Mary Adkins, Founder
Lawyer and Storyteller
Mary Adkins is a graduate of Yale Law School with a background in writing and storytelling. She teaches storytelling workshops for The Moth and launched the live storytelling series Live Law as part of the public radio project Life of the Law, supported by the National Science Foundation. As an attorney she worked as an associate at Boies, Schiller & Flexner in New York City, where she also served as pro bono coordinator. She directed the Domestic Violence Clinic at Yale Law School for two years and won the Florence M. Kelley '37 Prize for her focus on family law. Her legal scholarship has been published in the Yale Journal of Law & Feminism. Her non-legal writing has appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate and elsewhere, and her play The 49 Project received the Outstanding Playwriting Award in the 2009 NYC Fringe Festival. As a novelist, she is represented by Claire Anderson-Wheeler at Regal Hoffman & Associates.
Julie Polk, Founder
PERFORMANCE COACH AND STORYTELLER
Julie Polk is a writer, teacher, and performer with extensive experience in the corporate, non-profit, and academic worlds. As a senior writer at global brand firm Siegel+Gale, she designed messaging platforms and taught writing workshops in the US and Europe for clients including American Express, HP, Aetna, Motorola, Verizon, Guide Dog Foundation for the Blind, and the Wharton School of Business. She teaches storytelling for The Moth, is an adjunct professor of acting and playwriting at Manhattan College, and is a regular teaching artist at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. She trained as a classical actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the New School.