WiVLA 2025 Board Members
SUSAN SALTER | Encaustic Artist
President
Susan is a versatile artist focusing on visual, literary, and theatre arts. She is an accomplished playwright, staging many of her own productions. Her artistic journey includes studying art and design at Glassell School of Art and earning an MFA in directing from the University of Houston. Susan specializes in encaustic painting, incorporating collage, sculpture, and assemblage. She continues to refine her techniques through ongoing study, including membership in Painting with Fire, an online encaustic class platform. Her work has been exhibited in numerous galleries, earning several awards. Influenced by natural and metaphysical sciences, her art reflects inner exploration and contemplation, often imbued with hidden messages and symbolism. Susan resides in the Houston area with her husband, where she creates in her spacious home studio.
Kathi Crawford | Writer
Vice President
With a career spanning decades in organizational development, Kathi Crawford founded People Possibilities, LLC (www.peoplepossibilities.com) in 2008. She is a certified coach who has worked with hundreds of clients one-on-one through leadership, career, and life transitions. Alongside her business career, she actively writes poetry and flash creative nonfiction. Her work has been featured online and in print in various literary journals. Her chapbook, consider the light, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press.
Find her on Instagram or LinkedIn @kathicrawford.
Subscribe to her blog at https://adventureinbeingcom.wordpress.com/.
MELISSA CHAMBERS| Writer and Artist
Membership Chair
For 30+ years, Melissa focused her creativity in the world of marketing and communications as a graphic designer, art director, writer/editor, and communications strategist. Throughout that time, she practiced self-expression through writing poetry, short stories, and art journaling. Melissa also enjoys creating mixed-media abstract art and often incorporates it into her handmade books and journals.
Elissa Davis| Artist and Writer
Programs Chair
My mother taught me to sew, which kicked off a love of making and creating. I have a degree in Hotel and Restaurant Management from the University of Houston, but I landed in the bookstore of The Jung Center over twenty years ago and found a home, where I am currently a book-slinger and gallerist. I am married to a writer, have two cats, and smile very easily.
MELODY LOCKE | Traditional and Alternative Photographer
Treasurer
Melody Locke uses traditional and alternative photographic processes to create fine art prints. Using B&W and infrared film, she develops black and white prints in a traditional wet darkroom. She also specializes in lumen printing, a non-camera photographic process, to create colorful and ethereal images from botanical material and negatives. Her love of nature inspires her landscape photography and her ethereal lumen images of plants and flowers. Melody has a studio in Silver Street Studios at Sawyer Yards.
View samples of her work at https://melodylocke.com/
Follow her on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/melodylockeart
Catherine Gentry| Writer
Secretary
Catherine Gentry holds a BA in English from Princeton University and practiced law for several years before retiring to raise her three now grown children. Her essays have been published in The Houston Chronicle, The Princeton Alumni Weekly, and Women Under Scrutiny: An Anthology of Truths, as well as online, including Synkroniciti, Grown and Flown, Living the Second Act, and Literary Mama. Her short story, Shimmer, appears in the Journey Into Time anthology and she was a featured writer and guest on the podcast, In Her Words. As a Writer in Residence with Writers in the Schools, she enjoys visiting classrooms across the Houston area to inspire storytelling in new and unexpected ways. Catherine loves exploring her city to find new places and inspiration and is an avid accidental gardener.
You can find her on Instagram @thecatherinegentry, Facebook, and read more of her work at https://www.catherinegentry.com/.
Deborah Ellington | Visual Artist
Visual Co-Chair
Deborah graduated from Albion College with a degree in art education, later obtaining an M.A. in Painting from the University of Michigan and an MFA in Ceramics from Sam Houston State University. After college, she taught K -12 in Michigan and ended her career as an instructional dean at Lone Star College in Texas. In between, she was an art professor and department chair at Lone Star College. Deborah has never stopped teaching. Even after retirement, she teaches fused glass workshops in design, color, painting, and kiln casting. Deborah has a studio at Silver Street Studios in Houston, Texas.
Follow her on Instagram at @dellingtonartstudio.
