Annual Author Showcase

Straw Dog Writers Guild presents our 11th Annual Author Showcase! This is a hybrid event, on Zoom and at Northampton Friends Meetinghouse, 43 Center Street, Suite 202, Northampton, on Sunday, January 26, 2:30 – 4:00 p.m.

Straw Dog Writers Guild members with a book published in 2024 will read as part of the 2025 annual Author Showcase.

If you’ll be attending by Zoom, register HERE

Presenting Authors:

Bill Mailler has been writing poetry for over 50 years. In the current geo-political environment, he takes James Baldwin’s advice especially to heart: “… what you are doing, as a writer, or any kind of artist, what your role is… is to bear witness: to what life is, does, and to speak for people who cannot speak.”
Trauma, Truth & Outrage, collected poems. Also available on Amazon.

windflower co-founded the Feminist Arts Program at the University of Massachusetts Women’s Center where she published and edited, Chomo Uri, a women’s multi-arts magazine and produced the first National Women’s Poetry Festival in 1976. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals and anthologies, including international publications.  Her poetry chapbook “Age Brings Them Home to Me” was published in March 2024 by Finishing Line Press. windflower is also a photographer celebrating the poetry in nature. https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/age-brings-them-home-to-me-by-windflower/

Ed Orzechowski is a retired high school English teacher, radio, and print journalist. He lives with his wife Gail in Northampton, Massachusetts. Becoming Darlene follows the publication in 2016 of You’ll Like It Here, The Story of Donald Vitkus—Belchertown Patient #3394, which became an all-time best-seller for Levellers Press of Amherst, Massachusetts.

Rebecca Daniels writes in the creative non-fiction genre. Books include: Women Stage Directors Speak: Exploring the Effects of Gender on Their Work (McFarland, 2000), Keeping the Lights on for Ike (Sunbury, 2019), based on her father’s letters home from Europe during WWII, Finding Sisters (Sunbury, 2021), about her genetic genealogy journey, and her newest, a grief memoir, That Day And What Came After (Sunbury, 2024). She moved to western Massachusetts in 2015 on her retirement from university teaching.

Libby Maxey is a senior editor at Literary Mama. Her work has appeared in Crannóg, Blue Unicorn and elsewhere. She is a winner of the Princemere Poetry Prize and the Helen Schaible International Sonnet Contest, and her chapbook, Kairos (2019), won Finishing Line Press’s New Women’s Voices contest. Her book Is Indwelling Poetry collection Published March 2024.https://wipfandstock.com/9798385209057/indwelling/#

Elaine Reardon‘s first chapbook, The Heart is a Nursery For Hope, won first honors from Flutter Press in 2016. Her second chapbook, Look Behind You, was also published by Flutter Press. Stories Told In A Forgotten Tongue was published by Finishing Line Press in September 2024.  www.elainereardon.wordpress.com

Sarah Ritter is a poet who recently published two illustrated books: “So Many Great Books” and “Dad, Won’t You Walk With Me.” Sarah previously published her poetry collection “Inspirations, Transformations and Revelations: A Poetic Expression of My Personal Journey.” She is also a contributing poet to several poetry anthologies. In her spare time, she enjoys making homemade greeting cards and hiking with her dog. Sarah Ritter resides with her family in Connecticut. Her books are available on Amazon and audible version on Etsy. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732550921r

Trudy Knowles is a retired professor, social activist, mother, grandmother, and author of two novels, Radishes and Red Bandanas and Me, My Guitar and Elvis, a book of short stories, two education books, and memoirs about her trip around the world in 1970 and about living through the pandemic. Book link: https://a.co/d/4Sib26S or at her website: www.trudyknowles.com

Jendi Reiter is the author of five poetry books and chapbooks, most recently Made Man (Little Red Tree); the story collection An Incomplete List of My Wishes (Sunshot Press/New Millennium  Writings); and the novels Two Natures and Origin Story, both from Saddle Road Press. They are the editor of the writing resource site WinningWriters.com. https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0CZ4FQHGG/winningwriter-20

D.K. McCutchen’s Speculative Fiction trilogy includes: JELLYFISH DREAMING (2023), a Leapfrog Press Global Fiction Prize winner; ELECTRIC ICE (2024), winner of a Speculative Literature Foundation grant; & PLASTIC EATERS forthcoming (2026). WHALE ROAD, creative nonfiction about sailing with whale researchers through the South Pacific, was a Kiriyama Prize Notable Book and Pushcart Nominee.  Deb teaches writing for College of Natural Sciences, UMass Amherst, and is Associate Director of the Junior Year Writing Program.

Janet MacFadyen‘s third full-length collection, State of Grass, was released February 2024 by Salmon Poetry. Honors include a Massachusetts Cultural Council grant, a 7-month Fine Arts Work Center fellowship in Provincetown, and a Cill Rialaig residency in Ireland. Recent work appears in Persimmon Tree, White Stag, The High Window, Scientific American, Wordpeace, and several Writing the Land anthologies, along with artwork in CALYX. She is Managing Editor of the poetry collaborative, Slate Roof Press, and lives in the woods of Shutesbury.

A Pushcart nominee, Dr. Jim Brosnan is the author of Long Distance Driving (2024) and Nameless Roads (2019), two collections of poetry accompanied by original color photographs. His poems have appeared in the Aurorean (US), Crossways Literary Magazine (Ireland), Eunoia Review (Singapore), Nine Muses (Wales), Scarlet Leaf Review (Canada), Strand (India), The Madrigal (Ireland), The Wild Word (West Germany), and Voices of the Poppies (UK). He is a professor at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, RI.