Deborah Brannan holds an MA in English from SUNY New Paltz. In her undergraduate program at UAlbany, she wrote an honors thesis called “Wilde Theology,” which explored Oscar Wilde’s later works in reference to theology and his conception of spiritual self. Her writing concerns itself with how individuals operate and create meaning within their worlds. She would like to thank her mother, one of the great meaning creators in her world.
Gregory E. Bruno is an attorney (NY) and an associate at Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP, where he practices structured finance and also maintains an active pro bono practice assisting non-profits. He completed his English MA at SUNY New Paltz in 2017, and received his JD, summa cum laude, in 2023 from Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University, where he was the Executive Acquisitions Editor on the Pace Law Review. Prior to his legal career, he taught English and coached track at Salesian High School in New Rochelle, NY. His poetry and essays have been published widely.
Bri Castagnozzi (she/her) is a writer, artist, and the co-editor-in-chief of Solarpunk Magazine. Her writing has appeared in Clarkesworld, Shawangunk Review, and Stonesthrow Review. Currently, she teaches composition and rhetoric courses at SUNY New Paltz.
Susan Chute is a poet, librarian, and curator/founder of Next Year’s Words: a New Paltz Literary Forum (10th year). She was recently awarded 1st prize in the CAPS (Calling All Poets) 25th Year Anthology contest (2024). Publications include La Presa; Shawangunk Review; Lightwood; CAPS 2020 Anthology; Wallkill Valley Writers Anthology 2015 and Reflecting Pool: Poets and the Creative Process.
Oliver Curry is a trans author from Long Island earning his master’s degree in English/Creative Writing at SUNY New Paltz. This is his first publication.
Adrianna “Adi” DeBenedetto, a 20-year-old native of Long Island, New York, currently attends SUNY New Paltz as a student in the English department’s 4+1 program. She will be graduating this upcoming May with a BA in English Literature. Following graduation, she will be pursuing a MA in Creative Writing, scheduled for completion in May 2025.
Joann Deiudicibus teaches writing in New York’s Hudson Valley. Her chapbook, Lost & Found is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press (Fall 2024). Her poems and essays about poetry appear in WaterWrites, A Slant of Light, & Reflecting Pool (Codhill Press), Comstock Review, Contemporary Haibun Online, Drifting Sands, Typishly, Stone Poetry Quarterly, The Shawangunk Review, Calling All Poets Anthologies, Chronogram, Lightwood, as well as Affective Disorder and the Writing Life (Palgrave Macmillan). Ask her about true crime, cats, and confessionalism.
David Dear’s engagement with poetry was first kindled at university by a W. H. Auden epigraph. He lives in Edmonton, Canada.
In the years after their first undergraduate class together, Dennis Doherty and Harry Stoneback became close friends. Days before Stoneback died, they met at the college’s Veterans Day dinner, swapping military stories and bragging about their writing. Stoneback noted with pride Doherty’s four volumes of poetry (The Bad Man, Fugitive, Crush Test, and Black Irish). He approved of Doherty’s critical/autobiographical book, Why Read the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (subject and title requested by publisher Edward Renehan, another ex-student friend of Stoneback’s). Then the coming Navy novel, Liberty Call. Stoneback critiqued it, warned Doherty to ignore suggested changes by publisher bastards, and sent a gorgeous blurb for the book’s cover. That email was their last exchange ever.
While Dr. Marc Dudley’s specialization is Twentieth Century American literature, with particular emphasis on Modern fiction and American culture (fiction and cultural studies of the 1910s-1950s), he splits his literary devotion to the “standard” canon with African American literature. And his interests include the writings of contemporary novelists as well, including those of Philip Roth, Caryl Philips, and Paule Marshall. Sherwood Anderson, Ernest Hemingway, Toni Morrison, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Percival Everett, Cormac McCarthy, Richard Wright, Charles Chesnutt, Flannery O’Connor, Ishmael Reed, and Zora Neale Hurston are also among his favorites. Dr. Dudley’s primary scholarly concerns are issues of race and identity as they relate to notions of Americana. His research interests also include narrative construction as it relates to ontology in African American fiction, the intersection (of narrative technique) in film and literature, and American history and popular culture of the 1920s and 1930s especially. In Hemingway, Race and Art: Bloodlines and the Color Line, Dr. Dudley investigates Ernest Hemingway’s rarely recognized, life-long interest in race.
Thomas Festa is a Professor of English at SUNY New Paltz, where he has taught since 2005. He mainly teaches long poems from the European tradition and writes shorter ones, often after the Japanese tradition. His poems have appeared recently in a chapbook, Earthen (Finishing Line Press, 2023), and in such journals as Bennington Review, cattails, Contemporary Haibun Online, Modern Haiku, and Presence. Last year his haibun “Intern” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Priya Grace is a poet and student based in New York’s Hudson Valley. Her work has previously appeared in the Stonesthrow Review.
