Pen Parentis Board Members
John Mix
John Mix is an experienced executive with over 30 years in the non-profit sector, primarily in development. His consulting firm, Black Oak, has a focus on growth strategy, innovation, brand and development. Skilled in Databases, International Relations, Management, Technical Writing, Salesforce for Nonprofits, and in NGOs, John is a strong marketing professional with a Master’s Degree in Nonprofit Leadership from Fordham University. He is also a professional beekeeper. He was elected to the Board in 2024.
Andrew Meagher,
Andrew has watched Pen Parentis since its inception, attending many of the early salons when living in Lower Manhattan and then occasionally when visits to NYC happened to coincide. More recently following online and through the various missives.
As a father of three Andrew greatly admires the work that Pen Parentis does both in inspiring authors to keep producing through parenthood but also on a more basic level of recognising the importance of literature to society. He loves when his own children put down their devices and pick up a book and then want to talk about it.
He spent 17 years in Executive roles with Thomson and then Thomson Reuters with commercial responsibilities for the Financial News business.
In 2016 he returned to his native Sydney, Australia, where he still resides, and had been actively involved in working with the senior executives of foreign multi-national corporations operating in Australia.
He continues to consult with various media and technology companies in the USA and Europe.
He joined the board in 2023.
Vanessa Walters
Joining the Executive Board in 2022, Vanessa Walters inaugurates the role of Vice President on the Pen Parentis Board. A writer and media consultant, author and playwright originally from the UK, she has been based in New York since 2018 and has lived and worked internationally (Nigeria, France, Indonesia) over the years.
Her past novels are Rude Girls, The Best Things in Life (PanMacmillan), and a commissioned chapbook of poems and nonfiction pieces, Smoke! Othello! About the black historical presence in West London. She has had several of her plays staged in the UK, focusing on Theatre in Education.
She is an active school parent, serving on the school leadership team and the advisory council of the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music.
Her diverse media experience spans Thomson Reuters, The Guardian, FT, and digital media with a global youth audience like Bella Naija.
Vanessa curates and hosts workshops around writing or books, passionate about creating accessible, safe spaces for diverse communities to write freely.
Irena Gecas-McCarthy,
2025 Board Treasurer
Irena Gecas-McCarthy has over 25 years of experience in financial services. She joined the Board in June 2020 as Board Treasurer. She is a principal in Deloitte & Touche LLP's Banking and Capital Markets Risk and Financial Advisory practice with experience in providing a broad range of clients assistance with governance, regulatory, risk management, and compliance matters. Irena also serves as the leader of the Financial Services Industry Center for Regulatory Strategy, Americas, which is a source of critical insight and advice to clients. Prior to Deloitte, she was a senior examiner for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Jamie B. Clarke
Immediate past Board President Jamie B. Clarke has been a volunteer with Pen Parentis since its 2009 inception before joining the executive board and taking up the position of Secretary in 2015.
She served as Pen Parentis' Board President during the Pandemic (2021-2022), Board Secretary in 2022, and returned to the role of President in 2023-2024, always bringing to the organization a wide variety of professional and volunteer experiences.
Previous positions include the executive boards of the Allentown Public Library Association, the Saturday Evening Dance Club, the Allentown Food Pantry, and the Monmouth Council of the Boy Scouts of America.
In addition to her many roles with Pen Parentis, she is an active volunteer with Start2Finish and an enthusiastic participant in the Society for Learning in Retirement. An avid reader, she raised two terrific young men and now travels the world.
Helen Wan
Helen Catherine Wan joined the executive board in March 2020 as a trustee. A Taiwanese-American novelist and lawyer, she is the author of the 2013 novel The Partner Track, the story of a young Chinese-American woman poised to become the first minority female partner at a powerful, prestigious corporate law firm and the basis for the 2022 Netflix series Partner Track. She is a media lawyer and author, writing mostly about diversity and belonging and how race, sex, class, and family impact ambition and the pursuit of happiness. Her nonfiction work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, and HuffPo, and she enjoys teaching fiction at The Writers' Circle Workshops and The Asian American Writers Workshop. Helen is VP & Associate General Counsel at Hachette Book Group USA, where she advises on intellectual property and other matters. Previously, she was in-house counsel at Time Inc. and A+E Networks. Helen lives in New Jersey with her family, believes strongly in the mission of Pen Parentis, and is honored to serve on its Board.
