Jessamyn Smyth received her Bachelor of Arts in Comparative Religion, Classics, and Holocaust Studies (Bachelor’s Degree with Individual Concentration) in the Honors Program at The University of Massachusetts. She wrote her undergraduate thesis “Learning Witness: Salonica and Her Jews” while living and studying in Greece. She was a Commonwealth Scholar, and graduated Magna cum Laude with Interdisciplinary Honors, Golden Key National Honors, and Eta Sigma Phi National Honors in Classical Studies. Throughout college, she worked as an HIV counselor and educator, an advocate for battered women and survivors of childhood sexual abuse, and as a rape crisis counselor. After completing her undergraduate study, Jessamyn continued her work in public health as the Director of Community Education for Violence Prevention at Everywoman’s Center at UMASS. Her work with the Five Colleges and the county’s police departments, faith communities, and social justice programs included awareness raising and practical training for intervention, policy development, and effective response to violence against women and hate crimes based in gender identity, race, ethnicity, and sexual identity. In 2001, Jessamyn left Everywoman’s Center to attend Goddard College’s MFA in Writing Program. Her creative thesis was a full length play called Misogyny, which used the traditional framework of Classical Greek tragedy to tell the stories of modern men and women in work and love. Her critical thesis “To Descry the Rotten Heart: Euripides’ Legacy to the Modern Playwright” examined the historic tradition of using the stage as a means to confront issues of social justice. She received her Master’s Degree in Fine Arts in 2004. Since Goddard, Jessamyn has been teaching, writing, and producing and directing theater. She was faculty at The Writer’s Conference of The University of Pennsylvania in 2005 and 2006, and will be a Visiting Instructor at Middlebury College in 2009. She has also taught creative writing, analysis of literature and film, theater for social justice, and English composition at Keene State College, The University of Massachusetts, and Greenfield Community College. Jessamyn offers regular master classes in fiction, cross-genre writing, generating creative energy and building writing muscle, and skills for critical feedback through various Continuing Education departments and in the community. She also works with private writing students, and remains involved in theater through her production company Basilisk.