Workshop Leaders
Clarence A. Haynes
Clarence A. Haynes, a native New Yorker and Columbia University grad, is the author of the Summer 2026 urban fantasy novel The Broken Hearts Agency, and the urban fantasy/glam horror novel The Ghosts of Gwendolyn Montgomery. He's also the cowriter of Omar Epps’s lauded YA sci-fi/fantasy title Nubia: The Awakening and its sequel The Reckoning. And he's the author of the nonfiction work The Legacy of Jim Crow, which breaks down the history of discriminatory laws in America for young readers. Having a love affair with speculative fiction, Clarence has also worked as a developmental editor with different publishing houses. He lives in Brooklyn.
Phill Branch
Phill Branch is a writer, live performance storyteller, and regional Emmy Award-winning filmmaker. His memoir, The Double Dutch Fuss, will be released by HarperCollins/Amistad in 2026. He is a 2025 recipient of the Maryland State Arts Council’s Creativity Grant and received the Council's highest honor, the Individual Artist Award, for Theater (Solo Performance) in 2019. He was the GrandSLAM Champion of The Moth in D.C. in 2018 and has since traveled all over the country and overseas to tell stories with the organization. Branch was a 2014 Lambda Literary Nonfiction Emerging Voices Fellow and is the founder and Creative Director of Baltimore Story Fest, a showcase for live, personal storytelling. An alumnus of the American Film Institute, Branch has an MFA in Screenwriting. He earned his BA in Mass Media Arts at Hampton University and later returned as a professor in the English department to teach writing and develop the Film Studies program. Currently, Branch is a Resident Artist at the Howard County Center for the Arts in Maryland.
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Center for Black Literature
Medgar Evers College, CUNY
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ATTN: Wild Seeds Retreat Summer 2026
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