Nan Byrne is a poet, writer, and former Head of Development in television production. She lives in Edgartown and is fond of craft beer, the Pretenders, and baking vintage cakes. The author of two books, her poems and stories have appeared in a variety of literary magazines including Michigan Quarterly Review, Fiction Southeast, Canadian Woman Studies, and the Seattle Review, among others. She’s a recipient of grants from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and the Vermont Studio Center, and has won awards for her screenplays. She’s currently at work on a documentary about Margaret Fuller, an early feminist and the first female journalist.

Peter Ledermann is currently owner and Director of Engineering at the Soundsmith Corporation. He has spent much of his life designing and manufacturing all types of high end audio equipment including the “lost art” of hand making and rebuilding phono cartridges. He also worked for many years at the IBM T. J. Watson research center, a “think tank” located in Westchester county NY. His interests include philosophy, humor, all forms of science, travel, writing short stories and poetry, but most of all gathering with friends. He is a member of the Cleaveland House Poets and has published one book of poems, illustrated with his own water color paintings. Some of his poems also appear in the most recent Cleaveland house poetry anthology. Peter has been “spontaneously” receiving poetry since he was 9 years old, and states that he just “quickly writes what he hears”. Once given, he generally remembers most of what he has “heard” over the past 55 years.

Valerie Sonnenthal joined Cleaveland House Poets in 2006. She writes the Chilmark town column for the MV Times and is a contributor to the paper, Arts& Ideas and The Local. She owns Peaked Hill Studio, teaches and continues to study and deepen her Kaiut Yoga practice and is a Sound Practitioner. She is happy to be a wash-ashore.