Ian Hall was born & reared in Eastern Kentucky. His work is featured in Narrative, Mississippi Review, The Journal, Southeast Review, and elsewhere.
Evan Hulick is a 6th-year Ph.D. Candidate in English at The Catholic University of America (CUA) who concentrates on 20th-century Modernism. He began as Stoney’s student in his first year at SUNY New Paltz and was mentored by Stoney through his MA in English and at numerous conferences then and now (Hemingway Society, EMR Society, and RPW Circle, ALSCW and SAMLA). He is currently dissertating under the mentorship of his Director, Dr. Ernest Suarez, on J.R.R. Tolkien’s influence on Ursula K. Le Guin, Margaret Atwood, and Junot Díaz.
Published globally with little reportable income, Mike Jurkovic’s full-length books include Buckshot Reckoning, mooncussers, AmericanMental, (Luchador Press 2023, 2022, 2020) and Blue Fan Whirring (Nirala Press, 2018) a 2016 Pushcart nominee. President of Calling All Poets, now celebrating its 25th year in the Hudson Valley. Musio reviewer at All About Jazz & lightwoodpress.com Host of New Jazz Excursions, Mondays, 9-10am, WVKR-91.3FM Vassar College. The Rock n Roll Curmudgeon appeared in Rhythm and News Magazine, 1996-2003. Mike’s readings and other musings can be found on his website and his YouTube Channel. He loves Emily most of all.
Carina Kohn is a multi-genre writer, editor, and educator from New York. She received an MFA in Creative Writing and Literature from Stony Brook University and a BA in English at SUNY New Paltz. She is the Co-Founder and Co-Editor of Moonlighting by Lit Pub, and is a Contributing Poetry Editor for The Incognito Press. In 2023, she was an Artist-in-Residence at the Watermill Center, and she is a top prize recipient for 2022’s Money for Women in Fiction: Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. You can find her work in Ponder Review, The Brooklyn Rail, and Chronogram.
Nathan L. Lee had been enrolled in a Ph.D. program at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, studying linguistics and folkloric traditions in American Literature until his passing in 2024. While at New Paltz, Nathan participated in the 2018 Symposium and published multiple essays in the Shawangunk Review. Our emeritus colleague Jim Schiffer shared this note about him: “…most of his work in our MA program came out of his many courses and close association with Professor Harry Stoneback, especially his papers on Hemingway and Elizabeth Madox Roberts. That he was a top student in my course on Shakespeare speaks to Nathan’s impressive breadth of knowledge and experience as well as the power of his intellect.” Nathan was gifted in the arts and shared that passion with all whom he met. He will be greatly missed.
Dylan Perles graduated from SUNY New Paltz’s English MA program in August 2023. She was also the Graduate Assistant for the English department. Dylan is a scholar of British literature with an emphasis on Shakespeare and 19th century novels of manners. Some of her literary interests include Jane Austen, feminist criticism, Victorian literature, and the marriage plot. Dylan currently works as a freelance writer.
Guy Reed won the 2022 Littoral Press poetry prize and is author of Second Innocence (Luchador Press), The Effort To Hold Light (Finishing Line Press), and co-author, with Cheryl A. Rice, of Until The Words Came (Post Traumatic Press). His poems and essays have been published in journals both online and in print. He’s a graduate of The American Academy of Dramatic Arts. From Minnesota, Guy now resides in the Catskills Mountains. <guyedwinreed.com>
Aylie Rudge is a graduate student of English Literature at SUNY New Paltz. She has worked as a teaching assistant and graduate assistant editor for the faculty development center, and is a lover of all things literary and creative.
Kimberly Sanford graduated from the School of Education with her MSEd in 2023. She teaches English at Sullivan County BOCES in the Alternative Education program and Introduction to Disability Studies in the School of Education at New Paltz. As an early-career teacher, she works toward building an inclusive learning environment through the integration of diverse curriculum materials and a Disability Studies framework to her instructional practices. Kimberly’s personal literary interests include women’s memoirs, Shirley Jackson’s body of work, and short stories.
Owen Smith is a graduate English student in SUNY New Paltz’s 4+1 program with a concentration in creative writing. He is interested in creative fiction and poetry, as well as nonfiction writing in literary criticism and theory. His work centers on postmodern and contemporary writing, as well as themes of language, culture and physical space. Owen does work for a dry-cleaning service.
Ron Smith is former Poet Laureate of Virginia (2014-2016) and author of Running Again in Hollywood Cemetery, Moon Road, Its Ghostly Workshop, The Humility of the Brutes, and That Beauty in the Trees.
Taylor Steinberg is a graduate from the SUNY New Paltz English program. His poems have been published by the Hudson Valley Writer’s Guild and in Chronogram.