> Russell Banks
> Steve Benen
> Harry Bliss
> Chris Bohjalian
> Tim Brookes
> David Budbill
> Wayne F. Burke
> Jay Craven
> Anthony DeCurtis
> Greg Delanty
> Anna Dewdney
> Rusty DeWees
> Jim Ellefson
> Susan Elmslie
> Erik Esckilsen
> Marc Estrin
> Bridget Everts
> Marie-Louise Gay
> Thomas Christopher
Greene
> Shelby Hearon
> Sissy Hicks
> James Hoch
> Major Jackson
> Seth Jarvis
> Warren Kimble
> Leland Kinsey
> James Kochalka
> Willem Lange
> Jim Lantz
> Christopher Lawless
> Barbara Lehman
> Matthys Levy
> Diane Lockward
> Archer Mayor
> Jennifer McMahon
> Kate Messner
> Ann McKinstry Micou
> Jeffrey Moore
> Howard Frank Mosher
> Joyce Carol Oates
> The Onion
> Katherine Hall Page
> Justin Perreault
> Tracey Campbell
Pearson
> Susan Rich
> Jeff Rutenbeck
> Meghan Schardt
> Barbara Seuling
> Neil Shepard
> Ruth Stone
> James M. Tabor
> Linda Urban
> Dana Yeaton
> Crystal Zevon
Jim Arnosky was born in New York City September 1, 1946. He was raised in Pennsylvania. Jim graduated from high school in Philadelphia and joined the US Naval Reserves. His active duty took him to Maryland and Bremerhaven, Germany. In 1976 Jim and his wife Deanna moved to Vermont with their two daughters where they have lived in an old farmhouse for the past 28 years. 17 of those years were spent raising sheep.
Jim is self taught in writing, art and the natural sciences. He has written and illustrated 86 books on nature subjects and has illustrated 46 other books written by various authors. He has been awarded the Christopher Medal, Orbis Pictus Honor, ALA Gordon Award and Outstanding Science book awards from National Science Teachers Associations.
Jim loves to fish, boat, and play his guitar. In his work, he uses a Betacam SP video camcorder with a 1600 mm lens to record the wildlife he and Deanna find all across the country.
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Russel Banks is the author of fifteen works of fiction: five collections of short stories and ten novels, including Continental Drift, Rule of the Bone, The Book of Jamaica, Cloudsplitter, and his most recently published work, The Darling. Two of his novels, Affliction and The Sweet Hereafter, have been made into critically acclaimed motion pictures. Banks has won numerous awards for his work, including Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships; O.Henry, Pushcart, Fels and Best American Short Story Awards; the John Dos Passos Award; and the Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has been a PEN/Faulkner Finalist (Affliction and Cloudsplitter) and a Pulitzer Prize Finalist (Continental Drift and Cloudsplitter).He was named New York State Author (2004-2006) and currently serves as President of the North American Network of Cities of Asylum (NANCA).
Banks lives in upstate New York with his wife, the poet Chase Twichell.
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Steve Benen is a freelance writer, researcher and political consultant who has worked in politics in one capacity or another for about ten years. His articles and op-eds have appeared in a variety of publications, including Washington Monthly, The American Prospect, The Gadflyer and Church & State. Steve has also been a guest on several radio programs, including NPR's "Talk of the Nation." In addition to putting out The Carpetbagger Report, he serves as the lead editor of Salon.com's Blog Report (formerly the Daou Report) and has been a contributor to Talking Points Memo, Washington Monthly, The American Prospect, the Huffington Post, the Guardian, Crooks & Liars, AlterNet and Political Wire.
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Harry Bliss, an award-winning cartoonist and cover artist for The New Yorker magazine, grew up in a family of successful painters and illustrators. He studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and illustration at The University of the Arts (BFA) and Syracuse University (MA). He is the illustrator of several best-selling children's books including A Fine, Fine School (2001) by Sharon Creech, Diary of a Worm (2003) and Diary of a Spider (2005), both by Doreen Cronin and A Very Brave Witch (2006) by Alison McGhee. His latest collaboration with Doreen Cronin, Diary of a Fly, is scheduled for release in September. Mr. Bliss lives in Vermont.
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Chris Bohjalian is the author of ten novels, including his most recent national bestseller, THE DOUBLE BIND -- a book that debuted at #3 on the New York Times besteller list in February of this year, and within two months of publication had been sold in 8 countries. Still, he is probably best known for his 1997 novel, MIDWIVES, a #1 New York Times bestseller and a selection of Oprah's Book Club. His 2004 novel, the critically-acclaimed BEFORE YOU KNOW KINDNESS, is now in development for an independent film, and two of his earlier books became successful movies (MIDWIVES and PAST THE BLEACHERS). His work has been translated into 19 languages and been published in 22 countries. Right here in Vermont he has been a Sunday columnist for the Burlington Free Press since 1992. Chris graduated from Amherst College, and lives in Lincoln with his wife and daughter.
This year at the Burlington Book Festival he will be reading and discussing for the very first time his 2008 novel, a love story set in Poland and Germany in the closing months of the Second World War.
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Tim is the author of several books including Catching My Breath: An Asthmatic Explores his Illness, Signs of Life: a Memoir of Hospice, Guitar: An American Life and The Driveway Diaries: A Dirt Road Almanac. His writing has appeared in Harper's, the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Outside, the Boston Globe, American History and more than 60 other publications. He is a contributing editor for the U.S. Airways magazine Attache and has been a regular essayist for National Public Radio since 1989. Guitar: An American Life was chosen as one of the Best Books of 2005 by Library Journal.
