Who We Are
Meet Our Founder
Jane Underwood passed away in February 2016. She was the founder and former director of The Writing Salon, as well as a writer, editor, photographer, and teacher. She created and facilitated the immensely popular and still-thriving Daily Write Round Robin class. Her poetry, erotica, articles, and essays have appeared in numerous publications and anthologies, including The San Francisco Chronicle, The Sun, Salon.com, Western Humanities Review, Ripe Fruit, and Best Women’s Erotica. In 2017, Blue Light Press published her posthumous collection of poems, When My Heart Goes Dark, I Turn the Porch Light On.
Meet Our Staff
Ben Jackson
Executive Director
Ben Jackson has been the executive director since March 2016. He has taught composition, literature, and creative writing at a wide range of colleges, schools, and retreat centers, including the University of San Francisco, The Writing Salon, and the Esalen Institute. His writing has appeared in New England Review, Southern Review, Hudson Review, FIELD, Poetry Daily, and elsewhere. A graduate of the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, he has won awards and fellowships from the Tor House Foundation, Warren Wilson College, Vermont Studio Center, Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, and Jentel Artist Residency Program.
Kathy Garlick
Education Director
Kathy Garlick brings thirty years of experience teaching creative writing and literature at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Art and Ideas, Fourteen Hills, Field, Pool, and other publications. A chapbook of poems, The Listening World, was published by Momotombo Press at St. Mary’s College. Kathy received her M.F.A from Sarah Lawrence College and Ph.D. from the University of Houston. She currently teaches creative writing and academic writing at the University of San Francisco and Holy Names University.
Rose Haynes Touhy
Operations Manager
Rose Haynes Touhy joins The Writing Salon with over 20 years of experience working with non-profit organizations, most recently as an independent philanthropy consultant. She is passionate about education and has helped launch multiple self-directed learning programs, one of which she founded and led. She is proud to serve on the board of Northbay Letterpress Arts, and as a member of the Sonoma County Poet Laureate Selection Committee. Rose received an MFA in Poetry from San Francisco State University, and lives in the North Bay with her husband and son, a noisy bird, and a delightfully rambunctious puppy.
Meet Our Teachers
