Avril Amato is Administrative Assistant to the President at the Annandale Campus and has been with the college since 1999. She first visited the Caribbean in 1995 and has traveled a dozen times to the region; the islands of St. Thomas and St. John are her favorite locations. She states that spectacular underwater reefs, pristine beaches, and colorful island life provide a perfect location in which to re-energize, while the unique light and array of vistas offer a plentiful supply of subjects for her photography.
Gerald Berns is a long-time resident of Northern Virginia and has written about 50 memoir-stories. This is the first piece he has ever submitted for publication. His other major interests include photography, family genealogy, computer graphics, and game analysis.
Elizabeth Black works as a psychiatric nurse supporting her passion for painting and writing poetry. She exhibits her art irregularly and irreverently and is the recipient of several awards and grants for her art, including a Fulbright Scholarship.
Liona T. Burnham spent most of her life in the water-logged Pacific Northwest where she also served as poetry editor for the Bellingham Review. She now lives in Washington D.C. with her husband and enjoys teaching composition and journalism on the Annandale Campus. Her poems have been published in cranky: literary/arts journal, Jeopardy, Bellowing Ark, and Script.
Betty Cleveland, frequently published in TNVR, attended Wilson Teachers College, is an NVCC alumna, was employed by the Inter-American Defense Board (OAS), was Executive Secretary to five presidentially-appointed United States Attorneys for the Eastern District of Virginia, has an adequate knowledge of both the French and Spanish languages and an unquenchable love for literature. Most notably, she has reared four wonderful children.
Jen Daniels teaches creative writing and American literature at the Annandale Campus of Northern Virginia Community College.
Donald Depuydt is a professor of Fine Arts at the Loudoun campus of NVCC. He has had numerous solo exhibitions, most recently at Glenview Mansion Art Gallery, Rockville, MD, and Patrick Henry Community College, Martinsville, VA.
Libby Derting Dannenberg earned a Master’s degree in English with an emphasis in Creative Writing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her work has previously appeared in Acorn Whistle, Poetry Motel, Phoenix, and the American Collegiate Poets Anthology. Additionally, her freelance articles on travel, tourism, dining, and alternative health have appeared in Northern Virginia Magazine and online. She currently teaches composition and literature classes at American University, Marymount University and Northern Virginia Community College.
Barbara Esstman’s novels The Other Anna and Night Ride Home have been published by Harcourt Brace, HarperCollins and 13 foreign houses in addition to being adapted for film by Hallmark Productions. She also co-edited an anthology, A More Perfect Union, published by St. Martins. Her short stories have appeared in numerous literary magazines, won a Redbook Fiction Prize, and been recognized by the Pushcart Prizes. She is an NEA, VCCA and Maryland Arts Council fellow and teaches at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda.
Anita Faurot is a Legal Assistant at the Division of Child Support Enforcement in Manassas, but her real passion is photography. She never leaves home without her camera, as you never know when the perfect shot will present itself. She views her camera as a blank canvas in much the same way a painter does: as a beautiful work of art just waiting to be created.
Margaret Fogarty taught English at the high school and college level. She retired some years ago from her post as a researcher for the National Geographic. Rosemary Gallick is a Professor of Art History at the Woodbridge Campus. She displays her vibrant works in many exhibitions throughout the area. “Left Handed Rage” is atypical of her artwork and was created to express her emotion at breaking her right wrist last spring, which caused her to paint in an abstract style.
Dorothy Graff, a native Midwesterner, has lived in Virginia with her husband for two years. Over the years they had visited the area frequently and fell in love with it. They still find it hard to believe their luck in living within easy driving distance of the Capital and some of the most significant and beautiful locales in the country’s history.
Patty Gulledge studied art for several years with Randy Michener on the Manassas Campus and Bob Howard in Woodbridge, and is now focusing on oil/pastel portraiture and still life. She continues to learn about new trends in the art world from the guest artists she books as Program Director for the Manassas Art Guild and also from her daughter, a working artist in New York City. Patty enjoys writing as well as painting and is exploring ways to bring the two together in the future.
Jim Haentzschel is the president of Hurricane Technology, Inc. In his photography, he enjoys working with wildlife and other images with bright colors. Phil Harvey’s fiction and poetry have appeared in a variety of magazines including Phantasmagoria, which nominated one of his stories for a Pushcart Prize; Antietam Review, which named another of his pieces the winner of its annual contest; and TNVR. He is also the author of three non-fiction books.
