Career Area: Writing and Storytelling

  • Kate McMullen

    Kate McMullen

    Interview

    Transcript

    00:00 Victoria Bartolotto 

    Okay, so to start, can you just introduce yourself a bit? Spell out your name, tell us where you’re from, where you’re located currently, that kind of stuff. 

     00:08 Kate McMullen 

    Yeah, I’m Kate McMullen. I am currently in Spartanburg, South Carolina. I am from Greensboro, North Carolina. I lived all over North Carolina before I ended up here. I’ve been here for eight years, which is nuts. Is that everything? Yeah. 

    00:34 Victoria Bartolotto 

    So can you tell us what your position is, what you do for the press, and a little bit of a summary of what you guys do? 

    00:42 Kate McMullen 

    Yeah, so I’m the managing editor of Hub City Press. I started out as the assistant director doing mostly social media and some book design. And I worked more for the overarching nonprofit, which is Hub City Writers Project, a bit more. So we are 30 years old this year, and we, as the Writers Project, we operate in Spartanburg, South Carolina. We run a bookshop downtown. We run literacy nonprofit efforts in our communities. So, we give books away to kids. We run writers workshops and conferences.  

    And then where I work, officially, Hub City Press has been around for 30 years. We have been publishing; we started out in 1995, publishing writers in South Carolina and Spartanburg specifically. So, we put out two anthologies of Spartanburg writers in the first two years of the press. 

     01:35 Victoria Bartolotto 

    Oh, wow! That’s exciting. 

     01:37 Kate McMullen 

    Yeah! So we, those are Hub City anthology one and two, essentially. And then since then, we have been in our early years, we were doing a lot of local history. There’s a camp nearby that sent people to World War II, and there’s training and stuff there. We have a book about that. We’re a mill town, so we have a book about the textile industry here. We have two books now. We did one in the aughts, and we did one last year on urban renewal in our Black communities. So, we’ve done a lot of that historical regional interest stuff, and that’s how we got started. And then in the late aughts, we started publishing more traditionally, fiction, poetry, non-fiction.  

    So we started out specifically with novels and poems. Since then, we now do eight to ten books a year; fiction, poetry, non-fiction. We run a few prizes. We run a short story prize. We won a prize for South Carolina novelists, which is the only one of its kind in the country. We work with the Arts Commission to sponsor a South Carolina book every other year from a South Carolina writer. And then we also run two poetry contests. We run a general, it’s called New Southern Voices. So it’s a book prize for a Southern poet that is judged. We run that every other year. The short story prize is also judged. We run that every other year.  

    Then we do what we are calling our BIPOC poetry series, which is essentially every year we choose a book with an editor at large, from a Southern poet that’s not residency based. Our other ones are Virginia to Texas. So, we’re supporting writers who are living in the South. And that, the BIPOC poetry series, is funded by the Poetry Foundation and is a little bit different where you can be anywhere in the country, but as long as you’re writing about Southern themes. 

    So Hub City Press, now we do all of that stuff. We publish Southern writers, essentially, from Virginia to Texas. We really to try to find new and extraordinary voices. We’re also now getting into reprinting old out of print things that we thought could be brought back into the light in terms of Southern, in this case, nonfiction, but across the board, Southern works that could use a second life. So we’re getting into that too.  

    As the managing editor, I am running all of those prizes. I’m opening and closing those things and signing readers. We also receive books from agents year-round. Pitches from agents. We also open for un-agented submissions three times a year, depending on what we need. So that’s a weekend where we’ll open for something specific like short stories outside of the prize years, or poetry. 

    But mostly that’s how we’re opening for novels. It’s the best way to get stuff to us if you don’t have an agent. We really believe not everybody has one and there’s just a lot of gatekeeping in that sense. So, we like to talk directly to writers that way. So, I run all of those. 

    I’m assigning all of those things out to people. We have a group of readers who I work with on a contract basis. We also have an editor who works out of Birmingham who I work with on editing the books that have come in that we’ve picked up. 

    And then I am also a book designer here. So, I am a production manager slash designer. So I run all of those books through the printing process. And that’s the other big heavy lifting part of my job. There’s really only three of us here, so I also do some publicity. We have a sales and marketing manager and then our publisher, Meg Reid is the higher level royalties and contracts. And she also does design. We’re both self-taught book designers. So we do all that stuff together.  

    Then our sales and marketing manager runs social media and all of the book ordering. All of that stuff. I essentially handle acquiring production and then author care in between. We do work with outside publicity now sometimes, which is great. But I mostly am a shepherd, I think, of books from start to finish. 

    It’s fun. It’s really nice to wear a lot of hats because when I was looking for publishing jobs, I wanted a lot of variety because I think otherwise it’s really boring. 

    06:12 Victoria Bartolotto 

    Well, definitely. I feel like, what you said about writers not having a lot of agents. It’s like, I’m currently in school to be a writer and I’m trying to figure out which route I want to take. Trying to get an agent is so overwhelming. And I feel like that’s such a great opportunity that you provide writers who don’t have that, in order to still be published. I think that’s great. That’s awesome! 

    06:32 Kate McMullen 

    Yeah, it’s nice and it’s fun to discover things. I hate that we call it a slush pile, but it’s fun to discover things in there. And a lot of smaller presses are doing this.  I think it’s really nice. There’s just, there’s other stuff.  

    Agents want to pick stuff up that is- their clients tend to be this really commercially viable kind of stuff, which is fantastic and great. And they’re going to help you get those big deals if you want. But if you, A, don’t want that or B, can’t get in with an agent, being able to talk directly to a publisher is a really fantastic thing. So, I’m really glad that we do it. It’s really nice. 

    07:11 Victoria Bartolotto 

    Like you said, when the Hub City Press started getting up, you guys are really interested in the history of the area. What about South Carolina specifically do you think brings a unique aspect or unique niche thing to your work or the Press itself that nowhere else gets from? I don’t know where, you know what I’m saying? How does South Carolina influence you? 

    07:34 Kate McMullen 

    This is a great question. Yeah, this is a great question. I think that Hub City, there are some presses around with our model, but I feel we’re one of the earlier ones to do it. And I think the thing about South Carolina, and specifically the semi-rural area that we’re in, feels like a really ripe place to consider history and all its facets in this specific way.  

