Noah Rosenberg, Founder & CEO
Noah comes from a long line of artists and storytellers, ranging from the professional to those who simply embrace the great gift of gab. (Noah proudly falls into both of these camps.) In dedicating his career to storytelling, Noah has had an unwavering appreciation for the underdog, routinely steering away from the big headlines in search of the powerful human backstory. Noah is grateful to be able to champion this approach at Narratively. Prior to launching the company in 2012, he freelanced full-time for The New York Times as a writer, photographer and video journalist, and he also contributed in those mediums to The Wall Street Journal and GQ, and worked as a product manager for Univision Interactive Media. Noah began his career at CBS News Productions, working on documentaries, news and reality shows for CBS and outlets including Discovery, Current TV, Food Network and the History Channel. He went on to become digital director of The Queens Courier newspaper group, where he pioneered the company’s use of video and multimedia and founded and edited Long Island City Courier Magazine. Noah’s work has also been featured by Salon, New York magazine, Channel One News and New York Public Radio, among other outlets, and he was a 2012 fellow at the City University of New York’s Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism.
Brendan Spiegel, Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer
A New York City native, Brendan got his start in journalism as a political reporter and editor at Congressional Quarterly in Washington, D.C. His musings on food, travel, politics, news and humans have appeared frequently in The New York Times, as well as The Washington Post, Wired, New York magazine, Travel + Leisure and many other publications. But the only thing that really impresses most people he meets is that when he was 12 he appeared on an episode of PBS’ “Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?” and caught Carmen in Africa.
Jesse Sposato, Executive Editor
Jesse Sposato (she/her) is a journalist, essayist, and editor living in the Catskills. She particularly likes to write and edit stories about social issues, feminism, health and wellness, culture, and friendship. She is forever working on a grief memoir and a collection of essays about coming of age in the suburbs, and in her “free time,” she volunteers at Solitary Watch. Her writing has appeared in Vanity Fair, InStyle, Business Insider, Shondaland, HuffPost, Healthline, Gloria and many others.
Yunuen Bonaparte, Photo Editor
Yunuen Bonaparte is a photojournalist and editor based in Brooklyn. Her photos have been published by The Washington Post, The Hechinger Report, The Guardian, Al Día News, Mexico’s El Universal, Americas Quarterly, Riverside Press Enterprise and others. Her work has also been part of the exhibitions “South of the Border,” a Getty PST:LA/LA exhibition at Loft at Liz’s in Los Angeles, and “UndocuJoy Unfathomable Strength” at the Galería de la Raza in San Francisco. She has received multiple fellowships and accolades, but one of her favorites has been the Knight CUNYJ fellowship in New York that guided her way to Narratively. As an undocumented immigrant, she is passionate about telling the stories of the unheard. She enjoys traveling and a good cup of coffee.
Ronelle Thomas, Video Producer
Ronelle Thomas is a working actress and creative producer. Her vast imagination and passion for vulnerable storytelling use personal and professional life experiences to produce memorable content on both sides of the camera. Additionally, Ronelle enjoys working with clients to help shape their ideas and bring them to visual life. Starting in Reality TV and working her way across various areas of mass media, Ronelle has been able to grow quickly and utilize her unique skills in all areas of production: pre, pro, and post. Her branded clientele list includes Nike, Showtime, Healthline and Texas Instruments. She holds Reality TV credits for major networks such as ABC, Bravo, Lifetime, The Travel Channel and A+E Networks. She is a proud member of Ava Duvernay’s diverse talent list, Array Crew. Ronelle is also a contributing editor for Freida Films, a woman-owned, London-based production house. Her acting credits include The History Channel, Manifest, Blue Bloods and numerous shorts and mini-series, including the Emmy-nominated BET series, Pillow Talk.
Guia Cortassa, Editorial Assistant
Guia Cortassa is a Milan-based radio host, author, and selector focusing on art, music, and literature; a writer for international magazines; and an editor and translator for several international publishers. She graduated with honors in cultural studies from Milan’s Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera. She had bylines in, among others, Atlas Obscura, the Rumpus, The Quietus, Rolling Stone, Flash Art, Mousse Magazine, Crack Magazine, Loud and Quiet, GoldFlakePaint, the Intentional and Esquire Italia.
She co-wrote, co-produced and co-hosted Storielibere’s Un’estate fa..., a podcast about significant musical and cultural shifts occurring during four distinct pivotal summers, with Giulio D’Antona. She is the sole author of Babalibri’s podcast, Pezzettini d’autore, which features notable children’s book authors. She writes, hosts and selects radio shows on Radio Raheem, including the literary and book chat show Pagine and the daily morning show Yours Truly. Her most recent translation is Annie Dillard’s Una vita a scrivere for Bompiani.
