Main: An Anthology

We're pleased to introduce you to the contributors of Main: An Anthology: 

These writers share how these family businesses defined and redefined themselves (and those close to them) and how these entrepreneurial endeavors evolved over time.

Joan Taylor Cehn

Joan Taylor Cehn is a retired clinical speech pathologist. A graduate of Northwestern University, she practiced for many decades in hospitals throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2008 she co-edited and contributed to the anthology "Writin' On Empty: Parents Reveal The Upside, Downside, And Everything In Between When Children Leave The Nest". She currently lives in a small sea-side town on the central coast of California where she pursues fun and adventure. She cherishes and is grateful for her loving family and many life-long friends throughout the country.

Chris Cocca

Chris Cocca is from Allentown, Pennsylvania. His work has been published at venues including Hobart, Brevity, Pindeldyboz, elimae, The Huffington Post, O:JAL, Rejection Letters, Mineral Lit Mag, Schuylkill Valley Journal, Perhappened, Anti-Heroin Chic, Feed, Appalachian Review, Bandit Fiction, Still, VIA Voices in Italian Americana, Belt, The Shore, and Dodging the Rain. He is a recipient of the Creager Prize for Creative Writing at Ursinus College and earned his MFA in creative writing at The New School. In 2021, The Shore nominated his poem, "The Effects of Ground-Level Ozone on the Ecology of Pennsylvania Highways," for the Pushcart Prize.

Kimberly Ence

Kimberly Ence is in the final Zooms of an MFA at Columbia University. She’s a native Idahoan but can't seem to stay put. Her earliest writing was done on this thing called a typewriter and self-published on a mimeograph (go ask your grandma). You'll find her latest work in JuxtaProse (2018 Nonfiction Prize winner), The Eastern Iowa Review, Columbia Journal, and elsewhere. She's a mother of five, adjunct English instructor, and snow enthusiast. Kim lives in Park City, Utah with her husband, caboose son, and Kona the 100-pound Akita.

Linda Hansell

Linda Hansell is a writer and educator based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her essays have appeared in The Emerald Coast Review, Months to Years, and Wising Up Press. In addition to writing essays, Linda helps other people write their memoirs or autobiographies and has co-authored four such books (the latest one forthcoming from Skinner House Books.) She is also a musician and bird lover.

Melissa Hart

Melissa Hart is an author and journalist living in Eugene, Oregon. www.melissahart.com.

Nina Gaby

Gaby is a writer, visual artist and psychiatric nurse practitioner who spent the pandemic hunkered down across from the longest floating bridge east of the Mississippi with her dog, two cats, husband and the Cuomo brothers on TV. She did not finish the memoir-in-progress from which this piece was taken, did not develop any interest in sourdough, but has suddenly emerged with a whole new level of appreciation for the resilience of our collective spirit. Please visit www.ninagaby.com for a complete list of publications and images of Gaby's mixed-media artwork.

Lindsay Gelay-Akins

Lindsay is a teacher who lives in New Jersey with her husband, her three young children, and her dog. She has no spare time right now, but if she did, you would likely find her on the beach reading novels. This is her first print publication.

Kristine Kopperud

Kristine Kopperud is a writer and editor in rural Northeast Iowa. Her creative nonfiction has won the Diana Woods Memorial Award for Nonfiction at Lunch Ticket and appears at HuffPost, Parents.com, River Teeth, The Girlfriend (AARP), MUTHA Magazine, Literary Mama, and in several anthologies. Her hermit-crab essay “Jaw Wiring: What You Need to Know” was a flash nonfiction winner at Sweet: A Literary Confection, appeared in Creative Nonfiction's Sunday Short Reads, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Dyann Nashton

Dyann Nashton is a freelance writer from Central New York. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Utica College and her career carried her from the newsroom through not-for-profit public relations, marketing and fund development. Today, she works for a charitable foundation. In her spare time, she practices and teaches yoga.

Suzanne Samuels

Suzanne writes creative nonfiction, children's realistic fiction, and adult historical fiction. She is fascinated by the centrality of narrative in human life and how story helps us learn about the world. Her latest novel in progress, The Engraver, was inspired by a 1922 tenement fire that killed most of her grandfather’s family and left him maimed. In researching the fire, Suzanne discovered a great-great aunt, who was never spoken about but who likely saved her grandfather’s life. The Engraver explores the ways family both protects and constrains us, and the sacrifices we make on behalf of others.

Kelly Garriott Waite

Kelly Garriott Waite writes from Oberlin, Ohio, where she's researching and writing about the life of the second owner of her 1908 Arts & Crafts home, a woman left out of house's written history. Her work has appeared in Barren Magazine, BioStories, Tributaries: the Fourth River, and elsewhere.

Melissa Scholes Young

Melissa Scholes Young is the author of the novels The Hive and Flood, and editor of Grace in Darkness and Furious Gravity, two anthologies by women writers. She is a contributing editor at Fiction Writers Review, and her work has appeared in the Atlantic, Ms., The Believer, Washington Post, Poets & Writers, Ploughshares, Literary Hub, and The Believer. She has been the recipient of the Bread Loaf Bakeless Camargo Foundation Residency Fellowship, the Center for Mark Twain Studies' Quarry Farm Fellowship, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts Fellowship. Born and raised in Hannibal, Missouri, she is an associate professor in Literature at American University.