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David Budbill's play Judevine has been produced 53 times in 21 states since the early 1980s, most recently this past spring at Lost Nation Theatre in Montpelier. His latest two books of poems are While We've Still Got Feet (Copper Canyon Press, 2005) and Moment to Moment: Poems of a Mountain Recluse (Copper Canyon Press, 1999). Boxholder Records released Songs for a Suffering World: A Prayer for Peace, A Protest Against War, with bassist William Parker and drummer Hamid Drake in 2003. David can also be heard on Zen Mountains-Zen Streets: A Duet for Poet and Improvised Bass, (Boxholder Records, 1999) with the music of William Parker. Also in 1999, Chelsea Green Publishing Company republished a revised, expanded version of Judevine, his collected poems. He is currently working on a draft of a new play called A Song for My Father.
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Wayne F. Burke is a fiction writer and critic. His book reviews and essays have appeared in Rain Taxi Review of Books, Bibliophilos, The Caribbean Writer, Burlington Free Press and Vermont Guardian; fiction in Puckerbrush Review, Gihon River Review and elsewhere. His first book, KINGDOM COME: The Fiction of Howard Frank Mosher, was published in 2005.
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Filmmaker Jay Craven serves as Artistic Director of Kingdom County Productions. His ward-winning films include "Where the Rivers Flow North" (w/ Rip Torn, Tantoo Cardinal), "A Stranger in the Kingdom (w/ David Lansbury, Ernie Hudson, Martin Sheen), "The Year That Trembled" (w/ Fred Willard, Jonathan Brandis, Marin Hinlkle) and "Disappearances" (w/ Kris Kristofferson, Genevieve Bujold). Awards include Vermont Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts (1998) and the 1995 Producers Guild of America NOVA Award for Most Promising New Motion Picture Producer of the Year.
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Rolling Stone contributing editor Anthony DeCurtis brings to his writing a love for the craft and a love of music. With these he has assembled over the years a remarkable record of the the people who've created and played much of the most influential music of our time. Compiling and enlarging upon interviews with 39 major artists, Anthony has put together his book "In Other Words: Artists Talk About Life and Work." DeCurtis has spent 20 years at Rolling Stone as an editor and journalist and continues to write for the magazine.
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Greg Delanty recently published his seventh book of poems, The Ship of Birth (Louisiana State University Press 2007). Last year his Collected Poems 1986-2006 was published (Carcanet 2006)- unusual though it is for a 47-year-old to have a collected poems published. The poet also was not long ago awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. Delanty, who has taught at Saint Michael's College since 1987, plans to use the fellowship to work on a book of poetry to be titled The Greek Anthology Book XVII.
Delanty became an American citizen in 1994 and lives in Burlington with his wife Patricia Ferreira and their son Daniel. His other books include The Blind Stitch (LSU Press 2002, Oxford Poets Series, Carcanet, 2001), The Hellbox (Oxford Poets Series, Oxford University Press, 1998), American Wake (Blackstaff/Dufour, 1995), Southward (LSU Press, 1992) and Cast in the Fire (Dolmen/Dufour, 1986).
He has received numerous awards including the Patrick Kavanagh Award (1983), the Allen Dowling Poetry Fellowship (1986), the Wolfers-O'Neill Award (1996-97), the Austin Clarke Award (1996), National Poetry Competition Prizewinner (Poetry Society of England, 1999), an Arts Council of Ireland Bursary (1998-99) and an award from the Royal Literary Fund (1999).
The Booklist review of The Ship of Birth, states that "This is a voice not often heard, the sound of a father talking to his unborn, then newborn, child. In his seven volumes, Delanty has shown himself a skillful poet in an international, postmodern style full of startling juxtapositions and bold cacophonies. Here he is just as surprising with his undomestic language of space and time, of commerce and circuses and wilderness."
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People ask me how I come up with the faces that I draw. I answer that they are self-portraits. When I draw, I usually make the face of the character as I draw. I never use models or photographs, except for anatomical references. As you can imagine, I look pretty funny when I draw. I was in the airport the other day sketching out Grumpy Gloria and, as I glanced up, everyone in the row of seats across from me was looking at me really strangely. It took me a second to figure out why.
I come from a family of five-mom, dad and three girls. My mom is also a writer. You may have read her book Only Brave Tomorrows by Winifred Luhrmann. My Dad is a doctor. When my sisters and I were little, he used to read to us from A. A. Milne's POOH books. Now, whenever I read them to my own children or to myself, I hear his voice.
When I was little, I played dress-up and listened to cool stories called "Let's Pretend" on records (there were no such things as CDs). I played for hours in my big dollhouse (which was a castle!). But mostly, I drew or read. Reading. Drawing. Drawing. Reading. That's what I did. Sometimes I played with friends. But I was a really shy kid. I'm still pretty shy, but that wears off after years of teaching thirteen-year-old boys. Now I am a busy mother of two girls and I teach at a junior boarding school, which means that I teach boys at a school where the boys live away from home. They do that because they are dyslexic and they need extra help learning to read and write. But they are really smart, and a lot of fun to teach. Now that I'm grown-up, I still do the things that I liked to do when I was a kid. I still draw and read but, instead of playing dress-up, I go for runs in the woods. I have a dog that goes with me. Her name is Radish and she can talk (but not in English). Radish will have her own book someday. She and I are writing it now.
