CONTRIBUTORS & WORKS |
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Tools of the Trade - Photo by Weebly.com
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Soon after she retired from UCSF, a friend told Charlene Anderson about OLLI at SF State and she began taking classes. In 2015, in one of those classes, Mike Lambert suggested starting a literary and photography magazine at OLLI. So, Mike, Charlene and a small group of OLLI members, founded Vistas & Byways. It has been publishing stories, poems and nonfiction pieces, as well as photography, ever since. Charlene is pleased to be part of V&B which provides OLLI members an opportunity to be published.
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Contributions to this issue:
V&B Executive Administrator Fiction: Which Genre Is This Anyway? Photo Essay: Reflections |
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Barbara Applegate received a BA at UC Berkeley, with a major in Spanish, and an MS in Education at CSU, East Bay. As an administrator of Early Childhood Education, she developed a program to teach parents in non-English speaking families the value of helping their children retain the home language while learning English. She is the mother of 3 daughters, a traveler and a contemplative. She loves taking writing classes - not only because she learns from them, but because they give her structure for writing.
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Contributions to this issue:
Fiction and Nonfiction Editor Launch Party Selection Committee Nonfiction: Choices Poetry: The Collage - A Poem Hide and Seek Inside OLLI: Interview with Elaine Porter - Adventure Interest Group |
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Barbara Barer, MSW, retired as a Senior Research Associate in the Division of Medical Anthropology at UCSF where she did pioneering work in the field of Gerontology. Her early research career included work on a seminal study of prison life at the London School of Economics, a Stress and Coping study at UC Berkeley, and culminated with a focus on aging issues at UCSF. She is the author of numerous articles on life in later years, covering such topics as grandparenting, divorcing families, men and women aging differently, health care needs of the elderly, and a long-term study of Bay Area residents aged 85 and older.
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Contributions to this issue:
Fiction and Nonfiction Editor |
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Jane Barrier is currently a retired computer programmer who has been living with MS for over 30 years. She enjoyed acting in local theaters until multiple sclerosis, diagnosed in 1990, curtailed her trodding the sidewalks, much less “the boards.” Thanks to OLLI instructors in poetry writing, and an offshoot group of students who formed to hear and comment on each others’ work, her feeling for poetry has been reinvigorated.
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Beverly "Bree Brown" completed a BA and MA in Creative Writing at SFSU. She has expressed herself through poetry since she was a young girl. Her favorite quote is, “The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” (Muriel Rukeyser) Bree was born with words engraved on both hands and has loved words for as long as she can remember. And she remembers Grandma Rudin buying her first book of poems when she was 8. She believes poetry lives inside us all—it will connect us to the deepest parts of ourselves if we let it.
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Joe Catalano practiced law for more than 30 years before he retired in 2018. He has since pursued his interests in photography, high performance driving, travel, and writing. He has enjoyed his first OLLI as SF State courses in the spring semester 2019 and thanks the members of the OLLI at SF State Poetry Writing interest group for their input and support. He lives in San Francisco with his wife Joan.
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Mickey Eliason is a recently retired faculty member from San Francisco State University with a background in nursing, psychology, and public health. She harkens originally from Iowa and spent twenty-five years on faculty at the University of Iowa. She was propelled to San Francisco in 2005 by a midlife crisis, and transitioned from land-locked stoic midwestern to California beach bum. After a lifetime of academic writing, she is experimenting with different writing genres, but mostly with creative nonfiction. She has self-published two volumes of humor writing: a parody of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual outlining unique lesbian pathologies (The Dyke Dykignostic Manual) and short stories written recently (Pandemic Procrastination and Ponderings). Both are available on Amazon.
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Find your passion and follow it! - Oprah Winfrey
Cathy Fiorello’s passions are food, Paris, and writing. A morning at a farmers’ market is her idea of excitement and visiting Paris is her idea of heaven. And much of her writing is about food and Paris. She worked in publishing in New York, freelanced for magazines during her child-rearing years, then re-entered the work world as an editor. She moved to San Francisco in 2008 and published a memoir, Al Capone Had a Lovely Mother. In 2018, she published a second memoir, Standing at the Edge of the Pool. Cathy has two children and four grandchildren. Her mission is to make foodies and Francophiles of them all. |
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Kathy Gilbert received her MFA from San Francisco State University in 2013 after a career in public transport. She received the Mark Linenthal Poetry Award in 2012 from SFSU and won the San Francisco Browning Society Gita Specker Award three times for her dramatic monologues. She was commissioned to write a play for the 2015 San Francisco Olympians Festival. Her one act Delphin and the Children of Amphitrite was performed at the Exit Theater. She also tutors third graders, studies tai chi, practices yoga and swims. Her new book Aprils Three: Poems and Photographs is now available locally at Bird & Beckett, West Portal Books, Green Apple on Clement and on Amazon.
