Board of Directors
Cape Cod Writers Center Board of Directors
2024-2025
Officers:
Kathy Aspden – President
In no particular order, Kathy is a novelist, screenwriter, lifelong resident of Cape Cod, occasional host for the television show Books and the World, public speaker, reviewer for LitLovers.com, and contributing writer for Her Circle News. Her first novel, Baklava, Biscotti, and an Irishman, was a finalist for the Multicultural Fiction category of International Book Awards. The sequel, An Irishman’s Son, was published in May 2020. Her 2015 short film, The Solomons’ Dog, was a finalist in the 15-Minutes of Fame Film Festival in Orlando, Florida. Interested in everything from the next great invention to the easiest way to tile a bathroom, Kathy is a gleeful research junkie and an enthusiastic participant in the human experience. She is currently working on a feature screenplay, entitled, The Magnificent Quarantinos. www.kathyaspden.com
Alyssa Metcalfe – Vice President
Alyssa D. Metcalfe is Vice President of the Cape Cod Writers Center, a member of Grub Street and the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod. She is a host and co-producer for Books and the World, the longest-running literary interview program in the country. Her award-winning debut novel, Street, the first in a series, was released in December of 2023. Several of her short stories have been published in various magazines, and her children’s picture book, Mousebound, was published under the pen name, Leslie Ann George. She was born and raised in New York City, where her experiences continue to inspire much of her writing, but has made Cape Cod her home for the last several decades.
Perry Karfunkel, MD, PhD – Treasurer
Perry started his career as a professor of Biology and subsequently became a Primary Care physician, working for many years in a large multi-specialty clinic and subsequently at various offices of the VA Healthcare System in southeastern Massachusetts. University faculties constitute multi-generational organizations that can include mentoring of careers but can also involve the mentoring of personal growth. Professors also interact with non-faculty people around them, both within and outside the campus where they work, and the dynamics of those relationships became the inspiration for his writing. He continues to work on a series of personal-growth romance novels inspired by those dynamics and involving characters over the age of thirty. The stories had tumbled out of his head once he had time in his retirement to walk on a daily basis and he’s found great personal satisfaction in letting each one flower and bloom.
Terri Arthur – Secretary/Clerk
I have been a long-time writer over the years submitting to magazines and creating and maintaining a newsletter for nurses. My first book “Fatal Decision: Edith Cavell WW1 Nurse” came out in 2012 and was an immediate hit. Awards: Midwest Independent Book Association and a finalist-Eric Hoffer Award. In April of last year, I signed an option for a film, and it was renewed in April of this year. In 2016, I translated the American book into British and entitled it, “Fatal Destiny: Edith Cavell WW1 Nurse.” In 2017 I published the children’s book “Nurse Hero: Edith Cavell.” My second book “Power Failure: A Nurse’s Story” came out in 2021 and has also won two awards.
I have given numerous presentations over the last decade both in-person and on numerous radio/ TV interviews including the BBC in England.
In addition to writing, I worked as a critical care nurse in three of the Cape hospitals. I hold a degree in nursing, a BS in secondary education and biology and a Master’s in Health Business Management from Lesley College, Cambridge, MA.
Additional Directors
Judith Partelow – Director
Judith Partelow is a poet, director, and actress. Her first chapbook of poetry called A Woman’s Heart was released in 2014. She then created a play from her poetry with the same title which has been produced four times and will be produced again at The Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater, May 10,11,12 and in Cotuit in September. Her second book of poems published by Scargo Hill Poets is Carry Me Back, A Woman’s Life in Poetry.
Paul Raymer – Director
Paul H. Raymer was born in New York City. He has worked as a teacher in a one-room school, an assembly-line worker in a television factory, a quality control manager for an under-water acoustics company, inventor of twenty-five different product lines, founder of ten companies, a building scientist for forty-five years, the father of three excellent children, and the author of five published books. After getting a degree in creative writing from Syracuse University, he had the honor of being represented by James Oliver Brown, an extraordinary literary agent.
McGraw-Hill published his Residential Ventilation Handbook in 2010 which was followed in 2014 by his first self-published novel, Recalculating Truth. Then came three Jon Megquire stories—Death at the Edge of the Diamond, Second Law, and Confined Spaces.
Paul and his family make their home in an old, seventeen-room inn on Cape Cod.
Michael Solomowitz – Director
Originally from Coney Island, Michael Solomowitz has enjoyed a roller-coaster writing career. His debut novel, BEHIND THE FOURTH WALL, set on Cape Cod, was published in January, 2022 by Black Rose Writing.
Mr. Solomowitz began writing for Manhattan Cable TV and has worked for Warner Bros. He was a freelance sports journalist and a Contributing Author for two non-fiction sports books. He has also written and directed for the theater with works appearing on stages from Los Angeles to Long Island to Boston. In June, 2023, the Curtain Call Theater in Braintree, MA will produce an evening of four of his plays: DIVINE COMEDY – A Spirited Collection of One-Act Plays. A member of the Authors Guild, he is currently working on his second novel set in post-WWII
Brooklyn. https://www.michaelsolomowitz.com/
Barbara Eppich Struna – Director
Barbara is an International Best Selling Author of suspenseful historical fiction, including, The Old Cape House, The Old Cape Teapot, The Old Cape Hollywood Secret, The Old Cape Blood Ruby, and The Old Cape Map. She is a member of International Thriller Writers, IBPA, IPNE, Sisters In Crime: National, New England and served as President of Cape Cod Writers Center for eight years. Always a journal writer, she is fascinated by history and writes a blog about the unique facts and myths of Cape Cod.
Harris Thompson – Director
Harris developed his passion for writing through a BA/MA program at Boston University and 35-year career teaching literature and creative writing to high school students. After being honored with a teaching chair, he got the idea for a novel during a sabbatical in Greece. His insistence on becoming fluent in Greek didn’t make sense—he claimed it was because he had been held hostage by an Athens bus inspector—until he had created fifty Greek characters, who required him to authenticate and individualize their dialogue. Chasing Light follows a psychotherapist who, desperate to heal herself, recreates the odyssey of the mother who failed her. With the help of his CCWC writing group, it is in the final stages of revision. Harris is now fluent in broken Greek and broken English.
Nancy Rubin Stuart Executive Director
CCWC Executive Director Nancy Rubin Stuart is an award-winning author/ journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The New England Quarterly, The Washington Post, American History, Huffington Post and in other national publications here and abroad. She has authored eight traditionally published books, including the best-selling American Empress, Defiant Brides, and The Muse of the Revolution. Nancy’s most recent book is Poor Richard’s Women: Deborah Read Franklin and the Other Women Behind the Founding Father published by Beacon Press in 2022. You can also read her latest stories in the Saturday Evening Post.