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In a presentation which will be part reading, part performance, part talk, Rusty DeWees will read from his first book, Scrawlins. Scrawlins is a self-published collection of columns that offers "..a window into the hidden Green Mountain State, beyond the ski slopes and changing leaves. Rusty is an American Original," (John Fusco, author, screenwriter). Howard Frank Mosher calls it "..a wonderful addition to Vermont's literary heritage." "He's a force of nature," praises filmmaker Jay Craven. Rusty will talk about his approach to writing and acting, and also the process of creating, writing, marketing and branding his one man tour de force /alter ego The Logger, which for the past eight years has played to sold out houses throughout New England and spawned DVD's, CD's and Calendars. Rusty might perform a new short bit as The Logger and adds, if time allows, he might pick a song or two on his guitar. "They should hope time won't allow," he says.
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Jim Ellefson has an MFA in Writing from Vermont College. Before coming to Champlain, he taught writing and literature at Shanghai International Studies University and the Universidade Dos Acores. He has well over one hundred poems published throughout the United States, and others in Canada, Great Britain, France, and Japan. He has also published short fiction, reviews and a chapter of a children's novel. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and he received an International Merit Award from the Atlanta Review for his poem "Walt Whitman Shows Up for Dinner."
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Susan Elmslie's first collection of poetry, I, Nadja, and Other Poems (Brick, 2006) won the A.M. Klein Poetry Prize and was shortlisted for the McAuslan First Book Prize, the Pat Lowther Award, and, recently, a ReLit Award. Her poems have also appeared in several journals, anthologies, and in a prize-winning chapbook, When Your Body Takes to Trembling (Cranberry Tree, 1996). Born in Brampton, Ontario, she has also lived in London, Ontario, and spent year-long stretches in Nice and Vancouver. She received a PhD in English with a specialization in Canadian literature from McGill University. She has been awarded Canada Council for the Arts grants for Professional Writers, has been a resident at the Banff Centre for the Arts and a poetry Fellow at Hawthornden Castle in Scotland. She teaches at Dawson College in Montreal.
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Burlington, Vermont, native Erik E. Esckilsen is the author of three novels for young readers, all published by Houghton Mifflin / Walter Lorraine Books: The Last Mall Rat (2003), Offsides (2004), and The Outside Groove (2006). In addition, he has taught college writing and worked as a journalist with such publications as the Boston Globe, Entertainment Weekly, and Seven Days.
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Marc Estrin is a writer, cellist and activist living in Burlington. He is the author of three previous novels: Insect Deams, The Education of Arnold Hitler and Golem Song. Two new novels, Tsim-Tsum and The Lamantations of Julius Marantz, will be published shortly.
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Bridget Everts is a native Vermonter who graduated from Champlain College's Professional Writing program in the spring of 2006. Living in Burlington, she works as an adjunct professor at Champlain and does freelance work for the Burlington Free Press. She was raised by a pack of loud, fun-loving, quick-witted, storytelling, Irish Philadelphians, and is happy to admit she fits right in.
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Marie-Louise Gay was born in Quebec City, on June 17, 1952. As a child she lived in Sherbrooke, Montreal, Oakville and Vancouver but Gay eventually moved back to Montreal, where she now lives. As a child, she found it difficult to adjust to so many new and different environments. With the encouragement of her parents, who accompanied her on weekly trips to the library, Gay found solace in reading. Ironically, despite being a great reader, Gay found little interest in the books' illustrations. As a child Gay herself did not draw very much. She began drawing out of boredom when she was seventeen and having difficulties in school, sketching in the margins of her notebooks before moving on to using full pages. Her mother suggested she turn her interest into an asset instead of wasting her time and Gay discovered that she wanted a career in the visual arts field
She began her training at The Institute of Graphic Arts of Montreal but found graphic art too restraining and as a result moved to courses at The Montreal Museum School of Fine Art. As a student, she worked on professional cartoon strips and editorial illustrations. She also began taking her portfolio around to various publishers until she found one that was willing to publish her work.
When she was twenty-six, Gay decided to further her education in illustration at The Academy of Art College in San Francisco. Gay enjoyed the experience so much that she stayed for three years instead of the expected one. During her last two years in San Francisco, she worked hard to sell her drawings to publishers of educational books. This experience was very important in defining her unique style with its bright colours and sketchy design. Gay attributes the change of using bright colours to the sunny climate of California. However, Gay could not identify with a San Franciscan lifestyle. After a few years there, she began to long for a place that felt like a home. She needed a connection to her history and roots, so she moved back to Montreal.
In Montreal, Gay began illustrating children's books. She reveled in the larger scale and number of drawings that are involved in picture books. She enjoyed the opportunity to create whole new visual worlds but often found that she was not interested in the stories she was given to illustrate. In 1980, she decided that she would try to write and illustrate her own picture books. Marie-Louise Gay has become one of Canada's premier children's authors and illustrators. Her prolific amount of work is available in both English and French. She gets her ideas from her own memories of childhood. Rainy Day Magic for example, was inspired by memories of what she and her sister did on rainy days in Vancouver.