Helene M. Epstein
Helene M. Epstein has been a published freelance writer for over 25 years and has served on the board of Pen Parentis since March 2020. She is a member of the American Society of Journalists & Authors (ASJA) and the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ). While she has written on a wide range of topics from advertising, architecture, and beauty to parenting, patient safety, and real estate, for the past 20 years Helene's work has focused on families in crisis and patient safety. Her prior column, Dx IQ, guided hundreds of thousands of patients dealing with the diagnostic process. Her new free Substack Patient No More has expanded that advice to cover other patient safety issues patients need to know about. Helene frequently speaks to medical and patient groups about patient safety from the patient point-of-view. She is currently shopping a memoir about her son's 15 years in medical crisis.
Her website: HMEpstein
Michelle K. Hanson
Michelle joined Merrill Lynch Wealth Management in 2014, following the footsteps of her mother. She earned a Bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and graduated from New York Law School, focusing her studies on estate planning and tax law.
A financial advisor and a Portfolio Manager at Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, Michelle is devoted to helping clients understand where they stand financially. A frequent keynote speaker – women’s groups, college audiences, high school students--Michelle welcomes the opportunity to share her considerable expertise.
She grew up on Long Island and resides in downtown Manhattan with her husband, Eric, and their daughters. Her awards and recognition include 2024 Financial Planning's "Top 40 Brokers Under 40" and Forbes "Top Next-Generation Wealth Advisors Best-in-State" in 2019 and 2023.
Michelle joined the Pen Parentis Board in 2023 and serves on the finance committee.
Marina Budhos
Marina Budhos is the author of several books for young adults and adults. Her newest novel, We Are All We Have, was a Best Kirkus Book of 2022. Among her prior books are Watched, which received a Walter Award and an Asian Pacific American Honor, The Long Ride, Tell Us We’re Home, and Ask Me No Questions, recipient of numerous honors. She has also published the adult novels The Professor of Light and House of Waiting, and three works of nonfiction, including her co-authored books with husband Marc Aronson, Sugar Changed the World, an LA Times Book Finalist and Eyes of the World: Robert Capa, Gerda Taro & The Invention of Modern Photojournalism, both of which were YALSA Nonfiction Finalists. Her books have been published in several countries and her short work has appeared in publications such as The Daily Beast, LitHub, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, The Nation, Travel & Leisure, the Los Angeles Times, and in anthologies. She has received an NEA Literature Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Award for Women Writers, three Fellowships from the New Jersey Council on the Arts, and has been a Fulbright Scholar to India. She is a professor emerita at William Paterson University. She frequently gives talks around the country and abroad. You can find out more at her website here.
Hananah Zaheer
Hananah Zaheer is a writer, editor, improviser, and the author of Lovebirds (Bull City Press, 2021). Her writing has appeared in places such as The Cut, Kenyon Review, Best Small Fictions 2021, Pleiades, Waxwing, AGNI, Pithead Chapel, Smokelong, Virginia Quarterly Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Alaska Quarterly, and many others. In 2019, she won the Lawrence Foundation Prize for Fiction in 2019, and her short story “Fish Tank” was a notable story in Best American Short Stories. She was awarded a Tennessee Williams Scholarship in Fiction at the Sewanee Writers' Conference, and is a recipient of fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Rivendell Writers' Colony and the Ragdale Foundation. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart prize.
Hananah serves as a Fiction Editor for Los Angeles Review, and as senior editor for SAAG: a dissident literary anthology—a project that seeks to make space for radical and experimental South Asian art and writing. She is the founder of the Dubai Literary Salon, an international prose-reading series. A perpetual nomad and constant traveler, she has lived in South Asia, South East Asia, the Middle East and the USA. When she is not hopping on a plane, she finds joy in community work, especially work relating to equity for communities of color and refugees.
Christina Chiu,
A board member since 2019, in 2023 Christina Chiu served as Board President. The winner of the James Alan McPherson Award for her novel Beauty (2040 Books/sfwp), she is also the author of Troublemaker and Other Saints, which was nominated for the Stephen Crane First Fiction Award, won the Asian American Literary Award, and was chosen for Alternate Selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club. Her stories have appeared in Tin House, The New Guard Literary Review, Washington Square, and The MacGuffin, and she has won literary prizes from Playboy, New Stone Circle, El Dorado Writers' Guild, and Worldwide Writers.
She is a founding member of the Asian American Writers' Workshop and the recipient of the Wai Luk Award for Outstanding Service to the Arts. Chiu curates and co-hosts the "Let's Talk Books" Author Series sponsored by the New York Writers Workshop, as well as the Pen Parentis Literary Salon in New York City. She received her MFA in creative writing from Columbia University. She has been a treasured Salons Curator for many years.
