Meet our Social Media Team — and watch a livecast of a Salon!

We are thrilled to introduce our new Social Media Team:

Veronica Ciastko, our new director of Social Media (and Instagram genius) is also an International Leader of Tomorrow.

A recent graduate of UBC (yes, friends, British Columbia in Canada) Veronica came highly recommended by a brilliant author who read at Pen Parentis a few years ago.

She has exceeded expectations! In addition to being a whiz at Social Media, she’s just a joy to be around – and not to mention, comes to us as co-editor of an anthology and with a few prizes in her back pocket:

-The George McWhirter Poetry Prize
-Glimmer Train 2017 Story Award
-TREK Excellence Awardand

and was nominated for the Golden Key International Honor Society. Say hi to her – she is often behind a camera at the salons!

Vida Foubister is our new Twitter queen.

Vida was the editor of Quality Matters ( the Commonwealth Fund’s monthly newsletter) for five years. She has written extensively about health care for various publications, including American Medical News, Reuters Health and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She holds a M.A. in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a M.Sc. in biochemistry from –are you ready for this coincidence? — the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. She currently works as an independent journalist in Rye, New York.

and last but not least, meet our Fall/Winter Salons Intern – Olivia Shiller!

Olivia is a junior at Lewis & Clark in Portland, OR, where she’s studying all things art. She is in NYC for a short while (she won a fabulous Arts Fellowship!) and in her brief time with us has already established herself as a responsible go-getter who is up to any task placed before her. Thanks to her quick mastery of new technology, we are able to offer for the first time LIVECASTING of our Literary Salons.

We welcome all viewers — click like and share! as the YouTubers say… but please do watch Olivia’s recording of the October Salon “Alternative Lives” with novelist Janice Eidus, essayist Randon Billings Noble, and singer/songwriter/YA author Amy Edwards!

Feel free to add your comments about balancing a creative career with an active family life at home.