About Us

KN Literary Arts is the creation of twenty-year publishing veteran Kelly Notaras. After starting her career in New York City—working as an editor for HarperCollins, Penguin USA and Hyperion Books—she relocated several years ago to Boulder, Colorado, where she served for four years as the VP and editorial director at Sounds True, a multimedia spirituality publishing company. There she oversaw an impressive list of spiritual luminaries, including Adyashanti, Reggie Ray, Krishna Das, Sharon Salzberg, Pema Chodron, Caroline Myss, and many more.

In 2010 she left Sounds True to ghostwrite her first book, but her love of editing was never far away. Since starting KN Literary Arts, she has been honored to edit a wide variety of personal-growth books, including New York Times bestsellers The Tapping Solution by Nick Ortner and Pussy: A Reclamation by Regena “Mama Gena” Thomashauer, as well as all three of Nancy Levin’s popular books: Jump . . . and Your Life Will Appear, Worthy and The New Relationship Blueprint. KN Literary’s amazing client list also includes Drew Canole, Sara Gottfried, Carrie Green, Matt Kahn, Danette May, Michael Morelli, Agapi Stassinopoulos, Kate Northrup, and many more.

Along with an impressive roster of talented editorial associates, Kelly is dedicated to the KN Literary Arts mission: bringing life-changing books into the world—and making sure they’re good once they’re here.

Jill Esplin is a life and business coach who is an energetic, positive powerhouse. By leveraging her strong people skills and entrepreneurial spirit, she propels the success of individuals and companies. With a thirst for learning, she has steered her career in different directions with success at every turn. After college, Jill started Leading For Life, a motivational speaking and leadership development company for teens. Though she found this career rewarding and fruitful, Jill felt called to expand her work when she met a best-selling author in 2010. Jill has worked closely with top authors, teachers, and entrepreneurs in the personal growth industry. She specializes in coaching and business development with expertise in enrollment and producing live events. Her program sales total over $15 million dollars to date. In 2012, Jill graduated from the University of Santa Monica with a Master’s in Spiritual Psychology with an emphasis on Consciousness, Health and Healing. Jill is currently based in Los Angeles but can be found anywhere in the world as long as there is Wi-Fi.

Donna Galassi has decades of publishing experience, most recently as the Associate Publisher for Avalon Travel and Seal Press, imprints of Hachette Book Group. She is experienced in book marketing and distribution. Throughout her career she has worked directly with online retailers, bookstore chains, independent bookstores and libraries. Donna’s areas of expertise are memoir, health/fitness, self-help, gender studies, feminism, travel, outdoor recreation and other non-fiction categories. She enjoys helping authors position their ideas and manuscripts for today’s marketplace. Donna has assisted authors in refining their message, building a platform, and developing a marketing strategy.

Growing up Donna was a bookworm who hung out at the public library. Even after years of working in publishing, author events and book festivals remain some of her favorite things. She lives on California’s beautiful central coast where a great day begins with a hike to the beach and ends with a novel and a glass of local Pinot Noir.

Nirmala is a New York–based writer, editor, book midwife, theater artist, and mythmaker. Her work lives at the crossroads of creativity, mythology, storytelling, and collective liberation. As a multi-genre collaborator and creative facilitator, she believes in generative solutions in the midst of chaos, the coexistence of messiness and magic, and breathtaking beauty as a natural consequence of this wild ride. Her specialties include literary nonfiction, speculative fiction, mindfulness meditation, spirituality and personal development, art and design, and social change. Nirmala is trained in several methods of narrative-based collective healing, including Emergent Strategy, Family Constellations, Playback Theatre, Social Presencing Theater, Theatre of the Oppressed, and the Work That Reconnects. In her spare time, she drinks lots of black tea, indulges in luxury skincare, and plots the building of her own community retreat center in upstate New York. Find out more about Nirmala at nirmalanataraj.com.

