About The Workshop
The WordSmitten Writing Workshop Series has been a fixture in the St. Petersburg, Florida writing community from 2006 to 2020 that offered education, conferences, publication and media support, and a monthly writers’ roundtable. Today, the workshop offers advanced writers from across the county the opportunity to concentrate on the completion of projects from page 1 to publication.
About Kate Sullivan
WordSmitten Media was the brainchild of one Kate Sullivan. Kate was a literary coach, an editor, and a journalist. She knew a little something about a lot of things and she knew a lot about a few things. To be honest, she knew a lot about authorship.
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She started WordSmitten Media in 1998 where she offered development services for editing, publishing, podcast production, web content, branding, and social media strategies for those in the publishing field. Kate used her background as a journalist and marketing executive to help authors and publishers gain footing in an ever-changing business landscape.
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In 2003 she expanded WordSmitten Media to include the publication of a literary journal and a radio podcast, “About the Books”, where she interviewed noted writers including Elizabeth Strout, Jane Smily, Geraldine March, Edward P. Jones, and Dani Shapiro. In 2006, the company hosted the first WordSmitten Writers Conference in the Tampa Bay area. The yearly conferences included panel discussions from noted writers, editors, agents, and publishers. At these conferences, Kate held lively discussions with local writers such as Craig Pittman, Serling Watson, Cathy Unruh, Helen Wallace, Amy Christine Parker, Rita Ciresi, as well as nationally recognized writers Connie May Flowler, Betsy Lerner, and of course - Tom Robins.
In 2008 she turned her attention to WordSmitten Writing Workshop Series that offered classes, book signing events, and most importantly, a monthly writers’ roundtable. Her table has welcomed over 300 writers to share work, discuss craft, and connect in a workshop setting. In 2018 Kate took on the role of the chair for the Florida Author’s Guild, Florida Chapters where she hosted dinners and networking events as well as a conference with Ira Sungregun.
Sadly, we lost Kate in 2021. She left behind an imprint that was all her own with the writers she touched through every aspect of WordSmitten Media - the authors, the editors, the publishers, and of course the members of her writer’s round table.
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Today, the workshop continued, where emerging and published writers from across the country meet to work together on literary projects from page 1 to publication.
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We meet knowing that Kate is not far from the conversation where she will interrupt if someone is overly defensive of their work, unsure of what to critique, or simply say—"That was a wonderful romp, now how to make the story better?”
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For more information about the workshop, please scroll down.
Julieanna
Blackwell
A writer of short stories and essays, Julieanna Blackwel was a
member of the editorial team that launched the award-winning 805 Literary and Arts Journal,
the first literary journal published by a public library in the country.
Julieanna Blackwell’s fiction and essays have appeared in Stonecoast Review, Saw Palm Florida Literature & Art, MoonPark Review, Lunch Ticket, and others. She was the flash fiction editor for 805 Literary and Arts Journal. She conducts Elements&Arcs Creative Writing Classes. She is the director of WordSmitten Workshop.
Our Authors
Director
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Gerry Coleman was born into the Baby Boom world of working-class Brooklyn, where he did his academic work at St Peter’s, Wagner, and Columbia University. He taught college writing and lit. for forty-plus years.
His reading tonight is from His Collection of Nine Short Stories [“Out of His League”] set in one neighborhood in Vietnam Era New York City, where friendship and love were determined more by proximity than affection.
Gerry Coleman
Sam Trathen
Sam Trathen is originally from Spokane, Washington, but currently lives in Tampa. She graduated with honors in 2012 from Columbia College Chicago with a BA in Fiction Writing.
While there, she won the final Elise duBois award for her short story, The Prodigal. Most recently, Sam published her short story The Taste of Forbidden Flowers in the anthology, To Love A Monster.
Susan E. Rogers lives in sunny St. Pete Beach, Florida USA transplanted from Massachusetts and a career as a social sorker. Her move was the catalyst to begin her life-long ambition to write. Her other interests include genealogy and psychic spirituality, and she often twists these themes into her writing. platforms.
Her first book in 2018 was about her own psychic experiences. An occult thriller was published in 2023 and she is looking forward to her third book, a supernatural mystery to be published in the fall of 2024. She has a number of short stories published in anthologies as well as literary and genre magazines, a list of which is included on her author website. She also maintain author pages on several social media
Susan E. Rogers
Jae Worthy Johnson
Born and raised in New York City, Jae Worthy Johnson is a novelist and writer of short stories that have been published in various journals, such as Copperfield Review and The McGuffin. A graduate of Cornell University, Jae is also one of the founding editors of the literary journal 805 Lit + Art, and the founding editor of the literary journal Scribble .
Her pastimes include memorizing lyrics on her way to work to avoid road rage and creating mental short lists of suitable teammates for a zombie apocalypse.
Tamara Jean Luckinbill has been showcasing her poetry and writing online since 1994. She
currently reads for the literary magazine 805 Lit + Art and is the author of the upcoming fantasy
novel, Dark Stone in Still Water: a dystopian odyssey saturated in descriptive, world-building
imagery with a sensational, action-orientated, science-fiction plot.
It is the first book in a series.Listen to her spoken word in the KVMR radio archives, see her mixed-media word collages,taste her poetry, and read her travel writing at linktr.ee/tamiluck. She currently resides in herhometown foothills of Northern California’s river lands.
Tamara Jean Luckinbill
Gene
Altman
Retired psychiatrist Gene Altman writes with keen insight into the human psyche,
blending vivid imagery, psychological depth, and wry humor to create compelling
narratives. In Cityscapes: Intimate Strangers (2015), he captures profound emotional
moments through both photography and evocative prose
Drawing from his extensive travels and professional background, Altman explores the
complex landscape of human relationships in settings as varied as Morocco, India,
Hawaii and many other American locales. His characters draw on unexpected inner
resources to overcome adversity and discover meaning and purpose in their lives.
Currently, he is finishing his first short story collection, Stories on the Wind. Altman lives
with his wife in Treasure Island, Florida.
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Sharon Emery is an English writer and editor living in the USA. She has worked extensively in the field of mental health and with underserved communities, promoting and encouraging literacy and storytelling.
Sharon is an active member of Florida’s Wordsmitten Workshop. Her debut novel, I Saw You Dancing, is classic coming-of-age queer literature that explores the complexities of love, loss, and ultimate self-discovery against the backdrop of edgy mid-1980s life in London.
Sharon Emery
Emily
Johnson
and
Elizabeth Kasper
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Emily Johnson and Elizabeth Kasper have been writing individually for more than a decade, and have since been writing together for nearly as long under the pseudonym Emily Elizabeth. They are lifelong friends and travel companions, and have devoted their free time to creating written worlds that blend aspects of fantasy and history, romance and horror, environmentalism and feminism, comedy and tragedy.
Their current work in progress, a four-book fantasy series titled The Yarak Kingdom, has been completed and is now in the late editing stages, to be tentatively released in 2025. They can be found at publishing conferences throughout the United States, where they frequently travel to broaden their experiences and develop their craft.
Bill began with the original WordSmitten WorkShop led by Kate
Sullivan. Bill has participated in workshops throughout the country, but
most recently spent 2024 at Writers in Paradise at Eckerd College.
He is the author of two self-published novels, The Entitled, published in 2013 and Pillar of Fire published in 2016. His three published short stories are “Sailing Lessons,” in South Winds in February 2017, “Making Peace,” in Naviga Literary Review in July 2021, and Schroon Lake in Amazine Review, in October 2023.