Milda De Voe,
Pen Parentis Founder Milda M. De Voe created the concept of Pen Parentis, Ltd, in 2009. A Columbia MFA graduate and Writing Fellow, she served as the first Board President from 2013 to 2018 and remains on the Board as a nonvoting Member at Large. Incorporation as a New York State nonprofit in early 2013 was the realization of a dream for De Voe, who is also the Executive Director of the nonprofit. She has co-hosted the salons without a break since January 2009. An award-winning writer of short stories in multiple genres and poetry, she is a parent to two urban kids. She co-wrote the book of a sci-fi musical, R/Evolution, produced off-Broadway. She has been the recipient of four years of Manhattan Community Arts Fund Grants and one year of grants from The Fund For Creative Communities, as well as grants from Poets & Writers, Inc., the John A Hartman Foundation, New York State Council in the Arts, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation, Amazon Foundation, and a Grant for Creative Communities in support of her work with Pen Parentis. It is De Voe's hope that Pen Parentis can encourage all writers who are parents to stay on the creative track.
Her book about Pen Parentis won first prize in writing/publishing guides in 2021.
Her author website: www.mmdevoe.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/mmdevoe
Twitter: @mmdevoe
Advisory Board
Marina Aris
Succeeding the Founding President in 2018, Marina Aris, author, speaker & creative entrepreneur, was the President of the Board until May 2020. She also serves as an ambassador for the Authors Guild NYC Chapter and is a member of ALLi, the Alliance of Independent Authors, and IBPA, the Independent Book Publishers Association. Marina is the host of Life Lines The Books Podcast. Marina is the founder of the Brooklyn Writers Co and the Brooklyn Writers Press. She is an author, speaker, publishing strategist, and host of the Publishers Studio podcast. She works with writers one-on-one or in small group settings to help them write, publish, market, and distribute their work.
Jennifer Probst
An enthusiastic Board Member since early 2022, Jennifer Probst is the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of over fifty books in contemporary romance fiction, women's fiction, and children's books. THE MARRIAGE BARGAIN spent 26 weeks on the New York Times. Her work has been translated into over a dozen countries, sold over a million copies, and was dubbed a "romance phenom" by Kirkus Reviews. She is also a proud three-time RITA finalist, a former reader at Pen Parentis, and the mother of three kids.
Mai Lauren Hoang
Joining the executive board in March 2020, Mai Lauren Hoang is a writer living in Brooklyn. As a journalist, her articles have appeared in The Washington Post and The New York Times. She has worked on the staff of Ms. Glamour, World Press Review, CosmoGirl, and Every Day with Rachael Ray, among other magazines. Her fiction received a First Chapter prize from the Bronx Council for the Arts and appeared in the anthology Tilting the Continent. Born in Vietnam and raised in California, she has lived in South Africa and has traveled widely on six continents. As an editor for a travel company, she has observed nesting penguins in Antarctica, held rescued orangutan orphans in Borneo, and traipsed with blue-footed boobies and giant tortoises in the Galapagos. She is working on a refugee memoir about family separation, reunion, and finding a home. She inaugurated and ran the Brooklyn Pen Parentis weekly meetups at The Center for Fiction.
Arthur Phillips
Arthur Phillips is the NY Times notable author of five novels: Prague, named a New York Times Notable Book and recipient of The Los Angeles Times/Art Seidenbaum Award for a best first novel; The Egyptologist, an international bestseller on more than a dozen "Best of 2004" lists, Angelica, which made The Washington Post best fiction of 2007 and led that paper to call him "One of the best writers in America," The Song Is You, a New York Times Notable Book, on the Post's best of 2009 list which inspired Kirkus to write, "best American novelist to have emerged in the present decade," finally, The Tragedy of Arthur, published in 2011 to critical acclaim, including being named a New York Times Notable Book. The play taken from that book received its world premiere reading at New York's Public Theater in 2011 and was fully produced in 2013 by the Guerrilla Shakespeare Project. Three films based on his works are currently in development.
Photo Credit: Barbi Anne Reed www.arthurphillips.info
Darin Strauss
Darin Strauss is a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, a winner of the American Library Association's Alix Award and The National Book Critics Circle Award, and the internationally bestselling author of the novels Chang & Eng, The Real McCoy, and More Than It Hurts You, and the NBCC-winning memoir Half a Life. These have been New York Times Notable Books, Newsweek, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Amazon, Chicago Tribune, and NPR Best Books of the Year, among others. Darin is a Clinical Associate Professor at NYU's creative writing program.