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Thomas Christopher Greene was born and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts. Educated at Hobart College and the MFA in Writing program at Vermont College, he is the author of the previous novels, Mirror Lake and I'll Never Be Long Gone. He currently lives outside Montpelier, Vermont with his wife and daughter. Tom can be found at www.thomaschristophergreene.com.
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Shelby Hearon was born in 1931 in Marion, Kentucky, lived for many years in Texas and New York and now makes her home in Burlington. She is the author of sixteen novels, including Footprints, Life Estates and Owning Jolene, which won an American Academy of Arts and Letters Literature Award. She has received an Ingram Merrill grant as well as fellowships for fiction from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts and she has twice won the Texas Institute of Letters fiction award. She has served on the literature panels of both the Texas Commission on the Arts and the New York State Council on the Arts. Married to physiologist William Halpern, she is the mother of a grown daughter and son. Her latest novel is entitled Year of the Dog.
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Born and raised on a dairy farm in Chester County, Pennsylvania, Sissy moved to Vermont in 1973. She began working at a local inn, The Barrows House, in Dorset where she started her career in cooking under the direction of innkeeper Marilyn Schubert.
Sissy was soon discovered by Joe Allen, a frequent visitor to the inn and proprietor of Joe Allen's Restaurants (in London, Paris, Los Angeles, Toronto, and New York City). He offered Sissy the opportunity to expand and develop her cooking talent. It was Joe Allen's influence that ultimately determined Sissy's career and her culinary interests.
Chef Hicks is most noted for her simple, home-style (comfort food) American cuisine.
She resides in Dorset, Vermont, where she continues her 23 year tradition as owner and chef at the Dorset Inn.
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Prior to teaching, James Hoch was a dishwasher, cook, dockworker, social worker and shepherd. His poems have appeared in Slate, Kenyon Review, Gettysburg, Ninth Letter, Carolina Quarterly, Virginia Quarterly Review and many others. They have been nominated many times for the Pushcart Prize. He is the recipient of fellowships and scholarships from Bread Loaf, Sewanee, and Summer Literary Seminars, and received a 2007 NEA grant as well as a grant from the PA Council on the Arts. His latest collection, Miscreants, was published by WW Norton in June. A Parade of Hands won the Gerald Cable Award and was published in March 2003. Originally from Collingswood, NJ, he resides in Mahwah, NJ with his wife and son. Currently, he teaches at Ramapo College of NJ.
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Major Jackson is the author of two collections of poetry Hoops (Norton: 2006) and Leaving Saturn (University of Georgia: 2002), winner of the 2000 Cave Canem Poetry Prize and finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award. He has received critical attention in The Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, Parnassus, Philadelphia Inquirer, and on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. His poems have appeared in the American Poetry Review, Boulevard, Callaloo, Post Road, Triquarterly, The New Yorker, among other literary journals and anthologies. He is a recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award and has been honored by the Pew Fellowship in the Arts and the Witter Bynner Foundation in conjunction with the Library of Congress. Major Jackson is an Associate Professor of English at University of Vermont and a faculty member of the Bennington Writing Seminars. Currently, he is a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.
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Director, producer, writer and actor, Seth Jarvis has been actively involved in the Vermont arts community for over 10 years. Seth has directed several plays including The Once and Future Ubu which he also wrote, and the Burlington Free Press called, "...wildly entertaining." A familiar actor on Burlington stages (All My Sons and The Cripple of Inishmaan) Seth has received praise in the local press calling his performances "...riveting." A producer of both The Burlington Poetry Slams and the artsProject VT series, he represented Vermont at the 2001, 2002, and 2003 National Poetry Slam Competition. Winner of the 2004 Daysie Award for 'Best Poet in Vermont,' Seth has written several books of poetry including his latest, Manipulate the World, which has been made available through Wordsmith Press.
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AS “ AMERICA’S BEST KNOWN Living Folk Artist,” Warren Kimble draws on more than 40 years of experience as a fine artist, teacher, collector, craftsman and antiques dealer to create a casual but sophisticated style of American Folk Art.
Warren is best known for his paintings of highly stylized animals and rural Vermont scenes using antique architectural wood as his canvas. His subjects and whimsical style evoke the spirit of the tranquil Vermont countryside. His unique palette, distinctive eye for detail, and the antique texture of the wood create a pleasing, enduring art that has attracted a wide following of collectors both nationally and internationally.
Warren is also the design leader for the Folk Art trend in home furnishings, giftware, textiles and tabletop. With nearly forty licensees, he represents the best of this traditional and accessible style, which has taken the market by storm.
As a fine artist, Warren has held one-man shows at the Frank J. Miele Gallery in New York, the Chase Gallery in Boston, and numerous galleries in Vermont, including Gallery on the Green in Woodstock.
Graduated from Syracuse University with a fine arts degree in 1957, Warren has lived in Vermont for more than 30 years. He and his wife Lorraine operate the Warren Kimble Gallery located by the falls in downtown Brandon. This new location includes Warren's studio, a gallery, a gift shop and a featured artist gallery.
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Leland Kinsey was born and raised on a farm in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, where his ancestors settled in the early 1800s. He has conducted writing workshops for the Vermont Arts Council and the Children's Literacy Foundation at over 100 schools in New Hampshire and Vermont. Since receiving his M.A., Leland has worked as a farmhand, printer, horse trainer and has taught courses at Elderhostel in writing, birding, astronomy and canoeing. He has published five collections of poetry, most recently In the Rain Shadow (University Press of New England, 2004) and Sledding on Hospital Hill (Godine, 2003). Godine will bring out a sixth collection, The Immigrant's Contract, in 2008. He lives near the Canadian border with his wife and three children.
