Board Members

Megan Oliver Thompson,
Director

Megan Oliver Thompson practiced law in Chicago and San Francisco for over seventeen years before hitting the pause button and moving to the Louisville area with her husband and two daughters in 2020. She took a brief hiatus from the legal world, during which she read A LOT of those novels she’d been meaning to get to, experienced Disney World for the first time, assistant-coached her younger daughter’s soccer team, and got back into creative writing with NaNoWriMo 2021 and Women Who Write. She’s currently a Content Development Manager with Continuing Education of the Bar, a non-profit associated with University of California – and if she’s not writing, she’s thinking about writing.

Elizabeth Holtsclaw,
Membership Coordinator

Elizabeth Holtsclaw has a degree in history and a master’s degree in Social Work from the University of Chicago. She weaves her improv comedy background with these experiences to channel strong character voices and inserts comedy into even the hardest of subjects. Elizabeth is a voracious reader, storyteller, a true lover of social history and historical fiction. In 2024 she quit her toxic job and started her own consulting group with a few friends to support health focused coalitions. This life change allowed her to devote more of her time to writing and creative based flings. Which all sounds terribly fun and romantic until she starts to think about adult things such as a retirement account and health insurance.

Holly Hinson,
Co-Assistant Director

Elizabeth Roach-Smith,
Treasurer

Elizabeth Roach-Smith has loved writing stories and poetry since shewas a little girl perched in a treehouse with her notebook. Professionally, she works in communications and has channeled her writing skills into roles such as speechwriter and press secretary. Her published work includes freelance nonfiction articles about food and bourbon (her favorite is an article pairing Girl Scout cookies with bourbons), and her appreciation for good food often spills into her work. Currently, she is focusing on poetry and short fiction, with the goal of completing a novel. She holds a degree in English from Furman University and a graduate certificate in publishing from Columbia University.

Irene Sulyevich,
Public Relations

Irene Sulyevich came to Louisville from Ukraine 32 years ago. IT professional, seasoned Toastmaster, fitness nut and a culinary Goddess, she never cheated on her biggest passion—her writing.  She has a collection of personal essays published on medium.com, and she is also a contributor to multi-genre literary anthology The Boom Project: Voices of a Generation (Butler Books 2019). Trilingual, multicultural, her voice gives her writing unique dimension that always sets her work apart.

Nancy Wynn,
At-Large

Nancy Wynn is a writer and mother of two teenagers, and works full time as a nurse practitioner. She joined the 5am club to squeeze in time to write and is in the pursuit of writing a personal memoir. She is a lover of trees and you will often find a tree metaphor mentioned in her essays.