Meet our Members

Janet Aalfs

Janet E. Aalfs, poet laureate emeritus of Northampton and founder/director of Lotus Peace Arts at VWMA, enjoys helping to facilitate sites for revelation. Her books include Bird of a Thousand Eyes.

Alvilda Sophia Anaya-Alegría

Alvilda Sophia Anaya-Alegría is a graduate of Southern University of New Hampshire in Economics. She is a Fine Art Artist and Writer. Her focus has been to write lyric poetry, décima puertorriqueña, to be played with a cuatro guitar, and sung by Trovadores, who usually improvise singing historical events happenings. She is from Guayama, Puerto Rico and came to live in Springfield when she was 3. Her work in the fine arts, architecture, and literature have been honored by the Puerto Rican Institute of Culture (ICP). The highest government institution of culture, protectors of our art, history, architecture of our archipelago.

María Luisa Arroyo

Boricua poet and feminist intersectional educator María Luisa Arroyo’s poetry collections include Gathering Words: Recogiendo Palabras (Bilingual Press 2008), and the chapbooks Flight (2016) and Destierro Means More than Exile (2018). Her poems and essays have been published in a number of journals and magazines, and among her many awards, she was named Springfield’s Inaugural Poet Laureate in 2016, and received New England Public Radio’s Arts & Humanities Award in 2019. María Luisa is an Assistant Professor of Writing and First Year Studies at Bay Path University and serves as an Advisory Member on the Board of the New England Poetry Club. She has facilitated numerous poetry and writing workshops, and has written a guide to poetry for middle schoolers; Just Imagine in Springfield. Her poems, essays, and work in the classroom are inspired by her study of and lived experience in four cultures and their languages: American, Puerto Rican, German, and Iranian. She holds degrees from Colby College (BA), Tufts University (MA), Pine Manor College (MFA). At Harvard, she completed her coursework, passed her oral exams and submitted the first two chapters of her dissertation on two Jewish German poets, Hilde Domin and Mascha Kaleko, who were forced into exile during the Nazi period.

Jeannine Atkins

Jeannine Atkins writes about women in history. Her books include Finding Wonders: Three Girls Who Changed Science and Stone Mirrors: The Sculpture and Silence of Edmonia Lewis (both Simon and Schuster).

Joy Deva Baglio

 Joy Deva Baglio is a speculative-literary fiction writer and founder of Pioneer Valley Writers’ Workshop, a literary arts organization based in Northampton MA (and virtually), offering a changing lineup of writing workshops, writing groups, day-long creative retreats, author readings, and literary community events. Her short stories appear widely in journals such as One Story, Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, The Iowa Review, American Short Fiction, Conjunctions, Tin House, and The Fairy Tale Review, among others. Two stories have been optioned for film/TV. Her writing has been supported by fellowships, grants, and residencies from Yaddo, The Elizabeth George Foundation, Ragdale, Vermont Studio Center, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, The Speculative Literature Foundation, and The Kerouac Project, where she was the spring 2023 Writer-in-Residence living and working in Jack Kerouac’s Orlando bungalow. Joy holds an MFA from The New School and is currently at work on three novels and a short story collection. She’s represented by Peter Steinberg at United Talent Agency, and Sean Daily at Hotchkiss, Daily, & Associates for film/TV. Joy frequently presents at national conferences, teaches writing at PVWW, and writes a semi-regular Substack – Alone in a Room – on the craft of writing. She lives in Northampton, MA, where she can also be found playing the bagpipes, running, and scheming up adventures. 

Robin Barber

Born 1947 in Northampton, Robin Barber, M.A., is a writer, teacher, and photographer. Certified by Amherst Writers and Artists leadership program, Robin has been in writing workshops since 1987, and leading the Wednesday evening and Monday morning workshops since 1997. Robin is the managing director of Gallery of Readers Press.

Lynn Bechtel

Lynn Bechtel has published articles, essays, and poetry in professional magazines, literary journals, and anthologies. She worked for many years as a social worker and health educator and then as an editor and writer for Center for Responsive Schools.

Liz Bedell

Liz Bedell is a freelance editor, writing coach, and writer based in Northampton. A longtime English teacher, she is currently working on a novel set during the Great War and THE CARE AND FEEDING OF A WRITER’S SOUL, a nonfiction book about sustaining one’s writing practice. She also facilitates writing workshops locally and teaches at the Hartsbrook School.

Steve Bernstein

Most authors don’t have a master plumbers license and a master’s degree. Steve Bernstein has both. As a kid, he survived the turbulent Bronx streets of the 1960’s and chaos at home. Since his early twenties, Steve has been a mentor, teacher, and advocate for teens in trouble. Steve is also a humane educator and animal rights activist who shares his home in Western Massachusetts with Little Bear, his canine companion.

