Meet Our Instructors                                                    

Anastasia Suen

Author of Picture Writing and more than 100 children’s books
B.A. Liberal Studies, Loyola Marymount University 1977
Clear Credential, Multiple Subjects, State of California 1980
Life Credential, Multiple Subjects, State of California 1982
Website: http://www.asuen.com
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Author of more than 100 children’s books including Picture Writing, (Writer's Digest Books, 2003), "Man on the Moon," (Viking, 1997) and "Window Music," (Viking, 1998); co-taught children's literature at University of North Texas. She teaches SMU Creative Writing courses and nine different online workshops for adults. Suen talks about books and writes with children and adults at schools, libraries, bookstores, book festivals and conferences. A credentialed elementary school teacher, she is on the Reading Advisory Board for the Rosen Publishing Group, a literature consultant for Sadlier-Oxford, a children's book consultant for the Brown Books Publishing Group, and a reviewer for Book Links. A former director of Seminars in Children's Literature and advisor for the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, Suen is a co-founder of the Writers Roundtable Conference. She is on the children's Book Council Children's Book Authors and Illustrators List and the "Great Children's Poets" List. Suen is the moderator of cw-biz, a Yahoo Group for the creators of children's literature. She writes fiction, nonfiction and poetry for birth to grade seven and nonfiction for adults.

Anastasia Suen regularly teaches courses on story structure, children’s books, and Novel Three—Polish in the SMU Creative Writing Program.

BK Loren

Award-winning author
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BK Loren's writing has garnered many awards including the Roberts-Rinehart National Literary Fellowship, the D.H. Lawrence Fiction Award, a Colorado Council on the Arts Fellowship, the Dana Award for the Novel, and others. She writes regularly for the esteemed Orion Magazine, and her work has been published in numerous periodicals and anthologies including Parabola, Two in the Wild (Vintage), Women on the Verge, Utne, and The Best American Spiritual Writing of 2001 and 2004. Her piece, "Strata," originally printed in Going Alone (Seal Press), was translated into Dutch. Her first book, the way of the River (repackaged and retitled Tiger to the Bone) was commissioned and published by Lyons Press in 2001. She teaches regularly at national conferences and festivals, as well as maintaining a strong one-on-one, freelance teaching program. She has taught at several colleges and universities and has won numerous awards for her teaching. She attended the University of Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop and is currently completing a novel. She lives in Colorado with her partner, two dogs, and two cats, and any strays that straggle their way.

BK Loren was a guest speaker for the very popular SMU Creative Writing Workshop, The Creative Process, in the spring of 2007.

Cindy Dees

Author of 15 novels
B.S., University of Michigan
M.B.A., George Washington University
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Cindy Dees had her private pilot’s license before she had her driver’s license and went on to become a pilot and Captain in the United States Air Force. Of course, this was after she dropped out of high school, attended the Air Force Academy, and graduated from The University of Michigan with honors while still a teenager. She has the distinct honor of being the youngest pilot in United States military history and is the first female to graduate Top Stick (the equivalent to the Navy’s Top Gun) in her pilot’s class of 62: 61 men and her! As a pilot she has visited 42 countries around the globe; has broken through the sound barrier flying jets; was detained by East German guards in East Berlin; was held at gunpoint by Russians; and is a survivor of a mid-air collision.

Cindy began her writing career on a $1.00 challenge with her mother who bet her she couldn’t write a full length novel. Cindy has now published 15 novels and looks beside her computer at the framed dollar bill she collected from her mother. Cindy is the recipient of the romance writers’ Golden Heart Award for her first published novel.

In addition to her writing, Cindy and her husband owned a Medieval Reenactment business where she tilted with knights saving damsels in distress. Cindy is an accomplished national and international horsewoman, a professional belly dancer, wife, and mother. She enjoys cooking, gardening, solving world problems, and, of course, reading.

