Mary Cinadr
Founder and Instructor
Mary founded Circle of Writers which offers memoir writing workshops and coaching for writers of all types, online and in person. She believes the core yearning (and corresponding ability) to create a life story is central to all of us, and that we must fulfill this yearning in community. Mary is devoted to helping people step into their narrative, as both observer and co-creator. She gives daily thanks for the power of personal story— the way it erodes shame, fosters oneness, and drives us all towards deeper levels of truth and understanding.
She leads private and group circles of professors and adult literacy teachers, homeless shelter residents, women’s groups, international non-profit organizations, and service learning organizations. Mary taught therapeutic writing at an anti-poverty program in Boston, and facilitated writing circles in Paraguay, where she served as a Peace Corps volunteer and USAID Communications Associate, working with farm communities on beekeeping, and other sustainable agriculture projects. Service, teaching, and creativity are at the heart of Mary’s work and play. She enjoys guiding authors, artists, entrepreneurs & visionaries discover their divine signature, and then shape and share their brand story through her other organization, Campfire Creative.
Her writing has been scribbled on napkins, along book margins and occasionally published. Mary holds a B.A in Writing and Rhetoric from Hobart and William Smith Colleges as well as a M.A in Creative Non-Fiction from Empire State College. She currently lives in Troy, NY and can be found in New York City during the fall, working as a Faculty Associate in Columbia University’s Narrative Medicine department. Mary can be reached at mary.cinadr@gmail.com.
Sara Murphy
Instructor
Sara Murphy, PhD has a BA from Penn, an M.Phil from the University of Edinburgh, and a PhD in English from Columbia University. She taught literature and writing at Columbia University and Barnard College, as well as high school English at Horace Mann School in the Bronx, New York.
She is currently a freelance journalist, with bylines in The New York Times, National Geographic, Atlanta Magazine, and elsewhere. She lives in the mountains of Western North Carolina.
Heidi Walker
Instructor
Heidi holds a BA in Writing & Rhetoric from Hobart & William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY. After graduating with honors, she interned with book and magazine publishers in New York City and San Francisco and later worked as a freelance editor for a financial firm in London. From 2006-2011 she was the Coordinator of Hobart and William Smith’s Writing Colleagues Program, where she taught college students to self-edit as well as facilitate their peers’ writing process. The Program was founded on the basic principle that all writers need readers who ask good questions during the writing process—a process she believes is crucial for writers of all ages.
She also directed the Children’s Fiction Workshop in Geneva, NY from 2008-2010, which served creative 4th, 5th and 6th graders who have an interest in reading and writing stories.
She is an ex-expat who recently returned with her family to the U.S. after two years in Australia. As an instructor for Circle of Writers, she looks forward to sharing her passion for writing and reading by fostering students’ natural curiosity and creativity.
Lara Moore
Instructor
Writing is so meaningful that it’s easy to lose sight of how many purposes it serves—as the preservation of culture, truth, and from time to time, people; as self-expression; as communication uncompromised by time or space; as an old, familiar feeling, like throwing on a favorite pair of jeans; and, in Lara Moore’s case, the hand that feeds.
Lara has more than five years of full-time writing experience with newspapers throughout Northeast Georgia. In 2009 and 2008, she won first and second place, respectively, from the Georgia Press Association for her work with Forsyth County News. Lara’s articles have also appeared in
The Times, Gainesville, GA; The Paper, Braselton, GA; Burnaway.org, Atlanta; and Habitat.org, Americus, GA.
Lara was a full-time writer/editor with Habitat for Humanity International. Her bachelor’s degree in Writing and Publications, from North Georgia College and State University, features specialized coursework in various forms of creative non-fiction.
An experienced instructor and former beekeeping volunteer with Peace Corps, she taught courses in English, agriculture and beekeeping during her service in Paraguay. Lara also instructed preliterate refugees at the International Rescue Committee, in Atlanta, in English, Life Skills and computer courses. Her hope for students in Circle of Writers is that they see how writing impacts their lives and opens unexpected doors.