Stephen Billias

Stephen is the author of seven published science fiction/fantasy novels, including The American Book of the Dead and Quest for the Thirty-Six. From 2006 to 2016, Stephen and his wife Bela Breslau founded and ran the Shintaido Farm, a center for the practice of the Japanese body movement and martial art Shintaido, on River Road in Deerfield. Odeon Press is publishing Stephen’s literary collection of short stories entitled: A Book of Fields: Tales from the Pioneer Valley.

Anna Bozena Bowen

A poet, author, and nurse, Anna’s holistic approach to life and connection to spirit is expressed in her awards winning novel HATTIE which she says “is a testament to the multidimensional aspects of our human and spiritual lives.”

Bela Breslau

Bela has joined with her husband Stephen Billias (also a Straw Dog member). Together they have written a novel and are in the process of looking for an agent to represent them. Bela is working on a long-term project (memoir/personal history) about her father Sam, a Jewish chicken farmer who lived in Connecticut. Bela and Stephen founded and ran the Shintaido Farm, a center for the practice of the Japanese body movement and martial art Shintaido, on River Road in Deerfield. It is now Windhorse Hill Retreat Center.

Steven D. Brewer

Steven D. Brewer teaches scientific writing at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His LGBTQIA+ fantasy story “Revin’s Heart” has been serialized by Water Dragon Publishing. As an author, Brewer identifies diverse obsessions that underlie his writing: deep interests in natural history, life science, and environmentalism; an abiding passion for languages; a fascination with Japanese culture; and a mania for information technology and the Internet. Brewer lives in Amherst, Massachusetts with his extended family.

Jane Roy Brown

Jane is an award-winning journalist, editor, and the co-author, with Susan Haltom, of One Writer’s Garden: Eudora Welty’s Home Place. She is a workshop leader, helping other people write their life stories.

Elaine Burnes

Elaine is the award-winning author of the novel Wishbone and short-story collection A Perfect Life and Other Stories. Wishbone was honored with a 2016 Golden Crown Literary Society award for Dramatic/General Fiction. A Perfect Life and Other Stories earned a 2016 Rainbow Award. Her next book, Endurance, a science fiction novel and first in a trilogy, will be out in June 2022. She lives in the North Quabbin region where she’s helping her wife rebuild a natural landscape and do battle against invasive plants and mice.

Grant Carrington

Short stories, novels, plays, nonfiction, songs.

Floyd Cheung

Floyd Cheung teaches in the Department of English and American Studies Program at Smith College. His scholarship focuses on the recovery and recontextualization of lesser-known Asian American literature including The Hanging on Union Square by H. T. Tsiang (Penguin, 2019), Sadakichi Hartmann: Collected Poems (Little Island, 2016), and The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration (Penguin, 2024), co-edited with Frank Abe. Cheung is author of the chapbook Jazz at Manzanar (Finishing Line, 2014).

LJ Cohen

LJ Cohen writes science fiction & fantasy and was among the 1st wave of indie writers to qualify for SFWA membership. LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD, her 9th novel, is available now. A retired physical therapist, LJ currently uses her clinical knowledge and skills to injure fictional characters. She serves on the board of Broad Universe as well as several local non-profits in her community. In addition to her creative work as a writer and role as a community organizer, she is also a potter and fiber artist. She lives on a homestead farm in central MA and is extremely proud of her tractor riding and tree pruning skills.   

Arianna Alexsandra Collins

Naturalist educator. Writer, Poet. Priestess. Wild edibles enthusiast. Arianna writes natural science / natural history articles for local and regional publications. She writes a bi-monthly column “Into the Outside” for The Ashfield News and has featured articles in MassWildlife, Ecological Landscape Alliance, and Northern Woodlands. Arianna is the author of Hearken to Avalon, a historical fantasy novel and a contributor to Nature Portals: Animate Earth Practices which provides meditative activities inviting the reader to engage with the natural world.

Through her business Offerings for Community Building, Arianna offers a variety of services in community engagement activities, outdoor immersion experiences, and poetry shares. Arianna is the executive director for the Hoosic River Watershed Association. She served as SDWG’s administrative director from January 2021 – February 2025.

Candace Curran

Candace R. Curran was raised alongside Wachusett Mountain in rural Princeton, MA by a Coyote and Ford mechanic doing the best they could. Curran is co-founder/organizer of INTERFACE, exhibitions that included the work of twenty or more artists and poets over ten years of presentations throughout Western Massachusetts and a co-founder of Exploded View, a five woman traveling collaborative art and poetry performance group. Her publications include the anthology, Bone Cages, with Doug Anderson and John Hodgen and others, Haley’s Press, 1996, and her full length book, Playing in Wrecks, Haley’s, 2011.  Candace’s poetry has also appeared in journals, Meat For Tea, Silkworm, RAW NerVZ Haiku, and others. Her newest collection, The Sound of Her Good Name, was published in 2025 by Slate Roof Press and is available here.

