Staff & Board

Mary Gannon, CLMP's Executive Director, is a veteran nonprofit administrator with more than twenty years of experience in the literary field. Prior to joining CLMP she served as the Associate Director/Director of Content for the Academy of American Poets for five years, where she oversaw the production of the organization's award-winning website, Poets.org, its popular Poem-a-Day series, and its Education Program, including Teach This Poem, a weekly offering that received the 2018 National Book Foundation's Innovations in Reading Prize. She also served as Editorial Director of Poets & Writers, Inc., the country’s largest nonprofit organization serving poets and writers of literary prose, where she headed up Poets & Writers Magazine and pw.org. Also an award-winning poet whose poems have been published widely, Mary has published numerous articles about publishing and the literary field and has profiled such notable authors as The New Yorker editor David Remnick and nonfiction writer John Haskell, fiction writers Jay McInerney and Heidi Julavits, and poets Anne Carson and Major Jackson. She is co-author with her husband, Kevin Larimer, of The Poets & Writers Complete Guide to Being a Writer, published by Avid Reader Press in 2020.

Montana Agte-Studier is a writer, musician, and artist based in New York City. The Director of Membership and NYSCA NYTAP at CLMP, she previously worked in the membership department at MoMA. She holds a BFA in Jazz Flute Performance and a BA in Arts in Context with a focus on Literature from The New School University and has studied abroad in Verona, Italy; Edinburgh, Scotland; and Valladolid, Mexico. Montana is the face of Brompton Bicycle's 2015 North American Ad Campaign and 2018 NYC Transit Edition. She is the recipient of a John Coltrane Scholarship from The John Coltrane Foundation and a Michael Kamen Solo Award from The Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation. Montana is currently working on a novel and pursuing a private pilot's license. You can find her on Instagram as @theycallhermontana.

Emma Hine is the Communications Manager at CLMP. She is the author of the poetry collection Stay Safe (Sarabande Books, 2021), which received the 2019 Kathryn A. Morton Prize. Originally from Austin, Texas, she has a BA in English from Washington University in St. Louis and an MFA from New York University, where she served as a Starworks Fellow and the layout editor of Washington Square Review. She previously worked at the Academy of American Poets and continues to serve as their freelance Education Content Specialist. Her poetry and essays appear in Gulf Coast, Guernica Magazine, The Missouri Review, Poets & Writers, and The Southern Review, among other publications.

Chelsea Oei Kern is an ACLS Leading Edge Fellow working with CLMP on DEIA Outreach, Programs & Strategic Partnerships. She is involved with a variety of CLMP programs with a focus on diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility. Chelsea holds a PhD in English from the University of California, Los Angeles, where she taught and wrote about contemporary U.S. fiction. Her writing on literature and technology has appeared in Arizona Quarterly and Postmodern Culture. Previously, she worked with the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, Illuminations Arts Publishing, and blue moon, the annual literary magazine of Whitman College.

Usman Chaudhary, CLMP’s Accounting Consultant is from Accounting Solutions for Not-for-Profit Organizations. He has over five years of experience in not-for-profit accounting. Prior to joining CLMP in 2018, he has supported various not-for-profit organizations with accounting, finance, and operations related functions, including financial reporting, payroll, accounts payable, reporting of monthly cash-flows, and audit preparation. Usman has extensive knowledge of nonprofit best practices and regulations and frequently serves as an advisor to clients on such matters.

Publishing Director / Spiegel & Grau

Associate Publisher / Grove Atlantic

Partner / Cowan DeBaets Abrahams & Sheppard, LLP

Associate Publisher / Graywolf Press

Independent Literary Consultant

General Counsel / New York Botanical Garden

Author & Editor

Director / Two Rivers Distribution

Director / The Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College CUNY

Vice President & Executive Editor / Crown Publishing

Owner / Creative Management Partners, LLC (Booktrix)

Literary Agent / Massie & McQuilkin