Our Teachers
The Muse's instructors are all working writers and published authors who have taught courses at colleges, universities, and other community organizations. Read our teachers’ biographies and see what classes they are currently teaching.
Jean Klein
A non-fiction writer and playwright, Jean Klein holds an MA and an MFA from the Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa and studied playwriting at the U of I and at Carnegie-Mellon University. She currently teaches playwriting in the MA and MFA program at Wilkes University in Wilkes-Barre, PA. As a freelance writer and editor, she has won awards for magazine articles, plays, and television scripts. For three years, she served as Contributing Editor for Metro magazine and for one year as Cultural Editor for Portfolio. She has also published three books on writing skills and customer service. Her short play, Snapshots was a winner in the Kernoble Contest at the University of Arkansas in 2010 and her full-length play, The Refraction of Lightis scheduled for production during the Summer Playfest in Norfolk in 2012. She is co-owner of a dramatic publishing company, Blue Moon Plays with the imprints HaveScripts, ScriptWorks Press, and Unicorn Bay Press. Facebook link: https://www.facebook.com/bluemoonplays/
Klein currently is a co-director, along with Clyde Santana, of Dreamwrights, a playwrights' cooperative which meets twice/month at Zeiders' American Dream Theatre in Virginia Beach, where her new full-length play, Generous Rivals, premiered in 2019.
Current Classes Taught
- Keep ‘Em On the Edge of Their Seats: 6 Techniques to Create Suspense in Your Story
- (Fall 2024)
- X-Ray Your Characters: What Makes Them Tick?
- (Fall 2024)
Previous Classes Taught
- Growing Organic Characters
- (Winter/Spring 2021)
- How to write a play: The basics of dramatic storytelling and more
- (Fall 2021)
- Keep 'Em On the Edge of Their Seats: 6 Techniques to Create Suspense in Your Story
- (Summer 2020)
- Keep ‘Em On the Edge of Their Seats: 6 Techniques to Create Suspense in Your Story
- (Winter/Spring 2022)
- Making Minor Characters Sizzle (Now Online)
- (Winter/Spring 2020)
- Me, Myself, and I: Writing First Person POV
- (Winter/Spring 2023)
- Playwriting Crash Course: What You Need to Know to Write and Submit a Short Play
- The 3rd Annual Short Short Playwrighting Project
- (Summer 2023)
- The First Paragraph: Hook Your Reader
- (Winter/Spring 2023)
- The Power of Line Editing
- (Summer 2021)
- The Power of Line Editing
- (Summer 2022)
- The Short-Short Playwriting Project 2022
- Turn Your Fragments into Stories
- (Fall 2020)
- Turn Your Fragments into Stories
- (Winter/Spring 2023)
- Turn Your Fragments into Stories
- (Winter/Spring 2022)
- Write Great Sentences
- (Winter/Spring 2021)
- Write Great Sentences
- (Winter/Spring 2023)
- Write Great Sentences
- (Winter/Spring 2020)
- Write Great Sentences
- (Winter/Spring 2022)
- Writing Compelling Heroes
- (Fall 2021)