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James Kochalka lives in a very old house in the "Old North End" of Burlington, VT with his beautiful wife, adventurous son, and very cranky cat. He has never had a driver's license. He worked for six years as a waiter in a Chinese restaurant before quitting to become a full time cartoonist and rock star. His comics have won four Ignatz awards and one Harvey award. His music drives parents crazy!
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Willem Lange was born in 1935. A child of deaf parents, he grew up speaking sign language and first came to New England to prep school in 1950 as an alternative to reform school in his native New York State.
During a few absences from New England, Will earned a degree in only nine years at the College of Wooster in Ohio. In between those scattered semesters, he worked as a ranch hand, Adirondack guide, preacher, construction laborer, bobsled run announcer, assembly line worker, cab driver, bookkeeper, and bartender. After graduating in 1962, he taught high school English in northern New York, filling in summers as an Outward Bound instructor.
From 1968 to 1972 Will directed the Dartmouth Outward Bound Center. Since 1972 he's been a building and remodeling contractor in Hanover. He's an adopted member of the Dartmouth Class of 1957.
In 1981 he began writing a weekly column, "A Yankee Notebook," which appears in several New England newspapers. He's a commentator for Vermont Public Radio and the host of New Hampshire Public Television's weekly show Wildlife Journal. His annual readings of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol began in 1975 and continue unabated. He's published several audiocassette tapes and five books and received an Emmy nomination for one of his pieces on Vermont Public Television.
In 1973 Will founded the Geriatric Adventure Society, a group of outdoor enthusiasts whose members have skied the 200-mile Alaska Marathon, climbed in Alaska, the Andes, and Himalayas, bushwhacked on skis through northern New England, and paddled rivers north of the Arctic Circle.
He and his wife, Ida, who is the proprietor of a kitchen design business, have been married since 1959. They are currently moving to East Montpelier. They have three children and four grandchildren.
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Jim Lantz has written, directed and produced over 200 commercial films, videos and live events. Recipient of numerous awards including The Rosebud Award, the Telly Award and the International Television and Video Association's award for Best in Show, Jim has produced work for clients such as MCI, Mobil Oil, American Express and The Brooklyn Museum of Art. As a producer, Jim raised over 2.5 million dollars to finance a production company, several film projects and live events. He currently teaches writing and public speaking at Community College of Vermont. He lives in Burlington with his wife, two sons, and a dog named Gromit.
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From a small town, I learned the sounds of the wind and the sincerity of family. I adopted the gift for language from the simplicity of imagination and my subtle surroundings. Growing like the fields around me, it spread into an obsession more than an activity. Words and sounds came together in my head like a midnight ambush. Poetry is my way of giving back to the world I came from, and to the people who share the love of the written word. It has given me opportunities I could have never imagined. Everything you need to know about me is hidden in the poems I write. It is your job to find me in all of them.
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Barbara Lehman was born in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in New Jersey, very close to New York City. She began drawing very young, although it took a while before she learnt what types of surfaces were considered appropriate to draw all over. Above her crib, were hung illustrations by John Tenniel from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which her father had enlarged and hand-coloured.
Barbara attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, and majored in illustration. She has done many types of jobs since then, including working in animation, in a stained-glass studio, doing window displays, graphic design and once even painted the lettering on the sides of a huge truck. Her favourite work is book illustration, and her favourite illustrators are George Herriman (Krazy Kat), Herge (Tintin) and Winsor McCay (Little Nemo in Slumberland).
Barbara has illustrated many picture books, and usually works in watercolour with pen and ink. She works mostly from her imagination, and uses many memories from childhood in her illustrations.
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Matthys P. Levy is co-author of the best-selling Why Buildings Fall Down and Why the Earth Quakes. His other books include Structural Design in Architecture, Earthquake Games and Engineering the City. His new work, Why the Wind Blows: A History of Weather and Global Warming, continues in the same tradition of making complex topics interesting and accessible to the general public. It is published by Upper Access, a small general-interest book publisher located in Hinesburg, Vermont.
Levy is chairman emeritus of Weidlinger Associates, Consulting Engineers. Born in Switzerland, he received his MS and CE degrees from Columbia University. He has taught at Columbia University and Pratt Institute and lectured at other universities throughout the world.
Projects for which he was the principal designer include the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History, the Javits Convention Center and the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York, the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, the La Plata Stadium in Argentina, the One Financial Center tower in Boston, Banque Bruxelles Lambert in Belgium, the World Bank Headquarters in Washington, DC, and a cable-stayed pedestrian bridge at Rockefeller University, the WW II Museum in New Orleans and the Marine Corps Museum in Alexandria. He is the inventor of the Tenstar Dome structure, a unique tensegrity cable dome used to cover large spaces with minimal obstruction.
Levy resides in Burlington, Vermont.
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Diane Lockward is the author of What Feeds Us (Wind Publications, 2006) which was awarded the Quentin R. Howard Poetry Prize. She is also the author of Eve's Red Dress (Wind Publications, 2003), and a chapbook, Against Perfection (Poets Forum Press, 1998). Her poems have been published in several anthologies, including Poetry Daily: 366 Poems from the World's Most Popular Poetry Website and Garrison Keillor's Good Poems for Hard Times. Her poems have also appeared in such journals as The Beloit Poetry Journal, Spoon River Poetry Review, Poet Lore, Seattle Review, and Prairie Schooner.
