Meet the Story Street Writers

Michele Alouf is a founding member of the Story Street Writers and a master's degree candidate in creative writing at Harvard Extension School. When she’s not working on her first novel, What Lies in Orange Skies, she can be found in her kitchen trying to cook, read, and balance in tree pose without getting burned. Her short stories are forthcoming or published in Bridge Eight, Drunk Monkeys, the Wordrunner e-Chapbook Fiction Anthology--Salvaged, Grim & Gilded, and Sad Girl Diaries. Michele previously owned a yoga business and wrote for a local magazine. She has two grown children and lives in Richmond, Virginia with her husband, John, and her mini Goldendoodle, Coco "Mo."

E.O. Connors is a writer and award-winning photographer from Connecticut. She has a master’s degree in English Literature and Creative Writing from Harvard Extension School. Her writing has appeared in Five Minutes, The Furious Gazelle, Lowestoft Chronicle, and Dungeon Magazine. To read her humor and memoir, or to purchase fine art prints visit www.eoconnors.com

Elisa Maiz is a Mexican author, teacher, and mom who had the privilege of meeting fellow Harvard graduates from the Creative Writing and Literature program in the summer of 2023.

She worked as a journalist for Grupo Reforma in her hometown of Monterrey, Mexico and taught high school Spanish and Journalism.

Empowering a new generation of writers is her life purpose, as well as publishing her YA novel Synchronicity, which she originally wrote as a play when she was 17. She is also working in a two-POV, two-author dystopian MG and other projects.

Jack Morgan lives in Hawaii, 100 yards from the mouth of a waterway that drains mountain rain and rubbish into the Pacific Ocean. He's a graduate of Harvard's low residency MA in creative writing.

When he's not swimming or paddling in the ocean, Jack works on his current project, We, a novel of love, loss, vengeance, and peace. An excerpted chapter of We has been published in Harvard's The Brattle Street Review. He also writes the twice monthly column "A Work in Progress" for Story Street Writers.

Staci Stokes Morgan lives in Honolulu, Hawaii, with her husband, one of her children, and two dogs. Her work has been published in Story Quarterly.

Raised in Honolulu, Margaret holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Hawai'i and an MBA from Northwestern University. She has enjoyed careers in marketing, product management, and fashion. She currently lives in the Seattle area, is working on her master's degree in creative writing and literature from Harvard University, and is moving toward publishing her debut novel. She enjoys all forms of creative writing and likes to incorporate diverse characters and cultures into her writing. She believes in enrichment through diversity and is passionate about family, friends, writing, reading, and travel.

When I got my bachelor’s degree—decades ago, now—I started out in film school, with aspirations of making it big in the movies. However, over the course of four years, I ended up taking so many writing classes that I had to change my major to Media Communications, with a Scriptwriting emphasis, in order to graduate in my target year.

In the two decades since, I found myself drifting through several jobs that just paid bills. I have worked as a photographer, a truck driver, tour manager, and online marketing consultant. Finally, the most recent decade, I have settled for working as a software engineer. It pays well, and is something I am actually pretty good at. But I find myself longing to go back to the roots of what I really want to do—what my earlier college career should have told me I need to do—write.

Growing up in Appalachia, I was surrounded by natural storytellers. The air around me permeated with their tales while I read every book I could find. Stories became essential to my identity. I was lucky to have parents who encouraged reading. Our home was too rural to use the closest public library, so my mother would take me every year to a charity book sale where you could fill up a Walmart bag for a dollar. We would leave with the bed of her red Silverado loaded down with books. I would then lay them all on the living room floor, showing my dad every book I had picked. Undiagnosed dyslexia left my dad barely able to read into adulthood. He would beam at me and my piles of books, proud to foster a love of story for his daughter. Moments like these formed me.