Bio

Tripp Baltz, as the Head of Research at Boomtown, uses his extensive experience as a writer, researcher and interviewer to generate the platform’s strategic content for thought leadership in corporate innovation. Baltz looks around corners to examine and deconstruct trends, identifies those which are the most impactful and relevant, and creates analysis to help clients discern what’s really going on.

Baltz has led a more than 35-year career as an award-winning journalist, writer and teacher. As a reporter for Bloomberg Industry Group, he initiated new coverage areas in legal and regulatory affairs, writing about policy developments affecting law firms, major corporations and small businesses, including startups. He also pioneered the company’s nationwide beat for state environmental policy and created a regular column about the vexing global problems associated with the taxation of remote sales and e-commerce.

Baltz teaches writing, media, politics and international affairs at the College of Professional Studies at the University of Denver, where he served as director of the Master of Liberal Studies program and the graduate certificate in Professional Writing. He revamped the college’s research and writing courseware and guidance, served as a master’s student capstone advisor, and represented the college on the Faculty Senate and admissions council. He designed courses in global affairs, writing, social media and human geography, and has served as a speaker and presenter at conferences on global affairs, liberal arts, and the humanities. He has authored thousands of articles covering topics in business, politics and regulatory affairs and has published two nonfiction books.

Education

Tripp has a Master of Liberal Studies with concentrations in Global Business and Culture, Spanish and Italian. He earned a B.A. from the University of Notre Dame with concentrations in American Studies and German. 

Bio

Heather Beasley is a playwright, director, dramaturg, and teaching artist. She currently serves as Director of Education at Miners Alley Playhouse, where she designs and manages the company’s education programs for students of all ages. She also writes and directs for the mainstage and theatre for young audiences (TYA) production seasons. At Butterfly Effect Theatre of Colorado (BETC), she runs the BETC Writers Group, a collaborative of Colorado playwrights developing ten-minute, full-length, and TYA plays.

Heather’s experience in new play development and professional production includes work on ten world premiere productions and dozens of new plays with writers from across the country. She designed the innovative Generations residency program, the first residency program in the country specifically for parent playwrights. Heather created the Science Shorts program, which paired playwrights with environmental science researchers to create an original education event incorporating short plays, science talks, and hands-on experiments and creative activities.

Heather’s original plays include Bone Records, The Gentle Life-Changing Magic of Burning it All Down to the Ground, and the TYA musical Amelia’s Big Idea (co-written with Richie Cannaday and Edie Carey).

Education

Heather holds a B.A. in Creative Writing/Theatre from Creighton University, an M.A. in Theatre with Dramaturgy focus from Villanova University, and a Ph.D. in Theatre from University of Colorado Boulder.

Motivation for Teaching 

Heather brings her arts administrative experience and artistic creativity into her teaching approach. She loves working with students who are breaking disciplinary boundaries and re-envisioning arts organizations as places to build satisfying lives as well as prominent creative careers. Previously, she taught at the University of Colorado Boulder and for the MFA Performance Program at Naropa University, where she won the 2020 Faculty Involvement Award.

Bio

Dianne Blomberg is a writer and speaker living in Colorado. She is a multi-published short story and creative non-fiction author whose work can be found in HerStry, Feminine Collective, Across the Margin, Button Eye Review, Alpha Female Society, American Writer’s Review, in “best of” volumes and anthologies and several more. Currently, Dianne bundles her creativity, her understanding of human relationships, and her relentless drive toward story to work as a TV scriptwriter.

Education

Dianne holds a Ph.D. in Human Communication from the University of Denver, an M.A. in Organizational Communication from the University of Northern Colorado, and a B.A. in Speech Communication from Metropolitan State University.

Professional Experience

Dianne’s professional career started in marketing and public relations but the need to connect in a more meaningful way moved her to become a teacher. First, she was a high school teacher of writing and speech, then moved on to become a college professor. Always creating stories and scenes in her head, she is credited with two published children’s picture books. Dianne’s human-interest stories are featured in local newspapers and her relatable relationship research is cited in Good Housekeeping, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Family Life, Newsday-New York, The Denver Post and more. She is the 2023 President of the Denver Woman’s Press Club.