Corinne Demas

Corinne Demas is the author of thirty-nine books, including six novels (Daughters, The Road Towards Home, The Writing Circle), two short story collections, a memoir (Eleven Stories High, Growing Up in Stuyvesant Town, 1948–1968), a poetry chapbook, and numerous books for children (The Littlest Matryoshka, Saying Goodbye to Lulu, The Disappearing Island, The Perfect Tree). She is a Professor Emerita of English at Mt. Holyoke College.

Lori Desrosiers

Lori Desrosiers’ poetry books are The Philosopher’s Daughter and Sometimes I Hear the Clock Speak (both from Salmon Poetry). She edits Naugatuck River Review, a journal of narrative poetry.

E. Doyle-Gillespie

E. Doyle-Gillespie is a long-time Baltimore resident who enjoys writing, reading, and learning as a part of Hampden’s creative community.  He holds a BA History from George Washington University, and a Master of Liberal Arts from Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Gentrifying the Plague House, Father of the Red Grotto Used Bookstore, Aerial Act, and other books. He was 2024’s grand prize winner in the Iridescence Award for Horror and SciFi from Kinsman Quarterly. He won third place in this year’s Westmoreland Arts and Heritage Literary Contest, and an honorable mention in the Rhonda Gail Wiliford Human Rights Poetry Competition. E. Doyle-Gillespie is a teacher of World Literature at the Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women.

Christine Gay Dutton

Christine Gay Dutton hails from Rochester, NY. She resides in Northampton, Massachusetts. Her work has been published with Kota Press, Aileron, Deep Cleveland, Meat for Tea, and Identity Theory. She co-led in the formation of Writing Sisters, a BIPOC and Queer community of writers in Holyoke, Massachusetts.

Carol Edelstein

Carol Edelstein, with Robin Barber, co-founded Gallery of Readers Press. With Liz George, she edits Switch, a journal of micro fiction. She is the author of three books of poems, most recently Past Repair (Simian Press, 2021). Her poetry and fiction have been featured in numerous anthologies and literary magazines, including The Massachusetts Review, The Georgia Review, and Alaska Quarterly Review. 

Constance Emmett

Constance’s debut novel, set in early 20th c. Belfast, Northern Ireland, Heroine of Her Own Life (2019) and sequel, Everything Will Be All Right (2022), books 1 and 2 in the Finding Their Way Home series, were published by Next Chapter. Constance lives with her wife and their dog in the beautiful hilltown of Hawley, where she is writing book 3 in the series, an unrelated novel set in 18th c. New York, and short fiction. She is a dedicated member of the Irish Writers Centre, Writing.ie, The Historical Novel Society (US, UK, and Irish Chapter), the Irish Writers Union, and the eXpress Writing Community. She writes essays for the DIY MFA online magazine, her own blog (constancegemmett.com), and reviews fiction for Historical Novels Review.

Christian Escalona

Christian Escalona is a Massachusetts-based writer, originally from Southern California. He holds a BA from the University of La Verne and a JD from Western New England University. He is currently studying to become a licensed trauma therapist. His prose has appeared in BULL Magazine, Writer’s Digest,and the anthology, Trans Bodies Trans Selves amongst others. Christian is working on his manuscript, Divided, a memoir about growing up under the weight of his mother’s unmet dreams while navigating his own path, identity, and sense of purpose.

Beth Filson

Beth Filson has served as the host of Writers Night Out, a Straw Dog open mic. She won the 2015 Wild Light Poetry Prize from Red Hen Press, and her art was featured on the cover of The Florida Review.

Cheryl J. Fish

Cheryl J. Fish is a poet, fiction writer and environmental justice scholar. Her debut novel OFF THE YOGA MAT was published by Livingston Press/UWA. She is the author of THE SAUNA IS FULL OF MAIDS, poems and photographs celebrating Finnish sauna culture, travel, and friendships, and CRATER & TOWER, poems reflecting on trauma and ecology after the Mount St. Helens Volcanic eruption and the terrorist attack of 9/11. Fish has been a Fulbright professor in Finland and is a co-editor with Farah Griffin of A STRANGER IN THE VILLAGE: TWO CENTURIES OF AFRICAN-AMERICAN TRAVEL LITERATURE. Fish’s poems have appeared in Hanging Loose, Maintenant, Terrain, Mom Egg Review, New American Writing, Reed, Postcard poems, Santa Monica Review, ISLE and Poetics for the More-than-Human-World. Her short fiction has appeared in Cheap Pop, Iron Horse Literary Review, Liars League, Spank the Carp, Boog City, and KGB Bar Lit. She has also published essays on environmental justice through the arts and media in various books and journals and she is the creative writing editor of the journal Ecocene. Fish is professor of English at BMCC/City University of New York and docent lecturer at University of Helsinki. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @cheryljoyfish

