Svea Barrett is a 25-year veteran NJ public school teacher and mother of three teenage boys. Her chapbook, Why I Collect Moose, won the 2005 Poets Corner Press Poetry Chapbook Competition, and her book, I Tell Random People About You, won the Spire Press 2010 Poetry Book Award. Her work has appeared in Samsara Quarterly, Journal of NJ Poets, Lips, and other journals.
Norma Bernstock lives in Milford, Pennsylvania, where she is a member of the Upper Delaware Writers Collective. Her poetry has appeared in many journals including Connecticut River Review, Paterson Literary Review, and Lips. She has been twice awarded an Honorable Mention in the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards. Her chapbook, Don’t Write a Poem About Me After I’m Dead, was published in 2011 by Big Table Publishing.
Broeck Wahl Blumberg is a semi-retired correspondent for a Tokyo-based economics/political weekly magazine. Her poetry has appeared in Ithaca Lit, Snow Monkey and The Meadowland Review and as part of the off-Broadway play, On the Outside Looking In, in New York. She has taught writing at the World Trade Institute in New York and for Cornell’s Off-Campus College Program.
Teresa Carson’s first book, Elegy for the Floater, was published by CavanKerry Press. Also a playwright, she adapted her second collection, The Congress of Human Oddities, about a sideshow traveling through Ohio during the Civil War, into a full-length play. She has taught poetry and playwriting to a variety of age groups from middle-school children to senior citizens. The recipient of the 2010 Lipkin Playwriting Award, she holds an MFA in Poetry and an MFA in Theatre, both from Sarah Lawrence College. She is the Development Director for CavanKerry Press.
Jessica de Koninck is the author of Repairs (Finishing Line Press). Her poems appear in various publications including Paterson Literary Review, The Ledge, Edison Literary Review, and Lips. She has an M.F.A. from Stonecoast, a B.A. from Brandeis and a J.D. from Boston University. An attorney, she was twice elected to the Montclair, NJ, township council.
Ann M. DeVenezia, a former teacher turned poet, is the author of three books of poetry: Grave Rubbings, Riding My Tricycle, and Telling Abuse. Her work appears in Connecticut Review, Louisiana Literature, Poet Lore, and Rattle.
Serena Fox is an intensive care physician, consultant in bedside medical ethics and human rights advocate. Her poems have appeared in the Paris Review, Journal of the American Medical Association and Western Humanities Review. Her book of poems, Night Shift, is the basis for a series of poetry and medicine seminars that she facilitates in the NYU School of Medicine Master Scholars Program for Humanities in Medicine.
Laura Freedgood is the author of two chapbooks, Slant of the Heart (2010) and Weather Report (2007), both published by Pudding House Press. Her poems appear in Descant, Hawai’i Pacific Review, Wisconsin Review, Journal of New Jersey Poets, and elsewhere. Nominated for a Pushcart Prize, she was also awarded a three-year poetry grant from the City University of New York, where she worked as an Assistant Professor until 2010.
Sondra Gash’s collection of poems, Silk Elegy (CavanKerry Press) was a Finalist for the 2003 Paterson Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared in the New York Times, Calyx, Paterson Literary Review, and U.S. 1 Worksheets. She has read at the Dodge Festival in Waterloo, NJ, and is a recipient of fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts (for fiction and poetry), Yaddo, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
Deborah Gerrish is a poet and teacher whose work has appeared in Ararat, the South Mountain Poets anthology, Goldfinch, and the Paterson Literary Review. She was “Poet in Residence” at the Presbyterian Church of New Providence (2005-2008) and was a featured poet on Breathearts.org in April 2010. Her chapbook, The Language of Rain, was published in 2008, and her collection of poems, The Language of Paisley, is forthcoming.
Gail Fishman Gerwin’s poetry and reviews appear in journals including Paterson Literary Review, Lips, Pirene’s Fountain, and U.S. 1 Worksheets. Her memoir Sugar and Sand was a 2010 Paterson Poetry Prize finalist and she earned four Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards honorable mentions. She is an associate poetry editor of Tiferet. A Paterson native, Gail is principal of the Morristown communications firm inedit.
Marcia Ivans has given workshops at the College of St. Elizabeth and Caldwell College. She has led workshops at Barnes and Noble, Watchung Booksellers, and The Fine Grind. She has facilitated Poetry and Pastries at Cafe Beethoven in Chatham for the past eight years.
Vasiliki Katsarou, is the author of the just-published poetry collection, Memento Tsunami. She is a 2010 Pushcart Prize nominee and curates the Panoply Books Reading Series in Lambertville, NJ. In 2009, she co-edited and wrote the introduction to the anthology Eating Her Wedding Dress: A Collection of Clothing Poems (Ragged Sky Press). She holds an MFA from Boston University and wrote and directed the award-winning 35mm short film, Fruitlands 1843.
Tina Kelley is on the staff of Covenant House, where she is co-writing a book about homeless teenagers to be published by Wiley in the fall of 2012. Her first book of poems, The Gospel of Galore, (Word Press, 2003) won a Washington State Book Award, and her second book, Precise, will be published by Word Press in December 2012. A reporter at The New York Times for ten years, she lives with her husband and two children in Maplewood.
