Editors and Writers
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Publisher & Editor: Dave Wheelan is a graduate of Washington College, with thirty years experience in institutional development and communications, working for such organizations as the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Foundation, Appalachian Mountain Club, The Nature Conservancy, Audubon-California, Trust for Public Land, and the University of California, Berkeley. He also served as Vice President of Development and College Relations at Washington College.
Managing Editor: John Lang has been a reporter and editor at The Associated Press, Scripps-Howard News Service, New York Post, U.S. News & World Report, The Singapore Straits-Times and The Washington Post. As a Knight International Fellow, he was a founder of the Journalism Institute of Fiji. Lang has edited two collections of essays, including Here, On The Chester, and, coming in the fall from Literary House Press, Athey’s Field.
Art Director: Jean Dixon Sanders has been a painter and graphic designer for the past thirty years. A graduate of Washington College, where she majored in fine art, Jean started her work in design with the Literary House lecture program. She lives with her husband, two teenagers and two demanding cats in Sewall’s Point, Florida. The illustrations she contributes to The Chestertown Spy done with watercolor, colored pencil and ink. She paints Fine Art Daily, which can be seen at http://jeandsanders.blogspot.com
Farm & Garden Editor: Nancy Taylor Robson is the former Baltimore Sun garden writer, who has been growing food and flowers on Maryland’s Upper Eastern Shore for 30 years. She is a certified Maryland Master Gardener. She’s also the author of Woman in the Wheelhouse, which details the six years she worked on coastal tugboats, earning her operator’s license, and author of the award-winning coming-of-age novel, Course of the Waterman.
Contributing Editor and Marketing Consultant: James Dissette is the founder of monthly community newspapers in Oregon, Michigan and on the Eastern Shore, including the Chestertown-based Eastern Shore Milestone. He is the 1971 winner of the Sophie Kerr Award for Creative Writing, and most recently published Fierce Blessings, a collection of poems in 2008. He is a partner at Chester River Press and recently designed their current publication, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey as translated by Alexander Pope and is currently working on his book, A Hungry Moon.
Curiosities Editor: Melissa McIntire has worked for The Washington Times, The Kent County News, and the American Cancer Society. She has a Bachelor of Science in communication from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville where she majored in journalism and minored in speech communication and English. She has lived and traveled all over the world, but is currently making her home in Worton with her husband, son, and an overweight bulldog.
Videographer & Photographer: Chris Metzloff graduated from Warren Wilson College in Asheville, NC in 2007, majoring in Psychology. Before coming to the Chestertown Spy, Chris worked at a residential mental health facility in North Carolina, and most recently assisted with an award winning documentary Voices of American Law at Duke Law School.
Contributing Writer: Kelly Castro is a writer, artist, and certified life coach. After graduating from the Maryland Institute College of Art, she worked for fifteen years as a graphic designer. When she got antsy to do something else, she went back to school and earned an MFA in fiction writing. Then she went to a life coach for help with her career, and ended up becoming a coach herself. Now she’s pulling her three passions together: working on a collection of short stories (Aliens in the Yard), making wacky photographs (www.kellycastro.smugmug.com), and coaching clients around the country (www.kellycastro.com).
Contributing Writer: John Mann is a native of Baltimore, MD. After successfully hiking the 2175 mile-long Appalachian Trail in August 2005, John joined Echo Hill Outdoor School in Worton as part of the teaching staff. In March, 2007, John became a member of the 400th Anniversary Shallop Crew that traced John Smith’s voyage around the Chesapeake Bay. He incorporates cultural history and his love for the Chesapeake region in every aspect of his work. He was recently published in the “ Delmarva Quarterly.” And for the past three years, John has been the head coach of a Kent County Parks and Recreation youth basketball team.
Green Editor: Marty Fujita is an evolutionary biologist whose book, Archipelago: the Islands of Indonesia, co-authored with Gavan Daws, celebrates the travels and discoveries of the great naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace. Fujita was the founding director of the Nature Conservancy’s Indonesia program, and more recently co-founder and current president of Food for Thought, a farm to school program in Ojai, CA. Marty also serves on the board of Johnson Ohana Charitable Foundation.
Fortnightly Editor: Fairfax Wheelan (1856–1915) was the founder of Fairfax Wheelan & Co., and has been channeled by his namesake and publisher since 2008. Born in San Francisco, he attended school in Ireland, and later graduated from Harvard in the celebrated class of 1880. During his life, Wheelan was editor of the Young Californian, the Crimson and the Berkeley Beacon. In addition to running his family’s business, he was a frequent contributor to local and national journals and magazines, as well as a leading figure in reform politics in San Francisco. While first and foremost a businessman, Fairfax Wheelan believed in, and successfully passed along to his family, the importance of art, good writing, clean government, and the joy of imagination.
Technology Adviser: Kirk Mastin is a film maker, writer and social media strategist based in Seattle WA. Kirk is the founder of ‘Lo-Fi, Hi-Style Inc.’ (lofihistyle.com), a website dedicated to teaching people how to create and distribute viral video using social media. Kirk travels the country teaching digital storytelling and social media strategy to businesses and government agencies. Kirk’s personal work with the Flip Video camera is featured by technology editor David Pogue of the New York times, and his short films documenting the ‘fixed gear’ bicycle culture have been seen and written about by people all over the world. Kirk’s goal is to nurture others to create compelling content for the Internet without the need for expensive equipment or large production teams.
Contributing Writer: Brandon Righi graduated from Washington College in 2007. He flirted with the idea of becoming a professor, leading to a brief encounter with graduate school (at William and Mary) before deciding to ride out the world-wide recession by doing some travelling. Currently he lives in Cork, Ireland, with his wife, where he writes about their experiences, pens freelance articles, and works in retail. The Righis’ travels are chronicled at Éire Apparent; eireapparent.blogspot.com.
Contributing Writer: Katherine Honold Righi has been a development intern, sandwich shop waitress, swim coach, corporate researcher and a store clerk at a Golf Shop. She is a 2008 graduate of Washington College, where she majored in history, minored in earth and planetary science and was involved in several different campus activities, including The Elm. She currently lives in Cork City, Ireland with her husband where she writes, works, travels and enjoys the Irish culture.
