I'm the director of the Painted Parrot Writing Studio, located in the DeWitt Building, in the heart of downtown Ithaca. I've been leading Writing Circles for adults and teens since 1994. I also work as a literary consultant and writing coach.
You can contact me at:
zee@twcny.rr.com
607-273-4675
For many years I worked in the publishing world, as an acquisitions editor & as the editor of The WomanSleuth Mystery Series (Crossing Press).
I'm a former bookstore owner (Smedley’s Book Shop) and the editor of nearly two dozen short story anthologies, as well as numerous haiku journals and collections.
I am retired from the Durland Alternatives Library at Cornell University, a project of The Center for Transformative Action. For more than a decade I worked as the outreach librarian and offered writing workshops for all ages, organized public readings, curated the "Poetry on the Bus Project" (a collection of 150 haiku by local writers, which were printed as posters and hung on T-CAT busses), and ran the Women’s Community Library in downtown Ithaca.
As the publisher of 2Turtles Press I produced pamphlets and postcards that showcased the work of children and adults. These "literary mosaics" revealed the collective consciousness at a particular moment in time (such as 12/12/12) as contributors shared memories, diary entries, and reflections on themes both whimsical and profound. This celebration of collective creativity continues in electronic form on The Lost Paper blog.
http://lostpaper.blogspot.com/
I launched the brass bell online haiku journal in 2014. You can see back issues here:
http://brassbellhaiku.blogspot.com/
I was named the Tompkins County Poet Laureate for 2017 and 2018.
