Writers
L. Shapley Bassen is an ex-pat New Yorker, now gratefully in Rhode Island, who spent many summers near Wolfeboro on Lake Winnipesaukee. “Portrait of a Giant Squid” was the First Place winner in the 2015 Austin Chronicle Short Story Contest. She is published in The Kenyon Review and is a Fiction Editor at CRAFT. She was a finalist for the 2011 Flannery O’Connor Award; a first reader for Electric Literature; winner of the 2009 APP Drama Prize and a Mary Roberts Rinehart Fellowship; and poetry/fiction reviewer for The Rumpus (2019). Bassen’s first poetry collection What Suits a Nudist? is from Clare Songbirds Publishing House. Learn more at lsbassen.com.
Rebecca K. Brown is a New Hampshire-based writer and artist, having relocated here back in the 1980s. As a child she loved to write, create, and explore ways to present the world to others. Poetry is a lifelong writing form she has used, enjoying wordplay and crafting concise pieces. Over the years she has shared her creativity through poetry, blogging, photography, painting, and sketching.
Bill Chretien moved to the Monadnock Region 25 years ago. He has worked in a number of positions in the area, primarily in social service and education. Inspired by the very grounding local beauty, he continues his long-standing writing practice. Since coming to the Keene area, he has had the odd poem and short story published. His middle reader book was available at Toadstool a few years back. He currently resides in the Keene house he built with his wife, Sandy.
Mame Ekblom Cudd is a writer living in Marlborough, New Hampshire. Her work has appeared in Fiction Fix, Fiction, Epiphany, The Broad River Review, SNReview (SNR), and The Puritan (renamed Ex-Puritan).
Tim Dunn has written poetry seriously since 1960, as he began college and just after he discovered the Beats. He graduated from Keene State College in 1964. There were only two periods in his life when very little poetry was made: when he was drafted in the army later in 1964-1967, and when he was elected to the legislature in 2003-2008. In 1969, he began teaching Humanities and English at Keene High School. He retired in 2003. In addition to teaching, he became an accomplished letterpress printer, website: moonstruckpress.com. He lives in Keene, New Hampshire, with his wife, Brenda.
Denise Ginzler is a retired librarian who has been reading and writing all her life. She lives in Greenville, New Hampshire, and is the author of One Ripple, a book of poems. She loves swimming in lakes and the ocean, and walking among trees. The house where she and her husband have lived since 1984 is part of a community land trust, with 100 acres of protected woodland. She belongs to a Quaker Meeting, and several groups working to promote community and peace.
Hunter Hague is a writer who grew up in bucolic Bradford, New Hampshire, home of some of the state’s tallest pine trees. He trained to become an English teacher in the Upper Valley and now teaches at a middle school in Vermont. “Upside down New Hampshire” is also where he lives with his eighteen-month-old daughter and his wife, Ellen—an amazing mother and writer. In 2021, he received an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
J. Kates is a minor poet and a literary translator who lives in Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire. His website is jkates.net.
Michael Keshigian is the author of fourteen poetry collections; his latest, What To Do With Intangibles, was published by Cyberwit.net. His work has appeared in numerous publications including The California Quarterly, San Pedro River Review, Blue Pepper, and Aji, among others. He has been nominated seven times for a Pushcart Prize and three times for Best of The Net.
Maura MacNeil is a writer, editor, and professor of creative writing. She is the author of the poetry collections: A History of Water (Finishing Line Press), Lost Houses (Aldrich Press) and This Last Place (Dancing Girl Press). She is the founder and editor of the literary website Off the Margins “that pushes the boundaries of language, conventional form, blended genre, and prose flash, featuring women writers who fearlessly tell the truth and risk vulnerability to give voice to their experience.” She lives in Deering, New Hampshire.
Suzanne Rogier Marshall, former middle school English teacher, is the author of the full-length poetry collection A Charm of Finches (Shanti Arts, 2022) and the chapbook Blood Knot (Porkbelly Press, 2015). Her poems have appeared in Hummingbird: Magazine of the Small Poem, EcoTheo Review, Sky Island Journal, Cider Press Review, and many other journals and anthologies. After living thirteen years in the mountains of New Hampshire, Suzanne and her husband have recently moved further down the Appalachians to Virginia.
Peter Morton is a seventy-two-year-old engineer who takes inspiration for his poems from the landscapes around the remote radio tower sites he works on. He studied creative writing in a low residency program in Boston and participates in various writers’ groups in the Upper Valley of New Hampshire where he lives.
Lucia Owen moved to western Maine over fifty years ago to teach high school English. She married a colleague, a New Hampshire man from Berlin who graduated from UNH. For the last few years of their forty-eight-year marriage, she was his caregiver at home. Her work has appeared in The Cafe Review, Rust & Moth, Prospectus, Please See Me, The Bellevue Literary Review, and THINK, and in several anthologies, most recently Purr and Yowl (World Enough Writers).
Eric Pinder taught for many years at Chester College of New England and the New Hampshire Institute of Art. His books about wilderness, wildlife, and weather include Cat in the Clouds, Life at the Top, If All the Animals Came Inside, and Counting Dinos. He lives frugally in the woods in the shadow of Mount Washington.
