Speaker Bios
Hi-‐Res 2015 Presenter Bios Beth Bradfish, Music Composition 2015 Beth (composer and sound artist) explores contemporary acoustic and electronic sounds. Her focus is on creating environments where the audience is free to move through the sound and experience it with more than their ears. At VCFA she studied with composer John Mallia and in August, 2015 earns an MFA in Music Composition. She has been awarded an artist’s residency fellowship at Ragdale and fulfilled requests to develop pieces for CUBE Contemporary Ensemble, pianist Lawrence Axelrod and violist Michael Hall. Her work has been commissioned by Access Contemporary Music as part of the Open House Chicago celebration of the Chicago Architectural Foundation. Her work has also been performed at Spectrum NYC and featured at the Experimental Sound Studio in Chicago. She participates on the board of Access Contemporary Music and is a member of Chicago Composers’ Consortium. Websites: www.bethbradfishcomposer.com c3composers.org
Xtine Burrough, Visual Art 2001 Xtine is a new media
artist and educator. She has authored or edited several books including Foundations of Digital Art and Design (2013), Net Works: Case Studies in Web Art and Design (2011), and The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies (2015). She was recently named the new Editor-‐In-‐Chief of the Visual Communication Quarterly (beginning in January 2016). Informed by the history of conceptual art, she uses social networking, databases, search engines, blogs, and applications in combination with popular sites like Facebook, YouTube, or Mechanical Turk, to create web communities promoting interpretation and autonomy. xtine is passionate about creating works using digital tools to translate common experiences into personal arenas for discovery. She is the recipient of a Cal Humanities Grant, a Webby Honoree, has received a Terminal commission and an award from the UK Big Lottery fund. An associate professor in the School of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication at the University of Texas at Dallas, she bridges the gap between histories, theories, and production in new media education. Karen Oser Edmunds, Visual Art 2005, A New Orleans native, Karen earned a BA in psychology from H. Sophie Newcomb College in 1967. She spent a year (1965-‐1966) at the University of Paris studying art and psychology where she was introduced to Art Therapy and the relationship between art and healing. As a consequence, while in graduate school she studied the work of Louise Bourgeois who successfully mined her psychological trauma through her art practice. Edmunds twice participated in Bourgeois' famed Sunday Salons. When she was diagnosed with breast cancer in February 2012 Edmunds saw the diagnosis as an opportunity to put into practice the theory of using art to take control of physical and psychological trauma.
Hi-‐Res 2015 Presenter Bios Natalie Finkelstein, Visual Art 2012: Under the pseudonym Ambivalently Yours the artist explores ambivalence -‐ simultaneously loving and hating -‐ through the online sharing of pink illustrations (posted at www.ambivalentlyyours.tumblr.com), short animations, questionable advice, sound sketches, blog posts and anonymous notes left in public spaces. Fuelled by a decade of employment in the fashion industry, juxtaposed with an investment in feminist art, her work as Ambivalently Yours aims to highlight the potential for political resistance that exists within conflicting emotions. Her work has been exhibited in Canada, the US and the UK and featured prominently in online media publications, teenage blogs and zines worldwide. For more information, please visit: ambivalentlyyours.com Gail Hanlon, Writing 2014 Gail’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, New Letters, Thrush, Bloom, Cutbank online, Cincinnati Review, Verse Daily, and Best American Poetry, among other journals and anthologies. She published a review in Tarpaulin Sky, published a chapbook, Sift (Finishing Line), was a finalist for the Iowa Review Award (2013) and a semi-‐finalist for the Tomaz Salamun Prize from VERSE magazine (2015). A 2014 VCFA graduate (Poetry), she lives in Portsmouth, NH.
Robert Hyers, Writing 2011 Since Robert earned his work has appeared in Saints and Sinners: Fiction From the Festival, 3:AM Magazine, Q Reviewand The Summerset Review, and is forthcoming in Jonathon. He is a regular Visiting Fiction Writer at River Pretty Writers Retreat.