    I think in the South we are obviously very obsessed with our history and our history is very marked with conflict and differing opinions, I’ll say. So, I think it’s nice to work somewhere here. We’re the books that we were doing early on are like wrestling with some of the complicated Southern history that’s not unique to us, obviously. Like, What was it like to work in these mills? They allowed child labor and it was a very difficult life. And then when the mills left our town, it was rather decimated from the 50s to about the 90s. There was not much going on here after the textile mills left. 

    So, and then you also get our books about urban renewal and all of this stuff where we’re disenfranchising black communities. All of that stuff is really important. It’s nice to work somewhere where we’re contemplating that stuff and we’re not just writing it off because it’s part of our history. It’s something that happened. 

    So of course, it’s important to chew through that and to think about where we’re at now and how that can inform Southern identity going forward. I think that’s the thing about Southern identity too, it’s got some weird contradictions, right? So that’s such good fodder for story. So that’s looking forward into the fiction or non-fiction that we publish and the poetry too. 

    A lot of our non-fiction books, we put out one last year about the Georgia Gullah Geechee community and how difficult it has been for them to continue to thrive and to have that community space. We published a book a number of years ago about the Atlanta airport and all of the neighborhoods that it overturned to be built. So, there’s a lot of- obviously that’s fantastic. The Atlanta airport is the world’s busiest airport, but we did uproot communities to build it, right? 

    There’s all this very fascinating stuff about the growth of the South that I think has a lot of fodder for conflict, not in a bad way, but tension in fiction and nonfiction and prose. 

    We’re in a unique position to be contemplating that stuff. And I think that’s what we look for when we’re looking for books is things that feel like they haven’t been discussed. I have not published a Civil War novel. We’ve not published a novel about the Civil War. I think there’s a lot of that stuff out. You can find that stuff if you want. We don’t want to retread that so much as we want to find other places in Southern history that feel underexplored and learn what they can teach us about, right? And looking ahead by looking behind. I think that that’s kind of the ethos of what we like to publish here. 

    10:57 Victoria Bartolotto 

    Yeah, that’s great. Because, like you said, you can go to any bookstore and find a million books on the Civil War, but you can’t find the niche things that no one else would know about. So that’s awesome. 

    11:07 Kate McMullen 

    More than sweet tea and magnolias in the South is always what we’re telling people. So yeah, that’s a fantastic question. Wow. So good.  

    11:17 Victoria Bartolotto 

    So reflecting a little bit personally, can you describe a moment in your journey throughout your education, throughout just life in general, that made you want to become an editor? Made you want to take on projects in the publishing industry? Was there a defining moment for you? 

    11:33 Kate McMullen 

    It’s interesting. I tell people that I tripped into publishing a little bit. I got my MFA at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Fantastic program, it’s a three-year program. And I was like, “I guess I’m going to teach.” I don’t know. What I wanted to do was just keep writing.  

    I had worked with Ron Rash at Western Carolina University where I did my undergrad. And he was like, “Hey, you should get an MFA.” And I was like, “okay!” Both of my parents have like theater MFAs. And they were like, “Yes, MFAs are like the next step.” And I’m like, “Cool. I guess, let’s do it.” And I did want to keep writing. Everybody had said this is a great opportunity to essentially buy yourself time to write and to give yourself all this space. 

    And I miss it every day. It was so nice to as a writer, to only have that. That was my only job. It’s fantastic. It’s not actually a thing that people can do in real life, unfortunately. But I found out pretty quickly that I didn’t want to teach. I don’t like it very much. And I think that’s maybe for other folks to do. I don’t think I was very good at it. So, it just made me so nervous that I didn’t want to keep doing it.  

    So luckily, Wilmington has a student-run press. They’re a non-profit university press. And they do a book a year usually. It’s been a minute, like some time, there’s been some transition, I think, over there. But usually they do a book of the year. And essentially what happens is it’s a practicum run press. So students make the books and do a lot of the work guided by publishing professionals. So I took a class in book building and then they were like, “Hey, you should take this class in publishing.” And I was like, “Great, sounds fun.” 

    I love books. I love writers. I love this industry stuff. This is new and fun. Then I ended up taking that class the whole time I was there. My last year at Wilmington, I ended up being the TA for that class, essentially. Emily Smith, who’s the publisher there, I was her assistant, which was fantastic. And I was like, “Cool, I think I can do this. This is like what I’m going to do now.” 

    I needed a plan that was not my original plan. So I was like, “Oh this is here, great!” So it was that experience made me realize, this is something that I could keep doing. I wanted to work in the industry, so to speak. I find publishing a lot more suited to me than academia was. So it was really nice. We got to go with authors on tours and stuff. We wrote grants for that, so we had to document a lot of it. So I was driving around and going to bookstores and learning how bookstores were managed. It was very hands-on and something that just really helped me fall in love with it, I think.  

    So then I started applying for jobs as I was finishing my MFA. I was looking around in New York and I was like, “I don’t know if I’m going to be, as a Southern writer myself, just like slide into the job.” And it was not an editing job originally, but I ended up doing some editing. And I think because of my MFA experience doing workshops and that kind of thing. I think that’s always something I really like doing is…giving my opinion. But there’s something about book length editing that I’ve really come to like. I think I’m good at it, but I also really like that big structure stuff. So that was something that, again, that I like slid into here. 

    As I started taking more of it on, I think that’s when the moment I was like; there’s a lot of imposter syndrome because, you’re working with authors who have published like a few books or whatever.  

    Last year I edited Minrose Gwynn, who has published like1000 books and it’s just a consummate storyteller. And I was like, “I feel a little crazy telling you what I think you should do.” But she’s been very grateful and she is always telling me that the book was better after we worked on it together. So that’s very flattering and special. But it’s also just something I really, it’s something I ended up really liking doing. So I’m fortunate to get to do that in the job here. It’s really a nice thing to do, to have this relationship with a writer and to polish something up and put it out. It’s really special. 

    So I do feel I tripped into it a little bit, but I do really like it. As a writer myself, it’s really nice to get the book into that place where it’s ready to go and reviewers and critics are going to read it, and readers in bookstores and stuff. So, it’s special. And I think having done it enough, I’m like, “Okay, like this seems like something I’m allowed to keep doing, I guess.” 

    16:45 Victoria Bartolotto 

    Yeah, no, I completely sympathize and empathize with you on the whole imposter syndrome because even when I’m in workshop in one of my creative writing classes, I’m like, “Who am I to say that your work is bad or it’s good.” 

    16:59 Kate McMullen 

    Yeah, like this isn’t working. I don’t know. I just like books and I read a lot of books. It’s funny to have the authority on that, but it’s fine. 

