Our mission is to make legal education accessible

Law school is the gateway to the legal profession, and thus it is the gateway to key positions in our society. But those who are unable to hire expensive admissions consultants have been at an unfair disadvantage. Until now.

We want to level the playing field. Top-notch, high-quality admissions advice should be affordable, and we have worked hard to do just that. Our affordable course guides you through the admissions process and writing personal statements, so that you can go to law school and become a lawyer.

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  David Busis

  Partner

  David is a graduate of Yale, where he received a prize for excellence in the English major, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he received a teaching fellowship.

  His nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic online. His fiction has won two national contests, received notable mention in The Best American Short Stories 2014, and been anthologized by Autumn House Press. He taught English and writing at the School of the New York Times, Phillips Academy Andover, the University of Iowa, and Southern New Hampshire University.

  He was admitted to Harvard and Yale Law School before he joined 7Sage.

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  Selene Steelman

  Consultant

  Selene holds a B.A. with Distinction in English from Swarthmore College and a Juris Doctor from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law where she was Senior Managing Editor of the Cardozo Women’s Law Journal.

  For the last 14 years, she evaluated LL.M. and J.D. applications as a member of the Admissions Committee for Cardozo School of Law. As Director of LL.M. Admissions, she admitted and welcomed 27 new classes of LL.M. students from over 25 countries. Prior to joining Cardozo, she was a structured finance associate at a top-tier Manhattan law firm. Before she decided to pursue a legal education, she worked at a New York City literary agency, editing book proposals, negotiating subsidiary rights in the pre-digital era, and searching for the Great American Novel in the slush pile.

  She resides in northern New Jersey. When she is not helping law school candidates achieve their dreams, she spends her time playing the violin and ballroom dancing.

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  Gail Dauer

  Consultant

  Gail has worked in admissions for seven years, most recently at the University of Michigan Law School, where she was the sole first reader of applications. Before coming to Ann Arbor, Gail advised investment banks on broker-dealer regulatory issues at the New York law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and conducted enforcement actions as a senior attorney for the Securities and Exchange Commission in Boston. She earned her BA in Psychology from Brandeis University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and her JD from the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, where she served as an editor of the law review.

  When she is not helping applicants gain acceptance to their dream schools, Gail can be found painting portraits, walking her cavachon Benji, and savoring local Tex-Mex delicacies.

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  Elizabeth Cavallari

  Consultant

  Elizabeth Cavallari spent nearly six years as a senior and assistant dean of admissions at William & Mary Law School and three years in undergraduate admissions at Bucknell University. She has evaluated thousands of law school admissions files, interviewed hundreds of applicants, coordinated the waitlist, and advised both domestic and international candidates on the law school admissions process. She has also presented at the LSAC annual conference and at multiple prelaw advisor conferences on subjects ranging from waitlist strategies to resources for LGBTQIA students. Elizabeth is passionate about building relationships with her students as she guides them through the application process. When she’s not thinking about law school admissions, she advises a sorority at William & Mary, supporting collegiate leaders, and coordinates a 40+ Career Club to assist older job seekers. You can often find Elizabeth running through Colonial Williamsburg, pushing a double jogging stroller.

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  Brigitte Suhr

  Consultant

  Brigitte holds a BA from the University of Texas at Austin and a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. For two years, she worked in admissions at the University of Virginia School of Law. As she assessed prospective JD files, she often thought about how the applicants could have done a better job of conveying their strengths and contextualizing their weaknesses.

  Prior to her work as a consultant, Brigitte traversed the globe as an international human rights lawyer, advocating for truth, justice, and reparations in post-conflict societies. Working for organizations such as Human Rights Watch and the Coalition for the International Criminal Court, she carried out fact-finding, training, and advocacy missions to more than two dozen countries, meeting with stakeholders from presidents to survivor collectives. She feels honored to have had a hand in the legal reforms of over fifty countries ranging from Costa Rica to South Africa. Brigitte also spent several years working in Guatemala, first as counsel to a human rights NGO and then as an investigator of the atrocities committed during the country’s thirty-six-year armed conflict.

  Brigitte continues to consult with foundations and non-profits on human rights programs and research covering issues such as justice reform, LGBTQ advocacy, and anti-slavery initiatives. When she’s not working, you can find Brigitte hiking the trails of the Santa Monica Mountains with her ball-crazy Labrador named Milo.

