The Writers’ Circle is a free program presented by the Arts Council of Greater New Haven designed to support writers by connecting them to experienced experts. The panel discussion style meetings take place once a month at the Arts Council (70 Audubon Street, 2 FL, New Haven). The first session of the fall season will be How to Break Into Freelance on November 18 at 5:30p.m. The featured panelist will be Connecticut writers Daisy Abreu, Jocelyn Ruggerio and Lucy Gellman. Learn the pros and cons of freelancing from active freelancers in our community. This is a great opportunity for writers searching for publishing tips or even just a place to share work, ask questions and meet other local writers. A post discussion social will take place at Koffee on Audubon following the event. Learn more about the panelist below.

Jocelyn Ruggiero is a freelance journalist and author of the blog Foodie Fatale. Her writing has appeared in Parade, Saveur, The Boston Globe, Relish Magazine, Yankee Magazine and Connecticut Magazine. She produced and hosted the radio pilot Foodie Fatale, which broadcast on NPR station WPPB (Southampton, NY) in July 2013 with Michael Stern as her guest– and has appeared regularly on WFSB’s Better Connecticut and 102.9 DRCFM’s “Foodie Fridays.” Ruggiero also teaches adults with neurological and developmental disorders at Vista Arts Center and works as a private college essay tutor.

Lucy Gellman earned her B.A. in Art History & Archaeology at Washington University in Saint Louis in 2011 and her M.A. in the History of Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2013. She has held research assistantships at the Detroit Institute of Arts; the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, Paris IV; and Print Quarterly. In the past two years, she has been a contributing writer for Print Quarterly, The London Student, Journal of the Print World, and the British Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies. She is currently the Florence B. Selden Fellow in the Yale University Art Gallery’s Department of Prints and Drawings and an arts writer for the New Haven Independent.

Daisy C. Abreu is a writer living in New Haven, Connecticut. She received a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Hartford, and an MFA in Creative Writing at Fairfield University where she served as co-editor of creative non-fiction for the online literary journal, Mason’s Road. Her work has been published in the online journal Label Me Latina, The Arts Council of Greater New Haven’s Arts Paper, Spry Literary Journal, the It’s Just Brunch blog, and New Haven Magazine. Daisy is currently working on her collection of essays about growing up Cuban-American in northern New Jersey.

This program is organized by David Brensilver (Writer & Editor of The Arts Paper) Stephen Grant (Writer & Communications Manager at the Arts Council), Daisy Abreu (Writer & Arts Council Board Member) and Lucy Gellman (Writer, New Haven Independent).

For more information please contact Stephen Grant at the Arts Council (203) 772-2788 or via email at sgrant@newhavenarts.org.