Our Team

Our small team of dedicated educators, writers, and literary professionals represent decades of experiences in all fields of arts instruction and business. During your free 15 minute consultation call with our company Founder, we'll not only clarify your writing goals but determine who among us can best help you achieve them. We look forward to matching you with the perfect coach who can guide you towards achieving your aspirations. Browse our coach bios, explore their accolades, and get ready to embark on a fulfilling writing experience with Hewes House.

Write better.

Coach Bios

Veronica Ciastko

Veronica is an experienced educator, writer, and comics-artist. She has worked with students of all ages, from first graders to Ph.D. candidates, and is passionate about helping her students communicate clearly and effectively through writing.

Veronica’s teaching experience began with AmeriCorps’ City Year program, where she served sixth graders in a low-income literacy classroom. Following this experience, Veronica continued to serve students often left behind in traditional educational settings. She taught both academic and creative writing with the Boys and Girls Club, the Writer’s Exchange, and Stratford Academy. In each of these roles, Veronica honed her skills for building strong relationships with students and teaching effectively.

Veronica attended college at the University of British Columbia, where she was the recipient of the International Leader of Tomorrow Award, a prestigious scholarship that fully funded her degree and honored her skills in leadership and community service. At UBC, Veronica studied Education and Creative Writing. She was honored with the TREK Excellence Award for graduating at the top of her class and the Grant McWhirter Poetry Prize for excellence in the Creative Writing program. While at UBC, Veronica also worked as a Writing Peer with the Center for Writing and Scholarly Communication, where she coached college-age students writing across a wide array of disciplines. In the summer of 2023 Veronica attended the Soaring Gardens Artist Residency, funded through the Ora Lerman Trust. She is a regular participant in writing workshops across NYC, including with the Writer’s Rock. She loves one-on-one coaching (with both kids and adults!) because she loves to see students find their voice and recognize their own brilliance.

In her free time, Veronica is writing a novel about the Midwest, playing with her cat, and making visual art. She’s excited to be a writing coach with Hewes House.

Ky Huynh

Ky is an educator, world traveler, lover of arts, maker of crafts, and writer of stories. In Ky’s extensive teaching and tutoring experience, she has taught English, math, physics, art history, biology, and creative writing to students of all ages.

Ky holds a B.A. in English and Psychology from UC Berkeley and, perhaps unnecessarily, holds two masters degrees, one in Nonprofit Management from Milano Graduate School and one in Education from Hunter College.

Ky is a passionate world traveler, starting with her service in the Peace Corps in Bangladesh where she taught English to primary school teachers. Since then, she has traveled to more than thirty countries, and forty-nine of the fifty United States (I’m coming for you Alaska!).

In her free time, Ky makes tiny paintings, writes short stories, and crochets small animals.

Maggie Sadler

Maggie is a dynamic and intentional writing coach, editor, and literary agent dedicated to helping her clients plumb the depths of their potential as writers. Maggie marries her unique energy with a growth-minded mentorship approach to guide and support clients through their adventures in writing.

Maggie’s professional journey has been distinct and varied, first beginning in the freelance space as a self-starting editor, where she developed a keen passion for teaching authors how to further develop their craft with detailed developmental feedback. Building on this experience, Maggie lends her eye for artful prose to a boutique agency as a literary agent.

Championing debut authors has been the most inspiring aspect of Maggie’s work in the literary sphere. These complimentary experiences inform her mentorship practice, which is steeped in productive critique, industry integrity, creative curiosity, and positive encouragement. Above all, Maggie values the small moments—the discovery of a particularly beautiful word, a client having the courage to read their writing aloud for the first time, or a client feeling genuine pride in their work— that arise during a client’s creative journey.

Maggie earned her joint Masters with honors in Comparative Literature and English from the historic University of St Andrews and her Masters in Literary Studies from Memorial University of Newfoundland. As a student, she honed her diverse literary interests in folklore retellings, nineteenth-century maritime adventure fiction, and audience reception across creative mediums. Her scholarly work has been featured in Inquiries and Coriolis journals.

A writer herself, Maggie draws inspiration from folklore, sweeping landscapes, and untamed femininity as she scribbles away at her debut novel. When not reading or writing, Maggie can usually be found exploring astride her rascally horse or admiring various species of moss on hikes with her partner.

Darina Sikmashvili

Darina (Dasha) Sikmashvili was born in Lubny, Ukraine and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She received her MFA in fiction from the University of Michigan and has worked in film production for over a decade. Her fiction, essays, and screenplays have won the Hopwood Prize, the Kasdan Scholarship, and the Henfield Prize, among others. She is the recipient of scholarships from Can Serrat Residency, Laimun Residency, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Her recent writing appears in The Common, Fence, and The Los Angeles Review of Books.

A complete list of her publications and more information is available at: www.sikmashvili.com.

Eva Warrick

Eva Warrick is a fiction writer, educator and visual artist. She enjoys working with people and projects at all stages of development, from students writing for the first time to professionals honing skills. For all types of writing, she helps clients gain confidence, enjoy writing, and unlock blocks by starting with permission, play and creative brainstorming. She values encouragement, trust and developing long-term rapport with her clients.

Eva has worked with a variety of clients in professional and corporate capacities on projects including internal communications, reports, sales communiqués, web content and skills refreshers. Her business writing coaching emphasizes audience-specific content written with concision and clarity.

As an editor she has broad genre experience, from literary fiction manuscripts to architecture, graphic novel, fantasy, and memoir. Other experience includes academic writing, college application essays, and contest and grant applications.

Over fifteen years of teaching experience, she has taught academic and creative writing at the University of Michigan, and worked remotely with international students based in Shanghai. Prior to this, she taught visual art and design for several years at various universities. Eva earned an MFA in painting at Indiana University and an MFA in fiction at the University of Michigan in 2022. Her writing has appeared in Ploughshares, Granta, A Public Space and The Southern Review and has been financially supported by the Helen Zell Writers Program, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation & Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Tin House and Yaddo.

Eva lives in the Pacific Northwest and Amsterdam as a resident of the Netherlands. She is currently writing a story collection and a novel, and continues to paint.

Jonathan Zelinger

Jonathan Zelinger is a writer, work-shopper, facilitator, and matchmaker. He is a former high school English teacher, essay retreat leader, florist, corporate copywriter, and letter writing advocate. Currently, he works for StoryCorps as a writer and field producer. He lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and is the host of the Paired Down Podcast. He is also the writer of many essays, many of which can be found at jonathanzelinger.com.

Jonathan works with writers of all ages. He is a great resource for Creative Nonfiction, college admissions, speechwriting, and process building. He prides himself on creating a non-judgemental and safe environment for his clients to comfortably think out loud.

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Josh Boardman

Josh Boardman is from Michigan. He has worked as a writing coach and tutor in the elite spheres of New York City, and his writing has appeared in numerous outlets, both online and in print. He is the author of the chapbook Plantain (West Vine Press, 2018) and conducted the Latin translation project We, Romans (2015). His stories have appeared in journals such as New York Tyrant, Catapult, and Dandruff Magazine. He lives in Beacon, New York, where he is working on his first novel and a collection of stories about his hometown.

Ben Griffin

Ben Griffin is a software engineer and entrepreneur based in the East Village, New York. He has over a decade of experience building applications, working with clients, and managing operations at all scales.

In his free time Ben likes to travel, sail, work on 3D printing projects and other visual arts, and experiment with new technologies.