Saturday, July 31st
- Ron De Luca, Hancock, Writer - 11:50 am to 12:10 pm - retired after forty-four years in the advertising business. His experience includes art director, writer, creative director, operating officer, president. He wrote his first stories in college and put them in a shoe box after his handful of rejections and becoming pitifully addicted to eating. He wrote much of and supervised all of the creative work for two resurrections of Chrysler and the enthronement of Lee Iacocca. After retirement he wrote a book on his experiences in the business which became so focused on Lee Iacocca it was old news and never published. Since then he has taken up writing his personal stories again. His story, "Stone Man Willy," was published in The Second Word Thursdays Anthology (Bright Hill Press) and subsequently republished by Stockport Press with four other stories. He writes to pass on what he remembers and understands of life, love and death. Ron is a graduate of Pratt Institute, Syracuse University, and the New School University of New York City.
- Uri Shulevitz, Treadwell, Children's Book Author and Illustrator - 2:20pm to 2:40pm -illustrated more than 40 children's books, out of which, he has written more than a dozen. Amond his awards and honors are: A Caldecott Medal, 3 Caldecott Honors, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Many of his books have been translated into foreign languages. Books that he has illustrated and written include The Moon in My Room; The Mystery of the Woods; A Rose, a Bridge, and a Wild Black Horse; The Second Witch; The Twelve Dancing Princesses; The Carpet of Solomon; The Month Brotherse; Runaway Jonah and Other Tales; One Monday Morning; The Magician; The Fools of Chelm and Their History; Dawn; Hanukah Money; The Golem; Writing with Pictures; Toddlecreek Post Office; The Golden Goose; Snow; What is a Wise Bird Like you Doing in a Silly Tale Like This; The Travels of Benjamin of Tudela; So Sleepy Storey; How I learned Georgraphy and others!
- Bertha Rogers, Delhi, Poet - 1:05 pm to 1:20 pm published more than 300 poems and reviews in journals and anthologies, and in several collections, including Heart Turned Back (Salmon Poetry Publishing, Ireland, 2010), Even the Hemlock (Six Swans, NY - 2005), A House of Corners (Three Conditions Press, Baltimore - 2000), The Fourth Beast (Snark Publ, III - 2004), Sleeper, You Wake (Mellen, NY - 1991). Her translation of Beowulf, the Anglo-Saxon epic poem, was published in 2000 (Birch Brook Press, NY), and her translation of the riddle-poems from the Anglo-Saxon Exeter Book, Uncommon Creatures, Singing Things, will be published in 2010 (Birch Brook Press, NY). In 2010, her poem sequence, "Three for Summer's End," was selected by the MacDowell Colony/Monadnock Music Festival for an original composition by composer Jamie Keesecker and performance at the festival. In 2002, she received a Ludvig Vogelstein grant and in 2006 was the recipient of an AE Ventures Grant for excellence in poetry and visual art and for contributions to the field through the not-for-profit literary press and center she founded in 1992, brighthillpress.org. She has been awarded residency fellowships to the MacDowell Colony, the Millay Colony, Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers, Caldera, and Jentel. In 2007, Rogers, a Master Teaching Artist, was given the 2007 Teaching Artist Distinguished Service to the Arts in Education Field Award at the Common Ground Conference. She serves as a program director for the New York State Literary Web Site, www.nyslittree.org, publisher of the first Literary Map of New York State (2005, in partnership with the New York State Council on the Arts and she is a member of the New York State Writers in the Schools Panel. Visit her at www.bertharogers.com.
- Share the Words High School Poet
Cara Staib, Jefferson High School - 1:20 pm to 1:30
Sunday, August 1st
- Mermer Blakeslee, Roscoe (Delaware County), Writer - 1:20 pm to 1:40 pm - published two novels, Same Blood (Houghton Mifflin, 1989) and In Dark Water (Ballantine, 1998). In Dark Water, called by Connie May Fowler "a novel of uncommon grace and soaring beauty," was selected by Barnes and Noble for its Discover Great New Writers series. "Blakeslee's world," the San Francisco Chronicle state, "is lyrical and mythic, filled with magic, visions and reams." Mermer was awarded three fiction fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the most recent in 2008. An excerpt from Digger's God, her latest novel, won the 2006 Narrative prize from Narrative Magazine. Mermer is also a professional skier and her non-fiction book, In the Yikes! Zone: A Conversation with Fear (Dutton, 2002) emerged fromher intensive work with fearful students over the last twenty-five years. Mermer was born, raised and still lives in the Catskill Mountains and her work reflects its dialect - the rhythm, weight and swing, the inevitable dive at the end of the sentence back to the land it came from.
- Susan King, Walton, Writer - 2:45 pm to 3:00 pm - published her work in the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Bennington Banner. She worked as a technical editor and public relations writer at General Electric Co. in Schenectady, where she wrote and edited for PEO, and International Power Plan division and for the R&D Center. While at General Electric, she wrote an article (appeared in the LA Times) announcing the development of a chip that is a camera, now used widely for security and law enforcement applicaitons, as well as the NASA purpose for which it was originally developed. King taught at Southern Vermont College, where she developed a BA Communications Program and taught courses in English Composition, News Writing and Production, Mass Communications and Television Production. She also taught at the University of Akron, OH, where shed earned a Masters in a teaching assistant program; she continued her graduat work at RPI, in Troy, where she completed the technical writing program as well as course work for her PhD.
- John Paul O'Connor, Franklin, Poet - 12:05 pm to 12:25 pm - published his poems in numerous literary magazines, including Poet Lore, Silk Road, Indian Review, Cold Mountain Review, Rattle, Baltimore Review, Columbia, Sycamore Review and St. Anne's Review. His poems have won him AWP's Prague Prize and two nominations for a Pushcart. he has been awarded fellowships at Vermont Studio Center and the Saltonstall Arts Colony. John was a finalist in last year's Patricia Bibby book Contest and a semi-finalist in the Gerald Cable Book Award. This spring, John's poetry appeared in the anthology on the Obama presidency, Starting Today: Poems for the First 100 Days. John has also worked as a touring songwriter and singer, recording on the Flying Fish/Rounder label. his song "North by North" was adapted by the French artist, Renaud and was number one on the French charts this past winter. he serves as Vice-President of the New York City Musicians Union.
- Lisa Wujnovich, Hancock, Poet - holds an MFA in Poetry from Drew University. She writes poetry and farms at Mountain Dell Farm in Hancock, New York. An herbalist, theater artisit, and community activist, as well as apoet, Lisa currectly directs the Hancock Community Education Foundation Afterschool Garden. Her poetry is featured in the traveling art show, Earth Stewards: Atists Respond to Drilling in the Marcellus Shale. Her Poetry book, This Place Called Us, with photos of Mark Dunau, and High Watermark Saloon, Volume 1, Number 6, both published by Stockport Flats, feature poems about twenty years of life on her family farm. Wujnovich is a found member of Poets for Ayiti, a collective poets from diverse backgrounds committed to the power of poetry to transform and educate. her poetry is included in the Crowns of your Head, a limited edition chapbook. All donations for her chapbook go to rebuilding the Bibliotheque du Soleil, the Port-au-Prince Library destroyed during the January 12, 2010 earthquake in Haiti. To order a copy and to obtain further information, to to www.poetsforayiti.org. Her translation of Marina Tsvetaeva's "I Know the Truth," can be read in Poetry International 2010.
Literary Arts funded in part by Poets & Writers