Her work has been nominated for five Pushcart Prizes, featured on Poetry Daily, and read by Garrison Keillor on NPR's The Writer's Almanac. She is the recipient of a 2003 Poetry Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and was a featured poet at the 2006 Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry Festival.
A former high school English teacher, Diane now works as a poet-in-the-schools.
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Archer Mayor is the author of the highly acclaimed, Vermont-based series featuring detective Joe Gunther, which the Chicago Tribune describes as “the best police procedurals being written in America.” He is also the 2004 winner of the New England Independent Booksellers Association (NEIBA) Award for Best Fiction—the first time a writer of crime literature has been so honored. In addition, Archer is a death investigator for Vermont's Chief Medical Examiner, a Deputy Sheriff for Windham County, VT, a volunteer firefighter, and the EMT captain of his local rescue squad.
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Jennifer McMahon graduated from Goddard College in 1991, and has lived in Vermont ever since. Over the years, she has been a house painter, farm worker, paste-up artist, Easter Bunny, pizza delivery person, homeless shelter staff member, and has worked with adults and kids with mental illness in a few different capacities. Currently, she lives in Barre with her partner, Drea, and their daughter, Zella. Promise Not to Tell is her first novel.
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Kate Messner¹s first book, Shark: Terror of the Sea, was never published. Her parents taped it to the refrigerator, though. She was seven years old and has been writing ever since.
Luckily, she¹s always had jobs that involved writing. Kate spent seven years as a television producer and reporter before earning her master¹s degree to become a middle school English teacher. Now she spends her days reading and writing children¹s books and sharing those passions with her students. She has presented at numerous workshops for teachers and in 2005 earned National Board Certification in Early Adolescent English Language Arts. Kate is a member of SCBWI, the Society of Children¹s Book Writers and Illustrators and AS-IF, Young Adult Authors Supporting Intellectual Freedom.
Kate lives on Lake Champlain with her husband, WPTZ meteorologist Tom Messner, and their two children. When she¹s not teaching or writing, she loves to spend time outside hiking, kayaking, biking, running, ice skating, or skiing. When the weather is too nasty for any of those things, you¹ll find her curled up by the fire with some dark chocolate and a good book.
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Ann McKinstry Micou holds a bachelor's degree from Mills College in California and a master's degree from The New School in Manhattan. She spent roughly a third of her forty-six-year career as an English teacher, a third working as an editor and director of communications for international nonprofit organizations based in New York, and a third directing the South African Information Exchange at the Institute of International Education (IIE) in New York. In that last post, she traveled frequently to South Africa and produced over thirty-five directories on resources to assist anti-apartheid groups. In the late sixties, she lived with her family in Ankara, Turkey, for three years, working as the editor of the Turkish Journal of Pediatrics, and in Tehran, Iran, for two years, where she taught American Literature at Pars College. After retiring in 1999, she moved to South Newfane, Vermont, where she lives with her husband, Paul, a retired United Nations officer. Once in Vermont, she began reading fiction with Vermont settings to learn about the culture, the history, and the landscape of this state. This research led to her first book, A Guide to Fiction Set in Vermont (November 2005), and a companion piece, A Guide to Fiction Set in Vermont for Children & Young Adults (fall 2007). The publisher of both volumes is the Vermont Humanities Council, with financial support from the Vermont State Department of Libraries.
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JEFFREY MOORE was educated at the University of Toronto, the University of Ottawa and the Sorbonne. In addition to lecturing at all four Montreal universities, he has worked as a translator for theatre and dance troupes, film festivals and museums around the world. His first novel, Prisoner in a Red-Rose Chain, won the Commonwealth Prize in 2000, while his second novel, The Memory Artists, won the 2005 Canadian Authors Association Award and was shortlisted for the Rogers’ Writers Trust Fiction Prize, the Hugh MacLennan Prize, the WordsWorthy Award and Sunburst Award. Both novels have been optioned for film and translated into some 15 languages. He is currently working on a novel about extinction, animal and human.
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Howard Frank Mosher's work has earned him the highest esteem of some of our most admired writers, including Richard Russo, Oscar Hijuelos, Richard Ford, and Frank McCourt, who has written that he'd "put Howard Mosher up on the pedestal I keep for Wallace Stegner, Frederick Turner, [and] Edward Hoagland."
Mosher is the author of eight novels including, Waiting for Teddy Williams (for Red Sox fans everywhere), The True Account (a fictional retelling of the Lewis and Clark expedition), and A Stranger in the Kingdom (winner of the New England Book Award). Mariner Books will reissue his first novel, Disappearances, this March. Mosher has also penned one work of nonfiction, North Country. Three of his novels (A Stranger in the Kingdom, Disappearances, and Where the Rivers Flow North) have been made into feature films.
Mosher has received a Guggenheim fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Literature Award, the American Civil Liberties Union Award for Excellence in the Arts, and the New England Book Award.
A lifelong baseball fan and longtime player and coach, Mosher lives in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom with Phillis, his wife of nearly four decades and frequent muse. They have two children.
