BOARD MEMBERS
Jack Schluep, Milford, New York, has an extensive background in audio field recording and independent film. He initially spent 15 years with the State University at Oswego as an Audio Technical Specialist. Since moving to Otsego County in 1984 he has worked free lance, primarily as a location recording engineer. During that time he has recorded hundreds of poets and writers including half a dozen US poet laureates. His interview recordings of notable jazz musicians have been aired on the BBC and CBC. He has been a board member and officer of three successful organizations: WUFF, the nations only hydro powered public radio station; The Milford Historical Association and Sayre House Museum and a prior stint with Bright Hill Press.
Diane Bliss is professor emerita of English at SUNY Orange County Community College. During her tenure there, she also served the English Department as Writing Consultancy Coordinator, as Adjunct Coordinator and as Special Assistant to the Chair. She also served in the college’s shared governance system as a division representative, vice president and president, after which she served at the state level as the college delegate to the SUNY Faculty Council of Community Colleges, also chairing its Governance Committee and serving on its Executive Committee. Since her retirement, she has volunteered as a consulting member of the FCCC’s college visitation team, providing assessment and recommendations related to shared governance on college campuses. She was awarded the SUNY Orange President’s Award and the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Faculty Service. She is an avid birder, a published poet, and a writing workshop participant in a local Orange County group and in the Bright Hill sponsored writing workshop series Seeing Things, led by Robert Bensen.
Fred Schneider (Cooperstown, NY) earned his B.A. in American Literature from SUNY Geneseo. Following an executive career, Fred now owns the Landmark Inn in Cooperstown with his wife Robin. He is a three-time novelist and a two-time invitee to Colgate University’s Novel Intensive. Fred’s short fiction and poetry have appeared in Congo Lust, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, Newsday, and Backpacker Magazine as well as Public Radio, where he enjoyed an extended gig as humor essayist for NCPR and where one of his essays, “The Distance of Fathers” was short-listed for national release. His novels, including his latest Last Stop, Ronkonkoma (October 2019) have found much critical success. Fred’s current projects include a fourth novel, as well as a play titled, The Glass Eye of James Fenimore Cooper, based on Mark Twain’s famous essay on literary offenses, which he also hopes to produce locally in 2021.
Allison Collins, a graduate of Hartwick College, is editor of Upstate Life Magazine and a writer with The Daily Star and Kaatskill Life Magazine.
Her work has been published with Blast Furnace Press, Havok by Splickety Publishing, Shark Reef, Easy Street, Literally Stories, The Ravens Perch, E-Ratio, California Quarterly, The Banyan Review, The Phare, Black Fox Literary Magazine, New Contexts 2: An International Collection of New Poetry & Prose and New Contexts 4, Evening Street Press & Review, La Presa, Front Range Review, BigCityLit, Kerning: A Space for Words, Pebbles on the Strand: An International Collection of Short Stories, and Cider Press Review.
A mother of three, Allison lives in upstate New York with her family.
Katharine Kreisher, Schenevus, NY Katharine Kriesher is Professor of Art at Hartwick College. She received her MFA and MA at the University at Albany, State University of New York; her BS at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs. She teaches courses in documentary photography and alternative processes as well as photo-related printmaking methods. Her autobiographical work centers on highly manipulated photographic images and photo-etchings. She is a founding member of the Round House Press at Hartwick. She has been artist in residence at Millay Colony for the Arts in Austerlitz, NY and has been part of numerous exhibitions including “Hair” and the international traveling exhibit, “Diamonds are Forever: Artist and Writers on Baseball.” Her work has been collected by The Center for Photography at Woodstock and Albany Institute of History and Art, among others.
Pam Strother, now retired, was a university teacher and practicing psychotherapist for more than thirty years. Writing poetry since first grade, she has organized poetry programs, readings, and seminars and was a reviewer of poetry collections for Solares Hill, a Key West, FL newspaper. She has been a featured reader at the Robert Frost Poetry Festival, Key West, FL, at Bright Hill Literary Center, Treadwell, NY, and at Community Arts Network of Oneonta, NY, as well as a judge for Poetry Out Loud. In addition, Pam is also a four decades participant and leader of sacred celebrations and women’s circles. Her chapbook, Here at the End of the Road: Key West Poems, was published in 2007. In 2017, she was a contributor to Like Light: 25 Years of Poetry and Prose and in 2020, she was a contributor to Seeing Things: An Anthology of Poetry both by Bright Hill Poets and Writers.
STAFF
Vicki R. Davis, Sidney Center, NY. Interim Executive Director
Davis, whose recent productions include “Becomes a Woman,” “The Threepenny Opera,” and “The Rat Trap,” has numerous Off Broadway, regional theater and opera performances to her credit. She is the recipient of a TCG/NEA Design Fellowship, a Thomas S. Kenan Institute Breathe Grant, the USITT Design Expo Selection/2010 publication; and she is included in several Who’s Who Publications. Davis is a member of United Scenic Artists Local 829. She has been a director since 2004.
Administrative Assistant
Lawrence E. Shaw, Delhi, NY. Shaw has worked at Bright Hill as Administrative and Editorial Assistant, as well as NYS LitTree Administrative Assistant, for 12 and one-half years. He formerly was an accountant for the Delhi Telephone Company (30 years). He is active in the community, volunteering for the Food Pantry and at his church; and he also belongs to a horseshoe-pitching association and a bowling league. When on vacation, he likes to travel. Contact: (w) 607-829-5055 or larry@nyslittree.org
Librarian
Kathleen Averil Callahan
Education: Franklin Central School, Binghamton University Art History Major, Russian Minor
Binghamton University – fencing for a short time as well as Equestrian Club
Pit Crew for horse and rider at 3 Day 100 Mile Competitive Trail Ride, VT
Charities:
My Sister’s Place and Tabor House in Hartford, CT
Pringle Home in St. Mary’s , Jamaica
The Lord’s Table in Oneonta, NY
Past work experience:
Waitressing & catering
Customer service: AIG insurance, Time Warner Cable
Empire Vision Contact Lens Technician
Caseworker with Onondaga County DSS
All the while reading many, many, many books
FOUNDER
Founding Executive Director
Bertha Rogers, West Delhi . Rogers co-founded (with her husband, Ernest M. Fishman) Bright Hill Press in 1992 and has served as executive director since that time. She is responsible for the Word Thursdays reading series, Bright Hill Book Publication, the Literary Workshops for Kids and BHP Internship Programs, and administers the NYS Literary website and map, which Bright Hill developed in partnership with the New York State Council on the Arts. Rogers is a poet whose work has appeared in hundreds of literary journals and in several collections; she also is a translator of Anglo-Saxon poetry; her translation of Beowulf was published in 2000, and her translation of the 95 Riddle-Poems from the Anglo-Saxon Exeter Book is forthcoming. She has received several NYSCA and NYFA grants and residency fellowships to the McDowell Colony, the Millay Artists Colony, Jentel, Caldera, Saltonstall, Hedgebrook, and Hawthornden International Writers Residence (Scotland). A master teaching artist, her contributions were included in the new Open the Door: How to Excite Young People About Poetry (the Poetry Foundation and McSweeney’s, 2013). Contact: (w) 607-829-5055.