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  Tiffany Williams

  Consultant

  Tiffany spent nearly ten years working in law school admissions, most recently as the Assistant Dean for Admissions and Enrollment Management at George Mason University, Antonin Scalia Law School. At Scalia Law School, she had both admissions and student services roles. She recruited and advised law school candidates and made admission and scholarship decisions on thousands of applications for the JD, LLM, transfer, and visitor programs. Additionally, she advised the law school’s diverse affinity groups and helped to create and facilitate the law school’s Diversity and Inclusion Certificate Program.

  Tiffany enjoyed serving the law school admissions and pre-law communities and was appointed to three terms on the LSAC’s Misconduct and Irregularities in the Admission Process Subcommittee. She also presented and ran workshops at various LSAC, Council of Legal Education Opportunity, pre-law advisor, and college and university pre-law conferences and events.

  Tiffany received her BA from the University of Virginia and her JD from the University of Kentucky College of Law, where she also served as a student member of the admissions committee.

  Currently, Tiffany is an attorney for the United States Department of Veterans Affairs. When she’s not working, you can find her cheering on the Virginia Cavaliers or Kentucky Wildcats, spinning on her at-home spin bike, or spoiling her miniature schnauzer.

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  Scott Jones

  Consultant

  Scott received his bachelor’s from the University of Michigan in 1997. After working full-time as a paramedic, he was accepted to medical school and law school at the University of Virginia. He chose to attend law school and enrolled at UVA in 2002 on a JAG officer contract with the United States Marine Corps. Informed by his recruiter in the fall of that year that the Iraq war was imminent, he chose to replace his JAG contract with a ground officer contract, took an extended leave of absence from law school, and reported to Marine Corps Officer Candidate School in January 2003. After receiving his commission as a 2nd Lieutenant, he became an Intelligence Officer and deployed twice to Iraq. He then returned to law school. After graduating, he spent nine years as a state and federal prosecutor, specializing in violent crimes and crimes against children. As a remote employee for the Admissions Office at UVA Law, he reviewed and recommended admission or denial of admission for more than 1,500 applications and represented UVA at several law school fairs and LSAC events. He currently runs the Safe Passage Children’s Advocacy Center in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and plans on reapplying to medical school in the next admissions cycle.

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  Christie Belknap

  Consultant

  Christie holds a BA in history from the University of Pennsylvania and a JD from Emory Law School, where she served as an editor on the Emory Law Review. She worked at two top-tier law firms in New York City, but after getting her fill of late nights, fancy lunches, and (perhaps most importantly) paying off her student loans, she shifted gears and landed a job in the admissions office at Cardozo Law School. There, she reviewed applications, met and counseled prospective students, spoke on admissions panels, and travelled to such exotic locales as Pittsburgh and Columbus. She returned to practicing law as the real estate counsel for the New York City Economic Development Corporation, where she helped move the Fulton Fish Market from South Street Seaport to a refrigerated, state of the art facility, and got to use the term “fishmonger” on a regular basis. In her latest role as an admissions consultant at 7Sage, she’s happy to draw upon her past experiences as an admissions officer and lawyer to help advise prospective students in the law school application process.

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  Nicole Tarrence

  Consultant

  Nicole spent six years working in law school admissions, most recently as the Assistant Director of Admissions at South Texas College of Law Houston. During her time in the industry, she counseled and advised prospective students on the application process, evaluated files for admissions decisions, and traveled nationally to law school forums and fairs to recruit students.

  As a member of the law school admissions community, Nicole was engaged with the Law School Admissions Council (LSAC) and the Minority Network of Law School Admissions Officers. She served as a panelist at two LSAC Forums, where she discussed the application & admission process. She also served as a presenter at the LSAC Annual Meeting & Educational Conference. As a member of the Minority Network, Nicole worked with other admissions colleagues to facilitate diversity within the legal education pipeline.

  Nicole received her BA from the University of Louisville and her JD from the University of Kentucky College of Law. Currently, Nicole works in recruiting for an Am Law 100 law firm where she coordinates all non-partner recruiting functions for the Texas region. When she’s not working, Nicole enjoys trying out new restaurants, watching college football, and cooking.

