Instructors

Maribeth Fischer is the author of The Language of Goodbye, which was awarded Virginia Commonwealth University's First Novel Award for 2002. Fischer' s second novel, The Life You Longed For, an April 2007 BookSense Notable Book and a Literary Guild Alternate Selection, has been sold in Brazil, Germany, Italy, Norway and Sweden and cited by The Library Journal as a perfect book-group selection comparable to Jane Hamilton's A Map of the World or Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres. In addition to receiving an individual artist award from the Maryland State Arts Council, Maribeth's literary essays have appeared in such journals as The Iowa Review and The Yale Review, and have twice been cited as notable in Robert Atwan's Best American Essays. She has also received a Pushcart Prize for her essay Stillborn, as well as a Smart Family Prize for her essay Lottery.

Maribeth taught ceative writing full-time at the University of Maryland Baltimore County for nine years, was a visiting teacher in Virginia Commonwealth University's MFA program, and tutored young adult writers in fiction for Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. She is currently the founder and president of the Rehoboth Beach Writers Guild and the executive director of Writers at the Beach annual writing conference.

Gail Braune Comorat has taught in private schools in New Castle County and Sussex County for over thirty years. As a founding member of RBWG, she has served as Secretary and Vice President and is now Young Writers Event Coordinator. She leads both children and adults in Free Writes! throughout the year. Her short stories and poetry have been published in Delaware Beach Life and The Boadkill Review (forthcoming). In the past years, she has been chosen by the Delaware Division of the Arts to attend their annual writers retreat, and has been invited to read her work at literary venues throughout the state. She recently won an honorable mention for poetry and a second prize for short story at the 2007 Bethany Writers Conference.