We are thrilled to be a part of the Montclair Literary Festival for the second year. We will be welcoming a line-up of five established and emerging New Jersey authors to the YA Room at the Montclair Public Library. See you there!
Nancy Burke is the author of From the Abuelas’ Window, a story of the disappeared in Chile under Pinochet’s regime and If I Could Paint the Moon Black, a true story of a young girl who fled into Nazi Germany as the German occupiers lost to the Russians. Nancy’s short stories have appeared in Meat for Tea: The Valley Review and Pilgrim Journal. Nancy teaches writing at Montclair State and Kean University. She holds a communications position at Union County College and is active in two local writing workshops, Working Title Six and Finding Our Way Back, a group dedicated to healing from loss though writing. Nancy is at work revising her novel based in a fictitious Essex County town and her short story collection, Units of Measure. She holds a Creative Writing MFA from Rutgers University, Newark. She resides in Montclair and is the mother of three twenty-something daughters.
Dani Fleischer is a memoirist who’s been published in The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, Essig Magazine, The Classical, Role Reboot, and Scary Mommy. She is a freelance writer for NJ Advance Media, a blogger at sumofmypiecesblog.wordpress.com, and an ACT/SAT tutor. A beginner at this writing game, she is 200 pages into a memoir that she’d hoped to have done by now, and believes very much in Ray Carver’s edict about showing up at your station every day. Currently, her station is located in Summit, New Jersey.
Carole Stone, Distinguished Professor Emerita, Montclair State University has published four poetry books, among them, LATE, HURT, THE SHADOW and AMERICAN RHAPSODY. Her most recent poems appear in Blue Fifth Review, Poetry Breakfast, US1 Worksheets, Slab, and in the Donut Anthology, Terrapin Press. She has received three fellowships from the NJ State Council on the arts.
John J. Trause, the Director of Oradell Public Library, is the author of Why Sing? (Sensitive Skin Press, 2017);Picture This: For Your Eyes and Ears (Dos Madres Press, 2016); Exercises in High Treason (great weather for MEDIA, 2016; Eye Candy for Andy (13 Most Beautiful… Poems for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests, Finishing Line Press, 2013); Inside Out, Upside Down, and Round and Round (Nirala Publications, 2012); Seriously Serial (Poets Wear Prada, 2007; rev. ed. 2014); and Latter-Day Litany (Éditions élastiques, 1996), the latter staged Off Broadway. His translations, poetry, and visual work appear internationally in many journals and anthologies, including Rabbit Ears: TV Poems (NYQ Books, 2015). Marymark Press has published his visual poetry and art as broadsides and sheets. He is a founder of the William Carlos Williams Poetry Cooperative in Rutherford, N. J., and the former host and curator of its monthly reading series.
Kristen Witucki is the author of The Transcriber and her newest novel, Outside Myself, an extraordinary insight into living without sight. Kristen has been totally blind since birth. She earned a BA in English from Vassar College and three Masters degrees: an MA in teaching gifted students from Teachers College, Columbia University, an MFA in creative writing from Sarah Lawrence College, and an Ed.M in teaching students who are blind or visually impaired from Dominican College. While in school, she earned her living at Learning Ally, where she helped people with visual impairments, dyslexia and other disabilities to access technology related to reading audio books. Kristen is now the curriculum and content editor for Learning Ally’s College Success Program. Her nonfiction work has appeared at the Huffington Post, the Momoir Project, Literary Mama and Brain, Child. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and sons.