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Joyce Carol Oates is one of our country’s most prolific and versatile contemporary writers. With a writing career that spans 25 years, she is the author of more than 70 books including novels, short story collections, poetry volumes, plays, literary criticism and essays. Her writing has earned her much praise and many awards including the National Book Award for her novel them, the 2004 Fairfax Prize for lifetime achievement in the literary arts, the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in short fiction, the Rosenthal Award from the American Academy Institute of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the O'Henry Prize for Continued Achievement in the Short Story, among many others. In 1999 she also has been nominated a third time for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Several of her novels have been made into movies and made-for-television productions.
Ms. Oates is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University.
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The Onion is a national publication and website that offers award-winning news and views readers can't get anywhere else. With more than three million readers each week, it is by far the most popular humor publication in the world. The Onion's articles comment on current events, both real and imagined. It parodies traditional newspaper features such as editorials, man-on-the-street interviews and stock quotes as well as traditional newspaper layout and dry, AP-style editorial voice. The New Yorker has called it "the funniest publication in the United States." Among the numerous New York Times bestsellers to its credit are "Our Dumb Century," "Fanfare for the Area Man" and "Embedded in America."
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Katherine Hall Page is the author of fifteen previous Faith Fairchild mysteries and is one of only two authors to have won an Agatha Award for best first novel (The Body in the Belfry), for best short story ("The Would Be Widower") and best novel of the year (The Body in the Snowdrift). Her most recent book, the sixteenth in the Faith Fairchild series, THE BODY IN THE IVY, honors the award's namesake, the revered mystery writer Agatha Christie, by re-imagining one of her most popular tales, "And Then There Were None."
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Justin graduated with a Bachelor's degree from Champlain College in 2006. He has been published in the literary magazine Willard & Maple and the Vermont magazine Living. He currently resides in Middlebury, CT and is working as a suspension specialist in the family business. In his free time he enjoys cycling, hiking and kayaking.
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Tracey Campbell Pearson was born in Norwalk, Connecticut. The youngest of four children, she moved with her family to neighboring Wilton when she was eight years old. While attending Parsons School of Design, she studied with Maurice Sendak and discovered her love for creating children's books. After her graduation from Parsons in 1978, she began her career as a staff artist at American Greetings Corp. in Cleveland, Ohio. She returned to New York City in 1980, where she began a full-time career as a freelance illustrator. Her first book, We Wish You a Merry Christmas (Dial 1982), was a Booklist reviewer's choice. www.traceycampbellpearson.com
Since 1980, Tracey has illustrated more than twenty-five books for children. She wrote five of those, including The Howling Dog (Farrar Straus arid Giroux 1991)-selected as one of the top 100 Classic New England Children's Books by Yankee Magazine-The Purple Hat (FSG 1997) and Where Does Joe Go? (FSG 1991), which won a 2000 Oppenheim Toy "Portfolio Gold" Award and receivjed starred reviews from Booklist and Publishers Weekly.
Many of her books, such as The Awful Aardvarks Go to School (Viking 1997) and The Missing Tarts (Viking 1989) have received starred and notable reviews. Her awards include a Parent's Choice Award for illustration, Time Magazine "Best Books" and Parenting Magazine's "Reading Top Magic" Award. She is also the illustrator of the Claude and Shirley series, written by Joan Lowery Nixon, a Parent's Choice Award winner about an amusing couple who are Texas pioneers.
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Susan Rich is author of The Cartographer's Tongue Poems of the World, winner of the PEN USA and Peace Corps Awards for poetry, and a second collection, Cures Include Travel, both from White Pine Press. She is the recipient of a Washington State Artist Trust Fellowship and as well as a GAP recipient. Recent poems appear in Alaska Quarterly Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Dialogi and Green Mountains Review.
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Jeff Rutenbeck is the founding dean of the Division of Communication and Creative Media at Champlain College. He is also the founding president and the current chair of the board of the International Digital Media and Arts Association (iDMAa). Prior to his recent move to Vermont, he founded and directed the long-standing Digital Media Studies program at the University of Denver (launched in 1996). His research and teaching over the past 20 years have focused on media theory, media history, emerging media, and critical approaches to technology. He has worked for and consulted with a wide variety of companies and organizations, including Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, the US Air Force, Time Warner Cable, The Cable Center, Canisius College, Miami University, The Guangzhou Daily (China), to name a few. He holds a Ph.D. in communication from the University of Washington, an M.A. in journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia, and a bachelor's degree in history from The Colorado College.
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Meghan Schardt graduated from Champlain College this past spring as a writing major; she focused this passion on poetry. She was the 2007 Editor-in-Chief of Willard & Maple, a literary and fine arts magazine. She has completed her first chapbook titled "Freight Train Moving." Meghan is volunteering for Americorps NCCC, Sacramento, CA, in October of 2007. She loves poetry, music, nature, and finds great inspiration in Bob Dylan.
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Barbara Seuling was born in Brooklyn, New York, which seemed to her like the most exciting place in the world. In the summertime, her family would go up on the roof of their building to see the fireworks on Coney Island. It was a short walk to Gravesend Bay, where she saw great freighters coming in and out of New York harbor. There were new movies every Saturday at neighborhood theaters, a library a few blocks away and always armies of kids to play with. Barbara drew from the time she could hold a pencil.
When the writing bug bit, all those great times back in Brooklyn came back to her in floods of stories and pictures. Her freaky fact books were a direct offshoot of her early fascination with Ripley's Believe-It-Or-Not series in the Sunday funnies. The Teeny Tiny Woman is a tribute to her love for folk and fairy tales. The Triplets sprang from the irritating way adults compared her to her older brother.