Mary Warren Foulk

A graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts, Mary Warren Foulk (she/her) has been published in The Hollins Critic, Palette Poetry, Fjords Review, Silkworm, The Gay & Lesbian Review, and North American Review, among other publications. Her work also has appeared in Who’s Your Mama? The Unsung Voices of Women and Mothers (Soft Skull Press), (M)othering Anthology (Inanna Publications), and My Loves: A Digital Anthology of Queer Love Poems (Ghost City Press). She has two award-winning chapbooks, If I Could Write You a Happier Ending (dancing girl press) and Erasures of My Coming Out (Letter) (The Poetry Box). Her newest collection, The Show Must Go On (Fernwood Press, 2025), was a finalist for the 2021 Gival Press Poetry Award, and the Inlandia Institute’s 2022 Hillary Gravendyk Prize, and a semi-finalist for the Word Works’ 2022 Washington Prize.

Marianne Gambaro

Marianne Gambaro’s poems and essays have been published in print and online journals including Mudfish, CALYX, Oberon Poetry Magazine, and Spillway. Smithsonian excerpted her poem, “Darkness and Light,” originally published in Poets Reading the News, to illustrate its award-winning photograph, The Absent Sky. Her chapbook, Do NOT Stop for Hitchhikers, was published by Finishing Line Press. Marianne’s career as a journalist is often reflected in the narrative style of her poetry. A committed humane volunteer, she does enrichment with long-term cats at her regional humane society, socializing them and preparing them for adoption. She lives, writes, and gardens in Belchertown with her photographer-husband and two feline muses. “The Lighthouse Keeper,” Bookends Review “A Dream Deferred,” Halfway Down the Stairs

Michael Goldman

Poet and translator of classic contemporary Danish authors, Michael Goldman’s work has appeared in dozens of literary journals. He is also a guest speaker in classrooms and at literary events.

Kathryn Good-Schiff

Kathryn Good-Schiff is the author of Love Letters to Ghosts (Meat for Tea Press, 2025) and has published poems in various journals and anthologies including California Quarterly, Naugatuck River Review, and PANK. Kat trained in the Amherst Writers Method and has led workshops at the Massachusetts?Poetry Festival and the Hitchcock Center for the Environment. She holds degrees from Hampshire College, Goddard College, and Simmons University. She makes her living as an academic librarian and lives with her wife and their animals in Easthampton, MA. 

D M Gordon

Book author of Fourth World, and Nightly, at the Institute of the Possible, a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award and International Book Award. Prizewinning poetry and fiction, including Glimmer Train (1st Prize), The Massachusetts Review, and Nimrod. MCC Artist Fellow in Fiction, a finalist in poetry. Editor; multiple genres.

Tzivia Gover

Tzivia Gover, is the author most recently of Joy in Every Moment: Mindful Exercises for Waking to the Wonders of Ordinary Life, and Learning in Mrs. Towne’s House: A Teacher, Her Students, and the Woman Who Inspired Them. As an author and workshop leader, she draws from mindfulness, dreamwork, and writing to empower people to live their best lives.

Peter Cooper Hay

Peter Cooper Hay is the pen name under which I write fiction. (If you Google my legal name, Peter Bishop, your first few hundred hits will be a character from a science fiction TV show called Fringe, so I’ve chosen to use my grandmother’s maiden name and my great-grandmother’s maiden name.) I’m a Quaker, a Pagan/Wiccan, a retired science teacher, and a woodworker as well as a husband, father, and grandfather. I’ve published essays and poetry under my legal name in the anthology Celebrating the Pagan Soul and in the Quaker publication Friends Journal. My debut as a fiction author appeared recently in Metastellar. I am working on an urban fantasy novel while querying a historical fantasy set in the time of Queen Anne, with a hard SF opus sitting on a shelf after collecting 100 rejections. I remind myself that rejections are a good thing; every successful writer needs lots of them.

Meghan Hoagland

For the past decade, my creative work has lived at the intersection of language and image, shaped by a career in communications and an ongoing practice as a visual artist and photographer (www.meghanhoagland.com). I’m currently finishing my first poetry collection, Bearing Arms and Babies, which explores the ongoing identity crisis and cultural paradigm shift of this moment, shaped by insular AI echo chambers that have helped form a new feminine consciousness (and backlash). I’ve spent most of my life in our Happy Valley and now reside in Southampton. When I’m not writing, you can find me in my garden growing things.

Ellen Evert Hopman

Ellen Evert Hopman writes Celtic fiction and Herbals. Find my books and blog at www.elleneverthopman.com My new children’s book: “Once Around the Sun: Stories, Crafts, and Recipes to Celebrate the Sacred Earth Year” will be on sale April 19, 2022 in the U.S. The UK on-sale date is about 6 weeks later. It is available for pre-order here and other retailers worldwide here.

