Author Biographies

Katherine Boyle studied English literature in both her undergraduate and graduate years at SUNY New Paltz. Her master’s thesis analyzed the literary absurdism of Franz Kafka and Samuel Beckett, and her other academic interests include Latin American magical realism and modernist spirituality.

Bri Castagnozzi (she/her) is a Filipino-American writer, artist, and the co-EIC of Solarpunk Magazine. She holds a Master of Arts in English from SUNY New Paltz. Her writing has appeared in Clarkesworld, Entropy, Stonesthrow Review, and Shawangunk Review.

Katie Cavallucci is a writer, musician, and English teacher. In her prose and poetry, she’s most interested in exploring familial relationships, religion, and the humorous perils of being human. She lives in a small town in New York with her family and a perpetually growing pack of animals. 

Skylar Couch-Tellefsen is a graduate student of English Literature at SUNY New Paltz. A passionate feminist and lover of language, Skylar dedicates themselves to bringing advocacy, equity, and collaboration within their community through writing.

David Dear is a former government worker with an interest in the work of Philip Larkin and Sylvia Plath, and has been published in the Concho River Review and Valley Voices. He lives in Canada in Edmonton, Alberta. 

Crystal Donkor is an Assistant Professor of English, specializing in Multicultural Literature at SUNY New Paltz. She received her Ph.D. from the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research centers nineteenth and early twentieth century Black women’s post-emancipation literary fiction, African American print culture, Black feminist theory, and the Digital Humanities. Her manuscript in-progress, Fumbling Towards Ecstasy: The Pursuit of Pleasure in Black Women’s Fiction, 1859-1910 makes key interventions in our understanding of citizenship rights and representations of freedom in American literature and culture by centering these subjects within discourses of pleasure. Her work is forthcoming in the African American Review and The Cambridge Companion to American Literature on the Black Body.

Thomas Festa is a Professor of English at SUNY New Paltz, where he has taught since 2005. He is the author of a chapbook of poems, Earthen (Finishing Line Press, 2023) and a study of John Milton’s poetry, The End of Learning (Routledge, 2006), as well as over two dozen scholarly articles, and has co-edited four anthologies. Recent poems of his have appeared in Bennington Review, The Briar Cliff Review, Connecticut River Review, Contemporary Haibun Online, The Haibun Journal, and elsewhere.   

Abigail Gallagher is a Hudson Valley poet and writer whose work has been published in Breakwater Review, Chronogram, Green Kill Broadsheet, among others. They are the author of the self-published chapbook/zine, “How to Grieve” and other poetry zines. Abbey is the Teen & Adult Program Coordinator at Reed Memorial Library in Carmel, NY, as well as the workshop leader for Mid-Hudson Youth Writers.   

Robyn Hager is a poet and editor residing in the Hudson Valley who received her MA in Creative Writing from SUNY New Paltz in May of 2022. She currently hosts an open mic event in Kingston, NY called White Noise and edits for several online magazines. Her first collection of poems, Sewage Flowers, was published in 2019 by NDR press.   

Dylan Haughton is an English Graduate student and Teaching Assistant at SUNY New Paltz. His creative interests are in short fiction and poetry. 

Elizabeth Hill-Caruso is a proud member of the SUNY New Paltz community. She is earning her Master of Arts in English Literature, and she serves students’ academic needs through her work at the Center for Student Success. She spends her time reading, writing, and playing with her two children.

Mike Jurkovic’s forthcoming collection is Buckshot Reckoning, and his latest collection, mooncussers, (Luchador Press, 2022). Other recent collections include AmericanMental, (Luchador Press 2019); Blue Fan Whirring (Nirala Press, 2018); Mike is President of Calling All Poets, a poetry reading series that has endured for more than 20 years from Beacon to New Paltz, NY to Zoom. His reviews appear at All About Jazz and Lightwoodpress. Hosts New Jazz Excursions WIOX 91.3 FM.

He loves Emily most of all.

Demetri Kissel currently lives in New Paltz, even though he swore he wouldn’t be there long when he first moved in 5 years ago. He has previously published a literary essay in the Shawangunk Review, and a science fiction story in Men Matters Online Magazine. When he isn’t writing, he plays nerdy board games and talks over horror movies. He has just finished his Master’s in Literature and Writing at New Paltz. 

Raphael Kosek’s latest book of poetry, HARMLESS ENCOUNTERS, won the 2021 Jesse Bryce Niles Chapbook Contest. AMERICAN MYTHOLOGY, a finalist at Brick Road Poetry Press, was released in 2019. ROUGH GRACE won the 2014 Concrete Wolf Chapbook Contest.  Her poems and lyric essays have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. She served as the 2019-2020 Dutchess County, NY Poet Laureate where she teaches at Dutchess Community College. www.raphaelkosek.com 

Brooke Lundgren is a writer from the Hudson Valley. She graduated from SUNY New Paltz with her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English. Brooke enjoys reading, being in nature, and spending time with family and friends.

Eugen Margariti graduated from SUNY New Paltz’s English MA program in May 2022. His interests include the Gothic in all its manifestations, novel reading, sociology, and house plants. He developed his 19th Century American Literature seminar paper on Hagar’s Daughter into something more applicable to the topic of the Graduate Symposium, and he looks forward to exploring a career in literature that stresses the importance of story-telling.  

Dylan Perles is in her final semester of the MA program in the literature track. In addition to her coursework, Dylan is also the Graduate Assistant for the English department. She is a scholar of British literature with an emphasis on Shakespeare and 19th century novels of manners. Her literary interests include Jane Austen, feminist criticism, Victorian literature, the domestic sphere, and the marriage plot.  

Emma Philippas is a Hudson Valley based writer of prose, poetry, and the occasional song. She studied English with a concentration in Creative Writing at both the undergraduate and graduate levels at SUNY New Paltz.  

Steven Siegelski is a student of literature and creative writing at SUNY New Paltz. He spends most of his time walking in the woods and cultivating vegetables, fruits and flowers from the fertile grounds of the Hudson Valley. He has not published anything for almost a decade, but has returned from his writer’s hiatus and looks forward to his words appearing in new forums. 

Dr. Derrick Spires is Associate Professor of Literatures in English at Cornell University and an eminent scholar in the fields of African American Literature and Intellectual History, Visual Studies, and Media Studies. His book, The Practice of Citizenship: Black Politics and Culture in the Early United States, received several awards including the coveted Modern Language Association First Book Award and the Bibliographical Society of America’s St. Louis Mercantile Library Prize. Dr. Spires’ forthcoming book, Serial Blackness: Periodical Literature and Early African American Literary Histories in the Long Nineteenth Century continues his groundbreaking work in African American print culture.

Emily Vanston is a graduate student at SUNY New Paltz, pursuing a Master of Arts in Teaching in Adolescent Education with a concentration in English. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Texas at Austin, and has worked in writing, editing, and publishing throughout her career.

Hanna Zubarava is a Belarusian-American with an M.A. in English from SUNY New Paltz. Through her writing, Hanna continues to engage in the discussion of identity. Pursing an appreciation for her cultural identity as a Belarusian woman, she is currently working on a novel titled Malina, which is her grand attempt to bring understanding for her placement and purpose. Her search for identity further transcends into her faith-inspired writing.