Instructors

Liesa Abrams

Is an executive editor at Aladdin, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Books, where she acquires and edits tween and middle grade fiction in a range of genres with a focus on fantasy and action/adventure, including the #1 New York Times bestselling Pendragon series. Previously, she was an editor at Razorbill, the commercial YA imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group, and worked with many of today’s hottest teen book authors such as Scott Westerfeld and Maureen Johnson.

Liesa began her career at the book packager now known as Alloy Entertainment (producers of hits like Sweet Valley High, Gossip Girl, and The Clique), developing, launching, and overseeing ongoing YA series.

Tom Monteleone

Is the author the bestselling The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing a Novel. In addition, he has published more than 100 short stories in a wide range of magazine and anthologies, and 25 novels—including the bestseller and New York Times Notable Book of the Year, The Blood of the Lamb. He has written for the stage as well as the screen, and has published four collections of his short fiction. His omnibus collection of columns about writing, genre publishing, television, film and popular culture entitled The Mothers And Fathers Italian Association won the Bram Stoker Award for non-fiction.

He is also co-editor of the award-winning anthology series of imaginative fiction, Borderlands. He has won the Bram Stoker Award four times in four different categories—Novel, Collection, Non-Fiction, and Anthology. His novels and stories have been translated into French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Finnish, Swedish, Russian, Romanian, Czech, and Japanese.

He has served as an Instructor in Borderland Press Writers Boot Camp since its inception in 2004, and also been a guest lecturer or instructor at the Breadloaf Writers Conference in Vermont, Seton Hill University, Dartmouth College, American University, Western Kentucky University, Odyssey Writers Workshop at Southern New Hampshire College, and the British Fantasy Convention in London, England.

Elizabeth Massie

Is an Award-winning author who has published 26 novels and collections for adults, teens, and young readers, primarily in the genres of horror, historical fiction, media tie-ins, and mainstream. Her novels and collections include the Bram Stoker-Award winning Sineater, Wire Mesh Mothers, Welcome Back to the Night, Homeplace, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Power of Persuasion, 1609: Winter of the Dead, 1776: Son of Liberty, The Great Chicago Fire: 1871, The Tudors: King Takes Queen, The Tudors: Thy Kingdom Come, and more. Massie is also the author of close to 100 short stories including the Stoker Award-winning novelette, “Stephen.”

These tales have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies such as Borderlands, Borderlands 3, Outsiders, Kolchak the Night Stalker: Casebook, Years’ Best Fantasy and Horror 4, Best New Horror 2 and 17, Exotic Gothic 2, and The Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories by Women, and others.

Elizabeth was an English and science teacher in the Augusta County, Virginia public school system for 19 years before moving into full-time writing. Since 1994 she has presented creative writing workshops and writer-in-residence programs to students at the elementary, middle school, and high school level throughout the state of Virginia as well as North Carolina, Maryland, and New Jersey. She has also taught creative writing for the University of Virginia Writing Project and Blue Ridge Community College, and has presented writing programs to the statewide conferences of VATE (Virginia Association of Teachers of English) and VEMA (Virginia Educational Media Association), in addition she has been an instructor in the Borderlands Press Writers Boot Camp.

Mort Castle

is the author of the short fiction collection Moon on the Water, cited by the Polish edition of Newsweek as one of the “best books published in Poland in 2008.” Since 1967, when his first novel appeared, Castle has published over 600 novels, short stories, poems, articles, and comic books. Recent or forthcoming articles and short stories appear in magazines Doorways, Writer's Digest, The Writer, and the books Writers Workshop of Horror, Readings for Writers: 13th Edition, Le livre des livres de Stephen King, A Dark and Deadly Valley; and Poe’s Lighthouse.

An educator who has taught students “from grade school to grad school,” Castle was named one of “21 Leaders in the Arts for the 21st Century in Chicago’s Southland” by the Star / Sun-Times Newspaper Group. He has been an adjunct faculty member of the Fiction Writing Department of Columbia College Chicago for 11 years and writer-in-residence for Bloom Township High School District 206 in Chicago Heights, Illinois since 1980.

Castle has won or been nominated for the Excellence in Teaching Award of Columbia College, the Pushcart Prize, the Bram Stoker Award, the International Horror Guild Award, and the Emerson Fiction award. He’s given presentations, led seminars, and facilitated workshops in writing throughout North America and this year, along with writers Richard Price, Francine Prose, and Etgar Keret, will be a featured reader at the Chicago-wide Story Week Festival of Writers