Rachel King is currently enrolled in the Masters in Writing Fiction program at Johns Hopkins University. For most of her life, she has been an active journal writer and deeply appreciates how writing can help us more fully process our experiences. Rachel has recently retired from a career in biotechnology. Over the years working in that field, and now continuing as a member of several Boards, she has found that engaging in science and working toward improvements in human health has been very meaningful to her. She has an undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College in Government and French Literature, and a Master’s in Business Administration from Harvard Business School.

Liat Katz is a licensed clinical social worker and a writer. Her personal essays have appeared in the Washington Post, NY Times, Washingtonian, Lilith, Bethesda Magazine, Kveller.com, Kevin MD.com, Contemporary Psychoanalysis, and Pulsevoices.org. She has created and taught a therapeutic writing group at an abused women’s shelter. She writes with humor and through the lens of a mother, a patient, a clinician, and someone just muddling through life.

Susan Kane, LCSW is a psychotherapist in private practice in New York City treating adults, couples and adolescents for over thirty years. She specializes in working with people with eating disorders and has presented her original theory on the “Impact of Neglect in the Transference/Countertransference Paradigm nationally. She is a graduate of New York University School of Social Work, the Women’s Therapy Centre and the New Directions Writing Program.

Eileen Ivey is a psychotherapist and poet in Chevy Chase, MD, a lover of metaphor, and author of a chapbook, Out of Order. Her poems have been published in Ekphrastic Review, Calyx, District Lines, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, NewVerseNews and elsewhere. In addition to practicing psychotherapy, Eileen has served on the faculty at GWU School of Medicine, helping medical students discover their patients’ stories and explore their human reactions as physicians.

Nancy Heneson is a medical writer, poet, essayist, teacher, and editor. She had led workshops at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland and the New Directions Writing Program of the Washington-Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis. After 30 years interpreting science for a wide variety of audiences, she now edits research papers and helps authors develop books. Her essays and poems have appeared in medical journals and on Stoop Stories and public radio.

Paula J. Hamm, LPC, Psychoanalyst, Teaching Narrative Clinical Writing at the Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis, Graduate of New Directions Writing Program, Chair of Ongoing Discussion Group on the Psychodynamics of Religion/Spirituality at the American Psychoanalytic Association.

Caroline Hall, PhD, is a therapist in private practice in Asheville, North Carolina where she sees individuals and couples. She worked for years with pregnant and postpartum women as a therapist in the Women’s Mental Health Program at Georgetown Outpatient Psychiatry where additionally she trained psychiatric residents and medical students on the topic. She has published on psychological responses to childbirth.

John Gualtieri, Ph. D. is a Licensed Clinical Psychologist. He received his Ph. D. from SUNY at Buffalo. He is on the faculty of the Institute of Contemporary Psychotherapy Couples' Therapy Training Program. He joined the New Directions Program in 2009 and is a member of the WBCP. He is partially retired working with clinicians for clinical consultation.

Martha Blechar Gibbons is a nurse psychotherapist, nurse practitioner, qualitative researcher, educator, and author. She maintains a private practice in Washington D. C. where she provides clinical supervision as well as psychotherapy and psychopharmacology for children, adolescents and adults, offering a diversity of treatment modalities.

Diana Friedman is an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in numerous publications including New Letters, The Huffington Post, Newsweek, and The Baltimore Sun. Teaching is also integral to Diana’s commitment to the writing community: she has taught writing at Writopia Lab, the University of Maryland, facilitated small group workshops, and currently co-leads a creative collective of artists, and a long-term writing group at the New Directions Program at the Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis.

Iris Fodor, Ph.D., a Licensed Clinical Psychologist, is Professor Emerita, Department of Applied Psychology, New York University. She has also worked in hospitals. Iris has trained in Cognitive and Gestalt Therapy and is known for teaching and writings about anxiety management, women’s mental health and integrative psychotherapy. She has over 40 publications and has mentored student and academic writers. Recent work focuses on experiential writing and life story. website: dririsfodor.com

Sheila Felberbaum practiced as a Hospice Staff Support Group Facilitator, was a Clinical Nurse Specialist and is a Board Certified Social Worker in private practice on Long Island. A graduate/faculty member of New Directions, her publications and produced plays focus on personal and professional reflections on bereavement, counter-transference and the integration of writing in clinical practice

Karen Earle LICSW, writer and writing teacher (MFA, 25 years teaching experience). A trauma-informed psychotherapist in private practice, she uses writing as an adjunct to treatment. Her work has appeared in journals, including: The GW Review, Chaffin Journal, Chaminade, The Denver Quarterly, Hudson Valley Echoes, Metis, Phase and Cycle. Recent recipient of a MVICW fellowship, she has been involved with New Directions for fifteen years both as graduate and faculty.

Martha Dupecher is a psychoanalyst and psychotherapist in private practice in Washington DC. She also trained as a poetry therapist, using poetry to facilitate self-expression and healing in a group setting. Long interested in literature and language, Martha is a reader of fiction, non-fiction and poetry, as well as a writer devoted to memoir and journaling. She is also one of the organizers of the New Directions program.

Kate Daniels is the author of six volumes of poetry, and of the forthcoming prose work, Slow Fuse of the Possible: On Poetry and Psychoanalysis. Former poet in residence at Duke Medical Center and Vanderbilt Medical Center, she has taught writing in the New Directions program for fifteen years. She is Professor of English at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

Abigail Browning, PhD is a researcher, poet, community arts organizer, and literary podcast host. She has poems published in Yemassee Journal Online, The Greensboro Review, Linebreak, and RHINO Poetry. A member of the Carrboro, NC Poets Council, Browning co-organizes the West End Poetry Festival, a free event for all ages. Abigail co-wrote the song “The Dreamer” for Rearrange My Heart, by Che Apalache, Grammy-nominated for “Best Folk Album” (2019).

Kate Brown joined New Directions in 2012. After working in publishing, she earned a PhD from Berkeley and went on to teach at the University of South Carolina, Emory, and SUNY/Buffalo. She has published essays on George Eliot, Christina Rossetti, radical grammar books, and Richard Pryor, among other topics. She currently serves as a writing coach while also writing a novel about Charlotte Bronte, which she is illustrating with needlework.

Sarah Boxer, a cartoonist, essayist, and critic, is the author of three graphic novels, In the Floyd Archives, Mother May I? and Hamlet: Prince of Pigs. Her writings have appeared in The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Review of Books. For many years she was an editor, arts reporter and photography critic for The New York Times. Born in Denver, Boxer lives in Washington, D.C.

Deborah Blessing is a clinical social worker and psychoanalyst. She has served on the faculties of the Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis and Washington School of Psychiatry. Among the positions she has held, Deborah is a former Co-Chair of the New Directions-Writing with a Psychoanalytic Edge program at the WBCP and is the current CoChair of the Observational Studies Program at the WSP. She is in private practice in Washington, DC.

Hemda Arad, Ph.D. is a psychoanalyst and supervisor in Seattle, WA, working with individuals and couples. She is a Certified EMDR therapist. Dr. Arad is on the faculty of the Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis program: New Directions - Writing with a Psychoanalytic Edge. Her book, Integrating Relational Psychoanalysis and EMDR: Embodied Experience and Clinical Practice was published in 2018 by Routledge. More publications here.