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 Baglio

Joy Baglio is the founder/director of Pioneer Valley Writers’ Workshop, a writing center in Williamsburg MA offering workshops, editing services, and literary community. Her short stories have appeared in Tin House, The Iowa Review, TriQuarterly, New Ohio Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, PANK, and elsewhere and she’s been recognized by numerous contests and awards including the Ploughshares’ Emerging Writer’s Contest (Honorable Mention) and the Wigleaf Top 50 (Very) Short Fictions. She’s the recipient of scholarships, fellowships, and grants from Yaddo, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, The Elizabeth George Foundation, The Speculative Literature Foundation, The Vermont Studio Center, and Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. She serves as Associate Fiction Editor at the Bucknell University-based literary magazine West Branch and teaches writing at Grub Street in Boston and Pioneer Valley Writers’ Workshop.

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.

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).

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 also serves as SDWG’s part-time remote admin.

Candace Curran

Candace Curran is a writer and founding member of collaborative word and image exhibitions throughout western MA . Multimedia installations include, INTERFACE I-X, Automotive Poetry, Four on the Floor and Three on a Tree, and most recently Exploded View. She is twice named Western Massachusetts Poet’s Seat laureate and has judged for the competition as well as for the Massachusetts Book Awards. Publications include, Bone Cages and Playing in Wrecks, ( Haley’s Press), Raw Nervz, Meat For Tea, Silkworm and Compass Roads.

Corinne Demas

Corinne Demas is the author of 32 books including five novels, two short story collections, a memoir, a collection of poetry, and numerous books for children. She is a Professor of English at Mt. Holyoke College and a Fiction Editor of The Massachusetts Review.

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.

Carol Duke

My manuscript, A Bestiary Tales from a Wildlife Garden, celebrates trees, birds, butterflies, and other beings inhabiting Flower Hill Farm Retreat. Enjoy 21 acres, forest, gardens, views, quiet? Discount/barter.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Patricia Lee Lewis

Patricia Lee Lewis, MFA Creative Writing/Poetry, Vermont College of Fine Arts; BA Smith College, PBK, is the author of A Kind of Yellow, awarded first prize by Writers Digest International; and High Lonesome, published by Hedgerow Books. Born and raised in Texas, she lived for 43 years on a little mountain at Patchwork Farm Retreat, Westhampton MA, leading hundreds of creative writing & yoga workshops and retreats there, and 70 retreats in 9 countries. Now living in Northampton, MA, in her son’s old 6 th grade classroom, she held 98 creative writing sessions online during 2021. She was the founding president of Straw Dog Writers Guild and serves on the Advisory Council. Patricia’s draft novel set on a West Texas ranch in 1938, is out to readers, at last.

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.

Eric Nixon

Eric Nixon is a poet, author, and artist who has written fourteen collections of poetry, a guided poetry journal, several short stories, and two novels. His poetry has been featured on The Writer’s Almanac. His visual artwork includes paintings, digital art, and photography. Eric lives in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts with his author wife, Kari Chapin Nixon.

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 You’ll Like It Here—The Story of Donald Vitkus, Belchertown Patient #3394 (Levellers Press 2016) the first-person account of a man who grew up in a former Massachusetts institution. An experienced radio and print journalist, Ed’s work has appeared in The Springfield Republican, The Daily Hampshire Gazette, The Journal Register, Early American Life, Southwoods Magazine and other publications.

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.

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.

Elaine Reardon

Elaine is a poet, herbalist, educator, and member of SCWBI.  Her chapbook, The Heart is a Nursery For Hope, recently won honors from Flutter Press.

LaVonne Roberts

LaVonne Roberts is a health, technology, and science journalist and an MIT Tech Review Fellow. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, CNN, Wired, Popular Science, Neo.Life, The Independent, and other publications. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction from The New School, where she currently reviews books and interviews authors for Lit Magazine. Current work as an author and editor includes the newly-released Applied Virtual Reality in Healthcare.

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. She is also a psychologist. 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.

John Sheirer

John Sheirer has published works of fiction, memoir, and current events, as well as books for children. A few of his titles include Growing up Mostly Normal in the Middle of Nowhere: A Memoir (Foremost Press, 2009), Tales of a Real American Liberal (Veracity Press, 2012), and Uncorrected: A Novella (Scantic Books, 2020). His most recent book is a collection of “linked” short stories; Stumbling Through Adulthood (Janice Beetle Books, 2021). John has taught writing at Asnuntuck Community College in Enfield Connecticut for many years and he serves as editor and faculty advisor to the college’s Freshwater Literary Journal. John also writes a monthly column for the Daily Hampshire Gazette.

Jessica B. Sokol

Jessica B. Sokol writes scandalous creative nonfiction. She’s the author of For Better And Worse: Short Stories and Tantalizing Tales—From Coast to Coast, and her stories appear inThe Long Covid Reader (Long Hauler Publishing, 2023), Still Point Arts Quarterly, Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, “I DO” Wedding Guide 2023, The Music Museum of New England, and The Hosmer Gallery at Forbes Library. Her “Open Letter to Anthony Bourdain” was featured in The Valley Love Letters Project: Live on Stage at the Academy of Music and is published in WayWords Literary Journal. She’s a vegan cook living in Western Massachusetts, and was recently on José Andrés’s Longer Tables podcast, and the KVMR Disability Rap radio show and podcast.

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.

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.

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.

Q.M. Zhang

Q.M. Zhang is a writer, teacher, editor, and founder of MemoryWorks, a creative research and writing practice for individuals and communities trying to trace their own pasts and write their own stories in the face of historical omissions and intergenerational silences. Her book, Accomplice to Memory, a Kirkus Best Indies Book of 2018, combines memoir, historical fiction, and documentary photographs to explore the possibilities of truth telling across generations and geographies. She is an Associate Professor Emerita of Cultural Psychology and Creative Nonfiction at Hampshire College and Prose Editor at The Massachusetts Review.