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  Kurt Pitzer

  Consultant

  Author and journalist Kurt Pitzer has written about many of the world’s most turbulent regions, including the Balkans, the Middle East, Afghanistan and Iraq. He is a recipient of the Lange-Taylor Prize for his documentary work in Bosnia, Serbia and Kosovo. His work has appeared in the Boston Globe, The Sunday Times of London, the Los Angeles Times, BBC Radio, People magazine, Pleiades, the Denver Quarterly and Mother Jones, among others.

  In 2003, he helped the former head of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear centrifuge program, Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, escape from Iraq to the United States with his family. Their co-written book, The Bomb in My Garden (John Wiley & Sons), was called “never less than riveting” by The New York Times Book Review. Pitzer’s next, Eating with the Enemy (St. Martin’s Press), a “boisterous, improbable book” (The New York Times), is about the unlikely friendship between mobbed-up New Jersey restaurant owner Robert Egan and a North Korean ambassador. He is the producer of the narrative feature film Runoff, which premiered at the Los Angeles, Hamptons International and Woodstock film festivals in 2014.

  Pitzer earned his BA in English at Wesleyan University and an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University. He teaches Advanced Creative Nonfiction at Harvard’s Extension School.

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  Aaron Thier

  Consultant

  Aaron received a BA in Literature from Yale University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Florida, where he taught both creative and expository writing. He is the author of three novels: The Ghost Apple (a semi-finalist for the Thurber Prize), Mr. Eternity (a finalist for the same award), and The World is a Narrow Bridge. His essays and criticism have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Lucky Peach, and other magazines, and in 2016 he received a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment from the Arts.

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  Sam Massie

  Data Specialist

  Sam is a graduate student in statistics at Yale University and holds a BA in economics, also from Yale, together with a certificate from the MIT Advanced Study Program. Prior to joining 7Sage, he worked for six years as a business analyst and product manager in Hong Kong, Boston, and Shanghai. He speaks fluent Mandarin, and his writing about China has appeared in the New York Times. Currently, he is based in Boston, where he also consults for companies on data analytics projects.

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  Mark Firmani

  Consultant

  Mark is a doctoral candidate in the University of Pennsylvania English Department and a J.D. student (deferred admission until 2019) at Yale Law School. After graduating as valedictorian from Quinnipiac University with BAs (double summa cum laude) in English and History, he spent a year hiking in his home state of New Hampshire before living as a Fulbright scholar in Amman, Jordan, where he taught as the 7th- and 9th-grade English teacher at a UNRWA school for Palestinian boys.

  While living in Jordan, he decided to take the LSAT and, two years into his doctoral studies, he applied to law schools, receiving acceptances everywhere he applied: Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia (Hamilton scholarship), NYU (Vanderbilt scholarship), Penn (Levy and Toll Public Interest scholarships), and Duke (Mordecai scholarship).

  He currently lives in Philadelphia, PA, where he spends his time reading Arabic-language novels and writing his dissertation. He also teaches Penn undergraduate courses in topics as varied as monstrosity, law and literature, and artificial intelligence, and looks forward to adopting a dog very soon.

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  Amy Bonnaffons

  Consultant

  Amy holds a BA in literature (magna cum laude) from Yale University and an MFA in fiction writing from New York University, where she won the Goldwater Teaching Fellowship and an Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award. She taught in the Expository Writing Program at New York University for four years before deciding to pursue a Ph.D. in English at the University of Georgia. Her story collection THE WRONG HEAVEN was published in 2018 by Lee Boudreaux Books at Little, Brown, and will be followed by THE REGRETS, a novel about the afterlife. Her writing has appeared in publications ranging from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal to Kenyon Review and The Sun, and has won awards and fellowships from Yale University, Open City magazine, Bread Loaf, and The MacDowell Colony, among others.

  Amy is a founding editor of 7x7, a literary journal promoting collaboration between writers and visual artists, and has served as international editor of Washington Square Review. She has also helped many students hone their personal statements to gain admission to college, law school and business school.

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  Ben Mauk

  Consultant

  Ben Mauk is a freelance writer based in Berlin. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Harper's Magazine, The Guardian, Granta, London Review of Books, Virginia Quarterly Review, Vice Magazine, The New Yorker online, and many other publications. He has received a Fulbright research fellowship and multiple grants from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. He earned a B.A. in English literature, philosophy, and cognitive studies from Cornell University (Phi Beta Kappa, distinction in all subjects) and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He taught literature and creative writing for several years at the University of Iowa. He is the co-founder and director of the Berlin Writers’ Workshop.