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Matt Ginsburg received an MFA degree in Creative Writing with a concentration in playwriting at San Francisco State University. His work explores his interest in business, economics, and politics. His plays have been read or performed at numerous theaters in San Francisco. He has also had five short stories and four works of memoir published in previous editions of Vistas & Byways. He serves on the Editorial Board of our publication.
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Contributions to this issue:
Fiction and Nonfiction Editor Preview of This Issue Fiction: The Harder They Fall |
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Fred Goldman has been an OLLI member for as long as he can remember (best he can do at his age). His enjoyment of the OLLI learning experience has motivated him to serve on the OLLI Curriculum Committee as both a member and Chair. Although he has been interested in photography for over 40 years, his interest accelerated after his retirement, leading him to become an avid digital photographer utilizing sophisticated post-processing computer software. He and his wife Kathryn have relocated to Napa where photographic opportunities abound. Fred and Kathryn spend a portion of their year traveling to new places and documenting those trips photographically.
If you’re interested in seeing more of Fred’s photos, check out his website at: https://fredgoldmanphotography.smugmug.com/ |
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A San Francisco native, Kathryn Santana Goldman has been writing poetry for over 30 years. Early in her nursing career, she began writing to process stressful clinical experiences. In 2013, Kathryn took her first OLLI poetry class, fell in love with the genre, and has honed her skill ever since. As an avid photographer, she enjoys capturing images of people and places and uses these as muses for writing. During the pandemic, she combined her nursing background with her passion for poetry and designed a guided wellness class, Your Write to Resilience, using poems as prompts. She retired in December of 2022 and is excited to have more time to explore contributing to her community through the magic of poetry!
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Roberta Greifer is a poet and a retired librarian with the city of San Francisco. Her most recent appearance has been in Rumors, Secrets & Lies, an anthology of poems about pregnancy, abortion and choice.
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Mary Heldman is retired from a career in medical school administration, computer programming, business systems analysis and technical writing. She grew up in Los Angeles but lived in Palo Alto, Washington D.C., Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Stony Brook, New York, before settling in San Francisco in 1974. She has been taking creative writing classes at OLLI since 2014 and wishes she lived with a gregarious chocolate lab or a contemplative mutt, but doesn’t.
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Vivian Imperiale has been viewing the world through a poet’s eye since she was six. She now writes to process her emotions around homelessness, mental health, connections with the spirit world, and the loss of the Light of her Life to AIDS long ago. Her poems and prose have been published online, in magazines, journals, newspapers and in books. She worked in real estate office administration and later in vocational rehabilitation with people facing mental health challenges.
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Dr. Vera Jacobson was a teacher and administrator for 30 years. She is happily writing short stories, watercoloring, and doing pencil sketching. If she is not at home, you would probably find her sailing on the San Francisco Bay. She lives in Brisbane with her dog, Peter.
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Donna Kaulkin is the author of a novel, Brenda Corrigan Went Downtown. She has written stories, plays, a musical and poetry and is developing a memoir. A Georgetown University graduate, Donna currently is a free-lance writer specializing in aviation. She formerly was managing editor of U.S. Pharmacopoeia consumer publications and an editorial director in McGraw-Hill’s aviation group. In 1999 and 2000, she served as president of the American News Women’s Club.
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Mike Lambert is a long-time resident of San Francisco and led the effort to start Vistas & Byways in the fall of 2015. In an earlier life, he worked in the telecommunications industry for 35 years and taught at San Francisco State University’s College of Business for 15 years. He refutes the adage about old dogs and new tricks. He took up creative writing as a hobby at age 75. He recently self-published two novels and a collection of his short stories. His main fictional character is Jessica Jones, a single working girl in contemporary San Francisco. See his Author page at Amazon under the name of M. L. Lambert for more details.
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Contributions to this issue:
V&B Webmaster Inside OLLI: Interview with Maryellen Buckley Interview with Kathy Bruin |
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Dan Liberthson was born in Rochester, New York and attended Northwestern University and SUNY at Buffalo (PhD, English). He has retired from a career as a medical writer, and lives in San Francisco and Cottage Grove, Oregon. He has published five books of poetry and has published individual poems in anthologies and journals, including The Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, South Coast Poetry Journal, Elysian Fields Quarterly, Chaminade Literary Review and Triggerfish. He was Secretary of the Oregon Poetry Association (2019-2022), and took second place in the William Stafford Memorial Award Poetry Contest (2020) and the Maine Poets Society Contest (2022). He also published The Bluejay Contrivance, a spy novel, and The Golden Spider, a middle-grade fantasy novel. For more information, visit liberthson.com.