Cindy Dees is a regular instructor for the SMU Creative Writing Program since 2005, teaching courses from Genre workshops to Novel 2.5.

Carmen Goldthwaite

Author: Jim Wright and the Media: The Untold Story and Texas Ranch Women
B.A., Texas Christian University
M.S., Texas Christian University
Website: www.carmengoldthwaite.com
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Carmen Goldthwaite, a Fort Worth freelance writer, has found a niche telling the stories of Texas women whether they strapped into a space ship, hitched oxen to a covered wagon, pounded the pulpit or reigned over boardrooms and laboratories.

Some of these stories have unwound in Standing Tall in Her Footsteps-Three Centuries of Texas Ranch Women (UNT PRESS--pending), Wild Women of the Old West, Fulcrum Publishing, 2003 and The Way West: True Stories of the American West from Tor Publishing, June 2005.

In 2005 she launched a column, "Texas Dames™" for weeklies and small dailies in Texas to bring to light more of these stories of Texas' women pioneers-past and present. Texas Dames illuminates the once darkened pages of Texas' women's history. The stories roam the landscape of Texas professions, roles, ethnicity and culture. Their lives span three centuries. Not all are ranchers, but all are pioneers.

Magazines and newspapers she writes for include Wild West, True West, Persimmon Hill, American Cowboy, Fort Worth TX magazine, Latitudes & Attitudes, and the New York Times.

In 2006-2007, the first of seven audio books on writing-Masters Class of Writing with Carmen Goldthwaite--will be published by Timerwolf Books: Voice, Suspense & Style; Writing for Story; Adding Grit to Your Characters-Dialogue, Personalities, Tension, Culture; Creative Non-Fiction; The Two R's, Research & Revision-Description, Context & Rewrite; Finding a Home for Your Writing (getting published); Creating a Media Buzz for your Book.

Before freelancing Carmen was syndicated by Scripps-Howard News International as an investigative reporter following stints with Texas newspapers: Brownwood Bulletin, Midland Reporter-Telegram, Odessa American, The Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle and The Fort Worth Press. In the political and corporate world she worked as Media Relations Manager/Company spokesperson, executive speechwriter and media coach for Shell Oil and Brown & Root, Inc. corporate officers and for members of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, U. S. Congress.

Carmen is a member and former director of the Society of Professional Journalists, Western Writers of America, Investigative Reporters & Editors and Associate Member, Texas Press Association. She also is a member of Texas State Historical Association, the Western History Association and former director of the Fort Worth Friends of the Library and Dallas-Fort Worth Writers Workshop.

For fun she sails, backpacks and pesters local officials for funds for parks and recreation. For service she reads to the children housed in the Fort Worth emergency shelter and has helped two downtown churches sponsor and promote information for the needs of seniors and their families, i.e., "aging conferences."

She teaches writing in the Schieffer School of Journalism at TCU, and conducts 1-5 day writing retreats and story writing seminars at UTA, for Texas Press Association members, sessions for Western Writers of America, Writers League of Texas and other interested writers/groups, and has adapted her executive media coaching background to teach authors "how not to sit alone at a booksigning."

As well as the Introduction to Creative Writing Course, Carmen Goldthwaite regularly teaches the non-fiction courses offered as part of the SMU Continuing Studies Creative Writing Program.

Daniel J. Hale

Author: Red Card and Green Streak, Agatha Award Winner
Southern Methodist University
Cornell University
University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Bowen School of Law
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Agatha Award-winning author Daniel J. Hale is a proud graduate of SMU Creative Writing Program. Together with his teenage nephew, he writes the Zeke Armstrong Mystery series for kids.  The duo's first book, Red Card, took the Agatha for Best Children's/Young Adult Novel in 2003. Their sophomore effort, Green Streak, was nominated for the award in 2005. A former French resident and a recovering mountain biking addict, Hale serves on Mystery Writers of America's national board of directors.