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  Brian Booker

  Consultant

  Brian received a Ph.D. in English and American Literature from NYU, and an MFA in Fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was an Iowa Arts Fellow and, in his third year, a Schulze Fellow. He has been the Grace Paley Fiction Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the James C. McCreight Fiction Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. 

  Brian’s fiction has been published in Conjunctions, One Story, New England Review, Tin House, Vice, and other magazines; his stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the National Magazine Award. His debut short story collection, Are You Here For What I’m Here For?, was published in 2016 by Bellevue Literary Press.

  Brian has ten years of experience teaching expository writing and literature courses at NYU; he has also taught creative writing workshops at the University of Iowa and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Most recently, he has been a Lecturer in the Program in Creative Writing at the University of Chicago, designing and teaching workshops for both undergraduate and graduate students on topics such as Literary Horror. 

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  Zaina Arafat

  Consultant

  Zaina Arafat holds an MFA in writing from the University of Iowa, an MA in international affairs from Columbia University, and a BA in philosophy from the University of Virginia. She is the author of the novel, You Exist Too Much, which was selected as a most-anticipated book for June 2020 by O, The Oprah Magazine, Elle, Harper's Bazaar, The Millions and the American Booksellers Association. Her stories and essays have appeared in publications including The New York Times, Granta, The Believer, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, BuzzFeed, VICE, and NPR. She has taught creative writing, expository writing and journalism at The School of the New York Times, the University of Iowa, the International Writing Program, the Writers Guild Initiative, and Sackett Street Writers' Workshop. She recently traveled to Egypt and Eritrea as part of a U.S. State Department cultural delegation to teach creative writing. As an editor, she designed and curated a Q & A series with marginalized writers for The Margins and served as the managing editor for VinePair. In recognition of her work as a writer, teacher, and editor, she was awarded the Arab Women/Migrants from the Middle East fellowship at Jack Jones Literary Arts.

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  Sarah Cohen

  Consultant

  Sarah holds a BA in English and Psychology from Washington University in St. Louis (Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude), where she was selected as a member of Mortar Board Senior Honor Society and was awarded the Washington University Prize for Undergraduate Fiction. She received an MFA in fiction writing from New York University, where she was awarded the Starworks Fellowship, and instructed undergraduates in the craft of fiction and poetry. She has worked for over four years at a top Manhattan literary agency, editing manuscripts and proposals for award-winning authors, including Russell Shorto, Tara Brach, and Maryanne Wolf. She teaches English and writing enrichment to high school students, and edits manuscripts freelance. She is currently writing a fantasy series for young adults.

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  Daniel Castro

  Consultant

  Daniel has worked as a writing consultant for over a decade. He holds a BA in English from Indiana University-Bloomington, where he worked as a tutor at the campus writing center, and is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he received a Dean's Graduate Fellowship and taught undergraduate writing. He is a former Fulbright scholar in Spain, and his work has appeared in Tampa Review, Miami Herald, Gambit Weekly, and Salon. He was awarded the Cintas Fellowship in Literature in 2014 and the Faulkner Society's novel prize in 2015. He was a resident at the MacDowell Colony in 2016. He teaches classes and does manuscript consulting for Sackett Street Writers' Workshop in Brooklyn, and is a co-founder of the Berlin Writers' Workshop.

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  Kristen Gleason

  Consultant

  Kristen holds a BA in English with Honors from the University of California, Berkeley, where she was a Regents’ and Chancellor’s scholar, and an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) from the University of Montana. She studied linguistics in Tromsø, Norway on a High North Fellowship. She is currently a doctoral student in English at the University of Georgia.

  Her fiction has appeared in Boston Review, Fence, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. She was selected as an A Public Space Emerging Writers Fellow and was the winner of BOMB's Biannual Fiction Contest and the North American White Review Short Story Prize in 2017. Recently, she was awarded a Fulbright grant to Norway for the 2018-2019 academic year.

  She has taught creative writing and composition at the University of Montana, Montana Tech, and the University of Georgia, where she received an Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award. She was the managing editor of the University of Montana’s literary journal, CutBank. She has also worked in the Oakland, California public school system, edited for an academic publisher, instructed students in GRE and SAT test prep, and tutored in the University of Georgia’s Writing Center.

