Six emerging writers named to Literary Cleveland’s Breakthrough Writing Residency

FreshWater Staff Wednesday, October 25, 2023
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Literary Cleveland yesterday, Tuesday, Oct. 24, announced six writers have been named to its 2023-24 Breakthrough Writing Residency cohort. 

The residency provides free yearlong mentorship, support, and opportunities to help emerging writers in Greater Cleveland develop book-length projects. The program is designed for people who have a passion for writing and a commitment to their manuscripts, but who have not yet published a book or attended an MFA writing program.

Residents—two in each genre of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry—will work with mentors to make progress on their manuscripts, gain free access to Literary Cleveland programs, take part in professional development opportunities, and present their work at the annual Inkubator Conference. 

This year, Literary Cleveland received 113 qualified applications across all three categories. The recipients are Patricia Brubaker and Maureen McGuirk for fiction; Libby Chaney and Elizabeth O'Donnell for nonfiction; and Kristin Gustafson and Jenna Martínez for poetry.

Patricia BrubakerPatricia BrubakerFiction residents

  • Patricia Brubaker has been writing in some form most of her life. She grew up in a single-parent household and worked to save enough money to attend Cleveland State University and receive degrees in English Literature.
While getting her degrees, Brubaker became the mother of three children, yet continued to find ways to write. More than 20 years ago, she received an Ohio Arts Council grant, published stories in literary journals, and seemed on her way to a writing career. But life got in her way when she became the guardian of her brother's three children, in addition to her own.

She began teaching English, earned a counseling degree, and worked as both a school counselor and mental health counselor for the next 20-plus years. Since retiring in 2019, Brubaker has returned her focus to writing. 

She is currently working on a novel about three high school friends, now in their 60s, whose lives are altered when they learn that the bodies of two of their friends who disappeared in 1970 have been found.

  • Maureen McGuirk earned her BFA degree in writing for film and television from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Her short story, “Miss Fortunate” was published in the Seattle-based arts journal “quiet Shorts.”
Maureen McGuirkMaureen McGuirkMcGuirk’s one-act play “A Private Conversation” earned an honorable mention in the New Works of Merit Playwriting Contest in 2016 and was published in Two Sisters Writing & Publishing Second Annual Anthology in 2019.

In December 2021, McGuirk’s short story “Rule 49” was included in B-Cubed Press’s anthology Alternative Deathiness. Recently, her short story "Last of My Kind" was accepted into the Ohio Writers Association's anthology House of Secrets, which is due out this fall. She is at work on a novel about Jason and Morgan, a newly engaged couple in a world where married couples share not only their lives but a single body. 

Libby ChaneyLibby ChaneyNonfiction Residents

  • Libby Chaney has always been an artist and writer. She was born, raised, and educated in Ohio before she headed to California in her 20s, where she inadvertently stayed for 47 years. 
 Chaney taught, traveled a bit, married, and had two children while in California. After her son suddenly died, she was drawn to Cleveland, where she lives in a studio made from a converted mid-century medical center. She changed its large parking lot into a huge garden.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Chaney had triple bypass heart surgery that she may not have survived without the care and love of her husband, Paul Waszink.

She is at work on a memoir of stories about everything from her high school days when girls were not allowed to take mechanical drawing to the 1960s in Los Angeles to the loss of her son.

  • Elizabeth O'Donnell was born and raised in England and is a triplet, one of seven children of a single mother. She left the United Kingdom at age 18 and emigrated to Canada as a nanny—a job she held for three years while studying part-time to earn acceptance into the University of Toronto, where she graduated with a degree in physical therapy.
Elizabeth O'DonnellElizabeth O'DonnellO’Donnell later moved to the United States with her partner and raised two sons, attended graduate school where she earned her MSE and PhD in counseling and currently works full time as a clinical psychotherapist.

O’Donnell is raising a yellow lab, Delta, for Guiding Eyes for the Blind (GEB).  When Delta is 16 months old, she will return to GEB's Canine Development Center to complete her formal seeing-eye dog training.

ODonnell is at work on a memoir about growing up poor in England in the late 1950s and 1960s as one of seven children of a single bi-racial mother.

Kristin GustafsonKristin GustafsonPoetry Residents 

  • Kristin Gustafson is a poet and editor from Cleveland Heights. She received her bachelor’s degree in creative writing from Otterbein University in 2019 and her poetry has been published in over a dozen literary magazines. She currently lives in Cuyahoga Falls with her partner and small dog. Her work infuses her love of internet culture with her struggles with mental illness.
  • Jenna Martinez is a Queer, Mexican American femme originally from San Antonio, Texas who now lives in Cleveland. Her writing has appeared in Homology Lit and Femme, Collectively Zine 0.1.
Martinez is a recipient of a Cuyahoga Arts & Culture Support for Artists grant through the Julia de Burgos Cultural Arts Center. Her art is influenced by curanderismo, the cosmos, and community.

Jenna.MartinezJenna.MartinezShe is at work on a collection of poems exploring how the places she has lived alchemize her intersecting identities including her queerness, Mexican heritage, Texas roots, and Midwestern home.

Finalists for the residency include Catherine Fields, Julieanne Lopresto, and Christopher Richards for fiction; Kevin Bain, Meghan Cliffel, and Kristi Majni for nonfiction; and El Bentivegna, Sylvia Clark, and Rosary Kennedy for poetry. 

This year’s mentors

Fiction mentor Mary Grimm has published two books, including the novel “Left to Themselves “and the story collection “Stealing Time.” Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Antioch Review, and the Mississippi Review, as well as in several flash fiction journals. Currently, she is working on an urban fantasy set in the Flats area of a near-future, dystopian Cleveland.

Nonfiction mentor Raechel Anne Jolie is a writer and educator living in Ohio, on Erie and Mississauga land. They are the author of “Rust Belt Femme” and their other writing has appeared in “The Baffler,” “In These Times,” and “Novara Media.”

Poetry mentor Danny Caine is the author of the poetry collections “Continental Breakfast,” “El Dorado Freddy's,” “Flavortown,” and “Picture Window,” as well as books “How to Resist Amazon and Why” and Why and “How to Protect Bookstores and Why.” His writing has appeared in “Diagram,” “HAD,” “Barrelhouse,” “Literary Hub,” and “Publishers Weekly.”