Teaching Philosophy

Dianne teaches to help students achieve their best work and achieve professional success. Her goal is to guide students to the edge of their understanding where new discoveries await them.

Bio

Traci (Trai) Cartwright, MFA, is a 30-year entertainment industry veteran and creative writing specialist. She teaches, produces, and writes screenplays. Her filmmaking and creative writing expertise spans all genres and mediums, and her background as a business development and marketing consultant elevates creatives’ professional enterprises.

While in Los Angeles, she was a screenwriter, independent film producer, and story consultant and development executive for multiple studios. She was the Assistant Director of Leonardo DiCaprio’s online endeavors and the Manager for 20th Century Fox’s Mobile Studios. Trai currently teaches creative writing, screenwriting, and producing for a range of Colorado colleges. She is the screenwriter of Secret Ellington, and producer of docu-web series Hidden Tigers, and short film Sundown Road.

Whether as a studio level development executive or as a professor at Colorado’s top writing programs, her greatest pleasure after writing is in the development of writers. Trai has spent her entire professional life dedicated to elevating the craft and creating opportunities for filmmakers and writers of all mediums and genres. Creators are the single most important force in forging understanding and an illuminated pathway through this world.

Education

Trai earned her B.S. from New York University and her MFA from the University of California Riverside.

Bio

Jessica Comola (she/her) is an editor, educator, multidisciplinary writer and visual artist. She is the author of Everything We Met Changed Form and Followed the Rest, published by Horse Less Press in 2016, and What Kind of Howly Divine (Horse Less, 2014). Her work has been published in numerous literary journals and magazines.

Education

Jessica earned her Ph.D in English and Literary Arts from the University of Denver (2019) and her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Mississippi (2014). She writes across multiple genres, including poetry, prose, and drama and often incorporates visual art into her writing.

Professional Background

Jessica currently works at ASCD+ISTE, an education nonprofit, as an Editor for Educational Leadership magazine. Previously, she has worked as a consulting editor and content editor for federal clients, including the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Affairs and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

For many years, she has taught creative, technical and professional writing to both undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Denver, the University of Colorado and the University of Mississippi. Some of her most rewarding teaching experiences have been working with young writers at the Denver School of the Arts, Writers in the Schools and Lighthouse Writers Workshop.

Bio

Annie Dawid teaches writing, edits manuscripts, and makes art in the Wet Mountain Valley of South-Central Colorado, where she also writes fiction and non-fiction. Her sixth book, Paradise Undone: A Novel Of Jonestown, was published in 2023 by Inkspot Publishing.

Annie’s previous books include Put Off My Sackcloth: Essays, the poetry chapbook Anatomie Of The World, a collection of linking short stories titled And Darkness Was Under His Feet: Stories Of A Family (winner of the 2008 Short Fiction prize), Lily In The Desert, and her first book, York Ferry: A Novel, which was well reviewed in the New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times, and went into a second printing.

An English professor and director of creative writing for 15 years at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon, Annie left full-time teaching for full-time writing. Her stories and reviews, poems and essays have been published by many outlets, including the Denver Post, High Country News, the Oregonian, Glimmer Train Stories and Sequestrum.

Education

Annie earned her B.A. in Journalism and her M.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, and her Ph.D. in English from the University of Denver.

Bio

Tim Earley has published five collections of poems, including Poems Descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery (Horse Less Press, 2014) and Linthead Stomp (Horse Less Press, 2016). A sixth book, Foolishness Burns Hairy Sparrows in the Quare Dream, is forthcoming.

Tim’s poetry combines experimental/innovative approaches with a deep engagement of Appalachian and Southern culture. His work has appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies, including the Chicago Review, Denver Quarterly, Colorado Review and Best American Experimental Writing. He has received writing fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and Hawthornden Castle in Lasswade, Scotland.

