Presenting Poets:

Nicola Marae Allain, PhD, is Professor of Arts & Media at SUNY Empire State University. Inspired by her Polynesian heritage and Pacific cultural traditions, she weaves oceanic memory and ancestry into narrative memoir. Nicola has presented poetry, storytelling, and dance internationally. She translated French poet Philippe Beck’s Didactic Poetries (Univocal Press, 2016). Recent work includes poems in White Pines by Jane English (eHeart, 2025) and contributing to the translation of the Bàopǔzǐ nèipiān (Square Inch Press, 2025).

Peg Boyers is author of four books of poems: Hard Bread, Honey with Tobacco, To Forget Venice, and The Album. She is Executive Editor of Salmagundi magazine and teaches poetry workshops at Skidmore College, the New York State Summer Writers Institute, and intermittently at Columbia University.

Born in the Saratoga Hospital in 1942, Joe Bruchac‘s mailing address has been the same, more or less, since then. A member of the Nulhegan Abenaki Nation and Saratoga Springs’ first (former) poet laureate, his poems have appeared in hundreds of publications over the last 63 years.

Catherine Clarke, a Saratoga native, has studied science, philosophy, and writing/poetry; taught composition; and worked for the Corporation of Yaddo artists’ retreat in Saratoga Springs. Her chapbooks–Red Horse and Blue Nights, Golden Days—are of mostly lyric poems. Retired, she lives in Saratoga where she also enjoys playing traditional Irish music (bodhran) and working in stained glass.

David Graham is a retired teacher and unretired poet. His most recent collection of poetry is The Honey of Earth (Terrapin Books, 2019). He also co-edited the anthology Local News: Poetry About Small Towns. He’s always loved something Yogi Berra said: “You can observe a lot by watching.”

Artist/poet Mary Kathryn Jablonski is most recently author of Sugar Maker Moon from Dos Madres Press. She has received numerous grants & awards for her artwork, poems and collaborative video/poems appearing in exhibitions, screenings and journals including Atticus Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Quarterly West, Verse Daily, and Salmagundi. She has been Senior Editor in Visual Art at Tupelo Quarterly and contributor at Numèro Cinq Magazine. Her website is mkjpoet.com

Susan Jefts’ collection of poems, Breathing Lessons, was published in 2023. Her poetry has been published in journals including Big City Lit, A Slant of Light, Parnassus Literary Journal, Plant-Human Quarterly, Blue Stone Review, and Orchard Street Press, among others. A former college instructor, she works as an editor, poetry columnist, and workshop presenter. She enjoys collaborations with other artists that explore the intersection of art, music, and poetry.

Marilyn McCabe‘s collections of poems include Being Many Seeds, Glass Factory, Perpetual Motion and Rugged Means of Grace. Videopoems have appeared in festivals/galleries. She talks about writing at O Write: marilynonaroll’s blog and the podcast Whirled Through a Poem’s Eye. Her new book, from the Word Works, is a wry, irreverent writing manual/workbook called Always With the Questions: One Poet’s Writing Manual.

Lucyna Prostko, a Polish-American poet, received her MFA at New York University, where she was awarded the New York Times Fellowship, and her PhD in English from the University at Albany. Her poetry has appeared in various literary publications, including Washington Square, Quiddity, Ellipsis, Salamander, Cutthroat, Nimrod, Poets.org and Five Points. Her first book of poems, Infinite Beginnings, won the Bright Hill Press Poetry Book Award. She teaches at Queensbury High School and lives with her husband and their beloved animals in upstate New York.

Krista Rivera is an Assistant Professor of English at SUNY Adirondack, where she teaches creative writing and advises the Forest Bathing Book Club. She is an ardent admirer of the natural world and words, ever turning to both to cultivate presence and peace.

Jay Rogoff has published seven books of poetry, most recently Loving in Truth: New and Selected Poems (LSU Press). His other books include the Washington Prize-winning sequence The Cutoff (Word Works), and, from LSU, The Long Fault, The Art of Gravity, Venera, and Enamel Eyes. His essay collection, Becoming Poetry: Poets and Their Methods, also from LSU, won the Lewis P. Simpson Award for outstanding literary criticism.

Mary Sanders Shartle is an award-winning author of The Truth and Legend of Lily Martindale, (SUNY Press, 2014). “The Wives of Immanuel Kant” appeared in Hamilton-Stone Review, 2022, and “Ave Fit Ex Eva” in JMWW 2023. She teaches writing workshops in Saratoga County and the Adirondacks. Her website is marysandersshartle.com

Melora Wolff has authored two books: Bequeath: Essays (LSU Press, 2024) and The Parting, a selection of her published prose poems (Shires Press, 2019). Her work has been recognized by the Pushcart Prizes and Best American Essays, and published in Best American Fantasy, Brick, the New York Times, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. She is director of creative writing at Skidmore College and a 2026 nonfiction resident at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Ireland. Her website is melorawolff.com