RYW Staff

Bird Cox

Executive Director / Co-Founder
Email: richmondyoungwriters@gmail.com
Bird co-founded the organization in 2010 with writer Valley Haggard. Bird graduated from the University of Virginia in its first class of creative writing majors, and she has written for Richmond Magazine, C-ville Weekly, and the literary magazine McSweeney’s. Her work with RYW won her the Emyl Jenkins Award in 2021. Bird invites you to support young writers who are experiencing incarceration via the Free Verse program.
Quarry, where some RYW programs take place, is Bird’s creative community space for adults.

Catherine Carson

Catherine is a Richmond native with a deep love for teaching and writing. She graduated from James Madison University in 2019 with a B.A. in English literature and a concentration in Creative Writing. Catherine is the poet behind The Land of Opposite Attractions (Brandylane Publishing, 2022). In her free time, Catherine loves to journal, take on art projects, read, and be outside. She is currently working on her second poetry collection and a memoir project, as well as applying to graduate programs for creative writing. Catherine teaches art and creative writing classes around Richmond and loves every moment of it.

Grace Gentry

Teacher
Grace is a dancer, writer, artist, and teacher from Ohio who dropped anchor in Richmond after being blown about by a Oaxacan whirlwind, cleaned out by a Las Vegas gamble, and washed ashore in the midst of a Texas thunderstorm. Forever fascinated by words, Grace is an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher and freelance resume writer who boasts a dual-major degree from Wittenberg University in English Literature and Communication Studies, and a Master’s of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) from Arizona State University. Grace speaks English natively and Spanish fluently, and she is currently learning French and Dari (Persian). She spends most of her free time dancing, or with her Shih Tzu/toy poodle mix Louie, whose bark is untranslatable to anyone but his mother.

Evan Fleischer

Teacher
Evan Fleischer is a writer, editor, and recent MFA currently graduate living in Richmond, VA. He has regularly run D&D sessions for people of all ages and experience levels over the past two years. He is currently locked in a third-person bio and is trying to find his way out.

Valley Haggard

Co-founder / Advisor
After traveling through New York, Italy, Colorado, Arkansas and Alaska, Valley returned to live in the house she grew up in, in her hometown of Richmond, Virginia. She is now the director of Life in 10 Minutes, home of Richmond’s most vital creative writing workshops for adults, which shares a home with Richmond Young Writers. She is the author of *The Halfway House for Writers* and *Surrender Your Weapons*, and was the winner of the 2018 James River Writers’s Emyl Jenkins Award. Visit her at www.valleyhaggard.com.

Kisha Hughes

Teacher
Kisha Hughes graduated from James Madison University in 2007 with a BA in English/Creative Writing. She has spent her summers teaching children ages 6-15 at the Furious Flower Poetry Camp in Harrisonburg, VA since 2009. During the year she works at the Army Logistics University Library as a library technician, where she gets to share her love for education, research and writing. She lives in Richmond with her artistic spouse and three troublesome felines.

Lila Jones

Teacher

Lila Jones serves as a teacher at Richmond Young Writers. Lila started her journey with the nonprofit as a student, and continued as a volunteer, intern, and eventually even the first alum to return to teach as a creative writing teaching fellow. She’s thrilled to be back as a teacher, helping the next generation of young writers build confidence in their own storytelling skills. Lila graduated from Guilford College with a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing and a minor in Visual Arts/Photography.

Megan Spivey

Teacher
Megan Spivey is a graduate of Appomattox Regional Governor’s School, where she majored in Literary Arts. After high school, Megan attended Old Dominion University and earned a B.S. in Criminal Justice and a minor in English. Currently, she teaches English at Prince George High School and sponsors the Young Authors Club. When she isn’t in the classroom, Megan can be found either buried in a book or under her dogs on the couch (usually both!). Megan has a fierce passion for poetry and social justice, especially when they are intertwined.

Elise Steele

Assistant Director / Teacher
Email: esteelewrites@gmail.com
Elise is a creative writer with an honors degree in English from The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. While her work gravitates toward poetry, she loves to experiment with short-stories, often dabbling in horror-fiction.
Elise split her childhood years between midwest Ohio and Appalachian Tennessee. She’s lived in Richmond for the past few years and currently works as a freelance writer and a substitute teacher for local elementary schools.

D Weinstein2015.jpg — Dina Weinstein

Teacher
Dina Weinstein is a Richmond, Virginia based award-winning journalist who reports for numerous local and national outlets like Richmond magazine, the Henrico Citizen and Style Weekly. She's a writer for Virginia Commonwealth University News and also manages the website Richmond on the Cheap. Weinstein moved north from Miami, Florida where she worked mentoring young journalists as an advisor at the Miami Dade College student newspaper, The Reporter, and wrote about artists, bicycling, parenting, books, hurricanes, stone crabs and history for many various publications both in the Sunshine State and around the world. Weinstein is a Boston native and a proud graduate of Boston University School for the Arts and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Our Staff

RYW Staff