College Writing

Author

Simone Pilon is the executive director for Berklee Valencia, responsible for the vision, strategic direction, and day-to-day operations of all areas of the Valencia campus. She is charged with the development and execution of Berklee’s academic strategy on the Valencia campus, including new programs and partnerships, career development and student success efforts, and community outreach. Prior to assuming this role, Pilon served as dean of academic affairs at the Valencia campus, where she played a leading role in academic strategy, overseeing the graduate and undergraduate programs, academic records and services, library, and technology. She previously served as chair of Berklee’s Liberal Arts Department in Boston, serving students at both Berklee College of Music and Boston Conservatory at Berklee. Pilon has been a Fulbright-Hays scholar to Morocco and Tunisia, has published in international journals, and has presented at national and international conferences. She has served as technical reviewer for Cliffs, Dummies, and Everything books; published a student edition of Louis Hémon's canonical novel Maria Chapdelaine, with Molière and Company; and co-edited the book Woodstock Then and Now: A 50th Anniversary Celebration (Clemson University Press) with Berklee faculty member Alex Ludwig. Simone holds a PhD from Université Laval and an MA from McGill University.

Instructor

Mark Polanzak is the author of POP! (Stillhouse Press), a hybrid work of memoir and fiction. His short stories have appeared in The Southern Review, The American Scholar, and elsewhere. His story "Giant" will be included in the anthology Best American Nonrequired Reading, 2017. A runner-up for the Italo Calvino Prize for Fabulist Fiction, Mark is a founding editor for draft: the journal of process, and a producer for The Fail Safe podcast. He received an MFA from the University of Arizona. Mark teaches Literature, Composition, and Creative Writing at Berklee in Boston. He lives in Salem, MA.

Instructor

Gretchen Shae teaches writing in the Liberal Arts department at Berklee College of Music. In addition to teaching, she also enjoys performing, writing songs, and singing with her own band: Gretchen Shae & The MIddle Eight, as well as Gretchen & The Banshees (A SIouxsie & The Banshees tribute).  In 2014, she performed with U2 at the TD Bank Garden in Boston, MA. Boston's WZLX named Shae's song “Dionysius” in its Top Ten Local Picks of the year. Another passion of Shae’s is working with New Beginnings Re-entry Services as a board member. Founded in 2016, New Beginnings Reentry Services, Inc., is a 501 (c) (3) nonprofit organization working in partnership with community agencies to empower and provide supportive services to formerly incarcerated women to successfully rejoin their communities; it is the first in the state of Massachusetts. Her course on Mass Incarceration combines all of her passion to end mass incarceration, educate others, and inspire artists to create thoughtful works in response to this topic. Shae received a Berklee Urban Service award in 2019 for her work.