    17:13 Victoria Bartolotto 

    So throughout your whole journey, was there any kind of fear that you might have experienced, as you said, tripping into publishing? Was there any moment that you were like, “Oh, maybe this isn’t going to work out at all?” 

    17:28 Kate McMullen 

    Yeah, the publishing industry is a funny place to be because everyone’s like, “It’s dead, it’s dying,” all the time. I was talking to an author whose book we’re reprinting yesterday and she was like, “I don’t know, they’ve been saying this for 50 years, that books are over.” I think there’s a pretty near constant state of panic that something might snap and no one will ever buy a book again. And fewer and fewer people read. 

    So sometimes it feels like you’re in a weird niche industry for sure, which I don’t mind. And I guess, I don’t know. This is always how it is, especially if you’re somebody like me who’s always had a lot of interests. It’s hard to be like, “oh, I’m picking this. I’m doing this. This is happening. I’m going to base my career on this forever.” And it’s not you can’t just jump out and do something else.  

    But I also feel like I’ve really dug in here, and I really like the town. And so there’s just a lot of certainty. As an anxious person, you’re like, “oh, man, did I make the right call?” But I love my job, and I like working with writers. And it’s the best way to do it, I think. If I’m not going to be teaching them, putting their books out into the world is really special. And it feels good to work. 

    We’re a nonprofit. It’s nice that the values of this organization align with my own. It’s nice to be, as a Southerner myself, supporting Southern writers, because I’m one too. In terms of the future of books and the uncertainty now; obviously working on a nonprofit where the NEAs, and kind of this flux with the current administration, recently all of the writers grants have been canceled. So now writers aren’t getting money. 

    So that’s always, that funding stuff is concerning for sure, and definitely something that is not fun. It feels the uncertainty is not a great place to be in, but we’ve been just putting our head down and working really hard. 

    And I think it’s the best we can do, honestly. Because if it wasn’t this, it would be something else. A nonprofit publisher is always not doing the bottom line stuff that a big publisher is. We get to take these kind of wild risks with books as long as we make budget, essentially. So anyway, it’s kind of a weird time to be in publishing. I still really like it. It’s nice. 

    It’s nice to work with writers and to make their dreams come true. It gives you that kind of like, “No, this is the right choice.” 

    20:33 Victoria Bartolotto 

    No, definitely. So as we wrap up, bouncing off of that, can you give us any advice for either current college students or high school students who are thinking about going into college for writing or thinking of getting into publishing? Do you have any advice to give to them? 

    20:51 Kate McMullen 

    Yeah, the first thing I’ll say is because I got an MFA and now you don’t need to get an MFA, obviously, to go into publishing. If you’re a writer and you want to do that for you, that’s great. I went in right after undergrad and sometimes I’m like, I should have waited and gone and had a little life or something. Because what I wouldn’t give for that writing time now, now that I’m in my 30s and have more things to write about. 

    You don’t need an MFA. I think the things that are cool are the Denver Publishing Institute at the University of Denver is a summer certificate program for two or three months that is so fantastic and gives you a real leg up in terms of jargon. 

    I meet a lot of people who are coming out of undergrad and they’re like, “Oh God, I think I want to go into publishing. Like what, degree do I need?” And you don’t really. There’s so much, I think generally humanities degrees work in publishing. You need communication skills and critical thinking and you need to be able to write an e-mail and have a phone call. And you need to love books. And you can find jobs, like they’re around. It’s a weird industry and it can be small and it takes forever sometimes, which is never fun. But things like Denver are great. 

    There’s one in Columbia too, which is pricier and but you can specialize in stuff, which is neat. And they also do one where they send you to Oxford in England, which is really cool. 

    22:20 Victoria Bartolotto 

    Oh, wow! 

    22:22 Kate McMullen 

    I know! So there’s all kinds of stuff, like publishing certificate programs, I think are especially cool. Like if you’re like me and you’re like, “I need a little school first,” that’s a great resource to dig in and meet people. And Denver especially has a really high job placement rate. 

    If you are interested in the MFA route, there are a lot of places where you can work with publishers. My other advice is to never take an unpaid internship. I think we’re better at these now in the industry. I don’t think there’s as many of these. I know that New York publishers do this a lot and they tend to go to kids who already live there, whose parents can float them. But if you’re not one of those people, that’s not for you. 

    So there are a lot of cool opportunities at small presses. They can’t always pay for you to come live there or anything. Gray Wolf and Milkweed and a couple of these other kind of big indies have a lot of growth. There’s a lot of really interesting places to go, learn on the job, but just definitely make sure that they’re paying you. 

    And then the other thing is, this is what I always say too, is cold emails. Learn how to do a cold e-mail. Write a press that you’re interested in and say, “Do you need manuscript readers?” If they run a prize, say, “Do you need prize readers?” I have read for these literary journals. That’s a great– and agents need readers too. Again, sometimes this is unpaid, but it’s a little easier to read a book unpaid. 

    So yeah, especially if you’re interested in editing or if you’re interested in being an agent. Just knowing how to do a book report, for the industry is just a great skill to have. It’s also super fun. If you like doing that stuff, it’s a pleasure to do. 

    I always need contract readers, we pay people whenever possible, almost always to read books for us. So there’s always that extra work that we’re like, “Okay, like someone can do that.” So writing a cold e-mail to a press, and just saying like, “Hi, can I jump on a call? Hi, do you have any opportunities?” 

    And just following people on social media. We post our jobs there or any kind of calls that we need. So that stuff is always there. And I think my best advice to not be shy. Just if there’s someone you want to work for, be in their inbox. So that way if something opens up, you could be like, “Hello, we’ve worked together before.” 

    Because at these smaller places, it can be, the jobs don’t come open as much. The teams are smaller. And there are some jobs that do turnover everyone. So like editorial assistant position jobs, those entry level jobs, because people move on. Some places don’t have them. We don’t always have, that would be great, but we don’t always have, that  entry level spot. So for us, it’s that contracting. So that’s always like cold emails are in. 

    I’ll make sure that enthusiasm, I just like to see, and I think other people do too. But agent whose books you love, whose authors they represent, who you love, any of those kind of things, I think is like worth a shot, right? Because sometimes the right job won’t come up for a minute, but you can always be, even at the end of undergrad and stuff, thinking about, where you might want to go. And it just gives you a little bit of an in or some experience, which is always helpful. 