Emily Raboteau
Emily Raboteau is the author of The Professor's Daughter and a work of creative nonfiction, Searching for Zion. Raboteau's awards include a Pushcart Prize, a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, first prize in Spain's world-class $20K international flash fiction competition (judged by Ambassadors from all over the world), and the Chicago Tribune's Nelson Algren Award. A consummate world traveler, she recently visited Antarctica for research. She teaches creative writing at City College in Harlem.
Jenna Kalinsky
Jenna Kalinsky has published fiction, nonfiction, and poetry in EM Literary, The Oklahoma Review, Eleven Bulls, NYC BigCityLit,12 Magazine, So To Speak, Family Outlook Magazine, The Jewish Magazine, Descant, and the LA Times bestselling The Modern Jewish Girl’s Guide to Guilt (Penguin), winner of the National Jewish Book Award. Her awards and scholarships include the Toronto Arts Council, Breadloaf Writers' Conference, and Eden Mills Literary Festival.
Originally from Los Angeles, Jenna received her MFA from Columbia University. She lives in Toronto, Canada, where she teaches writing and works as a private writing coach and editor. She is in the final stages of a novel. She owns and runs One Lit Place, a full-service writing center.
Julie Paddleford
Former Board Secretary (2021-22) Julie Paddleford relates that in all aspects of her work, she finds that her passions lie with finding methods to streamline processes and create efficiency. An operations and systems expert, she is comfortable working with all levels of an organization, from hourly personnel through upper management and customers. In addition to offering her expertise to Pen Parentis from 2019-2024 on the Executive Board, she has created and managed complex spreadsheets to track estimated product costs for a design with 400+ unique parts and project costs for a $70 million production line. She is an engineer who also speaks finance and remains a valued member of the Advisory Board.
Maria Granovsky
Maria Granovsky uses her background as a cancer biologist and lawyer to craft fast-paced, intricately plotted capers where the protagonists rely on their wits rather than their brawn, and the body count rises only as much as is necessary. She currently lives in New York City but has lived a nomadic international existence. Her debut novel, Poison Pill, was published in October 2012. You can follow her on Facebook or Twitter.
Photo Credit: Robbie Michaels.
Twitter account: @MGranovsky
Facebook: facebook.com/granovskym
Book page on Amazon: PoisonPill
Pang-Mei Natasha Chang
Pang-Mei Natasha Chang writes about identity, relationships, and the intersection of cultures, generations, and the sexes. Her memoir, Bound Feet & Western Dress (Doubleday/Anchor), has been translated into ten countries and made into a twelve-part television mini-series in China. Natasha's writings have been included in the New York Times Magazine, New Haven Review, and Saveur magazine. She has taught writing at Yale University and Bard College. Presently at work on a novel, she lives in Union Square with her two daughters.
John Culloty, photographer
pmchang.com/
Renée Zuckerbrot
Renée Zuckerbrot has been a literary agent for many years. She worked previously as an editor at Doubleday and in the editorial department at G.P. Putnam's Sons. She is on PEN's Membership Committee and the Board of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP).
Photo credit: Sarah Shatz.
Todd Wellman
Todd Wellman (he/him), a Lambda Literary Fellow (2019), received his MA in writing from UW-Milwaukee and served as fiction editor for Cream City Review. His writing has appeared in The James Franco Review, Lunch Ticket, Indie Next, Lambda Literary Review, Emerge Anthology, Beyond Queer Words, LGBTQ Unbordered International Film Festival, Writers in Paradise conference, and more. He also volunteers with Newfound and serves in development at a leading southeastern US fine arts museum. Learn more at toddwe.com.
Renee Simms
Having served on the Exec Board from 2020-2021, Renee Simms is a celebrated author who has read at the Pen Parentis Literary Salons. Her debut story collection, Meet Behind Mars, was a Foreword Indies Finalist and listed by The Root as one of twenty-eight brilliant books by black authors in 2018. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and Bread Loaf and teaches at the University of Puget Sound and in the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. She is an Associate Professor in African American Studies at the University of Puget Sound in Washington state, where she teaches courses in African American literature and black feminist theory. She holds a JD from Wayne State University Law School as well as an MFA from Arizona State University.
Leigh Newman
Leigh Newman is deputy editor of Oprah.com, where she writes about books and life, and editor-at-large for the indie press Black Balloon Publishing. Her memoir about her Alaskan childhood, Still Points North (Dial, 2013), premiered while still in manuscript format at one of the earliest Pen Parentis salons. Her essays and short stories have appeared in a variety of publications, including One Story, Tin House, Fiction, The New York Times, and Modern Love. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, two boys, and many, many lightsabers. Her work can be found at Leigh-newman.com.
