Event

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Join us for a conversation with novelist, screenwriter, film producer, and Creative Writing instructor Kathleen DeMarco Van Cleve, winner of the 2024–2025 Beltran Family Award for Innovative Teaching & Mentoring. KWH Program Coordinator Alli Katz will moderate a discussion with Van Cleve and her former student Kate Myers (C’08), author of the bestselling novel — and soon to be television series — Excavations.

Together, they will explore the lasting impact of creative mentorship, the intersections of teaching and storytelling, and the ways in which personal experience informs artistic practice. The conversation will also touch on writing, motherhood, and the evolving paths of two authors shaped by — and now shaping — creative communities.

Kathleen DeMarco Van Cleve is a novelist, screenwriter, film producer and teacher. Her most recent work is Never Caught: The Story of Ona Judge, the 2020 Children’s History Book Prize winner, which was co-written with Erica Armstrong Dunbar. Never Caught was also named to Reader’s Digest’s List of the 106 Best Children’s Books of All Time. Her most recent screenplay, Femesis, was co-written with Aline Brosh McKenna, the writer of The Devil Wears Prada and My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Her middle gradenovel Drizzle won the Keystone State Reading Award and received starred reviews from Publisher’s Weekly, The Bulletin for the Center of Children’s Books and School Library Journal. Her debut novel, Cranberry Queen, was published in over twelve countries and was optioned by Miramax Films. For over a decade, she worked with actor/producer/playwright John Leguizamo and with him produced several movies, including the Sundance Film Festival screenwriting winner, Joe the King, and the award-winning film, Pinero. DeMarco Van Cleve graduated from Penn with a dual degree from the College of Arts & Sciences (Creative Writing) and Wharton.

Kate Myers is the author of the national bestseller Excavations. Her writing has appeared in Elle, and Self magazines, as well as on BuzzFeed. She studied archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania and has lived in New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC, where she's worked for CBS and for CollegeHumor. Her debut novel, Excavations, is being turned into a Peacock series starring Amy Poehler. She now resides in Annapolis, Maryland, with her husband, daughters, and dog.

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The Beltran Family Award for Innovative Teaching & Mentoring at the Kelly Writers House is presented annually to one of our faculty who teach writing in the extracurricular context of the Kelly Writers House, its projects, programs and people. The Beltran Award is not just for excellent teaching in the classroom, although that's obviously relevant and important; it's intended to honor the making and sustaining of a learning environment, and the spirit of informal and outside-of-class mentoring that the best teachers embody.