Masthead
Janna Marlies Maron, Editor & Publisher
Janna Marlies Maron (she/her) is a professional editor with nearly 20 years of experience helping writers to complete their projects and produce the best work possible. Her experience includes time as a magazine editor, college professor, agency editorial director, and content director for a popular internet brand. Her life’s work began when she was a kid writing in a spiral bound notebook, and she has since turned an MA in creative writing into a successful career as an editor, publisher, and director of her own business supporting women authors writing nonfiction. In addition to founding and editing Under the Gum Tree, she hosts a podcast all about creative nonfiction as well as private online community for nonfiction writers called More to the Story.
Dorothy Rice, Managing Editor
Dorothy Rice is a writer, editor and Amherst Writers and Authors-certified writing workshop facilitator. She is the author of two memoirs from small presses, GRAY IS THE NEW BLACK (Otis Books, June 2019) and THE RELUCTANT ARTIST (Shanti Arts, 2015), and has published essays and stories in many places, including Under the Gum Tree, Hippocampus, The Rumpus and the Brevity blog. After raising five children and retiring from a career managing statewide environmental protection programs, Rice earned an MFA in Creative Writing from UC Riverside, Palm Desert, at 60. Dorothy co-directs the literary series Stories on Stage Sacramento and works for 916 Ink, a Sacramento-based youth literacy nonprofit. You can find Dorothy at dorothyriceauthor.com, and on twitter at @dorothyrowena.
Evan White, Art Director & Designer
Evan White (he/him) is graduate of the University of California, Davis. In 2019 his “Happy Times with Horses” was published in Catamaran, and in 2016 his story “Patterson” received an honorable mention in Glimmer Train’s “Short Story Award” contest. He co-edited and published an anthology of poetry and short fiction entitled All the Vegetarians in Texas Have Been Shot, and currently serves as the director of Stories on Stage Davis, a monthly literary performance series in Davis, California.
Cat Hubka, Senior Editor
Cat Hubka (she/her) is a writer and editor who earned her MFA from the University of New Mexico where she now teaches technical writing to engineering students. Her poems and essays have won various awards and been featured in publications such as The Southwest Anthology, Gorgion Review, and the multimedia platform Chillfiltr Review to name a few. Her work is informed by sobriety and heavily influenced by her previous incarnation as a wanderer. She lives in Albuquerque with a 17-year-old cat.
Visola Wurzer, Digital Marketing Assistant
Visola Wurzer (she/her) is a freelance grant writer and editor living in Brooklyn. She holds an MFA in creative writing from City College and her work appears in Bowery Gothic, NanoCrit, Turnstyle Reading Series, Queer Conventions, and Sympathetic Ink. When she isn’t writing, she can be found practicing Ving Tsun Kung Fu or sipping a nice tea with her cat.
Debra Coleman, Editorial Assistant
Debra Coleman (she/her) is a writer and former architect who earned a Masters at Yale University. She is co-editor of the essay anthology Architecture and Feminism (Princeton Architectural Press, 1996). She has shared her nonfiction stories with audiences at the Fairfield Theatre Company, and other venues in the New York City area. Debra enjoys shunpiking on cross-country road trips between California, where she was raised, and Connecticut, where she puts her disability to use, advocating in her community for access and inclusion.
Louise Julig, Editorial Assistant
Louise Julig (she/her) is a writer from Encinitas, California whose creative nonfiction has appeared in Lunch Ticket, FEED, Crack the Spine, Five Minutes, the Brevity Blog, and others. She also has a weird compunction to read slightly embarrassing true stories in front of a bar full of people at the VAMP storytelling showcase of the San Diego literary and performing arts organization So Say We All, where she also volunteers as a peer mentor and reader. She has told stories about staring at people with food in their teeth, an epiphany at a summer camp dance, men telling her to smile, and her first field trip to an adult store. She also writes Be Your Own Hero, a newsletter about being brave in small moments. Find Louise at louisejulig.com and on Twitter and Instagram at @LouiseJulig.
Margaret Whitford, Editorial Assistant
Margaret Whitford writes creative nonfiction and recently completed a memoir exploring the complex legacy of inherited trauma. Her work has appeared in the anthology, Good Dogs Doing Good, from LaChance Publishing, Brevity, The Fourth River, Under The Gum Tree, and elsewhere. She co-edited the anthology, Between Song and Story, Essays for the Twenty-first Century from Autumn House Press. She earned an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, and later an MFA from Chatham University. She spent twenty years working with not-for-profit organizations in senior leadership roles, including a decade in the social justice field. In addition to her writing, she is a dedicated Francophile.
Sara Dovre Wudali, Editorial Assistant
Sara Dovre Wudali (she/her) is a writer and editor living in Saint Paul. Dovre Wudali is a 2023–2024 Poetry Fellow in the Loft Mentor Series and has received support from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council. Her poems and essays have been published in literary journals and anthologies such as under the gum tree, Barrelhouse, Blood Tree Literature, and the Saint Paul Almanac. She is the co-editor with Suzanne Swanson of the hybrid anthology chapbook, All You Need Is One Avocado. Dovre Wudali grew up on a farm in southwest Minnesota, where wind blows through the cottonwoods and box elder bugs rule. You can learn more and read her work at saradovrewudali.com.