    But definitely. All you got to do is love books, and it comes through. People who are book people, we know each other. 

    26:13 Victoria Bartolotto 

    Yeah, exactly. I know what you mean. 

    26:17 Kate McMullen 

    Yeah, like “I see you.” 

    26:20 Victoria Bartolotto 

    But thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today. I sincerely appreciate it. Would you be open to talking with us again for a potential second interview or we have another opportunity about a podcast that goes on with our press initiatives. So there might be a chance that if you are open to it, you could possibly get on the mic. 

    26:41 Kate McMullen 

    Yeah, anytime! I love doing these kind of things. I think it’s non-profit stuff, it’s important. If I had seen any of this stuff in undergrad, I would have been like, “oh, I know what I’m doing, right?” I’m always open to jumping on anything or zoom-in a class or literally whatever. So yeah, please let me know. 

  • Kristen Ness

    Kristen Ness

    Interview

    Transcript

    00:00 Victoria Bartolotto 

    OK, so to start, can you just introduce yourself, spell out your name and tell us where you’re from? 

     00:06 Kristen Ness 

    Yes. My name is Kristen Ness, and that’s spelled. And I grew up mostly in Columbia, SC. 

    00:17 Victoria Bartolotto 

    So, what do you do for work and where are you currently working from? 

    00:22 Kristen Ness 

    I am currently living in Charleston, SC, right near the coast., And I am an author, so I write novels and my first debut novel was published in 2023. It’s called At Loggerheads. I mostly work from home, although because I’m a writer and my lifestyle, I can kind of write anywhere, even if there’s white noise in the background. So sometimes I’ll pop around to bookstores or coffee shops. There’s so many great spots in Charleston, or even out by the beach. 

    00:52 Victoria Bartolotto 

    Do you have a favorite spot to go or…? 

    00:55 Kristen Ness 

    A couple of my favorite coffee shops. I like Kudu Coffee right downtown on Vanderhorst St. and Starbucks. Pretty much any Starbucks. I’ll go to those as well and book stores. There’s a new bookstore called The Archive that just opened up. I like to sit in there. They have a little coffee spot, like a little coffee bar and wine for later in the evening inside their bookstore. I’ve only been there once, but I’m planning to spend more time there and then so many great bookstores around town that I’ll occasionally pop into, but those are a few favorite. 

    01:30 Victoria Bartolotto 

    That’s awesome. So being from South Carolina, I did a little bit of research on your book. I’m a big reader myself, and I’m also a writer. So like when I was looking your stuff up, I’m like this looks so interesting. I love murder mystery novels. And so one of my questions is, what does South Carolina bring to your work? What about it is unique and influences you compared to anywhere else, any other kind of place? 

    01:56 Kristen Ness 

    Oh, that’s a good question. OK, so why set my novel in South Carolina? Well, first of all, I grew up here, so I grew up coming down to the coast right here near Charleston, to Isle of Palms.  

    What’s unique, I think about our coastline is the way the barrier islands are set apart from the mainland, so those islands become sort of small towns of their own. And I know that happens in other places, but there’s something about our beaches in particular, the way the marshes are in between the mainland and the barrier island.  

    I think there’s something unique about the people in South Carolina. We tend to be friendlier and kind of create little microcosms of bigger cities in our smaller towns, so you have just a big mix of people and everybody kind of knows what’s going on in everybody’s business. I like that about small South Carolina towns.  

    That beach in particular became a big inspiration from my book. I did fictionalize the barrier island in my story only because I wanted to be able to control everything that was happening in the setting, but it is loosely based on Isle of Palms.  

    Another big reason why this state in particular worked for my story is the loggerhead sea turtle. So I’m on the Island Turtle Team on Isle of Palms and Sullivans Island and I’ve been doing that for about a decade; a little more than a decade since I moved down here and loggerhead sea turtles are the most common species of sea turtles that nest on our beaches. And I needed a setting where that was going to be the case. And the loggerhead sea turtle is also the South Carolina state reptile.  

    So, so many things, you know, made it work as the best setting for my story. Everything from the small town feel to the way the barrier island ecosystem works to the way that development is happening on those barrier islands that plays into my story a little bit and I’ve seen a lot of the changes take place on some of the barrier islands here on our coast.  

    So, that gave me a great background in what the setting would be like over time and why my main character, Brooke, would be so connected to it both through the sea turtles and because she grew up there. 

    04:14 Victoria Bartolotto 

    Wow, that that seems it just fit perfectly and that’s — that’s great. Oh my goodness. So could you define a moment in your creative journey that really had an impact on why you became an author, why you wrote At Loggerheads? Was there anything that kind of struck you as: “this is the time I need to write this novel”? 

    04:37 Kristen Ness 

    Yes, that’s a great question. I’ve first of all, I’ve always, I think I am a writer at heart. From the start, I’ve always, even when I was little loved to write, I would keep journals from the time I was probably in first grade. So I went on to try to turn all of my papers in other classes into creative papers. Any chance I got, I would go to my teachers or professors and just say ‘instead of writing this boring, like research paper, can I just turn it into a creative version, like fictionalize it and make that my final paper?’ and some of my professors would humor me, but there was always that lean toward fiction that lean toward making it into a creative writing piece, and I majored in English.  

    I would say what eventually kind of kicked me into gear to write my first novel was about the time when I was practicing law, so I went to law school out of college and I’m a lawyer and I was with a big firm in Charlotte and I was practicing immigration law, which is what I still do a little bit on my own. I have my own firm now, but I was with this big firm and I was thinking in my office. I had all of these favorite quotations from different writers and I would still, I would still be doing a little bit of research, like ‘what would I want to write about?’ and even while I was in my office doing law work – shhh, don’t put that in the story – but I was supposed to be doing my work, but anyway it was clear that I was wanting to do more creative writing. I needed a creative outlet.  

    About that time I’ve been practicing law in big firms for about 7 years and I had decide as much as I enjoyed that practice, I didn’t want to do it that way. I didn’t want to be a partner at a big law firm, so I needed to get off that partner track and so. You know, I did something that most associates at big law firms never do, and I just resigned. I just decided; “you know what? I want to start a family. We’re in Charlotte and this now is the time. If I keep going and stay on this track, I’m going to end up being a partner at a big law firm and I’m never going to have time to write my novel, and I really want to give it a shot.” So I left the big law firm world.  