Richard Horton

Richard Wayne Horton is the author of Sticks and Bones (Meat for Tea Press, 2017), and Artists In The Underworld (Human Error Publishing, 2019). Later this year he will release Ballet for Murderers (Human Error Publishing). Richard writes poetry, flash fiction, and longer fiction, but much of his work is a hybrid of these genres, or might be said to exist outside the definition of any of them. Richard has received two Pushcart nominations and is the 2019-21 Massachusetts Beat Poet Laureate. His work has appeared in Lonesome October, Meat For Tea, Bull & Cross, Literary Heist, The Dead Mule and others. He is a master of the conservation and restoration of books, and has published four technical manuals on the subject, and has written research timelines on the culture of the Left in the 20th century, and on music, art, and literature in Russia from 1730 to 1970.

Regine Jackson

Regine Jackson is a writer based in Springfield, Massachusetts, specializing in writing stories across science fiction, horror, and fantasy genres. Additionally, she explores themes of mental health, the effects of inner-city life and womanhood through her poetry and prose. In 2022, Jackson was the recipient of the Straw Dogs Writers Guild Emerging Writer Fellowship, and her work has since appeared in the 2024 Massachusetts Bards Anthology, Pán•o•ply: Inaugural MultiCreative Anthology, The Bitchin’ Kitsch, Gnashing Teeth Publishing, Red Rose Thorns Lit Mag, A Queen’s Narrative: Heavy is the Crown Anthology, and the Reimagining New England Histories Project. For more details, visit reginejackson.com or @theflimsyquill on Instagram.

Kara Joseph

Kara Joseph, LICSW, is a therapist, poet, and writer. She has a private practice providing psychotherapy, poetry therapy, workshops, and wellness coaching in Easthampton MA. She worked as a hospice and palliative social worker for many years. Kara serves on the editorial board for the Journal of Poetry Therapy. She has publications in professional magazines, literary journals, and anthologies.

Alexis Johnson

Alexis Johnson is co-founder and was Executive Director of International Language Institute for 31 years. Before that, she lived and taught in Barcelona for 9 years. Playing With A Full Deck is a wry look at her experiences.

Becky Jones

Becky Jones leads bereavement writing groups and has an active volunteer life. She has published some poetry and works episodically on a manuscript of stories from her hospital chaplain days.

Eileen P. Kennedy

Eileen P. Kennedy lives in Amherst, MA. Her chapbook Banshees (Flutter Press, 2015) was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2015 and awarded Second Prize from the Wordwrite Book Awards in Poetry. She was awarded Second Prize in the Penumbra Haiku Poetry Contest. She was a finalist for the 2018 Concrete Wolf Louis Poetry Prize. She won Honorable Mention from the New England, New York, and London Book Festivals, as well as from the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid/Poetry Contest and the Oregon Poetry Society.

Elizabeth Levine

Elizabeth Levine, M.A., M.P.H., M.F.A., is a trilingual professor, consultant, translator, blogger,
published author, and poet. Language Learning Network (LLN) recruited her to be a Supervising
Instructor for 18 national World Language Teachers and a Curriculum Developer for Creative Writing,
French, and Spanish courses. Before LLN , she taught as Adjunct Faculty in the English Department at
William Paterson University and Montclair State University, where she taught Creative Writing,
Contemporary Literature, and Composition. She earned her M.F.A. in Creative Writing during her tenure
at William Paterson University , and also served as the first intern for MAPLiterary, the WPU English
Department’s online literary journal. She was selected to read her poetry and fiction at the WPU
authors’ reading annual event.

Patricia Lee Lewis

(aka Pat Sackrey) a co-founder and first president of Straw Dog Writers Guild, is an award-winning poet. She has published two books of poetry, A Kind of Yellow (first-place winner of Writer’s Digest’s International Chapbook Poetry contest); andthe full-length High Lonesome. She holds a BA from Smith College and an MFA from Vermont College for the Fine Arts. In over 30 years, she led hundreds of creative writing workshops and retreats at her Patchwork Farm mountainside retreat in Westhampton MA, hosted over 40 SDWG residencies for writers, and led 70 writing & yoga retreats internationally. She moved to downtown Northampton MA in 2020, where she held 98 “Writer’s Cave” workshops online and continues her work with writers through the invaluable Straw Dog Writers Guild. Patricia’s first novel, Thorns of the Mesquite, in paperback and as an audio book, will launch in mid-November 2025, on her 88^th birthday. She is beyond grateful to live and work in the company of other writers.  www.writingretreats.org; patricialeelewis@gmail.com

Laura Louise

Hello, please allow me to introduce myself to you. My name is Laura Louise and I am the author of four children books soon to be five! My first four books are about a series of anti-bullying, kindness and inspirational stories of ‘K-9 Fitzgerald Sniffs Out Bullies’ I am a retired nurse after 47 years, and this was totally out of my wheel house! I had no idea what I was doing initially, but I figured it out and I am so glad I did! Thank you for allowing me to join this very talented group of people.