Stephen Seraichick is a New Hampshire native and a retired thirty-one-year veteran public school educator. He has been married to Laura for thirty-nine years and has two great adult children. He began reading and writing poetry in the late sixties. His interests range from hiking and painting, to playing guitar and writing.
Caroline Tremblay is a wordsmith, nature lover, and community builder, who was raised beneath the shadow of Grand Monadnock. She now lives in the forests of Richmond with a family of her own. Her days are filled mostly with chai tea, writing, and big band jazz. Her award-winning business, Owl & Pen, has helped other local businesses thrive for nearly 10 years through thoughtfully crafted content. Find Caroline’s work featured in Monadnock Table and atHome Magazine, as well as TheMonadnocker.com, a digital magazine she founded in 2020 to celebrate all things local.
Pediatrician Kelley White has worked in Philadelphia and New Hampshire. Her poems have appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Rattle, and JAMA. Her most recent chapbook is A Field Guide to Northern Tattoos (Main Street Rag Press.) Recipient of 2008 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant, she is Poet in Residence at Drexel’s Medical School. Her newest collection, NO. HOPE STREET, was recently published by Kelsay Books.
Artists
Rebecca K. Brown is a New Hampshire-based writer and artist, having relocated here back in the 1980s. As a child she loved to write, create, and explore ways to present the world to others. Poetry is a lifelong writing form she has used, enjoying wordplay and crafting concise pieces. Over the years she has shared her creativity through poetry, blogging, photography, painting, and sketching.
Amber Rose Crowtree, MFA, is an award-winning poet whose poems appear widely. She is the author and cover artist of two chapbooks, Harboring the Imperfect (Dancing Girl Press, 2021) and The Inviolable Hours (Finishing Line Press, 2021). She has resided and worked in rural New Hampshire since 2005.
Barbara Danser is a New Hampshire artist and playwright with studios in Hancock and Jaffrey. She paints and photographs the landscape with a focus on the earth and sky connection. Her contemporary fused glass necklaces include earthscape and skyscape designs. Barbara’s steel and bronze sculptures partner earth and sky, often conveying the relationship between nature and mankind. You may view Barbara’s art at danserart.com.
Jes Davis is a New Hampshire native currently living in the Lakes Region with her daughter and working for a photography studio in Southern New Hampshire. She writes about life, grief, parent/child relationships, love, horror, onion rings, hypervigilance, and familiar places. Learn more at Instagram and lakebottomletters.substack.com
Soosen Dunholter is a painter, printmaker and collage artist. Her mixed-media work has been exhibited in solo and group shows in galleries and cultural centers throughout New England for more than twenty years. Her work hangs in private and public collections worldwide and has been licensed for books, magazines, and CDs. She has won numerousawards and prizes, including the 2016 Ruth and James Ewing Award for Exceptional Achievement in the Creative Arts. Soosen draws inspiration from her surroundings in Peterborough, New Hampshire, where she creates a variety of sophisticated yet whimsical works. You can see more of Soosen’s work on instagram.com/soosen/ or at soosendunholter.com.
Lew Holzman is a digital artist who has exhibited both internationally and regionally. He has also had images in hard copy and online. Lew works with all the tools available to create unique images. He finds inspiration in many modern and postmodern artworks by such artists as Duchamp, Miro, Klee, Lichtenstein, Dali, Munch, and R Crumb. He hopes others will find his work amusing and affecting, both emotionally and intellectually. Lew enjoys regularly staying with his family in New Hampshire and both hiking there and enjoying the fabulous dining possibilities. To see some of his work, please go to flickr.com/photos/tomswift.
Brenna Manuel spent her childhood in the suburbs of Detroit. She later moved to the West Coast and received a B.F.A. in Painting at Western Washington University and then to New York for her M.F.A. in Sculpture at the City University. She lived as an artist and teacher in NYC for many years before moving to New Hampshire. She taught Humanities at Franklin Pierce University for sixteen years, and now she writes stories and poems in the rural New Hampshire countryside.
Bob Moore has been writing poetry and songs since the early 1990s. He’s released three books of poetry; his latest is Body and Soul (Beech River Books, 2018). His poems appeared or are forthcoming in The Lyric, Muddy River Poetry Review, Quill & Parchment, and an anthology of poetry of New Hampshire bridges, forests, and landscapes published by Piscataqua Press. Around five years ago, Moore started to explore his interests in photography. He mostly photographs nature and the New Hampshire seacoast. Moore has lived in New Hampshire since 1984. A link to Bob Moore’s music and lyrics can be found at bobmoore.bandcamp.com/.
Alison Deland Scott moved to New Hampshire in 1979 and has lived in five Monadnock towns. She graduated from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and worked at University of Rhode Island’s Publication Department. In New Hampshire, she augmented free-lancing with part-time positions. Her work included illustrating, publication design, and collaborations, including public relations, helping develop educational forums and concert promotions. Now retired, she appreciates this region’s people and cultural activities even more, including creative writing groups, meditation, hiking, dancing, and discovering local history. You can view more of Alison’s photography at instagram.com/alisonascot/.
Smoky Quartz 