Meet Caravan Instructors

The Caravan project arises from our shared love of and experience with both writing and teaching, as well as our shared conviction that good writing has the power to change the world.

Our work as a collective is rooted in the desire to provide high-quality courses, coaching, and events that explore the art, craft, and business of writing in a collaborative, community-oriented way, and to make those things accessible, affordable, and enjoyable for you.

We’re not just experienced teachers and editors with deep publishing portfolios—we’re each other’s supporters, fans, and friends, and we’d like to be yours too.

Here’s us. In the comments, please say hi and introduce yourself!

---

Marya

Marya Hornbacher is an award-winning journalist, essayist, novelist, and poet, and the New York Times bestselling author of five books. Her sixth book, Solo, is forthcoming from Hachette/Cardinal in early 2027.

Marya has received the Annie Dillard Award for Nonfiction, the Logan Fellowship for Social Justice Journalism, the White Award for Magazine Journalism, the ASCAP Award for Music Journalism, the Fountain House Humanitarian Award, and other distinctions. Her work appears in publications including New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Minneapolis StarTribune, Chicago Reader, Smithsonian Magazine, Vogue, Glamour, Crazyhorse, Guernica, Longreads, AGNI, Arts & Letters, Gulf Coast, DIAGRAM, and many more. She is the creator of the bestselling Substack Going Solo at the End of the World, a multi-media report from the American road.

​A veteran educator with more than 30 years of teaching—both at the college and graduate level and in non-academic settings—under her belt, Marya’s 1:1 offerings include creative coaching, individualized writing mentorship, and three types of Caravan classes: weekend Bootcamps, four-week Crash Craft Courses, and six-week Deep Dives.

Holly

Writer, editor, teacher, award-winning journalist, nomad Holly Starley has enjoyed a two-decade career as a freelance editor and loves helping authors bring their visions to the page.

Holly has earned awards for investigative reporting and coverage of legal affairs. During seven years as managing editor of the nonprofit mini-mag Quick Release, she received the Velo Wings Award, Extraordinary Women Giving Flight to Cycling Programs, for storytelling. She was a founding member of KZAA lp, a low-power, bilingual community radio station and the host of We the Village podcast. Find her essays and tales from a solo nomadic life and on living with an autoimmune disease on her Substack The Rolling Desk.

Centering writers as their own best first editors is at the core of Holly’s courses and 1:1 work with authors over the past two decades plus. She believes we each have unique storytelling traditions to draw from, revision can be expansive and freeing, and learning how to mold our work from draft to polish is how we trust our own authority and guide ourselves to the work of our dreams. This is the foundation of her courses, weekend bootcamps, and one-hitter intensives. Holly’s 1:1: offerings include self-editing coaching / co-editing working sessions, as well as developmental editing and content editing. (She seasonally offers college essay writing coaching as well.)

Paul

Paul Corman-Roberts is the author of the Firecracker nominated poetry collection Bone Moon Palace (Black Lawrence 2021) the acclaimed We Shoot Typewriters (Black Lawrence, 2015) and the forthcoming 19th Street Station Volume 2 (Collapse Press 2025.) His short story “The Deathbed Confession of Christopher Walken” was shortlisted in subTerrain’s (CA) fiction contest and recently had his micro-fiction “Cemetery One Nighter” nominated for the Best American Short Fiction award.

Paul currently teaches workshops for the Older Writer’s Lab, the San Francisco Creative Writing Institute, and the Oakland Unified School District while raising his hellspawn in Oakland CA. He holds a double Masters in Poetics (MA/MFA) from the New College of California and occasionally fills in as drummer for the US Ghostal Service, Jen Blowdryer’s Punk/Soul, and his own project, The There Their They’re.

​Paul’s Caravan offerings include writing and craft courses such as The Art of the Chapbook, Threads & Breaks, Intro to Instapoem. Paul’s 1:1 offerings include editing services and submission etiquette/procedures.

Matt

Matt Smythe refuses to take the straight path in his personal or professional life. While currently a writing and lit professor and part-time Chief Water Treatment Specialist in western New York, his prior roles include Senior Staff Writer for Free Range American and Coffee or Die, Communications Director for the American Fly Fishing Trade Association, freelance Creative Director for several ad agencies, and autopsy specialist at the now-defunct Genesee Hospital, to name a scant few.

Matt’s book of poetry, Revision of a Man, came out in 2022, and an early version of his upcoming book, Letters to Trout Fishing in America, was named Runner-up for the Falkner Society Novella Award. He has had stories, essays, and poetry published in The Flyfish Journal, Drake Magazine, Southern Culture on the Fly, Gray’s Sporting Journal, and numerous anthologies and literary journals. Matt graduated from SUNY Brockport’s creative writing program and has a master’s in poetry from George Mason University. He writes Glorious Mayhem on Substack.

​Matt offers three-hour one-hitter writing intensives and other courses. Matt’s 1:1 offerings include manuscript editing and personal brand development.

---

We’d love to work with you!

---

And don’t forget to attend the Saturday Write-In!

Saturday June 21, 9–10:30 am PDT / 12–1:30 pm EDT

Hosted by Holly Starley!

Soak up the vibes. Feel the love. Do the work.

Click here to register.

---

Thank you for reading and liking and restacking so we can find those who want to join in! We appreciate you.

Now you

For the comments, please introduce yourself in any way you’d like. And if you so desire, tell us, What kind of stuff do you like to write? What haven’t you written but would love to try? What writing question, craft- or business-related, do you wish someone would definitively answer, for crying out loud?