Respectfully

Author Laura Louise

Janet MacFadyen

Janet MacFadyen is the managing editor of Slate Roof Press and the author of five poetry collections. Her newest book, State of Grass, is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. Recent work appears in Scientific American, Naugatuck River Review, Crannóg, Osiris, Persimmon Tree, Tiny Seed Journal, Soul-Lit, and elsewhere. She has received awards from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.

Jan Maher

Jan Maher’s writing credits include novels, Earth As It Is, and Heaven, Indiana; plays Ismene, Intruders, Widow’s Walk, and Most Dangerous Women; and books for educators.

Libby Maxey

Libby Maxey, of Conway, MA, is a senior editor at the online journal Literary Mama; she also edits for Amherst College and as a freelancer. She reviews poetry for The Mom Egg Review and Solstice, and her own poems have appeared in Mezzo Cammin, Crannóg, Kestrel, Naugatuck River Review, and elsewhere. Her first chapbook, Kairos, won Finishing Line Press’s 2018 New Women’s Voices Chapbook Competition. Locally, she has won both the Poet’s Seat Poetry Contest and the Robert P. Collén Poetry Contest, and her work was selected for the Northampton Arts Council’s 2017 Visual Arts and Poetry Biennial. Her nonliterary activities include singing classical repertoire and mothering two sons

J.A. McIntosh

J.A. McIntosh spent too many years as an attorney in the child welfare system. She draws on her experience and her imagination to write about her former career. When not writing, she walks in the woods, plays piano, and indulges her addition to chocolate. Her book, Niagara Fontaine, a Meredith, Massachusetts novel was released in 2018. Her next novel in the series, A. B. Hartwell, will be released in 2019.

Ellen Meeropol

Ellen is the author of the novels The Lost Women of Azalea Court, Her Sister’s Tattoo, Kinship of Clover, On Hurricane Island, and House Arrest, and guest editor for the anthology Dreams for a Broken World. Recent story and essay publications include Ms Magazine, Lilith, Solstice, Guernica, and Mom Egg Review.

Richard Michelson

Richard Michelson’s many books for children, teens, and adults have been named among the 10 Best of the Year by The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and The New Yorker, and among the Best Dozen of the Decade by Amazon.com. Michelson has received a National Jewish Book Award, two Sydney Taylor Gold Medals from the Association of Jewish Libraries, and two Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowships. His work was chosen to represent the Commonwealth at the Library of Congress National Book Festival, and he was the sixth recipient of the Samuel Minot Jones Award for Lifetime Literary Achievement. Michelson served two terms as Poet Laureate of Northampton, Massachusetts, where he hosts Northampton Poetry Radio and owns R. Michelson Galleries.

Lesléa Newman

Lesléa Newman’s 70 books include Heather Has Two Mommies and October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard. A past poet laureate of Northampton, her newest poetry collection I Carry My Mother was a 2016 Massachusetts “Must Read” title.

Nerissa Nields

Nerissa Nields is a musician, songwriter, novelist, poet, and author. She has released 18 CDs, written five books and is currently at work on her third “Jintucket” novel. She has been running writing workshops and retreats out of her home in Northampton MA since 2003. Writing It Up in the Garden is a mostly generative workshop process that welcomes all genres and levels of writers. She also runs manuscript groups (“Weeding & Pruning”) and maintains a popular blog on her website.

Chris O’Carroll

Chris O’Carroll is the author The Joke’s on Me (White Violet Press, 2019). He is a Light magazine featured poet whose work has appeared The Great American Wise Ass Poetry Anthology, Love Affairs at the Villa Nelle, New York City Haiku, and Poems for a Liminal Age, among other collections.

Rebecca Hart Olander

Rebecca is a poet, a writing teacher, and is the editor/director of Perugia Press.

Ed Orzechowski

Ed Orzechowski is the author of Becoming Darlene—The Story of Belchertown Patient #4952 and You’ll Like It Here—The Story of Donald Vitkus, Belchertown Patient #3394 (Levellers Press) first-person accounts by individuals who grew up at a former institution infamous for abuse and neglect. In 2019 he was presented the Dr. Benjamin Ricci Commemorative Award by the Massachusetts Department of Developmental Disabilities. He is a retired teacher and journalist whose work has appeared in numerous periodicals.

Dori Ostermiller

Dori Ostermiller, MFA is the author of Outside the Ordinary World, and founder and director of Writers in Progress, a writing center offering workshops, editing and consulting at our beautiful Florence studio

Rick Paar

Rick Paar taught psychology at Springfield College for thirty-three years. He has presented at local, national, and international conferences on topics ranging from psychotherapy to chaos theory to play. His book, God Bless American and Breakfast Burritos To Go was published in 2022.

