wife Briggs, his cat Fraidy, and his electric ukulele, Evangeline.

Marcy Dermansky's debut novel Twins was a New York Times Editors Choice Pick. Her stories have been published in numerous literary journals, including McSweeneys, The Alaska Quarterly Review, and The Indiana Review, and included in the anthology Love Stories: A Literary Companion to Tennis. She is a film critic for About.com and belongs to the New York Online Film Critics. She lives in Astoria, New York.

Alex Glass is a literary agent with the Trident Media Group. His books have been sold to the movies, television, and to foreign publishers around the world. Notable recent books include screenwriter Chad Kultgen’s first novel The Average American Male (HarperPerennial), Katherine Marsh’s debut children’s fantasy The Night Tourist (Hyperion), and New York Times bestselling author Da Chen’s debut novel Brothers (Shaye Areheart Books/Crown).

John Minichillo, Ph.D. has published stories in Third Coast, In Posse Review, Carve Magazine, Mississippi Review, and in the short fiction anthology Next Stop Hollywood. He lives and teaches in Tennessee, where he is also one of the founders of the Nashville Fiction Workshop.

Richard Nash (rnash.com) ran Soft Skull Press, now an imprint of Counterpoint, from 2001 to 2007 and ran the imprint on behalf of Counterpoint until early 2009. Here's why he left. He's now consulting for authors and publishers on how to reach readers.

Gary Percesepe, Ph.D. is Associate Editor at the Mississippi Review. His short stories, poems, essays, book reviews, literary and film criticism, and articles in philosophy and religion have been published in Mississippi Review, Salon, Antioch Review, and elsewhere. He is the author of four books in philosophy, including a book on Jacques Derrida. He has a novel in progress called Leaving Telluride.

Lizzie Skurnick's reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and "many other appallingly underpaying publications," she says. Her books blog, Old Hag, is a Forbes Best of the Web pick and has been anthologized in Vintage's Ultimate Blogs: Masterworks from the Wild Web. She writes a column on vintage young-adult fiction for Jezebel.com, a job she has been preparing for her entire life. She is on the board of the National Book Critics Circle.