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Wayne Lin is a member of OLLI at SF State, an Associate Member of the Academy of American Poets, as well as a member of the California State Poetry Society. His poetry has recently appeared in The Lyric, Poetry Quarterly, Ibbetson Street, California Quarterly, (California State Poetry Society), Wisconsin Review, Main Street Rag, Rosebud Literary Magazine, Loch Raven Review, Time of Singing poetry Journal and Chronogram Magazine. Wayne currently lives in California with his wife.
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Linda Zamora Lucero’s short stories have been published by The Ocotillo Review; The Hyacinth Review; Latino Literatures; Yellow Medicine Review; Somos en escrito; LatineLit Magazine; Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts; Puro Chicanx Writers of the 21st Century; Santa Clara Review; Vistas and Byways: and The Bilingual Review. Her story “Speak to Me of Love,” won first prize in the 2020 DeMarinis Short Story Contest; “When It Rains,” was a 2020 Pushcart nominee. A proud graduate of SFSU, Lucero is the Executive Director of Yerba Buena Gardens Festival, an admission-free outdoor performing arts series in San Francisco.
Her story for this Issue of Vistas & Byways, “Soon”, was first published by Yellow Medicine Review in 2023. It was a finalist in Somos en escrito’s 2023 Best Raza Short Story contest. |
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Carol Langbort was a Professor of Education in Mathematics for 30+ years at SFSU, teaching teachers how to teach mathematics. She was Chair of the Department of Elementary Education, and for 15 years directed the SF Math Leadership Project, a professional development program for classroom teachers. She developed a master’s degree program in Mathematics Education. She is co-author of several books, including How to Encourage Girls in Math and Science and Building Success in Math. Recently, she was a volunteer for the de Young and Legion of Honor Museums. She is currently on the Board of Nicaragua Children’s Friendship Committee. She has studied Spanish for many years in language schools in Mexico and participates in the OLLI Spanish conversation group.
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Contributions to this issue:
Online Proofreader |
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Richard Marino has lived in San Francisco since 1983. He moved to San Francisco from New York where he lived in the East Village. He has worked in the San Francisco Public Library (Main) for the past 28 years. He has been with the Gay Gray Writers since its inception in 2014. He joined the queer elders’ group four years ago which led to their having writings published in a one-time journal in November 2019. His pieces tend to be memoir, and he has written many of them. This opportunity with OLLI is an incredible blessing to him and he would like to participate in the future.
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Karen Marker is a retired school psychologist who turns to her studies in psychology, classical mythology, family ancestry and nature for her inspiration as a poet and memoirist. Her work has been published in various anthologies, won awards through the Ina Coolbrith Circle and the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition, and been included in the Kent State University May 4th Archives. Her first book of poetry Beneath the Blue Umbrella will be coming out with Finishing Line Press at the end of 2024. See her book at: www.finishinglinepress.com.
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Contributions to this issue:
Online Proofreader Poetry: On the Poets, Swifts and Other Birds A Response to Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese" |
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Jackie Davis Martin’s stories have been published in anthologies, including Modern Shorts, Love on the Road, and Road Stories, as well as in print and online journals. Her first memoir, Surviving Susan, was released in 2012 and a novel, Stopgaps, came out in May of 2021. Jackie’s second memoir, Those Several Summers, was just published in Spring of 2024. The memoir concerns serious decisions and choices she had to make over the course of several summers in the mid 1980’s. When she is not writing or teaching, Martin has enjoyed, along with her late husband, Bruce, full seasons of San Francisco’s Opera, its Ballet, and its Symphony, as well as performances at many of Bay Area’s many theatres.
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Kathryn Miller works in poetry and visual arts. She was trained as a tapestry weaver and has been engaged in collage, iPad painting, along with the woven world. She often returns to her love of poetry. Kathryn is an avid explorer of words and images. Her home is New Mexico and has worked in the Bay Area for the past 18 years. Her PhD explored women’s narrative and what women do with their stories from their lives. Her poetry books include Tango Dancer and Triologue, which was written with two friends through email. Both were self-published. Her professional work has been as an executive coach with private and public organizations.
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MJ Moore lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her various incarnations have included technical writer and editor, farm apprentice, environmental activist, teacher, poet, wife, and mother. As a bicoastal being, she thrives on salt air, wind and waves, but also loves mountains, deserts, forests and streams. Writing for her is a source of vision and joy. Her book of poems, Topography of Dreams, was published by Blue Light Press in 2020.
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Contributions to this issue:
Poetry Editor, Editorial Board Meeting Host Poetry: Sitting on a Fence Defying the Gods |
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Mary Noel Pepys is a senior attorney with a specialization in the rule of law, specifically international legal and judicial reform, and corruption within the judiciary. Since 1993 she has helped emerging democracies develop justice systems that ensure the protection of citizens’ human rights, equal treatment of all individuals before the law, and a predictable legal structure with fair, transparent and effective government institutions. Mary Noel has worked in over 45 countries, lived five years in six former communist countries, and 20 months in Afghanistan as the Justice Advisor for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement of the U.S. Department of State. While in Afghanistan, Mary Noel focused on strengthening the criminal justice system and the correctional system.