Adele Kenny is the author of numerous books of poetry and nonfiction. Her poems, reviews, and articles have been published in journals as well as in books and anthologies. The recipient of two poetry fellowships from the NJ State Arts Council, she is founding director of the Carriage House Poetry Series and poetry editor of Tiferet. Her most recent poetry collection is What Matters, published by Welcome Rain Publishers.
Gina Larkin, a retired teacher, is the editor of the Edison Literary Review. Her first book, When the Gods Play Hide and Seek, was published in 2011.
Deborah LaVeglia is director of Poets Wednesday, the longest running poetry series in NJ. She studied poetry at Kean University and NYU. She resides in Cranford with her son and husband, but dreams of living in a log cabin in Vermont.
Diane Lockward is the author of three poetry books, most recently, Temptation by Water (Wind Publications, 2010). Her poems have been published in such journals as Harvard Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Prairie Schooner. Her work has also been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and The Writer’s Almanac.
Julie Maloney is a writer and poet and founder/director of Women Reading Aloud, a non-profit organization dedicated to the support of women writers. She is a former dancer and choreographer of the Julie Maloney Dance Company. Her book of poems, Private Landscape, was published in 2007. She is working on her debut novel. In June, she will travel to Greece to lead a writer's retreat on the island of Alonissos.
Charlotte Mandel won the 2012 New Jersey Poets Prize. She has published seven books of poetry, the most recent, Rock Vein Sky from Midmarch Arts Press. Other titles include two poem-novellas of feminist biblical re-vision. She has published essays on the role of cinema in the life and work of poet H.D and edited the Eileen W. Barnes Award Anthology, Saturday’s Women.
Elizabeth Marchitti's poems have been published in Paterson Literary Review, Lips and Journal of New Jersey Poets, among others. She has been a finalist in the Allen Ginsberg Contest three times. In 2010 her poem "The Music Tree" won first prize at St. Catherine's annual Art and Poetry Exhibit in Ringwood, New Jersey. In 2011 her chapbook, In Praise of Stillness, won First Prize in the Bear House Publishing Mini-Chapbook Competition.
Jean Meyers is a retired English teacher who lives in Montclair with a cat and a lot of books. She is a member of a quilting group celebrating its fortieth year and a poetry group celebrating its sixteenth. In recent years she has taken up watercolor painting. Last Thanksgiving she played clarinet duets with her granddaughter.
Marilyn Mohr is the author of two volumes of poetry, Satchel
(Cross Cultural Communications Press) and Running the Track (Aesopus Press). Recent work has appeared in The Seventh Quarry, and the Edison Literary Review and in the anthology Blood to Remember. A native New Yorker, she lived in Woodstock, NY, where she was co-editor of The Woodstock Poetry Review and The Catskill Poets’ Series. For twenty years she was the curator of the series, The Poets’ Forum, at the JCC of Metropolitan New Jersey.
Priscilla Orr is the author of Jugglers & Tides and the forthcoming Losing the Horizon from Hannacroix Creek Books. She is a recipient of fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and Yaddo, and has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her poems have appeared in the Journal of New Jersey Poets, Tiferet, and Nimrod. She is editor of The Stillwater Review
Wanda S. Praisner,a recipient of fellowships from the New Jersey State
Council on the Arts and the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, has read at the
Dodge Festival and the Governor's Conference on the Arts. Winner of the
2010 Princemere Prize, her work has appeared in Atlanta Review, Lullwater Review, New York Magazine, and Prairie Schooner. A teaching artist for the NJ Writers Project, her third collection is due out from CavanKerry Press in 2013.
Linda Radice, a poet and essayist, has had her work published in numerous journals and anthologies and was the second place recipient of the 2007 Allen Ginsberg Award. She is a member of the Fanwood Arts Council and is currently involved in organizing a new reading series in her hometown. She is a Paralegal and resides in North Plainfield, NJ.
Susanna Rich, is an Emmy Award nominee, Fulbright Fellow in Creative Writing, and author of two chapbooks: Television Daddy and The Drive Home. She tours audience-interactive poetry experiences, including A Wild Night with Emily Dickinson. She is Professor of English at Kean University and was awarded the Presidential Excellence Award for Distinguished Teaching.
Susan Rothbard’s poetry has appeared in The National Poetry Review, The Literary Review, Poet Lore, Paterson Literary Review, and other journals and has been featured on Verse Daily. Winner of the 2011 Finch Prize for Poetry, she earned her MFA degree in creative writing at Fairleigh Dickinson University and teaches English and creative writing at Livingston High School.
Christine Waldeyer, founder of Adanna, a woman’s literary journal, is an Assistant Professor at Passaic County Community College where she directs the Journalism Program. She is the author of three collections of poetry, Frame by Frame, Gravel, and Eve Asks and has published in literary journals such as Paterson Literary Review, Schuylkill Valley Journal, The Texas Review, and Verse Wisconsin.
