A native of Bayonne, NJ - a place she says she was constantly trying to lose as in "Dad, let's get lost" on Sunday drives. Feeling more at home in nature, she has lived on the Vineyard since completing a degree in English in 1976. She feels that "all poetry begins in the body" and loves to dance. Her dancing companions have included "Vineyard Dance" and presently "What's Written Within". Susan has presented her poetry in conjunction with choreography at the Yard in Chilmark and at Featherstone. A member of the Cleveland House Poets since 2009, her work has appeared in their published anthology, in Legacy of Light, on NPR and various poetry journals over the years.

Liz is a retired psychotherapist and a painter who has been showing her work for the past 30 years. She has degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, Cambridge University in England and Columbia University. She has expressed an interest in interior lives and interpersonal dynamics, and all her work reflects this. A new book of her poems called THE HEART OF THE FAMILY has just been published.

Laura Roosevelt is a journalist, photographer and poet who lives in West Tisbury. Her poems have been published in a few small literary journals and have twice won the “Best Of” award for poetry at the Eckerd College Writers- in-Paradise Conference. Several years ago, she was one of five winners of a local poetry competition that resulted in the publication of a chapbook entitled “Island Quintet.”

Born in Brooklyn, poet and Elizabeth Bishop scholar Lloyd Schwartz earned a BA at Queens College CCNY and a PhD at Harvard University. In his poems, Schwartz often uses a conversational frame to explore intimate and familial relationships. His collections of poetry include Little Kisses (2017), Cairo Traffic (2000), Goodnight, Gracie (1992), and These People (1981). His poetry has also been featured in the anthologies Best American Poetry (1991, 1994), The Best of the Best American Poetry (2013), and Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems to Read Aloud (2009). Schwartz is the editor of Prose: Elizabeth Bishop (2011) and coeditor of Elizabeth Bishop and Her Art (1983) and of the Library of America’s Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose, and Letters (2008).

Rose Styron is a poet, journalist, translator and international human rights activist. She's published five volumes of poetry (Viking, Rizzoli), and traveled widely for Amnesty International and other human rights organizations, chairing AIUSA’s National Advisory Council, PEN's Freedom to Write Committee and the RFK Human Rights Award. A variety of her articles appeared in national periodicals on her involvement. In 2009 and 2010 Rose was a resident fellow at Harvard’s Institute of Politics and its Carr Center for Human Rights. Recently she has written introductions to Letters to My Father (LSU Press) and The Selected Letters of William Styron (Random House), also editing the latter. Her essays and book chapters are published from time to time. With Meryl Streep, she co-chairs Poetry and the Creative Mind on stage at Lincoln Center on behalf of the Academy of American Poets each April. Beyond Conflict, with its new emphasis on neuroscience and conflict resolution, interests her greatly. She is currently working on a memoir.

Donald edits the Banjo Newsletter, a monthly magazine for banjo players. His poems have been published in local journals, and his poetry collection Driving Lessons was published in 2008. He lives in Chilmark.

Arnie has been an award-winning writer, producer and performer for over four decades. At present he writes essays for the Vineyard Gazette and is a published poet. Since 1996, he was a regular panelist on National Public Radio’s Says You!, the weekly comedy quiz show, along with his wife, Paula Lyons. With Ann Carol Grossman, he produced for PBS The Powder & the Glory, a 90-minute film focusing on the business rivalry of Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden. In 2016, the film was developed into War Paint, a Broadway musical starring Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole. He is Martha’s Vineyard Poet Laureate emeritus, the host of MV Playhouse's Poetry & PIe, and newly released his latest book of poems, Lightheaded in the Dark Ages (Feb 2020)