BOARD MEMBERS
Lynne Kemen, PhD, has backgrounds in theater and literature, in managing a medical practice, teaching psychology as an Associate Professor (adjunct) at Hunter College, and in advising undergraduate students as the Hunter Psychology Department Undergraduate Advisor. She also holds an MA in Theatre Arts and Dramatic Literature from Cornell University and has served several arts organizations, including the McCarter Theatre in Princeton and managing The Phoenix Theatre in NYC. She helped found the Center for Dance Medicine in NYC, which did educational programs and workshops for dancers, and wrote the management handbook for the Off-Off Broadway Alliance. Books, writers, writing and literacy are important to her in part because she wants to share the enjoyment that comes from reading books (usually several at a time). She joined the board in 2016.
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.
Gayane Torosyan holds her Ph.D. (2003) and Masters Professional (1997) degrees from the University of Iowa School of Journalism and Mass Communication. She has worked as a full-time news and public affairs producer and talk show host at the NPR affiliate Iowa Public Radio from 2000 to 2005 after serving as a news and classical music announcer at the same station since her arrival in the United States in 1995.
In 2005 Torosyan joined the faculty of the State University of New York College at Oneonta’s Department of Communication and Media. From 2011 to 2018 she served as an elected department chair. In her capacity of Associate Professor at SUNY Oneonta, Torosyan has taught a number of journalism courses such as Reporting, Audio Documentary Production, Journalism, Advanced Journalism, Mass Media and Culture, Participatory Media, Public Speaking, and Small Group Communication.
During her prior career as a journalist, Torosyan has produced news and documentary stories for National Public Radio, Native News Network and Latino U.S.A. Her academic work captures a broad scope of topics from journalism education to digital activism. She has attended workshops and received grants to implement curricula based on applied learning and high-impact practices in journalism education. She has been leading her department’s student learning outcome assessment program since becoming chair in 2011, and has conducted a number of journalism program reviews at colleges across the State of New York.
Vicki R. Davis, Sidney Center, NY (The Word & Image Gallery and Public Programs) Davis, whose recent productions include “The Illiad,” “The Threepenny Opera,” and “Katie Roche for The Mint’s Teresa Deevy Project,” 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 2007.
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.
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.
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.
Julene Waffle is a teacher in Morris Central School and adjunct lecturer at SUNY Oneonta. Besides teaching at Morris, she advises clubs and coaches. She is active in her community and co-owns Colonial Ridge Golf Course in Laurens, NY. She is a mother of three sons, three cats, two dogs, and a bearded dragon. She finds pleasure in juggling these jobs while seeming like she has it all together. She earned degrees from Hartwick College and Binghamton University. Her writing has appeared in The Adroit Journal Blog, NCTE’s English Journal, Mslexia, The Annals of Internal Medicine, The Bangalore Review, Sky Island, The Blue Mountain Review, Sequestrum, among other journals and anthologies, and her chapbook So I Will Remember (Woodland Arts Editions, 2020).
Vicki Whicker, Franklin, NY is a poet and art photographer, a member of the Los Angeles Poets and Writers Collective and Bright Hill Press Poets. Her poetry has been published by Mo+th, 12 Los Angeles Poets, Big City Mantra, Literary Mama, and others. Her poetry and art photography are featured in the anthology Seeing Things (Woodland Arts Editions, 2020), her poem “Fire Starter” was published in both English and Spanish with La Presa (Embajadoras Press), and her debut collection of poems Caught Before Flight was published by Woodland Arts Editions, all in 2020.
Her iPhoneography has been the focus of shows on both coasts. She exhibited solo at Cherry Branch Gallery, Bank Gallery, and Lovely Gallery. Recent group shows include exhibits at The Smithy, Cherry Branch Gallery, Art Garage, CAA, Broad Street, The Empty Spaces Project and more. Her show, Bucolia, presented by The Word and Image Gallery at Bright Hill Press, debuted in 2020.
STAFF
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
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.