Our Instructors
Marya Hornbacher
Marya Hornbacher is an award-winning journalist, essayist, novelist, and poet, and the New York Times bestselling author of five books. Her sixth book, Solo, is forthcoming from Hachette/Cardinal in early 2027.
Marya has received the Annie Dillard Award for Nonfiction, the Logan Fellowship for Social Justice Journalism, the White Award for Magazine Journalism, the ASCAP Award for Music Journalism, the Fountain House Humanitarian Award, and other distinctions. Her work appears in publications including New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Minneapolis StarTribune, Chicago Reader, Smithsonian Magazine, Vogue, Glamour, Crazyhorse, Guernica, Longreads, AGNI, Arts & Letters, Gulf Coast, DIAGRAM, and many more. She is the creator of the bestselling Substack "Going Solo at the End of the World," a multi-media report from the American road.
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A veteran educator with more than 30 years of teaching - both at the college and graduate level and in non-academic settings - under her belt, Marya offers 1:1 creative coaching, individualized writing mentorship, and three types of Caravan classes: weekend Bootcamps, four-week Crash Craft Courses, and six-week Deep Dives.
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Interested in 1:1 creative coaching or individualized writing mentorship? Book a free 15-minute consult with Marya to discuss.
Holly Starley
Writer, editor, teacher, nomad Holly Starley loves the wild and to share the joy of revision, which is to say, writing. She’s enjoyed a two-decade career as a freelance editor and loves helping authors bring their visions to the page. An award-winning journalist, she’s been recognized for coverage of legal and government affairs and in-depth investigative reporting. She’s a founding member of KZAA lp, a low-power bilingual community radio station. She served for seven years as managing editor of a nonprofit mini-magazine, Quick Release, and was the recipient of the Velo Wings Award, “Extraordinary Women Giving Flight to Cycling Programs,” for her storytelling. Read her tales from a solo nomadic life and essays on living with a newly diagnosed autoimmune disease and how her body is a reflection of the world on her Substack The Rolling Desk.
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Holly’s courses and one-on-one work with authors center writers as their own best first editors. She believes we each have unique storytelling traditions to draw from, that revision can be expansive and freeing, and that learning how to mold our work from draft to polish is how we trust our own authority and guide ourselves to the work of our dreams.
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A veteran writer and editor, Holly’s Caravan offerings include single-session writing and editing courses and weekend bootcamps. She also offers 1:1: services, including essay editing “coaching” / co-editing, manuscript line editing, manuscript developmental editing, and college essay writing coaching.
Paul Corman-Roberts
Paul Corman-Roberts is the author of the Firecracker nominated poetry collection Bone Moon Palace (Black Lawrence 2021) the acclaimed We Shoot Typewriters (Black Lawrence, 2015) and the forthcoming 19th Street Station Volume 2 (Collapse Press 2025.) His short story “The Deathbed Confession of Christopher Walken” was shortlisted in subTerrain’s (CA) fiction contest and recently had his micro-fiction “Cemetery One Nighter” nominated for the Best American Short Fiction award. He currently teaches workshops for the Older Writer’s Lab, the San Francisco Creative Writing Institute, and the Oakland Unified School District while raising his hellspawn in Oakland CA. He holds a double Masters in Poetics (MA/MFA) from the New College of California and occasionally fills in as drummer for the US Ghostal Service, Jen Blowdryer’s Punk/Soul, and his own project, The There Their They’re.
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Paul offers writing and craft courses such as The Art of the Chapbook, Threads & Breaks: Flash Fiction vs. Narrative Poetry, Intro to Poetry (Worldwide Edition), as well as one-on-one editing service, and submission etiquette/procedures.​
Matt Smythe
Matt Smythe refuses to take the straight path in his personal or professional life. While currently a writing and lit professor and part-time Chief Water Treatment Specialist in western New York, his prior roles include Senior Staff Writer for Free Range American and Coffee or Die, Communications Director for the American Fly Fishing Trade Association, freelance Creative Director for several ad agencies, and autopsy specialist at the now-defunct Genesee Hospital, to name a scant few.
His book of poetry, Revision of a Man, came out in 2022, and an early version of his upcoming book, Letters to Trout Fishing in America, was named Runner-up for the Faulkner Society Novella Award. He has had stories, essays, and poetry published in The Flyfish Journal, Drake Magazine, Southern Culture on the Fly, Gray’s Sporting Journal, and numerous anthologies and literary journals. Matt graduated from SUNY Brockport’s creative writing program and has a master’s in poetry from George Mason University. He writes Glorious Mayhem on Substack.
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Matt offers 3-hour writing and craft courses, as well as one-on-one manuscript editing and personal brand development.
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