    I thought probably at some point I’ll start my own little firm, but I wasn’t doing it yet and about a month after I left, I got pregnant with my daughter, so we started our family! So I was pregnant, and I figured now’s the time. I haven’t started my new firm yet. I have a lot of free time. I need to find that idea for a novel. I wanted it to involve something on the coast. I knew I wanted it to be connected back to the sea. I always loved marine biology as a young child and growing up too, so I thought that’d be a great way to marry my love for writing with my love for marine biology. 

    And the reason that was such a perfect time is because not only did I have more time to get started on the idea, but I happened to be down at the beach with my mom, pretty soon after. So that summer, after I had left my law firm job and I saw a sea turtle track for the first time in real life. And so, it planted the seed of an idea. I was kicking around like ‘which creature would I wanna write about? Which genre am I gonna be in?’ I really like reading mysteries and thrillers and suspense. So probably that.  

    We saw this track on the beach and it was at Isle of Palms and I just the seed of an idea came to me like ‘what might be going on if there was a track, a turtle track on the beach?’ And when you read my book, you learn about it. Normally there’s a track going on from the water to the dunes. She makes a nest and then she leaves a track going back to the water. And I thought, well, ‘what would be going on?’ Maybe if you just saw one track from the water up to the dunes. But then there was no nest, no turtle, and no track going back into the water. 

    That idea just popped into my head. What would be going on the island if that sort of thing was happening and that’s where I got the seed of the idea. And at the same time, because I had a little bit more time, I was taking an evening creative writing course at Queens University in Charlotte and just getting the tools to put together a novel, since I don’t have any actual degree in creative writing, I just wanted some guidance on that. 

    And so, all of those things came together, and I started putting together my outline for what became At Loggerheads and sat down and started writing it from page one on my computer. Now, that was the moment I started it. Remember I was pregnant with my daughter and she’s now 17 years old.  

    So, it took, off and on. You know, I started a law firm. We moved to Charleston. I had my son. So, we had a second child, and I was just using any creative time I could find to work on my story. It just became this passion project while I was doing a little more immigration work and raising our kids and enjoying being here at the beach and joining the turtle team and gaining some more insight so I could put that in my book. 

    I’d say off and on. It took me about 10 years to write the first draft. If you condense down all the time I spent on it, it was probably more like a year of full-time writing. But I was just getting a couple hours here and there each day, or maybe even not even every day. And so, it took me just that long to do the full first draft. 

    And I was editing as I went and then I edited it a lot before. Then I went and found an agent. That took a little time to work with that agent and then got the published and going. So, overtime it took me a long time to get from Page One to publication, but now that I’ve kind of been through all of that and I’ve done it once, I’m working on my next book and it’s going much faster. So I think I’ll have it finished within-I’ve probably been working on it for about a year and I’ll have a manuscript, I think finished by probably the end of summer, early fall and hopefully get that out from my agent to a publisher pretty soon. 

    10:54 Victoria Bartolotto 

    Oh, that’s amazing. I understand the whole like trying to find time because I’m a writer myself. I’ve written a couple of books but just trying to make my way and even as a college student, I’m always trying to find a couple hours, wake up earlier just so I can get a couple words in just like spacing that time. 

    11:12 Kristen Ness 

    But so, you’re busy with classes and you have life, and things are going on and the writing. As much as you love doing it, it’s something that you have to really keep doing on your own until at some point maybe you have a publisher who has you under contract and then you have a deadline. But until you have that, it’s really up to you and your schedule can look. However it works best for you. 

    There’s no right way or wrong way to write. You just have to write. So anytime you can find if even if it’s just 15 minutes for a while. You know when I was working at that big firm, I was just doing sitting down at night and writing for 15 minutes and I called it my free write. And just whatever came out on the page that was creative at that time.  

    I would just write for 15 minutes, and a lot those little bits of writing ended up being in my book. I pulled from some of those little free writes I’ve done and used them for part of the story. So, you never know where it might be going, as long as you’re just– just don’t give up. Just keep working at it. Little by little, it might take you 10 years, but that’s, it’s OK. 

    12:18 Victoria Bartolotto 

    Speaking of how long a span you had to drop this novel, were there any kinds of fears or things that gave you a little bit of anxiety when you decided to pursue becoming an author? Was there any fear around querying, submitting to publishers? How did that kind of go for you? 

    12:38 Kristen Ness 

    That’s a good question. OK. So, I’d say some of my fears were, first of all, as you’re in the middle, I’m in the middle of this, you know, trying to write a novel. And I’ve never attempted writing a novel length piece of writing before. So, I had a lot of, I guess, trepidation or like uncertainty around like, “am I doing this right? Like is this making sense?”  I had a little bit of an outline, but some people write with outlines and some people just fly by the seat of their pants and I was a little bit of both I guess I had plot points, but then from one plot point to the next, I wasn’t exactly sure how I was going to get there. So definitely a little bit of uncertainty about am I going to actually be able to pull this off? Is this going to come together and make any sense to anybody or are people going to read the first chapter and be like “I know who did it.”?  

    It’s like I’ve got to figure out how to make the mystery enough of a mystery, so they keep reading. Not having done that before, but of course, having read a lot, I’m a voracious reader. So I had read a lot of books, so I kind of knew what it should do. How it should look. So that kind of kept me going. Like I’m just gonna go for it. I just need to write it.  

    And then when it came to the agent search. Yeah, I was. There was a lot of –I had a lot of nerves around that because that to me, I really wanted to go the traditional publishing route. I figured if I couldn’t find a publisher who wanted to publish my book, I would just write another one. I just didn’t want to, I didn’t want to be in the business of publishing books. I didn’t want to have to go figure out how to do all of that. I just wanted to do the writing. 

    14:18 Victoria Bartolotto 

    Yeah, I get that. 

    14:19 Kristen Ness 

    I was planning to get the agent and then try to find a publisher and then try to find a publisher. I spent a lot of time editing it myself and trying to get it as in is the best shape it could be in for going to an agent. I really got lucky with the agent search. I was very nervous about it to start, but I think luck and timing were on my side, so I had heard from going, I also went to a lot of author events as I was getting into writing I would.  

    I’d love to go hear authors talk about their books and their process and how their publishing experience was. So I remembered one of the authors I’d seen had said when you’re looking for an agent, a great way to find one aside from just going into the general list of literary agents is to go to the bookstore and find books that are similar to yours in similar genres or books that you really liked, that you felt resonated with you because of the writing style, maybe, or because of how they put the book together. The structure of it, and then the authors always almost always without fail thank their agents in the back of the book, in the acknowledgements. So, find those books that are similar to yours, or that you really loved. And go look and see in the acknowledgements who the agent is and then query those agents. 

