READERS THIS EVENING
Eleanor Bates
Christopher Legge
Peter Ledermann
Fan Ogilvie
Susan Puciul
Arnie Reisman
Brooks Robards
Annette Sandrock
Valerie Sonnenthal

BIOS OF SOME OF THE READERS THIS EVENING

Ellie Bates’s work is inspired by her love of nature, her family and all the Vineyard has to offer. Growing flowers has helped her be a gardener of the spirit. Her extensive travels in the US, Mexico, the Caribbean and Europe are also subjects for her writing. The time she spent with the Navajo and Kiowa as a Scholar in Native American Literature under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities was a life-changing experience. Her nonfiction work, as well as poetry, has been published in The Vineyard Gazette, The MV Times, MV Writing, Refocus and in two chapbooks.

Brooks Robards has five poetry collections, and her poetry appears in
many periodicals, including Canary, Plainsong and Plum Tree Tavern.
She also writes movie and art reviews for the Martha’s Vineyard Times.
She and her husband, sportswriter Jim Kaplan, live in Northampton, MA,
and spend four months on Martha’s Vineyard.

Susan Puciul grew up in the wilds of Bayonne, New Jersey where she wrote her first nature poem at the age of 9.
As a lifelong dancer, her experience is that poetry helps us come to our senses as well as opening us to the transcendent amidst the ordinary.  Her writing is inspired by the natural world interfaced with the stories of the ancestor, the mysteries of the stranger and those who call the island home.

Fan Ogilvie has co-curated and coordinated The Summer Festival of Poetry at Featherstone for over ten years. It includes national and local poets. Fan published “YOU” selected poems and “KNOT: A LIFE, a memoir in 2008 and ” EASINESSES FOUND” poems and paintings in 2016 which  received special recognition from the Washington Independent Review of Poetry and Grace Cavieleri, creator of the Poet and the Poem series. She taught English and poetry in Washington, DC, New Haven, CT, New York City, NY, and Martha’s Vineyard, MA.
She was selected to be the 2nd Poet Laureate of West Tisbury, Ma. worked three years at the Dukes County House of Correction, where she published two volumes of poetry by the inmates. Fan is the current facilitator of the Cleaveland House Poetry

For Chris Hegge
Simply said, a grateful poet and lover of my island.

Peter Ledermann is currently owner and Director of Engineering at the Soundsmith Corporation in Peekskill NY; his career includes primarily working in the audio industry designing and manufacturing. He also worked at the IBM T. J. Watson research center. Peter has been “spontaneously” receiving poetry since he was 9 years old and generally remembers most of what he has “heard” over nearly the past 60 years.
Susan Puciul grew up in the wilds of Bayonne, New Jersey where she wrote her first nature poem at the age of 9.
As a lifelong dancer, her experience is that poetry helps us come to our senses as well as opening us to the transcendent amidst the ordinary.  Her writing is inspired by the natural world interfaced with the stories of the ancestor, the mysteries of the stranger and those who call the island home.

Arnie Reisman, Martha’s Vineyard Poet Laureate (2014-2017), has published two books of poems – “Clara Bow Died For Our Sins” and “Sodom and Costello.” He has been writing a column for the Gazette since 2011. And since the weekly NPR comedy quiz show began in 1996, he has been a panelist on “Says You!” with his wife, Paula Lyons.

Annette Sandrock has called Vineyard Haven, Martha’s Vineyard home for over 30 years. She is a former Martha’s Vineyard high school teacher of English, US and World Histories and English-as-a-second-language. Previous to that, she embraced a handful of other vocations including mother of three, dog washer, actress, librarian, real estate agent, and court officer, which she swears have all enhanced her writing. During a seven year hiatus from the Vineyard in Pennsylvania  in the 90’s she served as an advertising copywriter and marketing consultant for ABC affiliate, WJET-TV, and wrote extensively for the Erie Times newspaper which has a circulation of 60,000.
Publications: Cleaveland House Poetry: 55 years, 2015
Legacy of Light: Poems for the Gay Head Lighthouse, 2014,
Martha’s Vineyard Poets’ Collective New Work, 2013,
poetry, prose ,art and theater critiques in the Martha’s Vineyard Times
reviews of plays, operas, dance, concerts gallery openings, and features in The Erie Times and the Sunday Showcase Magazine,
a piece on a lobster fisherman Wayne Iacono on Martha’s Vineyard Magazine
poetry in the Vineyard Gazette,
poetry in MV Patch’s Sunday afternoon poetry section.
Education:BA with majors in Art History, German and Philosophy from Colby College, masters in Education specializing in the Humanities from Cambridge College.
Honor: 2015 recipient of Pathways Projects Institutes honorarium for travel poetry.

Valerie Sonnenthal has been writing poetry since she was 12 and has had poems published in a number of reviews as well as the MV Times where she writes the Chilmark Town Column, and contributes Gardens of Love and other columns on collections and history. She is the owner of Peaked Hill Studio and offers Kaiut Yoga and Sound Healing.