Victor LaValle
Victor LaValle is the author of the short story collection Slapboxing with Jesus, three novels, The Ecstatic (PEN Open Book Award), Big Machine (Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel, American Book Award), and The Devil in Silver, and a novella, Lucretia and the Kroons. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including several "best of" awards, a Whiting Writers' Award, a United States Artists Ford Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Key to Southeast Queens. He now lives in Washington Heights with his wife, son and daughter. He is the acting Fiction Director at Columbia University.
Emily Pulley
Emily Pulley, a famed soprano known for her radiant voice and electrifying acting, has won both national and international acclaim on the operatic stage. Up next, Ms. Pulley will see her role debut as Georgetta in Il Tabarro for the Opera Theatre of St. Louis, performs Julie in Showboat with Central City Opera in Colorado, and returns to the Metropolitan Opera for their production of Shostakovich's The Nose. She is an avid reader.
Jennifer Egan
Jennifer Egan is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of five books: The Invisible Circus, released as a feature film by Fine Line in 2001; Emerald City and Other Stories, Look at Me, nominated for the National Book Award in 2001. And the bestselling The Keep. Her new book, A Visit From the Goon Squad, was a national bestseller and won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, and the LA Times Book Prize. Also a journalist, she writes frequently in the New York Times Magazine.
Photo Credit: Pieter M. Van Hattem.
Emily Speer Ryan
Emily Speer Ryan is the Director of Success Management Strategy and Operations at Splunk. Founding Treasurer of Pen Parentis for many years, she was instrumental in creating Pen Parentis at its inception. Emily is an avid public speaker, creating the processes required for excellent communication and growth at Splunk. Prior to her work in the tech industry, Emily was an independent film and media producer in New York City. She considers herself a New Yorker (a title she earned after living in Manhattan for eleven years) even though she grew up in the wilds of northern Idaho, married in San Francisco, and now lives in Colorado. Emily is a classically trained vocalist. She has a degree in Musical Theater from The New School University. Emily has worked with several nonprofits and has served on the board as treasurer for Canticorum Virtuosi, Inc., prior to working with Pen Parentis, where she was the Treasurer from 2013 to 2019. She was one of the three original board members of Pen Parentis (along with Milda De Voe and Michael Del Castillo).
Laura Rose Bloxham
Serving as an Executive Board Member from 2015-2019, Laura Bloxham is a managing associate of the Technology Companies Group in the Portland office of Orrick. She represents high-growth technology and life sciences companies in formation, venture capital, and a variety of general corporate and governance matters. Working with partner organizations such as Lawyers Alliance for New York, she has previously represented several nonprofit organizations, including Pen Parentis Ltd., in seeking incorporation, implementing by-laws and conflicts of interest policies, and applying for 501(c)(3) federal tax exemption status. Prior to joining Orrick, Ms. Bloxham worked in New York at Milbank, Goldman Sachs, and NYSE Euronext. She avidly read in both English and French and was one of the first "regulars" at a Pen Parentis Salon.
Aditi Davray
Serving as Interim Board Treasurer for 2019, having just joined the Executive Board, Aditi Davray did Pen Parentis a great service in her year on the Executive Board. She has vast experience with nonprofit boards and is a consultant to nonprofit, philanthropic, and private-sector organizations. Over the last decade, she has worked on projects with nonprofit organizations in the areas of program management, resource development, program design and implementation, board development, and strategic communications. Aditi received a Master's of Public Administration and Nonprofit Management and Public Policy from New York University's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. Aditi is co-chair of the Board of Directors at Rescuing Leftover Cuisine and an Advisor to visit.org
Arlaina Tibensky
Serving as Executive Board Member from November 2015 to May 2020, Arlaina Tibensky also helped inaugurate the reading series at Pen Parentis and curated and co-hosted the events from 2009 to 2013, working with M. M. to transform them from an after-work reading series into the vibrant Salons we know today. She is the author of the young adult novel, And Then Things Fall Apart, a Junior Library Guild Selection, and an ALA/YALSA Reader's Choice nominee for realistic fiction. Other work can be found in One Teen Story, One Story, Inkwell, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, The Madison Review, and The Dinner Party Download on NPR. She's taught adults and teenagers in workshops throughout New York City, has an MFA from Columbia University, and has been recognized by the Sustainable Arts Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and The Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance. She is the parent of two boys and lives in New Jersey, where she continues to teach creative writing.
Do you have what it takes to serve on our board? We want to hear from you. Contact us.