Daniel Hale regularly teaches Novel One: Elements course for SMU Creative Writing Program.

David Hale Smith

Literary agent
B.A. (English), Kenyon College
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David Hale Smith is the founder and president of DHS Literary, Inc., a literary agency in Dallas, Texas. Since starting the agency in 1994, Smith has been managing authors’ careers and making deals for his clients, negotiating contracts with companies such as Alfred A. Knopf, Algonquin, Bantam Books, Broadway, HarperCollins, Morrow, Putnam, Random House, Simon & Schuster, St. Martin’s Press, Viking Penguin, Warner Books, and others. Smith works with literary and commercial fiction – especially mysteries, suspense novels and thrillers – as well as a broad range of nonfiction. His agency also sells film, foreign and all subsidiary rights. Smith's sales and management work on behalf of his clients have been mentioned in Publisher's Weekly, Daily Variety, The New York Post, Texas Monthly, and The Dallas Morning News.

Representative books handled by Smith’s agency include New York Times bestsellers THE WORST CASE SCENARIO SURVIVAL HANDBOOK series (Chronicle Books); TAKE TIME FOR YOUR LIFE and LIFE MAKEOVERS, by Cheryl Richardson (Broadway); Edgar Award-nominated first novels GOD IS A BULLET, by Boston Teran (Knopf), and TONIGHT I SAID GOODBYE, by Michael Koryta (St. Martins Minotaur); Edgar Award-winner OFFICER DOWN by Theresa Schwegel (St. Martins Minotaur); THE WALDORF-ASTORIA COOKBOOK (Bulfinch/Warner); THE NIEMAN-MARCUS COOKBOOK (Clarkson Potter), the forthcoming START STRONG, FINISH STRONG by Dr. Kenneth Cooper and his son Dr. Tyler Cooper, and the graphic novel thriller WHITEOUT, by Greg Rucka, which is currently in production as a major motion picture starring Kate Beckinsale. David has been a featured speaker and panelist at the leading writers’ conferences, including Maui, Bouchercon, Jackson Hole, Pacific Northwest Writers Workshop, and SEAK.

David Hale Smith regularly teaches classes on the craft of writing and the business of publishing courses in the SMU Creative Writing Program.

Harry Hunsicker

Author: Still River, The Next Time You Die, and Crosshairs (August, 2007)
Website: www.harryhunsicker.com
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A fourth-generation Dallasite and sixth-generation Texan, novelist Harry Hunsicker writes a thriller series about a Dallas private investigator named Lee Henry Oswald published by St. Martin's Press. (Still River, May 2005; The Next Time You Die, July 2006). Still River was nominated by The Private Eye Writers of America for a Shamus Award for Best First Novel for 2005. Compared to the works of Dennis Lehane and Michael Connelly, The Washington Post called his first novel "a compelling debut" while D Magazine dubbed it "A smart, adventurous read, crafted in the Raymond Chandler vein."

When he is not writing the next Oswald thriller, Hunsicker works as a commercial real estate appraiser and speaks on creative writing.

As his busy schedule allows, Harry Hunsicker teaches Novel One: Elements, mystery writing, and other workshops in the SMU Creative Writing Program. Harry will be the feature speaker at the fall 2007 kickoff Writer’s Salon as he speaks about his new book, Crosshairs. The Writer’s Salon is open to the public. Click here for more information.

Joy Scallan

Author of articles on medieval literature and 50 technical manuals
PhD. (Medieval Literature), Michigan State University
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Dr. Joy Scallan is an educator at heart; an entrepreneur by choice; and a risk taker by nature. As an educator she has spent 20 years teaching English with a specialty in teaching writing. Along with teaching writing courses to seniors and poetry to sophomores, she taught English as a Second Language at Michigan State University where she also developed the first computer writing lab at a major university in the United States. She has written and delivered many papers at seminars and conferences on her favorite subjects of Chaucer and the bawdy Medieval Scottish poets, Henryson and Dunbar.

