Writers in the Mountains (WIM), a literary nonprofit organization serving the Catskills and the Hudson Valley area since 1992, offers a variety of creative writing workshops year round, and hosts numerous literary events to promote the written word throughout our region and beyond.
On Saturday, June 24, 2017, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Writers in the Mountains will present at the Maurice D. Hinchey Catskill Interpretive Center’s Book Fair in Mount Tremper, and introduce some of its finest writers and poets. Presenters include nature writer Leslie T. Sharpe; art writer Simona David; poets Sharon Israel, Sharon Ruetenik, and Lissa Kiernan; fiction and creative nonfiction writers Anique Taylor and Carrie Bradley Neves; and monologist Bonnie Lykes. There will be readings, short presentations, and illustrative class exercises.
Leslie T. Sharpe is a writer, editor, and educator. A member of PEN American Center, she is the author of Editing Fact and Fiction: A Concise Guide to Book Editing (Cambridge University Press, 1994), which is regarded as a “modern editing classic” and “On Writing Smart: Tips and Tidbits,” featured in The Business of Writing (Allworth, 2012). Her new book, The Quarry Fox and Other Critters of the Wild Catskills, published by The Overlook Press in March 2017, is a lyric narrative look at the wild animals of the Catskill Mountains. Ms. Sharpe will be reading excerpts from her new book, and will discuss the genre of nature writing, as it relates to the Catskill Mountains.
Simona David, president of Writers in the Mountains, is a writer and media consultant. She is the author of Self-Publishing and Book Marketing, A Research Guide (2013), Art in the Catskills (3rd. edition, 2016), and How Art Is Made: In the Catskills (2017). Ms. David will discuss her latest book How Art Is Made: In the Catskills, released earlier this year. The book pays homage to the place where American art was born through a series of conversations with some of the world’s most accomplished artists who live and work in the Catskill Mountains.
Sharon Israel is the host of Planet Poet-Words in Space, an edition of The Writer’s Voice program on WIOX 91.3 FM in Roxbury, New York, and serves on WIM’s board of directors. She has just released her first chapbook Voice Lesson, published by Post Traumatic Press. Her work most recently appeared in Per Contra, SPANK the CARP, 5:2 Crime Poetry Weekly, Medical Literary Messenger, and Spry Literary Journal. In 2016, Ms. Israel appeared as a panelist at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival in Salem, Mass. As a poet and soprano, she collaborates with her husband, composer Robert Cucinotta, on works for voice, live instruments, and electronics. Ms. Israel will be reading selected poems from Voice Lesson.
Anique Taylor has co-authored works for HBO, Scholastic, and Simon & Schuster. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The World (St. Mark’s Poetry Project), Rattle, Common Ground Review, Adanna, Earth’s Daughters, Stillwater Review, and e-Bibliotekos’ Pain and Memory. She’s has been a featured writer at New York City readings including St. Mark’s Poetry Project, Dixon Place, the Speakeasy, and Cedar Tavern. Her chapbook Poems is published by Unimproved Editions Inc. Her chapbook Where Space Bends was chosen as a finalist for both Minerva Rising and Blue Light Press’s 2014 Poetry Chapbook Competitions; and her collection Under the Ice Moon was a finalist in Blue Light Press’s 2015 Competition. She holds a Poetry MFA from Drew University, a Drawing MFA from Pratt Institute, and a diplome in French Literature from the Sorbonne. She teaches Creative Nonfiction for Writers in the Mountains.
Sharon Ruetenik is the author of a poetry chapbook, The Wooden Bowl. She is currently working on a manuscript of sevenlings. Her work has appeared in print and online journals, most recently The Green Door. Ruetenik was awarded a poetry fellowship at the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. As a speaker for the New York Council for the Humanities, she has lectured on short stories, novellas, and poetry. Her day job is working at SUNY Delhi as the coordinator of the Writing Center, the international student advisor, and adjunct instructor in composition and literature. She teaches for Writers in the Mountains The Journey from Theme to Images to Poem.
Lissa Kiernan is the founding director of the Poetry Barn in West Hurley. Her first full-length volume of poetry, Two Faint Lines in the Violet, was a 2014 Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Award finalist, as well as a finalist for the Julie Suk Award for Best Poetry Book by an Independent Press. Her first book of prose, Glass Needles & Goose Quills: Elementary Lessons in Atomic Properties, Nuclear Families & Radical Poetics will be published later this month. Ms. Kiernan holds an MA from the New School and an MFA from the Stonecoast Creative Writing program, and she teaches for Writers in the Mountains It’s Elemental: The Art of Revision in Poetry.
Carrie Bradley Neves is an Upstate New York native who grew up outside Albany and returned to the area a little over a decade ago. She has a bachelor’s degree in English literature from Williams College, where she also studied playwriting and poetry; and a master’s degree in fiction writing from the University of New Hampshire, where she studied fiction writing and poetry. For the last twenty-five years, Carrie has focused many of her writing goals on writing lyrics, making records, performing, and touring as a singer-songwriter and violinist. Other current writing and activities and projects include secretaryship of her college alumni publication, writing for her town newspaper, The Times of Halcott, and new work on a musical play. Her work-for-pay life is as a copy editor, specializing in cookbooks. She serves on WIM’s
Board of Directors.
Bonnie Lykes is a monologist, performance artist, and voice-over artist. Her work has been featured in Crack The Spine Literary Journal in both poetry and creative nonfiction, and is also featured in the subscription podcast “The Strange Recital.’ Ms. Lykes is a founder and president of the nonprofit organization Reservoir Food Pantry in Upstate New York. She is the host of Nonfiction Railroad Hour, an edition of the Writer’s Voice on WIOX 91.3 FM in Roxbury, New York, and serves on WIM’s board of directors.
To learn more about Writers in the Mountains, visit writersinthemountains.org.
Simona David Consulting 