About the Organizers

Penny Guisinger, Co-Director

Penny Guisinger had an idea for a conference a few years back, and believes it’s possibly the best idea she ever had. Annually, she welcomes writers to her part of the world and sees to it that they learn a lot, laugh a lot, and yearn to come back. Also an accomplished writer, she is the author of the book Postcards from Here, published by Vine Leaves Press in 2016.

Three-time notable in Best American Essays and Pushcart nominated, she is the 2016 winner of the Maine Literary Award for short nonfiction. Other work has appeared in Fourth Genre, River Teeth, The Rumpus, Guernica, the Brevity blog, Solstice Literary Magazine, multiple anthologies, and other places. She is a former Assistant Editor at Brevity and a graduate of the Stonecoast MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine.

Suzanne Strempek Shea, Co-Director

Western Massachusetts writer, journalist and writing instructor Suzanne Strempek Shea is helping with the restart of Iota. She is delighted to wear the t-shirt reading “Penny Guisinger’s Thought Partner.” Suzanne was a member of the faculty at the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast MFA program in creative writing for 18 years and was writer-in-residence and director of the creative writing program at Bay Path University in Longmeadow, Mass., for 12. Her enthusiasm for creating and running literary events and programs over the past 20 years has resulted in countless readings, lectures, book club celebrations, visiting writers series, nighttime writing workshops, creative writing undergraduate classes, and lecture days. At Bay Path, she created the university’s MFA in Creative Nonfiction, the annual Summer Writing Seminar in Dingle, Ireland, and, with MFA Director Leanna James Blackwell, created the university’s Certificate Program in Narrative Medicine. She has taught in the MFA program at Emerson College and in the creative writing program at the University of South Florida. She’s also taught in Ireland at Annie Deppe and Ted Deppe’s Curlew Writers Conferences in Howth and Dingle, and in Dingle via the Stonecoast Ireland residency.

Emily Guirl, Registration

Emily started working at Cobscook Institute in 2025. As Cobscook’s Community Programming Steward, she works to deliver meaningful programs, projects, and classes to community members. Her relationship with Cobscook programs started in 2010, when she moved Downeast. She met some of her first Maine friends at a Cobscook pizza night! Over the years she has enjoyed many Cobscook events and programs - pottery, yoga, botany, sailing, playgroup, and history talks.

Emily graduated from Oberlin College. She has worked in environmental education, agriculture, and conservation. Before moving to Cobscook she was Downeast Coastal Conservancy’s outreach director, managing programming, communications, and development.

With her incredible family, Emily tends a small farm in Whiting. Contact Emily.

Heather Pellegren, Hospitality

New to Cobscook Institute as of 2025 Heather looks forward to growing into her role as Retreat Center Steward and becoming part of the Washington County community. Professionally she has found herself playing the role of Organic Farmer, Activist, Yoga teacher, Resort Manager, Metalsmith, and getting her hands dirty in various kitchens and gardens across the country; all in the pursuit of creating beauty and being of service to others. She’s excited that her love of lifelong learning, and being of service to others aligns so closely with Cobscook Institute’s vision and mission and couldn’t be happier to help facilitate their operations. Maine has been a place Heather has called home at various times in her life since 1999, and has lived on Mount Desert Island since 2014, but is eager to move farther north. She revels in all of Maine’s natural glory whenever she can, feasting on berries during hikes in the summer and cooling off with impromptu swims are just two of the activities that she considers life worth living for. Usually accompanying her are her daughter and dog which govern most of her life’s decisions.

She often laments there are not enough hours in the day to learn, see or do all that she wants to, but is also kind of glad that there aren’t because she can sleep for sport! Contact Heather.