    And so, I, about that time it was probably 2019, middle of 2019, in the summer, a book that you might have heard of called where the Crawdad sing has become. 

    15:56 Victoria Bartolotto 

    Yes, I have. 

    15:57 Kristen Ness 

    Huge book, right? So Reese Witherspoon had picked it for her book club, and it had just taken off and I’d heard about it. I had seen it in the bookstores, and I was always like, I mean, an interesting title. What is this book about? And so a friend of mine told me you have to read it. You know, she knew how much I love nature and sea creatures and that I was writing this murder mystery set on a coastal beach and in the South Carolina setting.  

    So I went and read it, and it had so many things I loved. I loved her descriptions of nature. I loved her writing style. And also, the story itself had a murder mystery wrapped into a coming of age. Now mine’s not as much of ‘a coming of age’, but I had a murder mystery, and it was set on a in a coastal location. So, hers was North Carolina mine, South Carolina. A lot of nature and science woven into the story and I thought, “OK well, go big or go home.” I’m going to query him. You know? Why not?  

    So I looked him up in the back of her book, and then I looked him up online and found his agency. And every agent has a different way that they want to receive submissions from authors. So the way he wanted his submission was just a query letter. The one page query letter that you send by e-mail. So the query letter’s one page, it tells a little bit about why you think an agent will like your book, what your book is about, and then any credentials that you have in publishing. So obviously I had a lot of nervous energy around this thinking like, “OK, well, I’m just going to send it.” And I mean, I don’t know what I’m doing. This is I’m brand new to this. And either it’ll just go into his slush pile and I’ll never hear from him or maybe I’ll hear from him. I don’t know. I have this whole other list of agents. 

    And so just not really even knowing what I’m doing. I just sent him my query letter and went on about my day and went back to check my work e-mail and he had emailed me back 15 minutes later and I thought that my e-mail had been like, that’s how that’s how fast it was, and now that I know as so, yeah, I messed it up. So I opened his e-mail and it just said “You had me at turtles. Please send me your manuscript.” That’s all it said. That was his e-mail to me.  

    I screamed and jumped up and down sent him my manuscript and you know, called my mom, called my husband. I was like, “Oh my God. Like, I actually heard back from this agent.” And he read it in about a week and he got back to me and said, “you know, I’m interested in seeing where this is going. Let’s keep in touch and work on it a little bit. If you don’t hear back from any other agents.” I was like, “are you crazy? Like you’re my dream agent. I’m not going, not even looking for any other agents. I’m just working on making sure we can work together.” 

    So we kind of corresponded back and forth and he was reading my manuscript and giving me suggestions for edits and kind of seeing if he could get it to a point where he felt like it was saleable and by the time we got to that point, COVID 19 hit, and it was 2020 March and none of the publishers were accepting submissions and a lot of their authors, they were having to take off of tour. So we just held it for a while and didn’t submit it to publishers until maybe 20 late 2021, when COVID had settled down and the publishing houses were opening back up. And again, had some good luck there.  

    We submitted to maybe 7 or 8 different publishers at all ranges to some of the big houses, mid-size houses, small publishers and landed with the small press where the editor had been a volunteer on a sea turtle team up in Pawleys Island. The turtle team, so she knew, she really liked the whole sea turtle piece of it and how that wrapped into the story. And she bought my book and put me under contract. And then I worked with them and we put it out. I think it was. Oh, yeah.  

    So we my publication day, publication days are always on Tuesdays. In case you didn’t notice that new books are coming, are always released on Tuesday, and so the Tuesday in May that we chose in 2023 happened to be world seat World Turtle Day. So, it was May 23rd, 2023. It was World Turtle Day. It was a Tuesday, and that was my launch day. 

    So I definitely had some from there to get back to the original question, there was a lot of nervous energy and uncertainty in the whole process of writing along the way and that’s why I say just keep going. Don’t give up, even if this is your first time writing a novel, even if you’re not sure where it’s going, get that first full draft finished. Edit it. Make it as good as you can and then with the agent process, I was very nervous about that and really just kind of blind luck I ended up with an agent; who one of the reasons why he wrote back to me so quickly is because it just happened that the second thing he really loves in addition to being a literary agent. First is he loves conservation and nature and science, and he actually represents a lot of authors who write nonfiction, science related books, as well as fiction that has science in it.  

    So it just turned out that the book that I was writing happened to be right in his wheelhouse. And that that agent searched was much shorter than pretty much anybody I’ve heard of. So that was a lot like I said, just a lot of luck and good timing. Had Crawdads not been out and so big at that time, I don’t think I ever would have found him. So it was just all it all, I guess was kind of meant to be from my book. 

    21:46 Victoria Bartolotto 

    That’s so amazing. That’s cause I-I’ve done a little bit of querying for one of the books I wrote and it needed to be worked on a little bit more, let’s just say. It’s always been such an anxiety inducing thing for me because I’m like, ‘oh gosh, what if they don’t respond? What if, like, this happens? What if that happens?’ It’s, you know, a lot. 

    22:07 Kristen Ness 

    And that is way more than normal. That is definitely more of the normal response. In fact, I’ve heard since I’ve been going around doing stuff with my book, I’ve been on panels with other authors and the general average number of queries that people sent out to agents. I mean, we’re in the hundreds, like sometimes people would query 50 agents, 100 agent before they found that one that worked for them and then ended up going on to have a really big book. I think that Shelby Van Pelt, who gave me my cover blurb. She’s the one who wrote Remarkably Bright Creatures about the octopus. I don’t know if you’ve read her book yet, but… 

    22:48 Victoria Bartolotto 

    I’ve heard of it, yeah. 

    22:48 Kristen Ness 

    It became a big hit, too, when it was it was picked by Jenna for Jenna’s book club, and it’s an awesome book, but she had a long agent search, so she had gone through, I mean I think probably at least 50, maybe even 100 agent queries before she found the agent who wanted to represent her book, and they ended up landing with an imprint of, oh, I don’t want to mess up the house. I think it’s Harper Collins. But it was Echo Publishing, and they didn’t think, they didn’t know it was going to be such a big book, but again, just a lot of just sticking with it. Sometimes you’re going to get crickets. You’re not going to hear anything back from an agent, and that’s a really common thing that happens sometimes. You’ll just get a couple requests for a partial manuscript or requests for a full manuscript. Even then, they might read it and say it’s not quite a good fit for me.  