As an entrepreneur, she is a certified instructor of Total Quality Management. She has taught TQM in the military arena during Desert Storm and has seven copyrights for manuals on TQM. She served as the TQM Director and Director of Training at a Westin Hotel where she won the prestigious President's Award for the successful operations programs she developed. She was head technical writer at the General Motors Saturn car plant in Tennessee where she developed over 30 training courses. While at Saturn, she worked with German engineers and developed all of the original training materials for the new robots used to paint plastic car bodies. She was trained by the Behr and DeVilbiss companies and was the only person at Saturn who understood and could program the seven computer systems that operate the Paint Shop. Dr. Scallan has managed technical writing departments for two telecommunications companies here in Dallas.

She has owned and managed rental properties as well as her Standardbred race horse operation with 11 race horses. As a risk taker, Dr. Scallan loves to drive fast sports cars, lived on a boat for four years, enjoyed belly dancing, and jumped out of airplanes as a skydiver. She is a Duplicate Bridge Life Master. She has traveled extensively and lived in Europe. Dr. Scallan's favorite poem is "Ulysses" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. She knows Lord Al would approve of her life choices to "Live life to the lees, To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

Joy Scallan regularly teaches Creative Writing Introduction, Novel One: Elements, and leads Accountability Groups in the SMU Creative Writing Program.

Kay Winzenried

Contributor: Zagat, Fodor’s, American Way
B.S. (Clothing, Textiles and Related Arts), Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
M.B.A. (Management), San Francisco State University
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A regular contributor to Random House publications, Kay Winzenried writes for the Fodor's travel guides and website: Switzerland, USA, Europe, Healthy Escapes, Golf Weekends and fodors.com. She was the Dallas/Ft. Worth editor for the ZAGAT Restaurant Survey and her input and evaluations have been published in America’s Top Restaurants, Europe’s Top Restaurants, Good Meals, Good Deals and zagat.com. Kay’s stories and photographs have appeared in American Way Magazine, SPA, Healing Lifestyles & Spas, Where Dallas, and Today's Dallas Woman.

As a respected specialist, she has been interviewed about her food, wine, and travel experiences as a TV guest on Good Morning Texas, the WFAA (ABC affiliate), Texas Cable News Network, plus radio programs The Restaurant Show and Travel Talk, KRLD (CBS affiliate). Her climb of Mount Kilimanjaro has been chronicled in a feature segment on local cable television and she is writing a book about the adventure. In addition to writing and reviewing, Kay organizes and hosts specialty travel programs for small groups to exotic destinations like Bhutan and Peru. In 2005 she served as consultant to Cuisine International, a travel company specializing in global culinary tours. Prior to launching her communications career, Kay was an executive with the Neiman Marcus Stores, one of America's premier retailers.

A dual national (US and Swiss) Kay has traveled extensively for twenty-five years, including a solo trip around the world in 1993. She is a founding officer of the Texas Chapter of the International Food, Wine & Travel Writers Association, and member of the International Association of Culinary Professionals and International Association of Culinary Tourism. She serves as a Director of the Foundation Board of her alma mater and a visiting lecturer in retail and communication studies.

Kay Winzenried regularly teaches nonfiction travel writing courses in the SMU Creative Writing Program.

Ona B. Seaney

Lecturer: English Department, SMU
B.A. (Creative Writing & Philosophy), Texas Christian University (Phi Beta Kappa)
M.A. (English Literature), University of New Mexico
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Ona Seaney is a full-time lecturer of English at SMU, specializing in ESL First Year writing courses. Over the last decade she has taught SMU First Year Writing Program and community college courses in Composition, Contemporary Literature, World Literature and American Literature. Ona is the co-author of "Surviving Mexico: The Insider's Guide to Safe Travel," the author of “Star Trek Visions of Law and Justice.” While at TCU she was a contributor to the TCU Creative Writing Awards Publication and to the TCU Daily Skiff. Ona enjoys involvement with the Dallas Library system as panel member and presenter.

