WHO WE ARE
Keeping the loop looping...

RACHEL COONCE
Co-Founder
Rachel Coonce is a graduate of the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College. She was awarded the Conger Beasley Jr. Award for Nonfiction by New Letters magazine, and she received an honorable mention in The Missouri Review’s Miller Audio Prize. She is cofounder of The Inner Loop, a literary arts nonprofit in Washington, DC, and she is creator, Executive Producer, and cohost of The Inner Loop Radio, a creative writing podcast. Follow her on instagram @rachel_coonce.

COURTNEY SEXTON
Co-Founder
Courtney Sexton is a New Jersey native who grew up between the Delaware River and the sandy Pine Barrens. She received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, was a 2015 Our City Festival curator and is the co-founder of Washington, DC’s The Inner Loop. She is the recipient of a DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities Fellowship. Water and her dog (or manifestations thereof) are recurrent characters in her writing, and her life, for that matter.

KIERA WOLFE
Outreach Coordinator
Kiera Wolfe studied The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and is currently pursuing her MFA in Fiction at the University of Maryland. She has worked with literary nonprofits such as The Maryland Book Bank and 826Valencia. When she's not writing, reading, or teaching she enjoys embroidery and reality TV.

LINDSAY BROWN
Summer Residency Intern
Lindsay Brown has worked in publishing in New York for several years, and is currently enrolled at American University’s MFA program where she serves as editor in chief for Folio. She is a Kenyon Review and Juniper Institute alum who is interested in making the grotesque beautiful in her writing.

LENA CROWN
Program Manager
Lena Crown is a writer from Northern California. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from George Mason University, and her work is published or forthcoming in Guernica, Narratively, Gulf Coast, Sonora Review, and The Offing, among others. She loves cats, old fire insurance maps, and reading/writing about cities, bodies, language, and art. She edits for Autofocus Books and writes for the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.
Our Board of Directors
Past Members:
Maud Casey
Jennifer Clements
Paul Ruppert