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After becoming an attorney, Pamela Pitt graduated with an MFA (1990) from the San Francisco Art Institute. She showed her photography work nationally in group and solo shows. Seeking daylight after years in the dark room, she worked on collage with mixed media painting and photography. Ideas from social issues became the basis of certain collage series:
2014: ripped pages from a law book on the “Patriot Act” to use as collage elements. 2016: used tissue dress "Patterns" in a series about the place of women. 2017: produced a collage series based on the concept of making land a commodity. With her current focus on photography and scanner digital art, Pam works on achieving peace through creativity and beauty. |
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Daniel Raskin is a retired preschool teacher. He lives in Bernal Heights in San Francisco.. Daniel writes with The Older Writers Laboratory at the Bernal library, The MERI Center at UCSF and Laguna Writers. He is also an avid photographer of local scenes.
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Robin Roth is a Health Educator, retired after 40 years of teaching at City College of San Francisco. She created the Women's Health Issues course, the HIV Prevention Education Program, wrote Elder Abuse Prevention curriculum, taught Gerontology, Human Sexuality (also at SFSU), Hepatitis ABCs, and other courses in the Health Education and Women's Studies departments. Robin is co-chair of the SF Hepatitis C Task Force, on the Coordinating Committee of End Hep C SF, and the California Hepatitis Alliance. A life-long activist, Robin is currently writing postcards with Reclaim Our Vote in the Interfaith Action Committee of Or Shalom Jewish Community. She is the hands-on grandmother of an active toddler, and practices Qigong, Tai Chi, gardens and hikes.
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David Scott is a retired psychotherapist living with his wife, Ann, and two cats in Fresno, California. He has written poetry for most of his life and has been published in The American Poet and Vistas & Byways. He
has four books on Amazon: • Love, Spirit, and Mental Health; Counseling Psychology and A Course in Miracles • Jesus's Teachings about Love, Forgiveness, and Relationships in the Christian Bible and A Course in Miracles • Spirit, Love, and Oneness — A Poetic Journey • The Indian Way; Wisdom Stories for Young People |
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Amee Shah (PoetessDrAmeeShah) is a university professor and research scientist. She finds poetry and art to not only be personal expressions and medium to process her connection with the natural world, but also a powerful way to plug into the spiritual realm and receive gifts of wonder and awe, gratitude, a sense of abundance, and profound insights and creativity that further allow her to bring back into her work of teaching, coaching, and counseling. She has her first book of poetry published and received with wide interest. Her book is titled, Becoming the Light: From Angst to Awakening, available on Amazon.
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Contributions to this issue:
Poetry: Get off your R's The lens of choice When in doubt, will you choose freedom?P hoto Essay: Reflections on a Car Window - a Triptych |
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Dennis Sides has been a software developer, book editor, professional musician, construction project manager, tech writer, and world traveler. He's hung up his traveling shoes during COVID, but hopes to get back out on the road soon. He's lived in the Fillmore long enough to qualify for "San Francisco native" status.
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Pat Skala is a native San Franciscan (only 3 generations) and a graduate of San Francisco State College. (Note the "C". Had she waited a year longer to graduate it would be a "U.") A retired City employee, Pat and her husband live in the house that her grandparents built in 1927. She is a gardener, a quilter and an avid jigsaw puzzle person. Although she would love to be a star on Moth Radio, she limits her storytelling to friends and family. Her stories are true and focus on what she thinks of as "angels:" people who come into our lives ever so briefly, but who give us something we need or point us in a better direction.
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Steve Surryhne was an Associate Lecturer in English Literature at SFSU from 1993-2012. He is currently semi-retired and has recently returned to writing poetry. A native of San Francisco, he was a baby-beat in the sixties, knew some of the beat poets and is now a neo-beat. In his alternate career, he worked in Community Mental Health in San Francisco from 1979-2012. He took first place in the Jack Kerouac Poetry contest in 2015 and has been published in The Blue Moon Review, Interpretations and San Francisco Magazine. He is currently working on a project with a photographer friend on poem-texts and photos.
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Robert Weibezahl writes plays, fiction, and poetry, mostly in that order. After a long career in book publishing, including twenty years as a review columnist for BookPage, He now teaches literature class at OLLI San Francisco State and other Osher programs across the country.
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Robert Weiner claims that he is mostly retired from a career helping universities and nonprofits make decisions about and manage their fundraising infrastructure (people, policies, processes, and systems). He lives in Bernal Heights in San Francisco with his wife, Karen Rhodes (who is also an OLLI member and V&B contributor), and their cat.
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