L. McKenna Donovan
Executive Director
L. McKenna Donovan graduated from University of Mary Washington with an intense education in French,
Italian and Russian. This provided rich ground for understanding words—their origins, their nuances,
the fluency of their sounds. In 1990 McKenna resigned from her fifteen-year business career in systems
engineering, disaster recovery, and large systems marketing to return to her passion for language. She
founded To Write Well to teach the craft of writing with an emphasis on narrative structure, rhetoric,
and storytelling.
McKenna writes a broad spectrum of fiction and non-fiction. In the 2005 Surrey International
Writers Storytelling Awards Contest, her short story, "The Piano," was awarded Honorable Mention
and published in the SIWC Anthology. Some of her non-fiction work can be seen in back issues of
North Carolina Career Network Magazine, where she has published articles such as "Staying Professional
in an Increasingly Casual Workplace," "Eight Traits of a Professional," and "Staying Productive from
Your Home Office," among many others. More recently, her Creative Non-Fiction essay, "Driving in
Italy," was published in The Aquila Review. Her essays on language can be found at her blog,
Rhetorically Speaking, and her recent experience of moving across country in a rental RV during winter
can be found at her humor blog, Home to North Carolina.
Currently, McKenna is earning her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Goddard College,
and as her thesis, she is completing a complex novel of transnational intrigue that layers its
characters' stories around the notion that mankind's knowledge may not be entirely his own.
On a personal note, McKenna lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina with her husband, her blue-merle collie, and two cats.
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Eric J. Stark
Director
Eric is the product of the small town and the big city, of keyboard and pen. After four years at Montana State University,
where he studied Computer Science and English Literature, he moved to Denver where he received his MCSE in the spring of 2000.
After realizing the limitations inherent in "brick and mortar" education, he completed his Bachelor's in English through
University of Maryland University College's distance education program. Although Montana is his home, he currently resides in
Portland, Oregon, where he works at a certain well-known bookstore. When he's not working, he writes and edits fiction, and
of course, indulges his passion for reading literature and playing softball when the weather permits.
His expertise in technology and his background in English allowed him to realize his true calling was not in creating
technical documentation or providing user support but in writing fiction and studying literature. Although he had been writing
stories since grade school, it was not until he studied rhetoric that he learned it was indeed possible to understand the
workmanship that lies under the written forms, i.e., letters, essays, short stories, novels, non-fiction and fiction alike.
Where once he only wished he could "write like THAT!," he came to realize it was not only possible, but through work and
through experience, eminently achievable.
Based upon his instinct for the balance and structure of language, McKenna offered Eric a partnership in To Write Well with
their primary goal to bring Impact of Style from a private studio offering to a public offering on its own site. Eric brings
a passion for the literature of many cultures and many ages to the study of style, a complement to the foundation of the
art of rhetoric. With their combined skills, Impact of Style has reunited the study of literature, composition and speech.
This website is both a meeting of minds and a melding of disciplines.
Currently, Eric is working on his first novel. His writing has appeared in The Copperfield Review, The Harrow, Dark Recesses,
and Horrorlibrary.net.
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Edmund R. Schubert
Instructor
Edmund Schubert is fiction editor of
InterGalactic Medicine Show, a quarterly on-line science fiction
and fantasy magazine founded and published by Orson Scott Card.
In the past few years, Edmund has seen his own short fiction published over thirty times, including an
audio production, reprints, and several international publications. His stories include mysteries, science
fiction, contemporary fantasy, and historical, and have won or been nominated for a small handful of awards.
He has also published various articles, interviews, essays, books reviews, and the occasional newspaper column.
Recent publications include stories in the anthologies Crypto Critters II (Padwolf Publishing, July '07) and From
The Asylum: Year 3 (From The Asylum Books, July '07), and a novel, Dreaming Creek (LBF Books, Oct. 2008). He
is also co-editor of an InterGalactic Medicine Show anthology collecting stories from the first two years of IGMS
(Tor, Aug. 2008).
Despite all this, Edmund still maintains that his greatest achievement occurred when the underground newspaper
he published in college made him the subject of a professor's lecture in abnormal psychology. His website is
www.EdmundRSchubert.com. He also maintains a blog
about writing/editing/stuff: SideshowFreaks.blogspot.com
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