Julia Slavin is the author of The Woman Who Cut Off Her Leg at the Maidstone Club and Other Stories and the novel, CARNIVORE DIET. She is the winner of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers' Award, GQ's Frederick Exley prize, and a Pushcart Prize.

Gail B. Bendheim, Psy.D., is a psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City. She has a particular professional interest in emerging and young adulthood, and writes occasionally on matters of personal interest.

Libby Copeland is an award-winning journalist and author who covers culture and science. She has written for The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Atlantic and Smithsonian Magazine, and has authored a book called The Lost Family: How DNA Testing is Upending Who We Are. She has served as a media fellow and guest lecturer, and has made numerous appearances as a journalist and cultural commentator on television and radio.

Ann Pearlman, a writer, artist and former therapist living in Ann Arbor, MI. , is the author of two nonfiction books, Keep the Home Fires Burning and Inside the Crips, two memoirs, Infidelity which was made into a film and Eyes on a Sparrow. Her novels, The Christmas Cookie Club, A Gift for My Sister, and The Lottery were international best sellers.

Andrea Greenman Ph.D. is supervisor and faculty member at NYU PostDoc and Training Analyst at the Contemporary Freudian Society. Having served as President of CFS for the past three years, she is interested in the problem of how organizations can fail their members, and how that can be repaired. She is an alumna of New Directions, and in private practice (remotely) on the Upper West Side of New York.

Jennifer Bort Yacovissi’s debut novel, Up the Hill to Home, tells the story of four generations of a family in Washington, D.C. from the Civil War to the Great Depression. Her short fiction has appeared in Gargoyle and Pen-in-Hand. Jenny reviews regularly for the Washington Independent Review of Books, and serves on its Board of Directors. She has served as chair/program director of the Washington Writers Conference since 2017.

Jonathan Stillerman is a clinical psychologist and Certified Group Psychotherapist with a private practice in Washington, DC. As faculty at the Washington School of Psychiatry, he teaches in three training programs, supervises students and serves as Dean of the National Group Psychotherapy Institute. Alongside his clinical work, Jonathan is a published poet, and in a former life, he co-founded Men Can Stop Rape, non-profit empowering male youth to prevent gender-based violence.  

Julie Barton is the New York Times Bestselling author of Dog Medicine, How My Dog Saved Me From Myself (Penguin). She is a graduate of Kenyon College and holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and an MA in Gender Studies from Southern Connecticut State University. Her weekly generative writing class, Unleashed, aims to help people express themselves on the page, judgment free.

Steven Demby, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice in Cobble Hill Brooklyn. He works with adults and older adults. He teaches, supervises, and is on the Board of Directors at the Contemporary Freudian Society. He has published several articles in psychoanalytic and other professional journals. He is a member of the International Psychoanalytical Association.

Julie Elion is the clinical director of the Center for Athletic Performance and Enhancement and has an MA in counseling. Through her psychotherapy practice she has helped athletes and CEOs achieve their dreams since 2000 as one of the premier mental coaches in sports. Julie focuses on identifying beliefs that block our optimal performance which has helped her gain recognition in multiple articles in the New York Times, Golf Digest, and other periodicals as “that lady who helped me to win.”

Aimee Molloy is the author of two novels, Goodnight Beautiful and The Perfect Mother, which was a New York Times bestseller and translated into more than twenty-five languages. She has also written several non-fiction books and for publications such as the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Guardian. 

Laura Zam is a certified trauma professional and author of The Pleasure Plan, a memoir about reclaiming her body after sexual violation. Laura’s essays/articles appear in the New York Times, Salon, HuffPost, and other publications. For the past 20 years, Laura has conducted healing-through-writing workshops. She’s worked with U.S. military, teens from conflict regions, and assault survivors. Laura has an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Brown University.

Martha Addy Young is the recipient of two Individual Artist Grants from the Washington D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities and a Poet Fellowship from the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Runner-up for the Bellevue Literary Review’s poetry prize, and a finalist for the Larry Neal Writer’s Award and the Crosswinds Poetry Award. Her poem “Dusk in Dupont Circle” was featured in Poetry Daily. She holds an MFA and is trained in the AWA writing method.

Anne Wotring, Ph.D. is a retired writing teacher and researcher at George Mason University and Fairfax County high schools. Her expertise is in cultivating writing as a potent transformational tool for psycho-spiritual and intellectual growth and development. Her M.A. is in English Education and Ph.D. in Human and Organizational Studies. As a Life Coach for the past 20 years, she specialized in helping individuals navigate life transitions.

Anne Wild-Rocheleau, Ph.D. practices in West Stockbridge, MA. She trained at the Austen Riggs Center, Duke University and Dartmouth. She graduated from the Berkshire Psychoanalytic Institute where she is now faculty. She is part of the New Directions community and will be co-directing the program, Sex Talk: On the Couch and On the Page. Her practice includes adults, teens, children and families, and she enjoys writing memoir and fiction.

Kate Wechsler, LCSW is New York City psychotherapist in private practice since 1990 treating adults, couples and adolescents. Consulting in several preschools in Brooklyn NY, she specializes in offering Parent Guidance services especially to families with young children. She is a graduate of New York University School of Social Work, Postgraduate Center for Psychoanalytic Training and the New Directions Writing Program.

Valerie Tripp (Yale ’73; Harvard GSE ’82) is the award-winning author of American Girl books about Felicity, Josefina, Samantha, Kit, Molly, and Maryellen as well as the Welliewisher and Hopscotch Hill School series. Currently, Tripp is writing a STEM series for National Geographic Kids. She has adapted classics for Sterling Publishers, and has written numerous leveled readers, songs, stories, skills book pages, poems, and plays for educational publishers.

Deirdre Timmons’ 30-year career has spanned newspaper reporting, magazine writing, Internet editing, screenwriting, and directing documentaries. In 2020, she published her debut memoir, “Brain Candy,” about being treated for a fast-growing, inoperable, malignant Medullo Blastoma. In 2021, she released an award-winning documentary, “Land of the Sweets: The Burlesque Nutcracker.” Deirdre graduated Smith College, where she studied English Literature and theoretical math. She lives in Seattle.

Elizabeth Thomas, MTS, MSW, Ph.D. is a psychotherapist, specializing in relationships and with a background in spirituality. In the past, she has written and presented clinical papers; currently, her writing is focused on memoir and fiction. Elizabeth has been both a student and a member of the faculty of New Directions since 2009. She is active in several writing groups. She lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.

Liza Nash Taylor was a 2018 Hawthornden International Fellow and received an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts the same year. She was the 2016 winner of the San Miguel Writer’s Conference Fiction Prize. Her work has appeared in Microchondria II, an anthology by the Harvard Bookstore; Gargoyle Magazine; Deep South; and others. A native Virginian, she lives in Keswick, in an old farmhouse which serves as a setting for her novels