Staff & Board
Staff
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, sculptor, and artist based in Washington Heights, NYC. As the Director of Membership and NYSCA NYTAP at CLMP, she supports, consults with, and nurtures independent publishers across the country and around the world. Prior to joining CLMP, Montana 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 recipient of a John Coltrane Scholarship from The John Coltrane Foundation and a Michael Kamen Solo Award from The Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation. Her writing is published in/forthcoming from Epiphany, The Ocotillo Review, New South, and The New Guard, among others. Montana is currently working on her first poetry collection, growing pomegranate trees, and pursuing a private pilot's license. You can find her on Instagram as @theycallhermontana.
Emma Hine is the Communications Director 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. Her poetry and essays appear in Alaska Quarterly Review, Gulf Coast, Guernica Magazine, The Missouri Review, The Paris Review, Poets & Writers, and The Southern Review, among other publications.
Alisa Reynya earned a BA in English Literature and minors in Creative Writing and Communication from Purdue University, where she read poetry and fiction for Purdue's undergraduate and graduate literary magazines, The Bell Tower and Sycamore Review. Since graduating, she has interned for the independent nonprofit publishers Feminist Press and Restless Books.
Chelsea Oei Kern is the Director of Programs at CLMP, where she oversees CLMP's events, programs, and grants and awards offerings. 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.
Eunice Braimoh is a writer and aspiring community arts organizer. She earned a BA in English Literature and a minor in Creative Writing from University of Maryland, College Park, where she served as poetry co-editor for STYLUS and received the Joyce Tayloe Horrell Award. Previously, she worked as a creative nonfiction teaching assistant for Johns Hopkins' Center for Talented Youth and interned for Wolf Trap Institute for Early Learning Through the Arts and University of Maryland's Writing for Change program.
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.
Board
Nicole Dewey (Chair)
Publishing Director / Spiegel & Grau
Judy Hottensen (Vice Chair)
Associate Publisher / Grove Atlantic
Ellis B. Levine, Esq. (Treasurer)
Partner / Cowan DeBaets Abrahams & Sheppard, LLP
Katie Dublinski (Secretary)
Associate Publisher / Graywolf Press
Jarrod Annis
Sales and Marketing Manager / Transit Books
Justin Jamail
General Counsel / New York Botanical Garden
Beena Kamlani
Author & Editor
Nick Parker
Director / Two Rivers Distribution
Deborah Paredez
Author, Cofounder / CantoMundo & Associate Professor of creative writing and ethnic studies / Columbia University
Clarence Reynolds
Former Director of Literary Programs / The Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College CUNY
David Wilk
Owner / Creative Management Partners, LLC (Booktrix)