After college she spent several years as an editorial assistant, then as a children's book editor, first at Dell Publishing Company and later at J. B. Lippincott Co. Her experiences became the basis for How to Write A Children's Book and Get It Published. She taught writing for children at the Bank Street College of Education and the Writer's Voice in New York City and created The Manuscript Workshop to work privately with children's writers. Her long association with the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators is one of which Barbara is most proud and she now serves on the board of advisors of that organization.
She has published more than fifty books and continues to love her work. According to Barbara, it's almost as exciting as Brooklyn was to her all those years ago.
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Neil Shepard has published three books of poetry, his latest being THIS FAR FROM THE SOURCE, published by Mid-List Press in 2006. His poems appear in many literary magazines, including Boulevard, New American Writing, North American Review, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, and Triquarterly. He teaches in the BFA writing program at Johnson State College and is Editor of the literary magazine Green Mountains Review.
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Governor James H. Douglas has appointed Ruth Stone of Middlebury as Vermont's new State Poet, with her term beginning July 2007.
Ruth Stone was born on June 8, 1915, in Roanoke, Virginia, and has been a resident of Vermont since 1957. She is recognized around the world as a major American poet, and has been described as “Mother Poet” to many contemporary writers. Ruth Stone has published poems and fiction in numerous anthologies and literary journals, and is the recipient of the 2002 Wallace Stevens Award.
Among her other awards are two Guggenheim Fellowships, The Bess Hokin Award from Poetry magazine, the Shelley Memorial Award, the Kenyon Review Fellowship, the Whiting Writers’ Award, the Eric Mathieu King award from the Academy of American Poets, the Vermont Cerf Award for lifetime achievement in the arts, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Book Award. She is the namesake of the Ruth Stone Prize in Poetry Award, given by Vermont College each year since 2004. She served for many years as Bartle professor of English at Binghamton University, and taught previously at various schools including the Universities of Wisconsin, Indiana, and California, and Harvard University. Her books of poetry include In the Dark (2004), In the Next Galaxy (2002), Ordinary Words (1999), Simplicity (1997), Who is the Widow's Muse (1991), Second Hand Coat (1987), Cheap (1975), Topography (1971), and In an Iridescent Time (1959).
Ruth Stone is the sixth Vermont State Poet, and the fifth since Governor Madeline Kunin re-established the position in 1988. Robert Frost became Vermont’s first State Poet in 1961, and was followed by Galway Kinnell, Louise Glück, Ellen Bryant Voigt, and Grace Paley.
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James M. Tabor hosted the national PBS series The Great Outdoors and is currently a writer and executive producer for the History Channel series Journey to the Center of the World, about caves and caving. A former contributing editor for Outside and Ski and senior editor at Backpacker, Tabor has also published in other magazines, including The Smithsonian, American Heritage, TIME, and Reader's Digest. He has attempted Mt. McKinley and summitted Mt. Sanford. A certified Master Diver, he has dived in the Atlantic, Pacific, Caribbean, U.S., and Canada. He lives in Waitsfield, Vermont. Visit his website at www.jamesmtabor.com for more information or to read a Q & A about his new book, Forever on the Mountain: The Truth Behind One of Mountaineering's Most Controversial and Mysterious Disasters.
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Linda Urban, the former marketing director at Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena, California, now writes children's books full-time. A Crooked Kind of Perfect is her first novel. She lives in Montpelier, Vermont.
photo credit - Julio Thompson
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Dana Yeaton’s new play, Redshirts, will premiere this September at Penumbra Theatre in St. Paul, Minnesota, and then move on to Round House Theatre in Washington D.C. He is the recipient of the “New Voice in American Theatre” award from the William Inge Theatre Festival. His short play Helen At Risk won the Heideman Award from the Actor’s Theatre of Louisville and his full-length drama Mad River Rising received the Moss Hart Award from the New England Theatre Conference. His adaptation of Chris Bohjalian's New York Times best-selling novel Midwives has been professionally produced in North Carolina, Arizona, Tennessee, Vermont and, most recently, in Washington, D.C. Dana teaches at Middlebury College and at Vermont Governor’s Institute on the Arts.
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One of Warren Zevon’s final requests before he died was that his former (and only) wife, Crystal Zevon, compile his memoir. I’LL SLEEP WHEN I’M DEAD: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon (HarperCollins Publishers) is the realization of that request. Told in the words of his musical accomplices, fellow-travelers, friends and lovers, I’LL SLEEP WHEN I’M DEAD is a unique scrapbook of memories, stories and memorabilia from the wild and famed life of the iconic singer-songwriter.
Perhaps most well known for such dark, rock-and-roll classics like “Werewolves of London” and “Roland, the Headless Thompson Gunner”, Zevon was a prolific and storied musical legend. He released nearly 18 albums and collaborated with countless artists including the Everly Brothers, Linda Ronstadt and Bruce Springsteen.
Told in the words of Jackson Browne, Mitch Albom, David Crosby, Carl Hiassen, Bonnie Raitt, and other legendary artists as well as family members and friends, I’LL SLEEP WHEN I’M DEAD includes stories of drugs, women, insanity, creative highs and lows and charts the genius behind some of the most timeless songs in rock history.
Crystal Zevon, who was Warren’s lifelong friend and companion, narrates the compilation. For more information on Warren Zevon please see www.warrenzevon.com.
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