Carolyn Megan, Writing 1992 Carolyn teaches writing and literature courses at Babson College where she also serves as Director of the Writing Center. Her stories, essays and interviews have appeared in journals and anthologies.
Hi-‐Res 2015 Presenter Bios Gary Lee Miller, Writing 1995 His work has appeared in a number of literary magazines, including Florida Review, Green Mountains Review, Hunger Mountain, and Chicago Quarterly Review. Gary’s music writing can be found in Seven Days, Vermont’s weekly source for the arts, culture, and politics. His short story collection Museum of the Americas is the fiction finalist for the 2015 Vermont Book Award. Gary sings and plays guitar in the TrailerBlazers, a strictly hillbilly outfit, and serves as creative director of Writers for Recovery, a program using writing to help people overcome addiction. You can find out more about him at garyleemiller.com.
Mary Pinard, Writing 1992 Mary teaches literature and poetry courses in the Arts and Humanities Division at Babson College. She has served in a range of administrative positions there as well, including as Director of the Undergraduate Rhetoric Program, Coordinator of the Creativity Stream in the MBA Program, Writing Center Director, and Division Chair. Her essays and poems have appeared in critical anthologies and journals, and her collection of poems, Portal, was published in 2014 by Salmon Press.
Jean-‐Marie Saporito, Writing 2011 Her work has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Ilanot Review, Helix Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the AWP WC&C Scholarship and the UNM Taos Resident Award. She lives in Taos, New Mexico with two dogs, a teenager, and a cowboy.
Kristin Serafini, Visual Art 2014 Based in St. Louis, Missouri, Kristin is a conceptual artist who builds and breaks networks of visual and/or literary text. She draws on her experience with children’s book illustration, creative writing, graphic design, and experimental textile techniques to create installations and artist books that probe the physical and metaphysical implications of the limits of communication. Her work explores how we social beings adapt to, buckle under, resist, or re-‐purpose these limits. Kristin earned her MFA in Visual Arts from Vermont College of Fine Arts in August
Hi-‐Res 2015 Presenter Bios 2014.
Tereza Swanda, Visual Art 2010 Tereza was born Mazurova (implying paternal possession) in what was communist Czechoslovakia and resides both in CZ as well as the US. In her nomadic life, she questions familial and societal roles that classify bodies according to gender, race, etc. Her work centers on a meeting with the so called ‘other. Swanda has an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and BFA in Painting and Sculpture from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Swanda has recently received the A.R.T. Fund award to pursue her project, Capital Cleanse, which she installed in a rogue installation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as throughout public restrooms in galleries, art centers, universities, and McDonald’s along interstate 90. She has exhibited her work at the Whitney Center for the Arts (Pittsfield, MA), University of Oregon (Eugene, OR), Berliner Kunstprojekt (Berlin), 450 Broadway Gallery (NY), Bakalar and Paine Galleries (Boston, MA), Chemeketa Community College Art Gallery (Salem, OR), and online in Storyscape Journal. Her series, To/From Mothering, shown at the Center on Contemporary Art (Seattle, WA), won first prize. She has been awarded residencies at VSC (Johnson, VT), at the Millay Colony (Austerlitz, NY), and has been attending workshops with Rose Shakinovsky and Claire Gavronsky in Italy and South Africa since 2000. Swanda’s distinctions include the Wilhelmina Denning Jackson Art Award as well as scholarship for graduate work. Capital Cleanse is anticipated in a 2016 publication, Art for Everyone, through Chemeketa Press. As an Open Educational Resource textbook, Art for Everyone gives students of Art Appreciation the choice to forego a printed copy and get their textbooks online for free.