In addition to his work in poetry, he’s also the creator/writer of the tabletop roleplaying game, Holler: An Appalachian Apocalypse, which was released by Pinnacle Entertainment in early 2023. His graphic novel collaboration with the artist Francesco Chiappara (Prenzy) is also forthcoming.

Education

Tim earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alabama.

Motivation for Teaching

Tim has taught at the college level for 28 years. Since 2012, he has taught a wide variety of courses for the University of Mississippi, including creative writing, fantasy literature, blues literature, Shakespeare on Film and early British lit survey courses. He has won multiple awards for his teaching. Tim seeks to create an energetic, inclusive classroom environment that empowers students to pursue their chosen creative paths while introducing them to new techniques, aesthetic approaches and literary traditions/schools of thought.

Bio

Jennifer Golightly has taught research, argumentation, writing, rhetoric, history and literature for the past 24 years. She is the author of a book, “The Family, Marriage, And Radicalism In British Women’s Novels Of The 1790s: Public Affection And Private Affliction,” published in 2011 with Bucknell University Press and chapters in two edited collections, “Reproduction in the Novels of the 1790s,” which appeared in The Secrets of Generation: Reproduction in the Long Eighteenth Century (U of Toronto P, 2015), and “Gender Performance and the Spectacle of Female Suffering in Samuel Jackson Pratt’s Emma Corbett,” published in Female Transatlantic Travelers 1688-1843 (Bucknell P, 2021).

Jennifer supports digital humanities research and online teaching and learning and teaches courses on material and cultural eighteenth-century history as lecturer at Colorado College. She has taught writing, research, and literature courses at the College of Professional Studies since 2007.

Education

Jennifer earned a Ph.D. from the University of Denver in English Literature with a subspecialty in composition and rhetoric and an M.A. from the University of Denver in English Literature.

Bio

Joseph (Joe) Hutchison, Colorado Poet Laureate (2014-2019), is the award-winning author of 20 poetry collections, most recently Cliff Swallow at Mesa Verde; Under Sleep’s New Moon; The World As Is: New & Selected Poems, 1972-2015; and Marked Men (narrative poems focused on the aftermath of the Sand Creek Massacre). A selection of his poetry appears in the first ever collection of poems by Colorado Poets Laureate, Begin Where You Are: The Colorado Poets Laureate Anthology, published in 2025.

Joe’s poetry, short fiction, essays, reviews, and interviews have appeared in over 100 journals, including American Poetry Review, the Berlin Review, the 20th anniversary issue of Cutthroat, Tar River Poetry, and Poetry Salzburg Review, as well as numerous anthologies. His narrative sequence Bed of Coals was chosen by Wanda Coleman for the Colorado Poetry Award.

As Colorado’s poet laureate, Joe worked to promote poetry throughout the state, participating in nearly 100 events such as poetry readings, workshops, interviews, and gatherings such as the Poetry Out Loud state finals. He has co-edited three poetry anthologies and worked tirelessly to bolster the craft by teaching, leading poetry workshops, and addressing the craft at literary conferences and conventions.

While making the bulk of his living as a commercial writer and editor, Joe has taught elementary through high school-age children for Poets in the Schools programs in Colorado and Oregon, undergraduate writing and literature classes at a variety of institutions, and graduate students at the College of Professional Studies.

Education

Joe earned his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and his B.A. in English and Education from the University of Northern Colorado.

Bio

L.A. Jennings teaches non-fiction writing, literature and cultural studies with a focus on intersectionality and globalization. She is the author of two books: “She’s a Knockout! a History of Women in Fighting Sports” and “Mixed Martial Arts: A History from Ancient Fighting Sports to the UFC.” L.A. was a regular contributor to VICE Media and has been interviewed by NPR, The Economist, Cosmopolitan and the HISTORY channel as an expert on the history and culture of martial arts. L.A. uses her experience in professional publishing to mentor students in crafting unique and innovative writing that appeals to a wide audience.

Education

L.A. earned a Ph.D. in English and Literary Studies from the University of Denver, an M.A. in English Literature from Florida State University and a B.A. in English Literature from Florida State University.