One Seaney regularly teaches “Improve Your Grammar,” “Effective Business Writing,” and GRE courses for SMU Informal Courses.

Paula LaRocque

Author: The Book on Writing: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Well
Columnist: “Words Matter,” The Dallas Morning News
B.A., Western Michigan University (Summa Cum Laude)
M.A., Western Michigan University
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Paula LaRocque is a communications consultant who has conducted writing workshops for hundreds of media, government, academic, and business groups in the United States, Canada, and Europe. She was writing coach and assistant managing editor at The Dallas Morning News from 1981 through 2001. She also has been consultant for the Associated Press, the Drehscheibe Institute in Bonn, and the European Stars & Stripes in Germany.
From 1971 to 1981, she was in academe-teaching technical writing at Western Michigan University's School of Engineering, and creative or journalistic writing at Texas A&M, Southern Methodist, and Texas Christian universities.

She is a columnist for Quill magazine as well as author of The Book on Writing: The Ultimate Guide to Writing Well and Championship Writing: 50 Ways to Improve Your Writing (both published by Marion Street Press, Inc.). She frequently broadcasts commentaries on Dallas' National Public Radio station, and is at work on her first novel, a mystery.

Paula was elected to the Associated Press Managing Editors Executive Board in 1998, and in 2001, she received the APME Meritorious Service Award for exemplary contribution to journalism.

Paula LaRoque regularly teaches “Secrets of Writing Well” for the SMU Creative Writing Program.

Rex McGee

Playwright; Author; Screenwriter: Pure Country and Where There’s a Will
B.S. (Cinema), University of Southern California
Website: http://homepage.mac.com/rexmcgee/Menu11.html
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Rex McGee was a protégé of Oscar-winning filmmaker Billy Wilder (“Sunset Boulevard,” “Some Like It Hot”). Rex has been a Hollywood screenwriter and journalist (Playboy, TV Guide, American Film, LA Magazine) for many years. Rex wrote Warner Bros. PURE COUNTRY starring George Strait and Lesley Ann Warren. The story was really Rex’s own story in disguise, and it turned out to have universal appeal. The movie was a hit not only for Strait, but also for Rex. A stage adaptation of “Pure Country” is in the works with director Peter Masterson (The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, The Trip to Bountiful).

In addition, his movie about the aunt who left Rex her house in Cleburne, Texas, WHERE THERE’S A WILL, starring Marion Ross, Frank Whaley, and Keith Carradine, recently aired on the Hallmark Channel. As a writer, Rex continues the creative process every day, currently working on diverse film projects. He just finished a political satire about a Texas reporter in Cuba and is currently working on a new original screenplay about Texas debutantes called NOSE TO THE TOES.

Rex is also passing along the hard-won lessons in creativity he has learned over the years. He enjoys helping students revive the creative process, guiding them towards their dreams of becoming writers, painters, musicians -- whatever they desire -- or simply adding more creativity to their current jobs as engineers and mathematicians, journalists and human resource specialists. Being consistently creative is about removing fear and taking fresh risks.

Rex McGee regularly conducts the SMU Informal Courses workshop titled, "The Artist's Way", based on the bestselling book by Julia Cameron that sharpened his own creative approach. He also teaches courses in dramatic writing and Creative Writing Introduction offered in the SMU Creative Writing Program.

Rebecca Spears

Poet and essayist
B.A., University of Texas (Phi Beta Kappa)
M.A. (English), Southern Illinois University
M.F.A. (Creative Writing), Bennington College
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Freelance Writer, Editor and current English and Reading Teacher, Rebecca Spears, has authored and published numerous poems, educational study guides and resource books for students and teachers, book reviews and articles as well as editing, designing and developing instructional materials as teacher resources for various publishers.

