Creator and Director

Julia Paganelli Marín (she/her) is the Creator and Director of Bee Balm Arkansas, a community writing experience begun in October 2022 with opportunities to listen, write, and share within and beyond Northwest Arkansas. Julia has been teaching and designing curriculum for more than a decade for adult, college-level, and high school learners and has published her research and presented at academic conferences about community writing.

Her role in the Bee Balm community is program and community building; grant writing and development; and workshop instruction. She is the host and editor of the show Bee Balm Presents, a collaboration with KUAF National Public Radio in Fayetteville.

Julia holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arkansas. Her publications include her chapbook, Blush Less, as well as individual poems. Her editorial work has included reading and selection of work for The Arkansas International and Up North Lit.


  • Kirsten Beckett

    DRAFTING NIGHT CO-HOST & NEWSLETTER CREATOR

    Kirsten Beckett (she/her) is our Bee Balm Arkansas Newsletter Coordinator, so she’s the one in your inbox each month. Marketer by trade and poet by choice, Kirsten is a UT Austin grad with a Bachelor’s of Journalism. She made her way to NWA in 2021 and was part of the founding Bee Balm class in 2022. Kirsten regularly leads group members in drafting nights to create a dedicated space where writers can focus on developing their craft and building community. She hadn’t written poetry for fun before joining this community and now she can’t stop!

  • Cassie Sands

    REVISION NIGHT CO-HOST

    Cassie is a writer, Aerospace Engineer, Planetary Scientist, and survivor of childhood trauma based in NWA. Through their work, Cassie shares their journey healing from Complex PTSD and explores our human connection with Earth and the Cosmos. They have been featured on the Traumatized Motherfuckers and Bee Balm Presents podcasts, in the short story collection “In Flight” from Free Spirit publishing, the blog for the CPTSD foundation, and are the author of Cosmic Transmissions on Substack.

  • Haylee Shull

    DRAFTING NIGHT CO-HOST

    Haylee Shull is a writer and artist from Fayetteville, Arkansas. She has two cats and owns a small business with her sister.

  • Jane V. Blunschi

    REVISION NIGHT CO-HOST

    Jane holds an MFA in Fiction Writing from the University of Arkansas. She was a 2014 Lambda Literary Emerging Voices fellow, and her collection of stories, Understand Me, Sugar, was published in 2017 by Yellow Flag Press. Her novella, Mon Dieu, Love won the 2022 Clay Reynolds Novella Prize and was recently published by Texas Review Press. Jane's stories and essays have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and appeared in Bayou Magazine, Cream City Review, Paper Darts, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Foglifter, among others. Originally from Louisiana, Jane lives in Farmington, Arkansas.

  • Sav Leonard

    GRAPHIC DESIGNER

    Sav Leonard (she/they) is a creative professional living in Fayetteville, Arkansas who supports small businesses and local creatives with designs that are both fun and functional. Whether it's creating social media templates, designing promotional content, or building a whole brand guide from the ground up, she's excited to be part of your growth and success. Sav graduated from John Brown University in 2018 with a degree in Graphic Design and a minor in Business Administration & Marketing. View more of Sav’s graphic designs on their website.