The Shapiro Center at Wesleyan

Gabrielle Bruney, Wednesday, February 20th at 12:15 PM

Gabrielle Bruney is a former staff writer for Jezebel. Her work has appeared in Esquire, Vice, and other publications.

Jenny Fran Davis, Wednesday, March 7th at 12:15 PM

Jenny Fran Davis is the author of Dykette and Everything Must Go. She received her MFA at the University of Iowa, where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow. Her essays have appeared in Los Angeles Review of Books, Washington Square Review, and Speculative Nonfiction. She lives in Brooklyn.

Alex Levy, Wednesday, March 26th at 12:15 PM

Alex Halpern Levy '08 is a speechwriter, media strategist, and Tony Award-winning producer based in New York. In 2016, he founded A.H. Levy & Co., a speechwriting and strategy firm. Before founding the firm, Alex worked as chief speechwriter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Alex has co-produced four Broadway shows: Alex Edelman's Just For Us (2023), Parade (Tony Award, Best Revival of a Musical, 2023), A Strange Loop (Tony Award, Best Musical, 2022) and Company (Tony Award, Best Revival of a Musical, 2022).

Nicholas During, Wednesday, April 16th at 12:15 PM

Nicholas During is the publicist at The New York Review of Books

Isabella Corletto, Wednesday, September 20th at 12:15 PM

Isabella Corletto is a writer, editor, and literary translator from Guatemala City, Guatemala. Her translations from Spanish and Italian include Amalia Andrade’s Things You Think About When You Bite Your Nails (Penguin Books, 2020) and work published in the Cincinnati Review, Latin American Literature Today, the Arkansas International, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the 2023 PEN Grant for the English Translation of Italian Literature for her translation of Giorgia Tribuiani’s novel Padri.

Over the past five years, Isabella has held different positions in the publishing industry. She holds a literary translation MA from the University of Rochester and a BA from Wesleyan University, where she studied English and Italian studies. She speaks Spanish, English, Italian, and Portuguese. She currently works at Indent Literary Agency, is the 2022-23 Editorial Fellow at Words Without Borders, and is based in Brooklyn, NY.

Lily Herman, Date TBD

Lily Herman is a writer, editor, podcaster, and digital strategist. Her work has been published on Teen Vogue, Allure, Glamour, Refinery29, TIME, Mashable, Business Insider, Cosmopolitan, ELLE, and more. From February 2013 to May 2016, she was the co-founder, editor-in-chief, and CEO of The Prospect (TP), the largest student-run college access organization in the world. The site had over 400 student volunteers worldwide (all under the age of 22) over the site's three-year span and has had over 8 million page views to date. Within TP, she oversaw the company's editorial strategy, business development, programming, and marketing. She was named one of Glamour's College Women of the Year in 2015 for the endeavor.

Previously, Lily worked as Managing Editor at HelloFlo, a women's health startup, where she was in charge of the operation's entire editorial, social media, and email marketing strategy; the publication later won a Webby Award based on the strategy she created. She was also a National Contributing Editor for HerCampus.com, where she edited the High School and How She Got There sections in addition to writing dozens of articles, and a Senior Editorial Intern at The Muse, a career startup. Recently, she served as the Koeppel Journalism Fellow at Wesleyan University, where she taught a course on media to undergraduates.

 

Avery Trufelman, Tuesday, November 14th at 12:15 PM

Avery Trufelman is a radio producer. Currently, she serves as the host of “Nice Try!” a podcast from Curbed about utopian experiments. From 2020 to 2021, she served as the host of The Cut podcast at New York magazine, and from 2013 to 2020, she was a producer of the show 99% Invisible, one of the most popular podcasts ever.