Word’s Worth founder Darren McGarvey is an award-winning teacher, writer, and program facilitator and a trained public speaker with an extensive writing and education background.
He has taught writing at Lakota East High School, Stivers School for the Arts, and Wright State University. He is currently the Secondary Gifted Coordinator and International Baccalaureate Coordinator at Kettering Fairmont High School where he directs plays and has taught AP/IB English Literature and English Language as well as creative writing and theatre classes. He was a student at StoryStudio Chicago for two years, and has written a novel and a short story collection. His short story "The Graveyard Game" won third place in a Dayton Daily News short story writing competition, and his short story “Smoke Break” was published in the March-May 2009 edition of an east coast journal. His writing is also featured in Managing Interactive Media Projects by Tim Frick.
Darren’s educational writing has been published in a number of programs and textbooks for companies such as McGraw-Hill, Glencoe/Jamestown Education, Thomson Publishing, Holt, Rhinehart, and Winston, and Scholastic Reading Association—and he has helped create and assess standardized tests for high school students.
He has a certificate in editing from the Graham School at the University of Chicago and a master's degree in teaching writing from Miami University.
Email Darren at wordsworthdayton@gmail.com.
Darren McGarvey
Katrina Kittle’s newest novel Morning in This Broken World, releases September 1, 2023 and is an Amazon First Reads pick for August. Katrina is the author of four other novels for adults—Traveling Light, Two Truths & a Lie, Kindness of Strangers, and The Blessings of the Animals—and one novel for tweens, Reasons to Be Happy. The Kindness of Strangers was a BookSense pick and was the Fiction winner for the 2006 Great Lakes Book Awards.
She is a graduate of Ohio University and earned her MFA in creative writing from Spalding University in Louisville. She has been on faculty for the Antioch Writers' Workshop, the Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop, the Chicago Writers Association Conference, The Midwest Writer’s Workshop, The Writer's Digest Novel Writing Conference in NYC, and the Writer's Block Conference in Louisville. She is a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Dayton, and a frequent public speaker.
For more information on Katrina or her books, visit Katrinakittle.com.
Katrina Kittle
Christina Consolino
Christina Consolino is the co-author of Historic Photos of University of Michigan and the author of Rewrite the Stars and The Weight We Carry. She also publishes romance novels under the pen name, Keely Stephens. Christina's work has been featured in various literary journals, both print and online, and she serves as contributing editor for Shelf Media Group.
A graduate of the University of Michigan (Go Blue!) with a BA in French and PhD in physiology, Christina taught college-level anatomy and physiology before concentrating her passion on writing and editing. Her freelance clients include educational consulting companies, Department of Defense contractors, hybrid publishers, marketing firms, and both nonfiction and fiction writers.
Learn more about Christina and her work at christinaconsolino.com.
Heather and Brian Martin
MartinInk is a full-service writing, editing, and writer coaching company. Heather and Brian Martin work with a variety of clients—educators, novelists and memoirists, executives, marketing and development directors, and educational publishers, to name a few.
Heather Martin has been a professional writer and editor since 1991. She brings a sharp eye and an ability to machete through the weeds to get to the core message for clients. Clients turn to her when they want to make sure they are making clear, concise, and compelling points. Through a combination of coaching, editing, and ghost writing, she helps clients make their copy accessible without sacrificing important nuance.
Brian Martin has 25 years of writing and teaching experience, most of which was as a high school English instructor. He transitioned back into a career as full-time writer and editor in 2022. In his classes, Brian was known for his creative approaches to teaching literature and writing, never assuming that all students learn the same way. He also has a keen ability to see the big picture and to work with authors to manage and complete their work in the most efficient, effective way.