Anne Pinkerton

Anne Pinkerton is an essayist, memoirist, and poet. She is the author of Were You Close? a sister’s quest to know the brother she lost. Her poems and essays have appeared in Hippocampus Magazine, Ars Medica, Modern Loss, “Beautiful Things” at River Teeth Journal, Sunlight Press, The Bark, and elsewhere, as well as the anthologies, The Pandemic Midlife Crisis: Gen X Women on the Brink and Nothing Divine Dies: A Poetry Anthology About Nature. Anne holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Bay Path University and studied poetry as an undergrad at Hampshire College.

Steve Putnam

Farm kid, mechanic, carpenter; Steve Putnam later became a copier tech, working full time in the corporate florescence of a large life insurance company. When the printer fleet was up and running, he hid out in his chain link basement shop and drafted the Academy of Reality. Corporate people never suspected they were funding a satirical novel about the curious ways of big business. As a Novel-in-Progress, The Academy of Reality was shortlisted in the 2016 Faulkner-Wisdom Competition in New Orleans. It found a home with Madville Publishing in 2024. Putnam’s short fiction has appeared Whiskey Island, Main Street Rag, and a few Scribes Valley Publishing anthologies. The author of Nature’s Ritalin for the Marathon Mind (2001), it’s no surprise that he self-medicates, paddling an old racing canoe with his
wife, Cynthia.

Suzanne Rancourt

Suzanne Rancourt is a poet, a writer of fiction and creative non-fiction, photographer, and musical artist. As a woman of Native American and European ancestry who grew up in rural Maine, and as a Marine Corps and Army veteran, she has combined her heritage, her arts, and her experiences as a survivor into a therapeutic practice which uses art and ceremony to treat those suffering from Traumatic Brain Injury and PTSD. Suzanne is the author of the poetry collections Old Stones, New Roads (Main Street Rag Press, 2021), murmurs at the gate (Unsolicited Press, 2019), and Billboards in the Clouds (2nd print – Northwestern University Press, 1st print by Curbstone Press, 2004), which was the winner of the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas First Book Award. Her poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and photography has appeared in dozens of journals and reviews, as well as several anthologies. Her work focuses on nature, memory, family relationships, marginalized cultures and communities, and healing from physical, emotional, and spiritual injury.

Macci Schmidt

Macci Schmidt is a retired geologist and science librarian who enjoys research, her own and helping others with theirs. At present she’s writing a soulful companion volume to her dull MS thesis.

MaryAnn Scognamiglio

MaryAnn has been with Straw Dogs Writers Guild since its public debut. She has
served on the Program, Finance, and Pandemic Poetry Committees and was assistant
Editor for Jane Yolan on the Compass Roads poetry anthology SD published.
She is currently serving on the Westfield Cultural Council as chair. The experience of
learning how Grant councils operate and allocate funds combined with her work
experience in the financial sector and volunteering with non profits has provided a great
base for working with Straw Dogs Writers Guild as we continue to grow into the future.

Stephanie Shafran

Stephanie Shafran, a member of Florence Poets Society as well as SDWG, retired in 2017 from a dual career as a Spanish teacher and school counselor. Since then, she has found her identity and community as a writer, much to her satisfaction and delight. In 2020, she published a chapbook titled Awakening. Her most recent publication, a flash fiction essay related in content to her memoir-in-progress, was published in the September issue of The Sun.

Jacqueline Sheehan

Jacqueline Sheehan, Ph.D., is a New York Times Bestselling author and psychologist. She is one of the Co-Founders of SDWG. She has twice been the President of the Guild and has served on the Residency, Finance and Development Committees. Her novels include The Comet’s Tale a novel about Sojourner Truth, Lost & Found, Now & Then, and Picture This, The Center of the World, and The Tiger in the House. She is currently working on a book about her sister who had an intellectual disability.

Morgan Sheehan

Morgan is a writer, teacher and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu practitioner. She received her BFA from Tisch at NYU and MFA from The Writers Workshop at the University of Iowa. She’s a published poet and produced playwright though both were in her pre-kid life. She is currently working on a young adult novel and dealing with her flock of Pekin ducks.

John Sheirer

John Sheirer (he/him, pronounced “shy-er”) lives in Northampton with his wonderful wife Betsy and the beloved memories of their happy dog Libby. He has taught for more than three decades at Asnuntuck Community College, where he edits Freshwater Literary Journal. His monthly column on current events ran from 2012 to 2024 in The Daily Hampshire Gazette. His recent books include So Many Shapes and Sizes: Stories (Small, Medium, and Large); First-Person American: Personal Essays About Our Nation’s Public Issues; For Now: One Hundred 100-Word Stories; and Stumbling Through Adulthood: Linked Stories. 

Christopher J. Sparks

October
Skies slung so low
Tree kaleidoscope dreams float
Wet and shimmering with half rememberings
Of the season unlacing.