Kyi May Kaung (Ph.D.) is a political analyst focused on Burma and oppressive systems. She has won various awards including a Fulbright, a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts grant for her play Shaman (then titled Flashback) and the William Carlos Williams Award of the American Academy of Poets. She writes short and long fiction, nonfiction and poetry and also paints.
Elaine Kessler was a Washington D.C. based journalist for 24 years and recently published an essay in The Washington Post and a short story in Clerestory Press Quarterly. She volunteered with Women for Women in Bosnia during the siege of Sarajevo and had the opportunity to listen to their horrific and heroic stories about living through the war and its aftermath. Her experiences in Sarajevo inspired the piece published in this issue.
William Kinsella earned his Ph.D. from Georgetown University. Publications include Leadership in Isolation, FDR and the Origins of World War II (G.K. Hall 1978); “Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Soviet Union, 1933-1941” in T.C. Howard and W. Pederson, eds., Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Formation of the Modern World (M.E. Sharpe 2003); “The Prescience of a Statesman,” in L. Madaras and J. SoRelle, eds., Taking Sides, American History, Vol II (Dushkin-McGraw Hill 2000); and articles in previous issues of TNVR. He has taught at NOVA since 1970 and is currently the Assistant Division Chair of the Liberal Arts Division at the Annandale Campus.
Kate Lassman is currently an adjunct instructor at the Annandale Campus, and has been teaching English composition and literature there for about four years. She holds an MFA in poetry from George Mason University.
Fred Lokay is a semi-retired professional photographer who specializes in travel subjects. He has photographed on seven continents and his work has appeared in numerous travel-related publications as well as tour company catalogs. A member of the Manassas Art Guild, Fred is also an active participant in local art shows and sales.
Fred Markham’s paintings and drawings of Northern Virginia tend to reflect a mystery and fascination he developed with the landscape while growing up in rural, south central Kentucky. He is Instructor of painting and drawing at the Woodbridge Campus, and a second-time contributor to TNVR.
Molly McKitterick is the author of The Medium Is Murder, the first American book to win the Japanese Suntory Award for Mystery Fiction. Both it and the sequel, Murder in a Mayonnaise Jar, were published by St. Martin’s Press. When she is not writing, she works part time with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, promoting national wildlife refuges.
Linda Morefield lives with her husband, dog, and an unfinished novel manuscript in Alexandria, VA.
Antonina N. Rodgers is a Coordinator of the English as a Second Language Program in the Annandale Continuing Education department. Originally from St. Petersburg, Russia, she has been with NVCC for over 15 years. She enjoys taking photographs of children and nature, especially trees.
Tish Seabrook graduated from the University of Florida in the spring of 2007 with an English degree, where she studied under William Logan and Deborah Gregor and specialized in poetry. She recently moved to Washington, DC and is now trying for an MFA in poetry.
Marge Shaffer is a former Connecticut Yankee and has been with the Manassas Campus since February 1974. She loves her Nikon camera and documents her travels— always seeking that stellar shot. Abstracts and macro photography are of special interest to her. Marge has contributed to TNVR on several occasions over the years. Wayland Stallard writes stories about the people of the western mountains of Virginia and is currently working on a novel set in that locale. He has taken many workshops at the Writer’s Center, American University, and was selected for the Heritage Workshop at George Mason University. He has lived in this area since 1966.
Janet Taliaferro lives in Leesburg, Virginia. She holds a BA from Southern Methodist University in Comparative Literature and an MA in Creative Studies from the University of Central Oklahoma where she received the Geoffry Bocca Memorial Award for excellence, awarded to a graduating Master’s Degree candidate. She began her writing career doing scripts for children’s television. She published articles in “Campaigns and Elections” in the 1970s. Her novel, A Sky for Arcadia, was one of eight finalists in the Oklahoma Center for the Book Awards for 2001. Selections from her short story collection, Cityscapes, have appeared in TNVR. Her poetry has been published in a number of small magazines and on Robin Chapman’s poetry blog.
Nicole Foreman Tong is the supervisor of the Annandale Campus’s Reading and Writing Center and is also an adjunct professor. She holds an MFA from George Mason University. Nicole has received a grant from the Vermont Studio Center and a Pushcart Prize nomination. Her writing can be found in Red Rock Review, American Book Review, Poetry Southeast and Yalobusha Review.
Sherry Trachtman has taught painting and drawing on the Alexandria Campus for over twenty years. An active member of the Art League Gallery at the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, Sherry exhibits oils, acrylics, mosaics, mixed-media collages and drawings. In the summer, Sherry holds private local workshops and paints in New England.