Betsy Wheeler, Director (she/her)
Betsy Wheeler is the author of the poetry collection Loud Dreaming in a Quiet Room and the poetry chapbooks Start Here and Mental Detours. She earned her MFA in poetry at The Ohio State University in 2005, and held the Stadler Fellowship at Bucknell University from 2005-2007. Her poems have appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Windfall Room, The Journal, Bat City Review, Better, MiPoesias, Forklift Ohio and elsewhere. She lives with her wife and kiddo in Amherst, MA.
Noy Holland, Creative Director and Co-founder (she/her)
Noy Holland received the Katherine Anne Porter Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her books include I Was Trying to Describe What It Feels Like, New and Selected Stories; the novel Bird; and three collections of short fiction—Swim for the Little One First, What Begins with Bird, and The Spectacle of the Body. She has published fiction and essays in Best American Short Stories, The Kenyon Review, Epoch, Antioch, Conjunctions, AGNI, The Believer, and NOON, among others. She is a co-founder and Creative Director of the Juniper Institute, and a partner in the collaborative interdisciplinary series Art Sustainability Activism at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Jeff Parker, Creative Director (he/him)
Jeff Parker is the author of the nonfiction book Where Bears Roam the Streets: A Russian Journal (Harper Collins), the novel Ovenman (Tin House), and the short story collection The Taste of Penny (Dzanc). With Pasha Malla, he co-assembled the book of found sports poetry Erratic Fire, Erratic Passion (Featherproof), and with Annie Liontas he edited A Manner of Being: Writers on Their Mentors (UMass Press). His short fiction and nonfiction have been published in The Best American Nonrequired Reading, Ploughshares, Tin House, The Walrus, and many others. He currently teaches in the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He is the cofounder and Director of the DISQUIET International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal, as well as a Creative Director of the Juniper Summer Writing Institute.
Saffron Turner, Managing Director (they/them)
Saffron received their bachelor’s degree in sociology with a minor in women, gender and sexuality studies in September 2024 from UMass Amherst. Their research interest is disability studies with a focus on autistic self-advocacy. Saffron is a writer and previously took poetry workshops at Hampshire College and a creative nonfiction class at UMass. After a prolonged sojourn in their home state of Florida, Saffron now resides in Turners Falls, MA with their two cats.
Porter Lunceford, Assistant Director (he/him and they/them)
Porter Lunceford is a poet and playwright from Northern Utah. Porter holds a BA in English with a Creative Writing emphasis from Weber State University and is an MFA candidate in poetry at UMass Amherst. Porter has written children’s musicals with their partner, Kyle, and the pair currently live in Northampton, MA with their dog.
Vika Mujumdar, Assistant Director (she/her)
Vika Mujumdar was born in New Jersey and raised in Pune, India. She holds an MA in Comparative Literature from UMass Amherst, where she is an MFA student in Creative Writing (Prose). She edits Liminal Transit Review.
Rachael Carbone, Administrative Assistant (she/her)
Rachael Carbone is a Freshman at UMass Amherst and is from the Boston area. She is majoring in Managerial Economics and minoring in English with a concentration in creative writing. She’s a writer for Her Campus. She’s had a lot of fun working at the Juniper Institute. While living at UMass, Rachael has found a new love for Green Curry Pho.