Staff
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Linda Ewing, Interim Executive DirectorLinda is a highly experienced consulting professional and senior nonprofit executive with a proven track record of success at organizations such as the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce, the Como Park Conservatory, the Carpenter Nature Center, and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, as well as fifteen years as the CEO of Special Olympics Minnesota. Linda received a degree in English Literature from St. Catherine University and holds an MBA in Marketing from the University of St. Thomas. She also completed coursework in Leadership Theory and Development at the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, North Carolina. |
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Jeremy M. Davies, Executive EditorJeremy M. Davies lives in New York. He is the author of the novels Rose Alley and Fancy, as well as The Knack of Doing, a collection of short stories. He comes to Coffee House as an editor following his years at Dalkey Archive Press, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and And Other Stories. |
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Daphne DiFazio, Publishing AssistantDaphne DiFazio joined Coffee House Press following a summer internship. She earned degrees in English—Creative Writing and Classics with an emphasis in ancient Greek translation from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she was an OMAI–First Wave scholar. An alumna of Hedgebrook’s Writer-in-Residence program and YoungArts, she has published and performed poetry for almost a decade. Originally from Southeast Alaska, she now lives in South Minneapolis with gratitude for all large, Midwestern bodies of water. |
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Mark Haber, Director of MarketingMark Haber was born in Washington DC and grew up in Florida. For the past ten years, he was a bookseller as well as the operations manager at Brazos Bookstore in Houston, Texas. Mark has a deep devotion to books, especially international literature, and has organized and hosted dozens of panels and events with both authors and translators. Also a writer, Mark’s novels have been translated into many languages and his debut novel, Reinhardt’s Garden, was longlisted for a PEN/Hemingway Award. In addition to his two published novels, Reinhardt’s Garden and Saint Sebastian’s Abyss, Mark has published numerous articles in a wide variety of publications and is an experienced teacher and academic lecturer in the field of creative writing. He holds a BA Degree in English from the University of South Florida. |
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Rob Keefe, BookkeeperRobert Keefe arrived at the offices of Coffee House Press via a trajectory that reads like a Proustian phrase: long, complex, all-encompassing—beginning as a computer scientist who picked up accounting while networking small construction developers in Los Angeles, to trade that hat and to ply his hands at publishing and writing, and cinema and radio in the Pacific Northwest, then a skip across the pond to Europe as a DJ until an inevitable return to NYC as an accountant for record labels. He packed up shop again for the long mid-west horizons to settle just south of the source of the Mississippi. He’s rather fond of biking and meeting new folks. |
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Laura Graveline, Publicity DirectorLaura Graveline was born and raised among the prairies and forests of Ames, Iowa. She earned degrees in Art History and Visual and Dramatic Arts from Rice University and spent five years as the Marketing Director, Children’s Book Buyer, and French Specialist at Brazos Bookstore in Houston, Texas. She’s now returned to her Midwestern roots to join Coffee House Press as their publicist. When not working, Laura can be found baking, catching up on Taskmaster, or playing with her tyrant of a chinchilla, Theo. |
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Ülrika Moats, Director of OperationsÜlrika Moats grew up in Treasure Island, Florida. She attended the Savannah College of Art & Design where she earned her BFA in Metals and Jewelry with a minor in Art History, as well as her MFA in Graphic Design. Always passionate about art and fashion, Ülrika began her career in corporate fashion merchandising and operations. In 2014 she joined Brazos Bookstore as the gift buyer and soon became the General Manager. She joined Coffee House Press as the Director of Operations in the summer of 2023. |
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Abbie Phelps, Production EditorAbbie Phelps joined the Coffee House staff in spring of 2022—she previously worked for Wise Ink Creative Publishing. She holds a BA in English Literature and Writing, and has been published in Ribbonfarm and Adorans undergraduate journal. When she's not working on manuscripts, she's going on walks, thinking too much about movies, or trying to read. |
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Quynh Van, Editorial & Production AssistantQuynh joined Coffee House Press in the summer of 2021 following a spring internship. She graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2021 with a BA in Journalism and Film with a concentration in creative writing where she was a contributing writer for The Tower. Quynh supports the editorial and production process, including acquisitions, contracting, submissions management, rights and permissions management, preparation of manuscripts for production, and maintenance of key publishing and copyright data. |
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Mara Winke, Development DirectorMara Winke joined Coffee House Press in 2022. Mara has served as a professional fundraising consultant to nonprofit arts organizations for nearly 20 years, strategizing and managing annual and special project campaigns, foundation and corporate giving and special events. She holds an MBA in Nonprofit Management from the University of St. Thomas and a BA from St. Olaf College. |
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Ken Chen, Spatial Species EditorKen Chen is the recipient of the Yale Younger Poets Award, the oldest annual literary award in America, for his book Juvenilia, which was selected by the poet Louise Glück. He served as the executive director of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop from 2008 to May 2019. An NEA, NYFA and Bread Loaf Fellow and National Book Award judge, Chen cofounded the cultural website Arts & Letters Daily and CultureStrike,a national arts organization dedicated to migrant justice. He has been quoted in NPR’s All Things Considered, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, the New Republic, the New Yorker, and the New York Times. A graduate of Yale Law School, he successfully defended the asylum application of an undocumented Muslim high school student from Guinea detained by Homeland Security. He is currently a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library, where he is working on Death Star, a book about his traveling to the underworld and seeing there everything that has been destroyed by colonialism. He is represented by the Wylie Agency. |
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Youmna Chlala, Spatial Species EditorYoumna Chlala is a writer and artist born in Beirut and based in New York. Her poetry collection, The Paper Camera, was published by Litmus Press in 2019. She is the recipient of a 2018 O. Henry Prize and a Joseph Henry Jackson Award and is the founding editor of Eleven Eleven {1111} Journal of Literature and Art. Her writing appears in publications such as BOMB, Guernica, Prairie Schooner, Bespoke, Aster(ix), CURA, MIT Electronic Journal of Middle East Studies, and Bahithat: Lebanese Association of Women Researchers. She has exhibited widely including at the Hayward Gallery, the Drawing Center, Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Art in General, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Art Dubai, and Hessel Museum of Art. She participated in the 33rd Bienal de São Paulo, the 2017 LIAF Biennial, and the Performa 11 Biennial. She is a professor in the Humanities and Media Studies and Writing Departments at the Pratt Institute. |