Simone Caldwell, Intern
Simone Caldwell is a freelance writer, bibliophile, cinephile and student based in New York City.
Karen Ng, Fact-Checker
Karen is an associate editor at Poets & Writers magazine. She is also a fact-checker and editor at USAFacts, The Appeal and Global Women Connect, as well as a writer for NME, and The Nation, where she was a fact-checker and poetry assistant. Karen is a born-and-raised Hongkonger. An alumna of Columbia University’s journalism school and King’s College London, she earned First Class Honors while studying literature, classics, history, philosophy, politics, archival studies and postcolonialism, before she was trained extensively across journalistic forms and beats. Both within the realm of magazines and beyond, Karen has a track record of shining a light on marginalization. Often dissecting points of intersection within social justice, her work is doubly reflective of her immersion in pop culture — be it music, film, fiction, photography or theatre.
Shawna Kenney, Contributing Editor
Shawna Kenney is the author of the award-winning memoir I Was a Teenage Dominatrix (Last Gasp), co-author of Imposters (Mark Batty Publisher), editor of Book Lovers (Seal Press) and co-author of Live at the Safari Club: A History of HarDCore Punk in the Nation’s Capital 1988-1998 (Rare Bird Books). Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Playboy, Creative Nonfiction, Vice, Brevity, Narratively and more. She serves as an instructor in the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program and leads Hamlet’s Hideaway, an international writing retreat every summer in Denmark.
Julia Métraux, Contributing Editor
Julia Métraux is a journalist whose work has appeared in Narratively, The Tempest, Bust and Briarpatch Magazine.
Dylan Taylor-Lehman, Contract Writer
Dylan Taylor-Lehman is a nonfiction writer from southeastern Ohio. Previously a reporter for the Yellow Springs News and the Alamogordo Daily News, he writes for Narratively and other publications about crime, work and the obsessive interests that make people happy. His first book, Dance of the Trustees: On the Astonishing Concerns of a Small Ohio Township, was published by the Ohio State University Press in August 2018, and his second, Sealand: The True Story of the World's Most Stubborn Micronation and Its Eccentric Royal Family, was published by Diversion Books in June 2020.
Amy Barnes, Chief Submissions Reader
Amy Cipolla Barnes has words at a wide range of sites including Flash Frog, Reckon Review, The Citron Review, Complete Sentence, Trampset, The Citron Review, The Bureau Dispatch, Spartan Lit, JMWW Journal, McSweeney’s and many others. Her writing has been nominated for Best of the Net, the Pushcart Prize, Best Microfiction, longlisted for Wigleaf50, and included in Best Small Fictions 2022. She’s a Fractured Lit associate editor, Gone Lawn co-editor, Ruby Lit assistant editor and reads for Narratively, Craft Taco Bell Quarterly and The MacGuffin. Her debut chapbook Mother Figures was published in June, 2021 by ELJ Editions with a second collection Ambrotypes published by word west in March 2022. You can find her on X at @amygcb.
Banchiwosen Woldeyesus, Submissions Reader
Banchiwosen Woldeyesus is a Black woman, a teacher and a writer of short fiction and nonfiction. She has published 400+ posts and essays on her blog, Banchi Inspirations, since mid-2018. She publishes personal essays and short fiction on This Precious Dark Skin, her newsletter on Substack that shines a light on the lived experiences of Black women. She lives and teaches in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Nicole Ortiz, Submissions Reader
Nicole Ortiz is a freelance editor and writer based in New York's Hudson Valley. She edits for media outlets including Axios and Adexchanger, as well as for publishing houses like Scholastic/Graphix and Pushkin Press. She has also written for the likes of Adweek, Greatist, Patreon, Rewire.org and more. Outside of her writing and editing, she is embarking on the Catskill 3500 challenge alongside her husband and dog, and she enjoys exploring new places by bike.
Ruby Rosenthal, Submissions Reader
Ruby Rosenthal is an MFA candidate at Hollins University, focusing on creative nonfiction. She loves hot sauces of all kinds.
Ashley Rubell, Submissions Reader
Ashley Rubell is a voracious reader, nonfiction writer and celebrity hair stylist. Based in the Catskills of upstate New York, Ashley is in the thick of motherhood, raising her two sons and trying to work on her memoir when not sleep deprived. Her bylines have appeared in Motherly, People and Tidal Magazine and she is a regular contributor to Byrdie. She travels around the world working on photoshoots and destination weddings and spends her “free time” as a reader for Narratively and Epiphany literary journal.