Tricia Thibodeaux Baar, Writing 2006 Tricia is a poet and artist from Hot Springs, Arkansas. She teaches composition and literature at College of the Ouachitas, where she also directs the Honors College. Her current work in both writing and visual art is focused on the female body and the effects of changes in the body on personal identity and interpersonal relationships. Tricia is an alumna of the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project, March 2014, and PoMoSco, April 2015.
Susan Levi Wallach, Writing 2011 Susan is a freelance copyeditor and generally nice person. Recently, her short stories and poetry have appeared in Bayou, Southern California Review, RiverLit, Literary Matters, the Frank Marshall Review, and the Columbia Broadside Project. She was co-‐winner of the 2014 Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize.
Hi-‐Res 2015 Presenter Bios Dana Walrath, WCYA 2010 A writer, artist and anthropologist, Dana Walrath, likes to cross borders and disciplines with her work. After years of using stories to teach medical students at University of Vermont’s College of Medicine, she spent 2012-‐2013 as a Fulbright Scholar in Armenia where she completed Like Water on Stone a verse novel about the Armenian genocide of 1915. Blending historical fiction with magical realism, Like Water on Stone’s is a Notable Book for a Global Society Award Winner, a Bank Street Best Book of 2015, a Vermont Book Award Finalist and more. Her graphic memoir, Aliceheimer’s (Harvest 2013) blends the story of life with her mother, Alice, before and during dementia, with stories from Armenia. She has spoken extensively about the role of comics in healing throughout North America and Eurasia including talks at TEDx Battenkill and TEDx Yerevan. Co-‐author of one of the leading college textbook series in anthropology she has also shown her artwork in a variety of venues throughout North America and Eurasia. Her recent essays have appeared in Slate and Foreign Policy. She earned a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania but her favorite degree is her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Melissa Cronin, Writing 2013 Melissa’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Chicken Soup for The Soul, Saranac Review, Under the Gum Tree, Brevity, and various online publications. Her essay, “Right Foot, Left Foot” received special mention in the 2013 creative nonfiction contest held by Hunger Mountain Journal. Melissa lives with her husband, John, and their stuffed lamb, Hawk, in South Burlington, Vermont, where she is a correspondent for her local newspaper. Melissa is currently revising her memoir, The Peach, a story of healing, forgiveness, and the search for a new identity after an older driver confused the gas pedal for the brake and plowed through the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market in 2003. The driver struck seventy-‐three pedestrians, including Melissa. A former nurse, she holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Please visit Melissa at melissacronin.com.
Xtine Burrough, Visual Art 2001 Xtine is a new media
artist and educator. She has authored or edited several books including Foundations of Digital Art and Design (2013), Net Works: Case Studies in Web Art and Design (2011), and The Routledge Companion to Remix Studies (2015). She was recently named the new Editor-‐In-‐Chief of the Visual Communication Quarterly (beginning in January 2016). Informed by the history of conceptual art, she uses social networking, databases, search engines, blogs, and applications in combination with popular sites like Facebook, YouTube, or Mechanical Turk, to create web communities promoting interpretation and autonomy. xtine is passionate about creating works using digital tools to translate common experiences into personal arenas for discovery. She is the recipient of a Cal Humanities Grant, a Webby Honoree, has received a Terminal commission and an award from the UK Big Lottery fund. An associate professor in the School of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication at the University of Texas at Dallas, she bridges the gap between histories, theories, and production in new media education. Karen Oser Edmunds, Visual Art 2005, A New Orleans native, Karen earned a BA in psychology from H. Sophie Newcomb College in 1967. She spent a year (1965-‐1966) at the University of Paris studying art and psychology where she was introduced to Art Therapy and the relationship between art and healing. As a consequence, while in graduate school she studied the work of Louise Bourgeois who successfully mined her psychological trauma through her art practice. Edmunds twice participated in Bourgeois' famed Sunday Salons. When she was diagnosed with breast cancer in February 2012 Edmunds saw the diagnosis as an opportunity to put into practice the theory of using art to take control of physical and psychological trauma.
