Co-Directors
Bronwyn LaMay
Bronwyn has been a teacher, instructional coach, and administrator for over 20 years in the Bay area. She has taught middle and high school in Oakland, Hayward, East Side Union, East Palo Alto, and Santa Clara.
She has her Phd from Stanford in English and Literacy Curriculum, her MA from Mills College in Educational Leadership, and her BA in English from UCLA. A few years ago, she published what began as a literacy curriculum that she co-created with her students; it revolved around their self-narratives on the topic of love. The book, Personal Narrative, Revised: Writing Love and Agency in the High School Classroom, was awarded NCTE’s David H. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in the Teaching of English for 2017. Bronwyn currently lectures in the Departments of English and Teacher Education at San José State, and has worked with the Writing Project as a teacher consultant and participant for many years prior to becoming a director.
Faculty Director
Jane Gilmore
Jane Gilmore is Director of Programming for the San Jose Area Writing Project. She is a teacher at Lynbrook High School with over a dozen years of experience in both the classroom and leading professional development for teachers. She has a Masters in education and two teaching credentials (in English and Social Studies) from the University of California at Santa Barbara and a Certificate in Novel Writing from Stanford University Continuing Studies. Aside from working on her own manuscripts, Jane’s favorite endeavor is supporting teachers and students in developing their identities as writers. More likely than not, your students have played her original creative writing games at a Super Saturday or one of our summer writing programs. In addition, Jane directs our Teen Novel Writing Program and she looks forward to helping nourish and flourish the careers of some of our brightest young writers.
Program Director
Andrea Katz
With her hair in pigtails and a clipboard in hand, Andrea first began playing teacher in the mid-80’s when she’d create homework for the kids who lived in her neighborhood. It wasn’t until the late 90’s though when she started teaching elementary school for real in the San Fernando Valley with Los Angeles Unified School District. Years later, after teaching at Burnett ES in Milpitas Unified School District, Andrea stepped out of her role as classroom teacher and into her role as parent/classroom volunteer. Eventually her classroom volunteering morphed into a position as a Student Support Educator. She currently spends her days, occasionally with a clipboard in hand, supporting students (often pigtailed) at Mulberry School in Los Gatos. Andrea has been involved with San Jose Area Writing Project since 2002.