    And I experienced a lot of that when we were going through the publishing process, trying to find a publisher. Even though I had an agent, we were submitting my book to publishing houses, and sometimes they would take a really long time to get back to us. Sometimes we would get responses that were just like this doesn’t fit with our list or you know, we like the idea, the concept of it, but it’s just not for us. So you have to just keep going. You have to have a thick skin. And believe in your work. 

    I also have heard a lot of authors who have that, that book or several books in a drawer, that those were kind of their practice novels. And those were the ones they’ve written, but they just for whatever reason didn’t find a home with an agent or with the publishing house. And maybe at some point they’ll bring them back out and work on them and they’ll get published. But that’s also a really common thing that I hear and had my book not found a home. I think I would have done the same thing, just chalked it up to this was my this was my training and I’m gonna keep going on and working on my next one. 

    24:46 Victoria Bartolotto 

    Yeah, that’s great. Oh, my goodness. As we wrap up, I know we’ve kind of talked a little bit about not giving up and a little bit of advice, but if you do, do you have any advice or skills that you think would be important to have for current college students or pre-professional young adults who want to pursue possibly being author, is anything that you think they definitely should hit before they start their process? Do you have any advice for something like that? 

    25:12 Kristen Ness 

    That’s a good question. So if. Yes, and again, novelists can come from any kind of background. You don’t have to have a degree in English or creative writing to be a great writer. If you do have the chance to take some coursework, I think it would be really helpful to take a creative writing course because you will learn some of the tools of the trade of how to structure a novel. I see a lot of novelists who often came from a journalism background, so maybe if you have those types of courses available to you, it helps you. 

    As you’re researching a novel and putting a story together to learn those who, what, when, where, why, how to investigate your story, how to develop your characters. You know, a lot of characters come from real life. So, learning to pull stories out of what you see and observe around you, those would be the types of classes I would look to take.  

    In general, if you’re developing your skills as a writer, some of the things that I did that I found to be very helpful were, of course, reading, read, read the authors that you truly enjoy. You enjoy their writing style, or you enjoy their plots. Pay attention, go to those books as a writer instead of a reader, and try to read the book as if you’re taking it apart and paying attention to how did they put in so much background information about this character without slowing down the plot? So go to your favorite books and read them as a writer. That was really helpful to me as I was developing my skills. Go hear authors speak, go to author events and ask questions and find out from them what their process is like. Very much like you’re doing with me. You get little tips and insights that might work for you later. 

    Sit down and if even if you don’t have a story that you’re working on, or a or a novel or a plot in mind that you want to write, go to the page as often as you can and just write something. Like I was doing a lot of free writing that turned out to be a great way to exercise those writing muscles, and I just would spend, like I said, about 15 minutes a day. Usually at night when I had a little bit of downtime between dinner and whatever I was doing later. Just sat down and wrote for fifteen minutes. It could be what I did that day. It could be something I observed that I thought was interesting. It could just be a completely made-up paragraph about something. I found that to be very helpful too.  

    And then I’d say after college, if you’re really wanting to go, if coming out of school that what you want to do is become a novelist. Another thing I’ve heard a lot of people do that helps launch you into the industry a little bit is to get a master’s in fine arts. So an MFA degree, or if you if you’re still working on your bachelors, you can get a bachelor’s in fine arts or a bachelor’s degree in creative writing. A lot of times having that tool, the masters in particular. If you go into a master’s program, I didn’t do this myself, but I know that a lot of authors I’ve been on panels with and heard talk have come through a master’s program.  

    It provides you with a great networking opportunity where you get to meet not only professors who might also be published authors, but sometimes they’ll have agents come or publishing houses come to the master’s program and you might get a chance to connect with one of those and also a lot of times in the masters programs you’re working on, you’re working on a book while you’re in the program and you’re getting immediate feedback from both your peers and from your professors.  

    So that’s also something to consider if you know going in, coming out of college or even while you’re in college, that you definitely want to see, you want to try to become a novelist and just keep writing. Go to your favorite books and see which kinds of course work, and possibly degree programs might be available to you and go just go for it. 

    29:08 Victoria Bartolotto 

    Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today. I really appreciated it. 

    29:11 Kristen Ness 

    Welcome, it was such a pleasure. Thanks for reaching out to me. I really, I was so pleasantly surprised to get your message and always happy to help pass along what little advice I have one book in, you know, it’s fun to be able to be to have a little bit of experience under my belt. So, I can tell people about it. 

    29:32 Victoria Bartolotto 

    Would you before we end the call, would you be open to talking with our team again if we have questions or if we want to contact you for more interviews or things like that, would you be open to that? 

    29:44 Kristen Ness 

    Absolutely. Happy to do that. Feel free to reach out to me. You have my e-mail address and my phone number. Yes. Follow up with any questions or anything you’d like for me to do to be involved with. I love talking to people about writing and about my book. It’s just such a thrill. It seems really surreal to me still, so I love it, I’ve been talking to a lot of book clubs that reach out and have me come to their book club meetings. It’s just been so much fun. So I would love to be involved however I can be and talk to students and answer your questions whatever you need. 

    30:16 Victoria Bartolotto 

    OK. Thank you so much. I hope you have a great day. 

    30:18 Kristen Ness 

    Thanks, Victoria. It’s nice talking to you.  

    30:24 Victoria Bartolotto 

    It’s nice talking with you. 

  • Kate McMullen

    Kate McMullen

    “All you got to do is love books, and it comes through. People who are book people, we know each other.” 

    Quick Facts

    Education: M.F.A. at UNC Wilmington 

    Years of experience: 8 years

    About

    As the managing editor for Hub City Press, Kate McMullen’s role is to smooth out the publication process of every book that comes across her desk. Originally from North Carolina, Kate expanded her roots to Spartanburg, where she has lived and worked for the past eight years. With a love of books and a long-developed passion for publishing, Kate and Hub City play an important role in uplifting the untold stories of the American South.  

    Kate’s interest in publishing blossomed when she was working toward her M.F.A. at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. During the three-year program, she joined the university’s student-run, nonprofit publishing lab alongside classes in book building and publishing. The love she had for writing evolved into an enthusiasm for supporting writers, and when she realized working in publishing was a career she could pursue full-time, Kate pursued it.  