Sarah Bossenbroek spent over a decade in print and online journalism, working as both a travel editor and a managing editor while writing on topics ranging from health and nutrition to workplace culture to arts and entertainment. While working in the nonprofit and education spheres over the past decade, she discovered a love of book editing as well as proposal coaching and editing. Sarah has found her most fulfilling work to be with clients in the teaching memoir, psychology and self-improvement genres. Based in Portland, Oregon, she’s grateful to be able to explore the outdoors with her family in and near a city where great food, culture and art are around every corner. She still prefers reading traditional books, but the invention of audiobooks and podcasts means she no longer risks her life by having her nose in a book while crossing busy streets.

Books still keep Jason Buchholz up too late, but he doesn’t have to hide under the covers with a flashlight anymore. In his writing career he has worked as a travel writer, a publisher, and a journalist, covering business, finance, and technology. His debut novel, A Paper Son, was published in 2016 by Tyrus Books, since acquired by Simon & Schuster.

His love for storytelling finds further expression in editing and supporting other writers in their endeavors to find their voices. He considers it the greatest of honors to have had the opportunity to work with authors from all over the world on everything from epic novels to scientific articles. He lives in northern California, where he continues to write, read, and edit deep into the night.

Emily Krempholtz is a writer, editor, book coach, and storyteller. Her reading interests are as varied and ever-changing as her hair color, but her specialties as an editor include memoir, personal development, and speculative fiction. With a background that spans from journalism to fantasy novels, Emily is passionate about pulling at the threads of a narrative—be it memoir, self-help, or sci-fi—to unearth the powerful stories that lie beneath the fabric of the human experience. She prides herself on being an enthusiastic, supportive, and honest advocate for the authors she works with.

In her spare time, Emily loves to ride horses, bake bread, decorate cakes, and drink more tea than is probably healthy. When she’s not traveling, she lives in sunny Colorado, where you can usually find her in the mountains—either hiking (and pretending to be a character in a novel) or curled up in a hammock with a good book (and also pretending to be a character in a novel). She’s on a lifelong quest to discover the magic in the world, and has a sneaking suspicion that the written word is where she’ll find it.

Equipped with a passion for organization and a love of books, Lindsay Michko is our Office Manager. Her office administration career has led her to roles in higher education, real estate and property management, and most recently, publishing. Lindsay holds a BA in Environmental Studies from Naropa University, where she minored in Writing & Literature, as well as in Visual Arts. With an unquenchable thirst for knowledge, Lindsay most enjoys reading nonfiction, but she also reads plenty of poetry and spirituality-based books. In her free time, Lindsay is a studying and consulting astrologer, but she does relax every now and then, either snuggling with her feline companion, Hermes, or riding her bike around Boulder, Colorado, where she lives.

Toni Sciarra Poynter is a book publishing industry veteran and a bestselling independent nonfiction editor and writer. She’s been fortunate to focus her career on helping experts bring their knowledge to the public through books that aim to inform, inspire, and improve lives.

She spent more than 25 years at major publishing houses and held editorial acquisition positions at HarperCollins, William Morrow, and Simon and Schuster, working with noted authorities such as bestselling trainer Jack Canfield, Families and Work Institute President Ellen Galinsky, Salk Institute neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran, M.D., Ph.D., New York Times science writers Gina Kolata and Sandra Blakeslee, Mayo Clinic, and the Emily Post Institute.

An editorial consultant since 2008, her clients have been published by Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon and Schuster, Public Affairs/Hachette, Rodale, and Workman. Highlights include Dangerous Personalities/Joe Navarro (Wall Street Journal bestseller), The Code of the Extraordinary Mind/Vishen Lakhiani (New York Times bestseller), The Bullet Journal Method/Ryder Carroll (New York Times bestseller), and Mind in the Making/Ellen Galinsky (1.5 billion+ media impressions).

She is a past co-president of Women’s Media Group (2013, 2014) and a member of the Authors Guild.

She lives in Manhattan, where she loves to explore and photograph the city, and dance—an activity which has given her the opportunity to be a flower, a sylph, a Jet, a Shark, a hoofer, and a murderess.

A detailed bio is available here.