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  Conor Ahern

  Consultant

  Conor works as a civil rights attorney for the City of New York, and has been moonlighting as an LSAT tutor for two years. Immediately following law school, he worked as a Ford Fellow at the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project. He enjoys reading fiction and making bad puns. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia and of Harvard Law School.

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  Jessie Marshall

  Consultant

  Jessie Marshall is a writer, teacher, and amateur farmer living in Āhualoa on the Island of Hawai’i. She graduated with highest honors from Oberlin College, earned a Distinction in Modern Literature and Culture from the University of York, and completed the MFA program in Creative Writing at New York University. Her work has been published in The New York Times, ZYZZYVA, Barrelhouse, The Common, The Gettysburg Review, The Mid-American Review, The Emerson Review, New York Press, and Night Train. Jessie’s career as an educator has included teaching writing at NYU and Honolulu Community College, tutoring at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and being on the English faculty of several private schools in Hawai’i. Her plays have been staged at Oberlin College and The University of Durham and have been featured in the E ‘Ōlelo reading series at the Kahilu Theatre. She has also received fellowships to attend writing residencies at the KHN Center for the Arts, the Gershwin Hotel, and the Millay Colony. Recently Jessie was a finalist for the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing’s postgraduate fellowships and she attended the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley as the recipient of the James D. Houston Memorial Scholarship.

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  Jocelyn Glantz

  Consultant

  Jocelyn Glantz is a graduate of George Washington University and Brooklyn Law School. After practicing law, she returned to BLS to serve as the Assistant Director of Admissions. Then the magic began...

  To give herself more flexibility while raising her three girls, Jocelyn began consulting for a test prep company. She provided guidance to prospective undergraduate and graduate students, conducted essay and admissions workshops, and moderated law forums with panels of career and admissions professionals. Twenty years and hundreds of clients later, her individualized approach ensures that her clients present an application that highlights their achievements and their personal goals.

  To balance her life, Jocelyn works as both the Assistant Director and Staffing Director of an all-girls sleepaway camp, which enables her to enjoy the outdoors during the summer while mentoring campers and staff. As the fall application season begins and she switches from an iced tea to a chai latte, you can find her working diligently for her clients, baking treats for her daughters in college (as well as her middle schooler at home!) or walking the neighborhood with her puppy.

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  Shruti Swamy

  Consultant

  Shruti Swamy is the author of the short story collection A House Is a Body and the novel Utter, both forthcoming from Algonquin Books. Her work has twice been awarded the O. Henry Prize, and been published in The Paris Review, McSweeny's, Catapult, AGNI, Black Warrior Review, and other journals. She is a Kundiman fiction fellow, a 2017 – 2018 Steinbeck fellow at San Jose State University, and the recipient of grants from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the San Francisco Arts Commission, and Vassar College. Shruti has been awarded residencies at Hedgebrook, Blue Mountain Center, and the Millay Colony for the Arts.

  Shruti earned a BA in literature from Vassar College and an MFA from San Francisco State University, where she received the Distinguished Graduate Award. Shruti loves working one-on-one to help people achieve their goals and tell their stories. When she's not tackling client work or writing, she can be spotted at various San Francisco playgrounds, wrangling her one-year-old.

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  Caitlin Kindervatter-Clark

  Consultant

  Caitlin Kindervatter-Clark received her MFA from the University of Virginia, where she taught writing as a Poe-Faulkner fellow. She also taught English for five years at UC-Berkeley Extension, specializing in helping international students write and revise application essays. Students she’s worked with have been accepted to top universities including Stanford, Princeton, and UC-Berkeley. On the other side of the admissions process, she has scored essays for TOEFL and TheDream.US scholarship.

  Caitlin is an award-winning writer with work in the Washington Post, Antioch Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Prairie Schooner, where she received the Lawrence Foundation Award for the best story published in 2017. Additional honors include a 2017-2018 Steinbeck fellowship from San Jose State University and a Distinguished Story in Best American Short Stories 2018. Outside of writing and editing, she enjoys watching horror films and finding good kids' books to read with her one-year-old daughter.

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  Meghann Banacki

  Consultant

  Meghann spent nearly a decade as an admissions officer at Cardozo School of Law. As the Associate Director of Admissions, she was involved in every aspect of the admissions process, including oversight of transfer admission. She has reviewed thousands of JD applications, interviewed hundreds of applicants, and counseled countless prospective students on the law school application process and the law school experience. Meghann also served two terms on the Law School Admission Council’s Misconduct and Irregularities in the Admission Process Subcommittee.