Vati Sreiberg

Vati Sreiberg is a founding editor of Stone Walls II, a literary and arts journal of the hilltowns. She is currently the fiction and non-fiction editor. She resides in the hilltowns of western Massachusetts where she practices acupuncture and writes. She has a BA in Education and Comparative Literature and an MA in Acupuncture and Chinese Herbal Medicine. She is also on the program committee of Straw Dog Writers Guild.

Laura Stone

Laura is dedicated to the growth and placement of the many seeds (ideas, programs, events) planted that work with Tiny Seed Project. Her goal as a nonprofit leader is to help envision successful and sustainable growth while supporting each idea as it grows into full fruition. She has over 20 years of experience working in the nonprofit world. The opportunity to support, empower, and assist community-based conservation and restoration projects is her life’s mission. Laura served as SDWG’s Administrative Director for 4 years.

Lanette Sweeney

Lanette Sweeney’s first poetry collection, What I Should Have Said: A Poetry Memoir about Losing A Child to Addiction, has just been released by Finishing Line Press. The book is structured in accordance with the stages of grief, and includes twenty poems by Sweeney’s late son, who died of an overdose in 2016. Sweeney began her writing career as a journalist, and has also taught writing and Women’s Studies at SUNY New Paltz. Lanette’s poems and essays have been published in a variety of publications, including Rattle, Gyroscope Review, Silkworm, Blue Collar Review, and Please See Me. Her short stories and essays have also been included in the popular Women’s Studies anthology and textbook Women: Images and Reality.

Rachel Teferet

Rachel Teferet (Xe/They) is a writer, witch, and creative writing MFA graduate from Lesley University, working on multiple dark fantasy novels. Their work appears in 40 publications and counting, including Subprimal Poetry Art, Zoetic Press’ NonBinary Review, Page & Spine, Slink Chunk Press, Manawaker Podcast, and appears in the book, 100-Word Stories: A Short Form for Expansive Writing by Kim Culbertson and Grant Faulkner. They have +6,000 followers on their blog Letters and Feathers.

Gail Thomas

Gail Thomas has published four books of poetry including Odd Mercy, winner of the Charlotte Mew Prize, and Waving Back, named a Must-Read for 2016 by the Massachusetts Center for the Book.

Fungai Tichawangana

Fungai is a journalist, writer and web developer who founded the multiple award-winning arts and culture website Zimbo Jam in 2008. In 2015 he was awarded a Nieman Journalism Fellowship and Berkman Klein Fellowship for Journalism Innovation at Harvard University. His fiction and poetry look at the promises the world makes to young people and the extent to which those promises are kept. He is passionate about using the Internet as a platform for promoting artists and artistic endeavor.

Sharon Tracey

Sharon Tracey lives and writes in Amherst, Massachusetts and is the author of three poetry collections: Land Marks (Shanti Arts 2022), Chroma: Five Centuries of Women Artists (Shanti Arts 2020), and What I Remember Most is Everything (All Caps Publishing 2017). Her poems have appeared in Radar Poetry, Lily Poetry Review, Aji, Terrain.org, The Banyan Review, The Ekphrastic Review, and elsewhere. She previously served as a director of research communications and environmental programs at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Barbara Viniar

Barbara Viniar was born and raised in the Bronx, New York. She started her career as
an administrator in higher education while teaching women’s studies and literature part
time and writing her doctoral dissertation on “Women’s Moral Development in
Contemporary Fiction.” After retiring from her second college presidency in 2018, she turned to blogging and
writing a daily Haiku. During COVID, a chance discovery about her grandmother
compelled her to imagine the story that became her debut novel, Little Bird.
Barbara now lives in the Berkshires, surrounded by hills and world-renowned cultural
venues. She is currently plotting her second historical novel.

Jane Yolen

Jane Yolen, often called “the Hans Christian Andersen of America,” is the author of over 366 books (actual number), including OWL MOON, THE DEVIL’S ARITHMETIC, and HOW DO DINOSAURS SAY GOODNIGHT. In 2018 you will be able to read a Jane Yolen book a day for a year–even on a leap year.)

Nicole M. Young

Nicole M. Young is a performance poet, playwright, theater instructor and pop culture critic originally from Detroit, MI.  Her work has been performed across Western Massachusetts, New York, and Michigan.  She self-produced a spoken word album, In/Put:  Live from the Valley, which was recorded live and is working on her first memoir.

Madelaine Zadik

Madelaine Zadik lives in the wooded hills of western Massachusetts. A longtime botanic garden educator and editor of Botanic Garden News, she now devotes herself to her own writing. She is a Pushcart Prize nominated essayist and has been featured on New England Public Media. Currently, she is at work on a memoir about her relationship with her Aunt Helga, whom she never knew except through letters Helga wrote from prison in Nazi Germany. Her work has appeared in a variety of literary journals.