2025 CONFERENCE SPEAKERS

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LORENE CARY is an author, memoirist, and playwright. Among her works are Black Ice, about her experiences as one of the first African-American students at the exclusive St. Paul's School in New Hampshire, and the play _My General Tubman_. The play takes place in the abolitionist era and present day in the Philadelphia prison system. Cary portrays Tubman in a mythical manner--she has the power to travel through time. In the present, she meets a man incarcerated in Philadelphia for a minor crime. The play draws a clear connection between the legacy of slavery and the current prison system.  Cary adapted her caretaking memoir Ladysitting: My Year with Nana at the End of Her Century into a play. Both works explore the life and last year of Nana – a fiercely strong and independent woman, who now needs the care of others. In Ladysitting, Cary examines the ruptures, the love, and the forgiveness that defines family through stories of five generations and bears witness to her Nana’s remarkable 101 years.

 CAROLINE GREGOIRE is a Brooklyn-based writer exploring the realms of psychology, health creativity, and human potential. She is  co-author of Wired to Create: Unravelling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind (Penguin) and creator of the Webby Award-winning CREATIVE TYPES personality test, which has been taken by over 7 million people worldwide. Her writinbg has appeared in publications like Scientific American, TIME, Harvard Business Review, The New Republic, Quartz, and Yoga Journal, For six years, Gregoire was  a Senior Writer at  The Huffington Post, where I worked for six years as a Senior Writer. 

DANIEL ERNST is an Assistant Professor of English at Texas Woman’s University in Denton, TX. He researches and teaches courses in rhetoric, writing, grammar, and generative AI. Ernst holds a PhD in English from Purdue University, where he studied automated language technologies, AI, educational assessment, technical communication, and rhetoric. His research focuses on education, AI, literacy research, and public policy. He has been featured on NPR’s Academic Minute on the topic of artificial versus human intelligence.