  Before transitioning to a career in admissions, Meghann was a litigation associate at Weil, Gotshal & Manges in New York City.

  She received a BA, with honors, from Lehigh University, and a JD from Boston University. At BU, Meghann wrote on to the Law Review and later served on the editorial board as a Note Development Editor, guiding 2L students through the lengthy note-writing process.

  Meghann is a life-long reader and a mother of three young children. She loves exploring the beautiful parks and beaches of Monmouth County, New Jersey with them.

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  Jeremy Klemin

  Consultant

  Jeremy Klemin is a writer and editor based in New York. Born and raised in Long Beach, California, he has also lived in Portugal, Scotland, and Brazil, where he taught at the Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná as a Fulbright Fellow. He received grants from Phi Beta Kappa, Santander Bank, and the University of Edinburgh itself to pursue an MSc in Comparative Literature, and also received a scholarship from the Disquiet International Literary Program to support his creative nonfiction writing. He is a Contributing Editor at Help4Refugees, a Jordan-based humanitarian nonprofit.

  His nonfiction is published or forthcoming in publications like The New York Times Book Review, Literary Hub, Redivider, Highsnobiety, Joyland, Post Road, and The Common about countries as diverse as Palestine, Ukraine, Serbia, and Brazil. He speaks Spanish and Portuguese, occasionally writing in the latter, and is currently working on an essay collection about skateboarding and cerebral palsy.

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  Lulu Dewey

  Consultant

  Lulu holds a BS in Society and Environment from the University of California, Berkeley and an MFA in writing from the University of Iowa, where she received fellowships in Rhetoric and Nonfiction as well as the Karl Claus Teaching Award.

  She has designed and taught creative writing and composition courses at the Buckley School and the University of Iowa on subjects ranging from the rhetoric of food to humor writing, environmental writing, and writing about fashion. She has also worked as a technical writer in Silicon Valley and was an archivist at the Berkeley Folklore Archive. 

  Her essays, stories, and journalism have appeared in or are forthcoming from The Los Angeles Review of Books, DIAGRAM, Iowa Public Radio, and others. Her essay “Dams in Distress” was a 2020 finalist for the Pinch Page Prize. She is currently at work on a collection of humorous essays.

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  Nora Miller

  Consultant

  Nora Claire Miller holds a BA from Hampshire College and an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she received a postgraduate teaching fellowship. At the University of Iowa, Nora taught undergraduate courses in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and new media writing, and served as an editorial assistant at The Iowa Review.

  Nora is the author of LULL, which won the 2019 Ghost Proposal Chapbook Contest. She was awarded the 2020 Bat City Review Editors’ Prize, was a finalist for the Poetry Society of America’s 2020 Anna Rabinowitz Prize, and was a finalist for the 2019 Omnidawn Open Poetry Book Prize. Her writing has appeared in Hobart, The Brooklyn Review, Apartment, Tagvverk, and other journals. Originally from New York City, Nora currently lives and teaches in Iowa City.

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  Ethan Madore

  Consultant

  Ethan Madore received a BA in History from Vassar College and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program, where he was the 2017–2018 Provost’s Visiting Writer in Nonfiction. He has taught literature and personal writing courses for over five years, including classes on environmental, political, and travel writing, as well as graduate classes in journalism and cultural studies at the University of Dortmund in Germany. At Iowa, he designed a new series of courses for the Iowa Publishing Track and won an Outstanding Teaching Award. In Germany, he was a guest of honor at the national celebration of Walt Whitman’s 200th birthday.

  A former editor of The Essay Review, his writing appears online in The Iowa Review and Guesthouse. He is at work on his first two books of nonfiction, a collection of essays about prehistory and a love song to the year 2011.

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  Lee Cole

  Consultant

  Lee Cole holds an MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a BA in English and Philosophy from the University of Louisville. He’s a 2020 Aspen Words Emerging Writer Fellow. His work has appeared in the Cimarron Review, where it was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and he’s earned an honorable mention in Oxford American’s debut fiction contest. For the last two years, he’s taught creative writing at the University of Iowa.

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  Susannah Davies

  Consultant

  Susannah attended Barnard College, where she studied English and visual arts, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she received a teaching fellowship to study fiction. At Iowa, she taught literature and creative writing courses. In 2016, Susannah was a finalist for the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing Fellowship. She is currently based in New Orleans and is at work on a collection of short stories.