Hi-‐Res 2015 Presenter Bios Natalie Finkelstein, Visual Art 2012: Under the pseudonym Ambivalently Yours the artist explores ambivalence -‐ simultaneously loving and hating -‐ through the online sharing of pink illustrations (posted at www.ambivalentlyyours.tumblr.com), short animations, questionable advice, sound sketches, blog posts and anonymous notes left in public spaces. Fuelled by a decade of employment in the fashion industry, juxtaposed with an investment in feminist art, her work as Ambivalently Yours aims to highlight the potential for political resistance that exists within conflicting emotions. Her work has been exhibited in Canada, the US and the UK and featured prominently in online media publications, teenage blogs and zines worldwide. For more information, please visit: ambivalentlyyours.com Gail Hanlon, Writing 2014 Gail’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, New Letters, Thrush, Bloom, Cutbank online, Cincinnati Review, Verse Daily, and Best American Poetry, among other journals and anthologies. She published a review in Tarpaulin Sky, published a chapbook, Sift (Finishing Line), was a finalist for the Iowa Review Award (2013) and a semi-‐finalist for the Tomaz Salamun Prize from VERSE magazine (2015). A 2014 VCFA graduate (Poetry), she lives in Portsmouth, NH.
Robert Hyers, Writing 2011 Since Robert earned his work has appeared in Saints and Sinners: Fiction From the Festival, 3:AM Magazine, Q Reviewand The Summerset Review, and is forthcoming in Jonathon. He is a regular Visiting Fiction Writer at River Pretty Writers Retreat.
Carolyn Megan, Writing 1992 Carolyn teaches writing and literature courses at Babson College where she also serves as Director of the Writing Center. Her stories, essays and interviews have appeared in journals and anthologies.
Hi-‐Res 2015 Presenter Bios Gary Lee Miller, Writing 1995 His work has appeared in a number of literary magazines, including Florida Review, Green Mountains Review, Hunger Mountain, and Chicago Quarterly Review. Gary’s music writing can be found in Seven Days, Vermont’s weekly source for the arts, culture, and politics. His short story collection Museum of the Americas is the fiction finalist for the 2015 Vermont Book Award. Gary sings and plays guitar in the TrailerBlazers, a strictly hillbilly outfit, and serves as creative director of Writers for Recovery, a program using writing to help people overcome addiction. You can find out more about him at garyleemiller.com.
Mary Pinard, Writing 1992 Mary teaches literature and poetry courses in the Arts and Humanities Division at Babson College. She has served in a range of administrative positions there as well, including as Director of the Undergraduate Rhetoric Program, Coordinator of the Creativity Stream in the MBA Program, Writing Center Director, and Division Chair. Her essays and poems have appeared in critical anthologies and journals, and her collection of poems, Portal, was published in 2014 by Salmon Press.
Jean-‐Marie Saporito, Writing 2011 Her work has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Ilanot Review, Helix Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the AWP WC&C Scholarship and the UNM Taos Resident Award. She lives in Taos, New Mexico with two dogs, a teenager, and a cowboy.
Kristin Serafini, Visual Art 2014 Based in St. Louis, Missouri, Kristin is a conceptual artist who builds and breaks networks of visual and/or literary text. She draws on her experience with children’s book illustration, creative writing, graphic design, and experimental textile techniques to create installations and artist books that probe the physical and metaphysical implications of the limits of communication. Her work explores how we social beings adapt to, buckle under, resist, or re-‐purpose these limits. Kristin earned her MFA in Visual Arts from Vermont College of Fine Arts in August
Hi-‐Res 2015 Presenter Bios 2014.
