12th Annual Author Showcase: A Celebration of Members’ Books

Join us for a celebration of Straw Dog Writers Guild authors at the 12th Annual Author showcase!

Authors will have five minutes each to read from their work and author Andrea Hairston will MC the event. Books will be available for purchase at this in-person event.

Meet Our Authors

 

Steven D. Brewer (he/him) is the author of A Familiar Problem. Diverse obsessions underlie his writing: deep interests in natural history; an abiding passion for languages; a fascination with Japanese culture; and a mania for information technology and the Internet. Brewer lives in Amherst with his extended family.

 

Linda Cardillo is an award-winning author of historical fiction and historical romance. She writes about the old country and the new, the tangle and embrace of family, and finding courage in the midst of loss. Her debut novel, Dancing on Sunday Afternoons, which launched Harlequin’s Everlasting Love series, was published in 2007. She has published a total of fourteen
books and is currently writing her fifteenth, entitled Paint the Wind, which will be available this coming summer.

 

 

LJ Cohen is a novelist, poet, fiber artist, potter, and relentless optimist. After 25 years as a physical therapist, LJ uses real clinical skills to injure fictional characters in her science fiction and fantasy novels. Her 9th novel LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD is available now. http://www.ljcohen.net

 

 

Janet Crosier: Janet has a PhD from Capella University. She has presented research on Emily Bronte for Oxford University and at several academic conferences. She is English professor in Western Massachusetts. Her first book, Shadows on the Heath, was published in 2023 and her second novel, Weymouth House, in August 2025.

 

 

Candace R. Curran was raised alongside Wachusett Mountain in rural Princeton, MA by a coyote and Ford mechanic doing the best they could. Publications include, Bone Cages and Playing in Wrecks, by Haleys Press;  and the Elyse Wolf prize winner The Sound of Her Good Name, Slate Roof Press, 2025.

 

 

Mary Warren Foulk has been published in The Hollins Critic, Palette Poetry, Clockhouse, The Gay & Lesbian Review, and North American Review. Her newest collection, The Show Must Go On (Fernwood Press), was a finalist for the 2021 Gival Press Poetry Award and the Inlandia Institute’s 2022 Hillary Gravendyk Prize.

 

 

Kathryn Good-Schiff is the author of Love Letters to Ghosts (Meat for Tea) and has poems in various journals including California Quarterly, Naugatuck River Review, and PANK. A former gardener, ice cream maker, and editor, Kat now works as an academic librarian and lives with her wife in Easthampton, Massachusetts.

 

 

Chaya Grossberg: Life long poet, non fiction writer and advocate for those harmed by psychiatry, Chaya has been writing and sharing poetry for 3.5 decades, and is currently writing her first novel.. She recently published poetry books, “Reborn: Poetic Codes For Psychiatric Survivors” and “Daylillies Wild as Night.”

 

 

Madlynn Haber’s first collection of poetry, Seasons of Sorrow and Joy, was published in June. She grew up in Brooklyn and worked as a Child and Family Therapist for over forty years. Her writing has been published in numerous anthologies and literary journals. She lives in a cohousing community in Northampton. You can view her work at www.madlynnwrites.com.

 

 

Native Texan and award-winning poet Patricia Lee Lewis led creative writing & yoga retreats at
her mountainside retreat in Westhampton MA and internationally for 30 years. An advocate for
women, civil rights, peace and democracy, and co-founder of Straw Dog Writers Guild, Thorns
of the Mesquite is her first novel.

 

 

Linda Summersea is the author of the coming-of-age memoir, The Girl with the Black and Blue Doll. She enjoyed a long career teaching Youth-at-Risk without realizing she too was “At-Risk”. At 67, Summersea discovered her passion for expedition hiking by walking 50 miles with Berber nomads in the Moroccan desert.

 

 

Lisken Van Pelt Dus’s most recent full-length collection of poems, How Many Hands to Home (Mayapple Press 2025), joins What We’re Made Of (Cherry Grove 2016) and two chapbooks, Everywhere at Once and Letters to My Dead. Raised in England, the US, and Mexico, she now lives western Massachusetts, where she teaches writing, languages, and martial arts. She loves leading workshops and teaching poetry. Visit LVPDPoetry.com for more.