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  Adrienne Raphel

  Consultant

  Adrienne Raphel is the author of Thinking Inside the Box: Adventures with Crosswords and the Puzzling People Who Can’t Live Without Them (Penguin Press, 2020), which the New York Times Book Review cited as an Editor’s Choice. Her debut collection of poetry, What Was It For (Rescue Press, 2017), won the Black Box Prize for Poetry. Raphel’s essays, poetry, and criticism appear in the New Yorker online, Poetry, the New Republic, the Atlantic, the Paris Review Daily, and Slate, among many other publications. A summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Princeton, Raphel holds an M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she received a teaching fellowship, and a Ph.D. in English literature from Harvard, where her dissertation won the Helen Choate Bell Prize. Currently, Raphel is a Lecturer in the Princeton Writing Program.

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  Clare Jones

  Consultant

  Clare Jones holds a BA in English from Carleton College, an MFA in Poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and an MPhil in Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Studies from Cambridge University. Her writing has been supported by the Fulbright Program and the Keats Shelley Memorial Association. She has reviewed books for The Cambridge Quarterly and The John Clare Society Journal, and her poetry has appeared in Poetry, PN Review, Sport, and elsewhere. She has worked in the editorial departments of three university presses and has taught creative writing and book arts in the United States and New Zealand.

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  Nathan Go

  Consultant

  Nathan Go holds a BFA in Screenwriting from the University of Southern California. He has two MFAs—one from the University of Michigan, and another from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he won the Richard Yates short story contest twice. He was the 2017-2018 David TK Wong Fellow at the University of East Anglia. In 2012, Nathan was a PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow and taught creative writing to blind adults at the Braille Institute. He has received scholarships and fellowships at Tin House, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Sewanee, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and Sozopol Fiction Seminars from the Elizabeth Kostova Foundation.

  His fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, American Short Fiction, Ninth Letter, Selected Shorts, the Massachusetts Review, the Bare Life Review and the Des Moines Register, among others. He is at work on his first novel and short story collection.

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  Leigh Gallagher

  Consultant

  Leigh holds a BA in English from San Francisco State University, where she was a Presidential Scholar, and an MFA from the University of Michigan, where she won a Hopwood Award and a postgraduate fellowship. Her stories have appeared in the journals American Short Fiction, Beloit, Cutbank, and Salt Hill, and in a number of collaborations with artists and musicians. She has been awarded fellowships at numerous artists residencies, including the Lighthouse Works on Fishers Island, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico, and the Vermont Studio Center. Embracing curriculum design and community engagement as an extension of her practice, Leigh has been a writer-in-residence in Detroit public schools and has taught at the Pratt Institute, the City University of New York, the University of Michigan, and the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. She is currently completing her first novel.

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  Ariel Katz

  Consultant

  Ariel Katz holds a BA in English from Yale and an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she won the Richard Yates short story contest. As a student there, she taught undergraduate English and creative writing courses, and upon graduation was awarded a Meta & George Rosenberg screenwriting fellowship. She's published essays and interviews on the Ploughshares blog and at Bookforum, and is at work on a novel.

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  J.Y. Ping

  Founder

  J.Y. is an educator figuring out ways to bring down the cost of education while improving its quality and accessibility. “This is how we liberate and democratize education!” he likes to say to himself. He says a lot of things to himself. Not all of it makes sense.

  J.Y. graduated from Columbia University where he studied Economics, Political Science, and Philosophy and holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School. Before finding his calling in education, J.Y. pretended to be a lawyer at Paul, Weiss in Hong Kong and at Davis Polk in NYC.

  J.Y. is also a founder at PreProBono, a 501(c)(3) non-profit dedicated to helping poor and minority students get into law school and promoting public interest law.

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  Alan Cheuk

  Founder

  Alan is from Canada, where he received a BSc with a joint major in Computing Science, and Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from Simon Fraser University. He graduated first in his class, in Computing Science. He also received a JD from Harvard Law School.

  Alan taught International Negotiation at Jindal Global Law School and was a Sumner Redstone Fellow in New Delhi for a year after law school. He was justifiably appalled by the lack of good ramen restaurants in New Delhi.

  Alan's interests and work experience have focused on access to justice and information. He has worked for the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative in India, the Justice and Peace Commission in Liberia, and the Berkman Center.