Staff

John C. Brereton

John Brereton has spent his career administering university writing programs. After getting his Ph.D. in 1973 at Rutgers University he worked at the City University of New York, then in the midst of its Open Admissions program. While at CUNY he became head of the New York City Writing Project in 1977 with the help of a grant from the Bay Area Writing Project. In 1979 he moved to Wayne State University in Detroit, where he founded the university's doctoral program in Rhetoric and Composition. In 1985 Dr. Brereton moved to the University of Massachusetts, Boston, where he supervised writing students and the Writing Proficiency Examination. In 2001 he became director of the writing program at Brandeis University. His publications include textbooks (A Plan for Writing, The Norton Reader) and scholarly studies (Traditions of Inquiry, The Origins of Composition Studies in American Colleges, 1875-1925, a Documentary History) as well as many articles. His most recent publication is Living Literature: An INtroduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama, which was published by Pearson Longman in 2007.

Jenny Desai

After graduating from Harvard College with a degree in Classics, Jenny Desai studied creative writing at the University of Michigan's MFA program and at Stanford University, as a Stegner Fellow. She has worked as a literary agent and as a writer and editor for community newspapers and magazines including San Jose Magazine, where she served as managing editor. She is currently on the editorial board of Science & Spirit magazine, and her freelance articles appear in a variety of publications.