    Kate advises students interested in publishing to look at different programs, especially those offering publishing certificates. She also urges those interested to look for internships that fairly compensate the work. “Never take an unpaid internship. I think we’re better at these now in the industry,” she says. “There’s a lot of really interesting places to go, learn on the job, but just definitely make sure that they’re paying you.” 

  • Kristen Ness

    Kristen Ness

    “Sit down and even if you don’t have a story that you’re working on, or a or a novel or a plot in mind that you want to write. Go to the page as often as you can and just write something.” 

    Quick Facts

    Education:

    • Undergraduate studies at Duke University in English, Durham, NC
    • Evening Creative Writing Course for 1 Quarter at Queens University, Charlotte, NC
    • Received Law Degree from the University of South Carolina School of Law

    About

    Lover of turtles and words, Kristen Ness is an author who writes novels while bringing awareness to endangered sea inhabitants. She was inspired to write a book after encountering a set of turtle tracks on a heading away from the ocean but never returning while on vacation. The mystery of that turtle’s whereabouts sparked the story of her debut novel, At Loggerheads, a murder mystery set on a fictionalized barrier island off the coast of South Carolina. 

    Currently residing in Charleston, Kristen can be found at a coffee shop or on the shore writing her novels. Her stories reflect a passion for wildlife protection as she is an advocate for marine wildlife. Kristen’s advocacy is found not just through her writing, but also in her time volunteering for the Island Turtle Team through Isle of Palms and Sullivans Island. 

    When asked about balancing writing, work, and family life, Kristen acknowledges that “it’s something that you have to really keep doing on your own until at some point you have a publisher who has you under contract…but until you have that, it’s really up to you and how your schedule can work.” 

    Her advice to aspiring writers is simple and consistent. The time it takes to write might be long or tedious, but the reward for finishing the draft is unlike any other. “There’s no right way or wrong way to write,” she says. “You just have to write. Anytime you can find it, even if it’s just fifteen minutes.” 

  • Theresa McEvoy

    Theresa McEvoy

    “Stay committed to your vision and the story you want to tell.” 

    Quick Facts

    Level of Education: 2-year Technical College 

    Years of Experience: 3-4 Years

    About

    Theresa McEvoy is the author of the Elves and Dragons of Vacari series which weaves together mythical creatures and ancient alliances in stories that explore courage, unity, and the enduring struggle between light and darkness. After her lifelong love of imaginative storytelling, Theresa decided to turn those ideas into a novel. Her work began as a single idea before developing into multiple interconnected series centered on dragons, elves, and the ties which shape their fates. 

    Fantastical worlds are built throughout Theresa’s books, alongside the development of character histories and overarching storylines. Within them, there is an all-encompassing narrative which allows the world to grow through culture and lore surrounding the magical inhabitants of her universe. She highlights the importance of maintaining continuity while also allowing the stories to evolve into their fullest potential. 

    Theresa’s goal as a writer is to create stories to “remind readers that hope, unity, and perseverance matter, even in the darkest moments.” Through her works, she hopes to build characters that reflect the strength found when people stand together. Theresa emphasizes the importance of learning, refining, and creating consistently, “even when the path forward feels uncertain.” 

  • Carol Black-Lemon

    Carol Black-Lemon

    “Avoid comparing yourself to others—learn from them instead.” 

    Quick Facts

    Level of Education: Undergrad/Associate 

    Years of Experience: 25 Years

    About

    Carol Black-Lemon is a multidisciplinary visual artist who creates expressive, story-driven work that explores heritage, identity, and human connection. She fosters creativity and community through the art and outreach of others, taking pride in her own creative freedom. Carol balances her own artistic exploration by serving her community through collaboration, exhibitions, and creating spaces for the nurturing and sharing of creativity.  

    Carol prides herself on embracing challenges and committing to her art. From an early age, she had been drawn to art as an outlet to express herself and make sense of the world around her. Carol says she “didn’t wait for a seat at the table” and made her own, choosing instead to create, exhibit, and engage in art her own terms. At sixty-nine years old, Carol views her life as a powerful continuation and wants to set an example by living life creatively. 

  • Rachel White

    Rachel White

    “Don’t be afraid to pursue your dreams!” 

    Quick Facts

    Education: Coastal Carolina University Undergraduate degree 

    Years of Experience: 16 Years

    About

    Rachel White is a designer, writer, publisher, and storyteller who provides affordable marketing and administrative solutions to businesses through social media, graphic design, and copywriting. She is also a visual artist and photographer, managing her business at her local farmer’s market. For Rachel, “finding work in a creative field where you enjoy what you do is the ultimate fulfillment!” 

    Throughout her life, Rachel had always been an artist and a writer, from creating paintings as a toddler to writing stories in second grade. Within her career, she has turned her love of art and creative writing into a skill she has utilized in her professional life. Rachel recognizes the importance of everyone’s differences and emphasizes the importance of finding what makes you unique. 

  • C. Michelle Bryant Griffin

    C. Michelle Bryant Griffin

    “Be your unique self, and let the world catch up.” 

    Quick Facts

    Level of Education: A.C. Flora High School (Columbia); attended 27 schools across 12 years; some college 

    Years of Experience: 40+ Years

    About

    C. Michelle Bryant Griffin is an artist, author, and entrepreneur based in the Low Country of South Carolina who has spent more than four decades creating, building, and supporting others in doing the same. Her work today centers on helping dreamers, doers, and entrepreneurs bring their visions to life, transforming ideas into brands that shine and make their mark on the world.  

    Her path into photography began during a divorce in her late fifties, born out of vulnerability and a desire to rebuild. As she photographed other women navigating similar turning points, she found herself collecting their remarkable, under-sung stories which deserved a wider audience. That impulse became a magazine with a global readership for over a decade, dedicated to showcasing the overlooked and the underestimated. When the pandemic reduced print circulation, she pivoted to a fully online practice. She launched Fabulous Business Solutions, a practice that blends strategy, design, and hands-on support for writers, artists, and entrepreneurs at every stage of their journey.  

    She expresses her love for her work, saying that “everything I do is done with 100% heart and passion, as if it were my own personal project.”  

    Michelle describes her abundance of talent as both a blessing and a challenge; the question of how much to use, and in which direction, is one she holds lightly. But the answer she keeps returning to is love. Everything she does, she does because she genuinely loves it. And for her, that has always been enough.  

  • Protected: Jenny Jimenez-Sullivan

    This content is password-protected. To view it, please enter the password below.

  • Protected: Melanie McClellan-Hartnett

    This content is password-protected. To view it, please enter the password below.