Katherine McDaniel| Artist and Writer
Visual Co-Chair
Gwendolyn Womack| Novelist
Literary Co-Chair
Gwendolyn Womack is the bestselling author of The Fortune Teller, The Memory Painter, and The Time Collector. Next up is her YA debut, The Premonitions Club. Gwen has an MFA in Directing Theatre and Film from the California Institute of the Arts, and she was a screenwriter for many years before embarking on novels. When she is not writing, she enjoys photographing kaleidoscopes.
Visit her at www.gwendolynwomack.com.
Denise Bossarte | Writer
Literary Co-Chair
Denise Bossarte is an award-winning author, poet, photographer, and artist whose passion is inspiring others. Her short stories and poems have been published in several anthologies and literary magazines, and her photography has been featured in several solo and group juried exhibitions. Her daytime job in IT helps to keep the household running. She enjoys writing and exploring new art forms. She lives in Texas with her husband and literary cat, Za'Ji.
REBECCA CHIRAK| Writer
Newsletter Editor
Rebecca Chirak has been chronicling ‘interesting things I have seen and heard’ since age 5, writing almost daily since she was in fourth grade, and finally sharing her voice with readers. Her debut novel will be published in 2024 under the pen name Joy Beguine.
She has been Muslim since 2005 and has a lot to say to, for and about Muslim women, especially converts and Muslim women living in the West. She has lived in Houston since 2010 after growing up in western New York and living in Russia, Turkmenistan, Brooklyn, and northern Virginia. She is an active member of Writespace and the Women’s Fiction Writers Association (WFWA) and is thrilled to serve as a literary co-chair for WiVLA in 2025.
Her day job is in education. She attended Bryn Mawr College for her bachelor's degree (in Russian language and linguistics) and Sam Houston State for her master’s (in Comparative and global education). After writing, she is also passionate about travel and kayaking.
Contact info: mrschirak@gmail.com
Jamie Frontiera| Wood Carver
Publicity
Jamie Frontiera is a wood carver and photographer. She has been wood carving since 2017, working on chip carving, relief carving, pyrography, and carving in the round. Several of her carvings have placed in wood carving competitions with both Houston Area Wood Carvers and the Texas Wood Carving Guild. Her style (in both photography and wood carving) reflects a mix of materials, movement, nature, and geometries. She was raised in Texas and has a bachelor’s degree from Pratt Institute.
Jamie’s work can be found on Etsy and Instagram @jmfcarvings.
Abby Kesington | Poet
Website Administrator
Abby Kesington seamlessly blends her Nigerian heritage with her adopted Texan home, infusing her poetry with cultural depth and emotional resonance.
A former journalist in Lagos, she is an active voice in Houston’s poetry scene. Holding degrees in Political Science from prestigious Nigerian universities, she uses her poetry to champion self-awareness, equality, and social justice.
She has published a book of poems and lyrics titled Finish Line. Her works have gained recognition, with her poems “The Game” and “Runway” featured in The Bayou Review (Fall 2024, Freedom & Deliverance edition) by the University of Houston English Department. Additionally, her poem “A Legacy of Freedom” was published in Wole Soyinka: The Herald at 90, a bilingual collection of poems and essays by the Pan African Writers Association (2024).
Regina Vitolo| Writer
Historian
MARIE CASAMAYOR-HARVEY | Visual Artist
At Large
Marie Casamayor-Harvey is an artist based in Houston, Texas, with roots in Cuba and Colombia. She earned a B.A. from the University of Houston with a major in Art History, minoring in Studio Arts and Architecture, and a Master's in Education and Supervision from the University of St. Thomas, Houston.
Marie is an abstract artist who creates paintings, sculptures, drawings, collages, and mixed media works. Her work reflects intense curiosity, wild imagination, and enchantment with symbolism, expressionism, and metaphysical and surreal imagery.
Liz Plaster | Visual Artist
At Large
Liz Plaster, M.Ed., brings her curiosity, skills, and playfulness to exploring mixed media art, photography, writing (award-winning author), drumming, professional activities, and daily living. She lives each day with spirit and intention. She is committed to supporting the growth of more empathy, wisdom, and clarity in her own personal and professional life and in the world (Ikigai). As an artist, she has exhibited in multiple private, non-profit, and corporate galleries.
Visit her in her studio #106, in The Silos of Sawyer Yard on Sawyer Road.
Board private page click HERE.