Rebecca has taught creative writing online with the University of Geväle (Sweden) and Inkberry.org. In the recent past she served as writer-in-residence for Houston’s High School for the Performing Arts. Her interests include teaching general courses covering multiple genres and specific classes covering poetry and creative nonfiction.

Having learned by observation from many famous writers and from her own life experiences, Rebecca offers workshops that recognize the value of writing as a way to heal from difficulties. Her research of writers of the Vietnam War era dealt with post-traumatic stress disorder and national tragedy was published in her graduating lecture, “The Bitter Bread of Urgency: The Vietnam War and the Communalization of Grief.”

Rebecca Spears has been published in the following national, regional and community journals: Calyx, Minnesota Review, Dos Passos Review, Natural Bridge, Nimrod, AmarilloBay.org, Borderlands, Concho River Review, Texas Review, Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetry, and Post Road. Her work has appeared in two anthologies: Texas in Poetry 2 (2003) and Cyber-Collection: Writings from the Bennington Collective (2004). She also participates in an online writing collective and participates and supports literary readings in the Dallas area and elsewhere. With 3 grown children, she now has time to enjoy spending time with friends and family in the Dallas area.

Rebecca Spears regularly teaches Creative Writing Introduction in the SMU Creative Writing Program.

Suzanne Frank

Director: Continuing and Professional Education Creative Writing Program, SMU; Author of seven novels, including “Twilight ”and “Fashion Victim”
B.S., University of North Texas
Graduate studies: Center for Near Eastern Studies in Bethlehem, Israel
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Novelist Suzanne Frank spent her formative years in England and Europe where she gained an appreciation of history’s reality and immediacy by traipsing through countless castles and museums. Frank wrote in many different capacities – from local news reporting and technical documentation, to PR pieces, travel and feature stories – before publishing her first book as a student of the SMU Creative Writing Program.

Her time-travel novels are meticulously researched and written with an eye to historical accuracy and an understanding of the diverse cultural viewpoints. Frank selects pivotal moments in Western history and looks at them from an unexpected angle, using both the latest and the most provocative information to tell the story. Place serves as a character and helps to create not only the story, but also an entire world the reader can experience.

Research has taken Ms. Frank to many of the locations in her books, including the Egypt, England, Europe, Israel, Mexico, and Morocco. From the British Museum to the Louvre, Akrotiri to the Valley of the Kings, she has sought the flavors, colors and emotions that bring her ancient worlds to life. She’s worked as a mosaicist in Jerusalem, picked avocados by the Mediterranean, and prepped garments worth six figures, all in the interest of story depth.

All of her time travel books were selected by The Literary Guild and the Doubleday Book Club. The books have been published in Spain, Portugal, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Korea and Italy. Ingram Top 50 listed Reflections in the Nile and Twilight in Babylon was as a top ten best seller in Germany. As Suzanne Frank, she has authored: “Reflections in the Nile,” “Shadows on the Aegean,” “Sunrise on the Mediterranean,” “Twilight in Babylon,” “Claws of the Wind” – short story -- Mammoth Book of Egyptian Whodunnits

Chloe Green is another personality operating in Suzanne Frank’s head, and gaining expression through her pen. Ms. Green has written several murder mysteries set behind the scenes in the fashion world. She worked as presser, as First Assistant, as stylist; dabbled as a makeup artist, and read countless issues of Vogue, to assure accuracy in her fast-paced world of photos, videos, catwalks, and corpses. As Chloe Green, she has authored: Going Out In Style, “Designed to Die,” “Fashion Victim,” "Remember It" -- short story – “Don't Abuse the Muse” anthology.

Currently Suzanne Frank writes full-time and serves as Director of the SMU Continuing and Professional Education Creative Writing Program and also as an instructor in that program. She regularly teaches the full range of courses offered from Introduction to Creative Writing to the SMU Writer’s Seminar in NewYork.