Celebrating 20 Years!

This January 31st, join us as AllWriters' Workplace & Workshop, LLC celebrates 20 Years of teaching.

MICHAEL GIORGIO got his start in writing radio drama and had over a dozen audio scripts produced. His third novel, A Week Of Criminal Happiness, was released by Rogue Phoenix Press in June of 2020. His previous novels, Justice Comes Home and The Memory Swindlers, were released by Black Rose Writing in 2014 and 2016. Michael had publications in magazines and anthologies, ranging from mystery to poetry to non-fiction. He was a loving husband and father, and a favorite instructor at AllWriters' Workplace & Workshop.

Kathie will be reading a selection from Michael's final work in progress and will also be doing two readings from the two books she's currently working on. One is a novel, and one is a poetry collection.

KATHIE GIORGIO is the critically acclaimed author of eight novels, The Home For Wayward Clocks (The Main Street Rag Publishing Company, 2011), Learning To Tell (A Life)Time (The Main Street Rag Publishing Company, 2013), Rise From The River (The Main Street Rag Publishing Company, 2015), In Grace’s Time (Black Rose Writing, 2017), If You Tame Me (Black Rose Writing, 2019), All Told (Austin Macauley Publishers, 2022), Hope Always Rises (Black Rose Writing, 2023), and Don’t Let Me Keep You (Black Rose Writing, 2024), as well as two story collections, Enlarged Hearts (The Main Street Rag Publishing Company, 2012) and Oddities & Endings; The Collected Stories Of Kathie Giorgio (The Main Street Rag Publishing Company, 2016), a collection of essays, Today’s Moment Of Happiness Despite The News; A Year Of Spontaneous Essays (Black Rose Writing, 2018), and four poetry books, True Light Falls In Many Forms (The Main Street Rag Publishing Company, 2016), When You Finally Said No (Finishing Line Press, 2019), No Matter Which Way You Look, There Is More To See (Finishing Line Press, 2020) and Olivia In Five, Seven, Five; Autism In Haiku (Finishing Line Press, 2022). A new poetry book, Let Me Tell You; Let Me Sing, will be released by Kelsay Books in August of 2026. She’s been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in fiction and poetry and awarded the Outstanding Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Library Association, the Silver Pen Award for Literary Excellence, the Pencraft Award for Literary Excellence, and the Eric Hoffer Award In Fiction. Her poem “Light” won runner-up in the 2021 Rosebud Magazine Poetry Prize and her poem, “Again”, won first prize in the Wisconsin Writers Association’s Jade Ring contest. She is a two-time winner of the Zona Gale Short Fiction Award, for her stories, “Quiet” and “Recipe”. Her short story, “Snapdragon”, was performed on stage for the Stories On Stage series at Su Teatro theatre in Boulder, Colorado. Her poem, “Harvest Moon”, was included in the Poetry Leaves exhibition in Waterford, Michigan. In a recent column, Jim Higgins, the books editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, included Giorgio in a list of the top 21 Wisconsin writers of the 21st century.

Besides being a writer, Giorgio is also the director and founder of the international creative writing studio, AllWriters’ Workplace & Workshop LLC. AllWriters’ offers online and on-site courses and workshops in all genres and abilities of creative writing, as well as coaching and editing services. Thousands of writers worldwide have gotten their start at AllWriters’, and thousands have continued their career there. Giorgio has taught for 30 years.

Kathie lives in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Three of her adult children, Christopher, Andy, and Olivia, live close by, along with her solo granddaughter, Maya Mae. One adult child, Katie, has wandered off to Louisiana where she teaches at the University of Louisiana – Lafayette and lives among the mathematicians and alligators.

Richard Hedderman is a multi-Pushcart Prize nominated poet whose work has appeared in dozens of literary journals both in the U.S. and abroad. Publications include The Stockholm Review of Literature, Rattle, The American Poetry Review, Kestrel, Chicago Quarterly Review, Stone Poetry Quarterly, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, and Santa Fe Literary Review. His poems have been collected in several anthologies including In a Fine Frenzy: Poets Respond to Shakespeare (University of Iowa Press.) He’s been a Guest Poet at the Library of Congress, performed his writing with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and served as a Fine Arts Grants Panelist with the National Endowment for the Arts. A veteran theater professional, he’s worked as a voice-over artist and actor, and performed ten seasons with the New York State Shakespeare Company. He is a Certified Advanced Actor/Combatant with the Society of American Fight Directors and has taught and choreographed stage combat in theaters, universities, and colleges on the east coast, in Milwaukee, and nationwide. His most recent book of poems is, Choosing a Stone (Finishing Line Press.) He is formerly Education Programs Coordinator and Writer-in-Residence at the Milwaukee Public Museum and currently teaches creative writing at Mount Mary University. More about Richard and his work may be found at richardheddermanpoetry.com.

Student Readings Include

• Fiction: Michele Feeney, Kathie's lonest standing student, will be reading form her upcoming novel, Like Family
• Poetry: LaShaun Taylor, Kathie's newest student, will be reading a selection of poetry
• Nonfiction: Philip Sutton Chard

Michele Feeney is an award-winning writer and lawyer, teacher, wife, and mother of five children. She resides in Arizona and in Michigan, where she owns part of a Christmas tree farm her ancestors homesteaded in 1850. Michele pursued her passion for creative writing for 20 years before she earned an MFA from Bennington College in June 2022 in the genres of fiction and nonfiction. Her first novel, Like Family, will be released by Black Rose Writing in August 2024.

Michele began her creative writing career almost 20 years ago, starting with an online short story class offered by Writer's Digest. Since then, she has continually taken online and in-person classes, and attended many conferences, including several sessions of the University of Michigan's Bear River Writing Conference and the Breadloaf Writing Conference. She has served as an assistant editor for Narrative Magazine since 2017, evaluating both "Story of the Week" and "Six-Word-Story" submissions. She is also a member of the Advisory Board for the Literary & Prologue Society of the Southwest.

Having raised five children (biological and adopted) and welcomed three grandchildren, Michele managed navigating the COVID-19 pandemic as a family affair. While doing so, she remembered a story told to her by her grandmother and was inspired to imagine how families and community members in rural Michigan navigated their way through the Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918. That story inspired her first novel, Like Family.

Michele is currently working on short stories, a book of essays about a young man incarcerated in the Arizona Department of Corrections system, and the second volume of the Like Family, which will be a series.

LaShaun Taylor is a young passionate poet and fiction writer. She is a mother of two, an undergrad student, and she works as a behavioral technician lending a hand to children who may need a little extra help. Before AllWriters', Lashaun was afraid to share her work with anyone outside of her immediate family. Now she feels as though she has a new family who welcomes her with one hand and assists in her dream to become a published author with the other.

Philip Sutton Chard is a psychotherapist in private practice specializing in health psychology and trauma treatment. He writes an award-winning weekly column titled Out of My Mind, previously in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and now the Shepherd Express, and authored three books, including The Healing Earth, which won the Midwest Publishers Award. Philip’s next book, A Slow Backpacker, will be available later in 2025. Previously, he was President and CEO of Empathia, a firm providing behavioral health solutions on an international basis. Prior to that, he was Director of Behavioral Science Education at Michigan State University’s College of Human Medicine, where he was an associate professor and received the Outstanding Faculty Award.