Tereza Swanda, Visual Art 2010 Tereza was born Mazurova (implying paternal possession) in what was communist Czechoslovakia and resides both in CZ as well as the US. In her nomadic life, she questions familial and societal roles that classify bodies according to gender, race, etc. Her work centers on a meeting with the so called ‘other. Swanda has an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and BFA in Painting and Sculpture from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Swanda has recently received the A.R.T. Fund award to pursue her project, Capital Cleanse, which she installed in a rogue installation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as well as throughout public restrooms in galleries, art centers, universities, and McDonald’s along interstate 90. She has exhibited her work at the Whitney Center for the Arts (Pittsfield, MA), University of Oregon (Eugene, OR), Berliner Kunstprojekt (Berlin), 450 Broadway Gallery (NY), Bakalar and Paine Galleries (Boston, MA), Chemeketa Community College Art Gallery (Salem, OR), and online in Storyscape Journal. Her series, To/From Mothering, shown at the Center on Contemporary Art (Seattle, WA), won first prize. She has been awarded residencies at VSC (Johnson, VT), at the Millay Colony (Austerlitz, NY), and has been attending workshops with Rose Shakinovsky and Claire Gavronsky in Italy and South Africa since 2000. Swanda’s distinctions include the Wilhelmina Denning Jackson Art Award as well as scholarship for graduate work. Capital Cleanse is anticipated in a 2016 publication, Art for Everyone, through Chemeketa Press. As an Open Educational Resource textbook, Art for Everyone gives students of Art Appreciation the choice to forego a printed copy and get their textbooks online for free.
Tricia Thibodeaux Baar, Writing 2006 Tricia is a poet and artist from Hot Springs, Arkansas. She teaches composition and literature at College of the Ouachitas, where she also directs the Honors College. Her current work in both writing and visual art is focused on the female body and the effects of changes in the body on personal identity and interpersonal relationships. Tricia is an alumna of the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project, March 2014, and PoMoSco, April 2015.
Susan Levi Wallach, Writing 2011 Susan is a freelance copyeditor and generally nice person. Recently, her short stories and poetry have appeared in Bayou, Southern California Review, RiverLit, Literary Matters, the Frank Marshall Review, and the Columbia Broadside Project. She was co-‐winner of the 2014 Thomas Wolfe Fiction Prize.
Hi-‐Res 2015 Presenter Bios Dana Walrath, WCYA 2010 A writer, artist and anthropologist, Dana Walrath, likes to cross borders and disciplines with her work. After years of using stories to teach medical students at University of Vermont’s College of Medicine, she spent 2012-‐2013 as a Fulbright Scholar in Armenia where she completed Like Water on Stone a verse novel about the Armenian genocide of 1915. Blending historical fiction with magical realism, Like Water on Stone’s is a Notable Book for a Global Society Award Winner, a Bank Street Best Book of 2015, a Vermont Book Award Finalist and more. Her graphic memoir, Aliceheimer’s (Harvest 2013) blends the story of life with her mother, Alice, before and during dementia, with stories from Armenia. She has spoken extensively about the role of comics in healing throughout North America and Eurasia including talks at TEDx Battenkill and TEDx Yerevan. Co-‐author of one of the leading college textbook series in anthropology she has also shown her artwork in a variety of venues throughout North America and Eurasia. Her recent essays have appeared in Slate and Foreign Policy. She earned a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania but her favorite degree is her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Melissa Cronin, Writing 2013 Melissa’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Chicken Soup for The Soul, Saranac Review, Under the Gum Tree, Brevity, and various online publications. Her essay, “Right Foot, Left Foot” received special mention in the 2013 creative nonfiction contest held by Hunger Mountain Journal. Melissa lives with her husband, John, and their stuffed lamb, Hawk, in South Burlington, Vermont, where she is a correspondent for her local newspaper. Melissa is currently revising her memoir, The Peach, a story of healing, forgiveness, and the search for a new identity after an older driver confused the gas pedal for the brake and plowed through the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market in 2003. The driver struck seventy-‐three pedestrians, including Melissa. A former nurse, she holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Please visit Melissa at melissacronin.com.
