Read

Sign up today for our annual Short Story Seminar with Stacy Woodson and Art Taylor

About the Seminar: Details are coming soon!

About Stacy Woodson: A US Army combat veteran, Stacy says memories of her time in the military are often a source of inspiration for her stories. She made her crime fiction debut in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine’s Department of First Stories and won the 2018 Readers Award, the second time in the award’s history a debut took first place.

Awards: Since then, she has placed over 40 short stories in various publications, three winning the Derringer award for excellence in short mystery fiction. (She is a five-time nominee.) Her short fiction has also been nominated for a Macavity Award, Thriller Award, Anthony Award (anthology, co-editor), selected for The Best Mystery Stories of the Year, named a finalist for ScreenCraft’s Best Cinematic Short Story, and adapted for animation. Stacy also writes screenplays and was recently accepted to the Writers Guild Foundation’s Veterans Writing Project. Her pilot script, “Poppins,” was named a Second Rounder in the Drama Teleplay Pilot category in the 2025 Austin Film Festival Script Competition.

When she’s not writing: Stacy co-edits anthologies with Michael Bracken for Down and Out Books and Level Best Books and teaches at Outliers Writing University. She is also a member of the Screen Actors Guild and works as background talent for movies and television which has deepened her understanding of the filmmaking process and the need for practical scripts. Past projects include Homeland, Jack Ryan, The Walking Dead: World Beyond, Silo, Terminal List: Dark Wolf, Wonder Woman 1984, and A House of Dynamite. Learn more: stacywoodson.com

About Art Taylor: Art is a fiction writer, book critic, and professor of English at George Mason University.

Art is the author of The Adventure of the Castle Thief and Other Expeditions and Indiscretions (Crippen & Landru, 2023), The Boy Detective & The Summer of ’74 and Other Tales of Suspense (Crippen & Landru, 2020), and On the Road With Del & Louise: A Novel in Stories (Henery Press, 2015), winner of the Agatha Award for Best First Novel and a finalist for both the Anthony and the Macavity Award for Best First Novel. His short stories have appeared in magazines and journals including Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Barrelhouse, Needle: A Magazine of Noir, and North American Review; online at Fiction Weekly, PANK, Prick of the Spindle, and SmokeLong Quarterly; in various regional journals/newspapers based in his home state of North Carolina; and in several anthologies, most notably those in the Chesapeake Crimes series, published by Wildside in conjunction with the Chesapeake Chapter of Sisters in Crime. His short fiction has won several of the major awards in the mystery field, including the Edgar Award, three Agatha Awards, an Anthony Award, four Macavity Awards, and four Derringer Awards, among other honors. His work has also appeared in the annual Best American Mystery Stories anthology, and he edited Murder Under the Oaks: 2015 Bouchercon Anthology, winner of the Anthony Award for Best Anthology or Collection, and California Schemin’: Bouchercon Anthology 2020.

From 2001 to 2011, he served as a contributing editor for Metro Magazine in Raleigh, N.C., with a focus on literary news and reviews. Since 2005, he has been a semi-regular reviewer for the Washington Post Book World, concentrating on mysteries and thrillers. In 2010, he was named to the editorial board of the North Carolina Literary Review, and in 2015, he began work as a columnist and reviewer for the Washington Independent Review of Books. Other literary essays/reviews have appeared in publications including The Armchair Detective, Mississippi Quarterly, Mystery Scene, The Strand, Spectator, The Independent, and The Oxford American, among others.

A native of Richlands, N.C., Art is a graduate of Yale University (B.A. American Studies) and also holds an M.A. in English/creative writing from N.C. State University and an M.F.A. in Fiction from George Mason University, where he now teaches creative writing, literature, and composition and works as assistant director of Mason’s Creative Writing Program. For more than a dozen years, he also coordinated marketing for the annual Fall for the Book Festival.

Before returning to academia, he worked as assistant director of communications for the North Carolina Museum of Art, and prior to that as managing editor of Spectator magazine, an alternative weekly in Raleigh, N.C.

A member of the N.C. Writers’ Network since 1992, Art chaired the Network’s Fall Conferences in 2000 and 2002 and has served as president of the Network’s Board of Trustees. A member of Mystery Writers of America since 1996, he is currently on the board of MWA’s Mid-Atlantic Chapter and an at-large board member for MWA National. A long time member of Sisters in Crimes, he has also been vice-president of SinC’s Chesapeake Chapter and continues to serve on its board. Other memberships include: International Thriller Writers, the Crime Writers’ Association, and the National Book Critics Circle.

He is married to the writer Tara Laskowski. They have one son.