Words in the Woods

Bryan Blanchette is a singer-songwriter who brings more than ten thousand years of Abenaki tradition to his contemporary compositions. He began powwow drumming more than two decades ago and soon after began writing Abenaki language songs. Bryan also studied at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

Toussaint St. Negritude describes himself as “Black, queer, artist, mountaineer, devout congregant of the wilderness.” He frequently intersperses his words with compositions on his bass clarinet. His work has been published in journals such as The Michigan Quarterly Review, The Savannah Literary Journal, and The San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Carol Potter is a teacher, editor, and author of five books of poetry. Some Slow Bees won the Field Poetry Prize from Oberlin College Press in 2014. Her poems have been published in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, The Green Mountains Review, The Kenyon Review, among others.

Toby MacNutt is an author, artist, and teacher based in Addison County. Their work engages themes of embodiment, space and relationship from a queer and disabled perspective. Toby's debut poetry and short story collection If Not Skin was published by Aqueduct Press in 2018; more recently their work has appeared in or is forthcoming from magazines such as Liminality, Strange Horizons, and Vulture Bones, and as a self-published chapbook, "what cannot be held". Find out more at www.tobymacnutt.com. 

Monica Ferrell is the author of a novel and two books of poetry, most recently the collection You Darling Thing, which was a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award and the Believer Book Award. She has taught fiction and poetry for the MFA programs at Columbia University and Bennington College, and is Professor of Creative Writing at Purchase College (SUNY). 

Bianca Stone author of the poetry collections What is Otherwise Infinite (Tin House, 2022), The Möbius Strip Club of Grief (Tin House, 2018), Someone Else’s Wedding Vows (Octopus Books and Tin House, 2014) and collaborated with Anne Carson on the illuminated version of Antigonick (New Directions, 2012). Her work has appeared in many magazines, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic and The Nation. She teaches classes on poetry and poetic study at the Ruth Stone House (501c3) where she is editor-at-large for ITERANT magazine and host of Ode & Psyche Podcast.

Michiko Oishi was born in Tokyo, Japan, and has lived in Montpelier since 1997. She has been teaching Japanese language and culture through Champlain College, UVM's Asian Studies Outreach Program and high schools in Central Vermont. Before coming to Vermont, she worked with relief and repatriation programs in Laos, Thailand and Japan for UNHCR and the Japan International Volunteer Center. Her first bilingual Haiku/Tanka book, co-translated with Judy Chalmer, Red Fish Alphabet was published in Tokyo and her second book Deepening Snow was published by Plowboy Press in Vermont.

With now fifteen published books, Geza is a prolific author of five thrillers, three memoirs, five poetry collections, one short story collection and one children’s picture story book. He has a sixteenth book, another thriller, coming out in August, and has just finished a murder mystery based in Vermont that will be published later this year. His poems, short stories and essays have appeared in various journals throughout the USA and Canada.

Linda Quinlan’s book of poetry “Chelsea Creek” was published by Brickhouse Press.  She won the “Wicked Women’s” poetry award and was Poet of the Year in Wisconsin.  She published in many journals some of which include Sinister Wisdom, New Orleans Review and Black Mountain Press. She cohosts a T V Show All Things LGBTQ and lives in Montpelier with her partner."