CONTRIBUTORS & WORKS |
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Tools of the Trade - Photo by Weebly.com
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Charlene Anderson received an MA in English Literature from Purdue University and an MA in Research Psychology from San Francisco State University and spent most of her working life at the University of California San Francisco in grant administration. As a child, she always knew she would write, told stories to her friends, and even invented a pen name for herself, Charles Andrè. So, while working on budgets and submitting grant proposals at UCSF, she continued to write and, in 2001 published a novel, Berkeley’s Best Buddhist Bookstore. When Vistas & Byways was launched in 2015, she was pleased to be asked to chair the Editorial Board. She has served in that capacity ever since.
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Contributions to this issue:
V & B Editorial Board Chair Fiction: Stopping Time Poetry: Dream of a Withering Wall Photo Essay: Covid and Climate Change - The Unexpected |
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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:
Editorial Board, Launch Party Committee, Nonfiction: Reflection Puppy Love Poetry: Waterplay |
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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.
Jane is a first time contributor to Vistas & Byways in the Spring 2023 issue. |
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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 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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Cap Caplan has been putting words in the right places. As a social worker and therapist, she observed and listened, helping clients put into words what they longed to express. As a corporate trainer, she was sought by emerging leaders to refine their skills and gain momentum. Taking her talent to academic publishing and a leading business school, she helped hundreds understand the power of their own voices. Finding her own voice (Survivors: How to Keep Your Best People on Board After Downsizing) provided the catalyst to promote her passion for writing, editing, and advising. Editor-in-Chief of The Semaphore, Cap holds an AB in English from Vassar College and an MSW in Policy and Planning from The Ohio State University.
Cap is a first time contributor to Vistas & Byways in the Spring 2023 issue. |
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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 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 to 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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Heather Saunders Estes's debut book of poetry, Inner Sunset, was recently published by Blue Light Press and is available online. It celebrates the joy of life, the natural and human-made world, recognizing all must change. For her, poems are incantations to push back against the forces, human and inhuman, that turn our eyes away from the beauty of shivering aspen leaves, joy of whales breaching, and the compassion of hugs. Her second book, Cloudburst, was published in 2021 by Poetic Matrix Press. She lives in the Inner Sunset in San Francisco and is a member of the OLLI at SF State poetry group that has been meeting since 2016. You can see some of her work online at: https://heathersaundersestes.com/
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Elsa Fernandez grew up in Asia. She has lived in San Francisco since 1970 and never gets tired of this lovely city. She has travelled the world and still gets excited flying back home and to finally land at SFO. Her family is scattered around the world—India, Australia, Dubai, England, Ireland and Argentina. She is a political junkie and majored in Journalism and Political Science. She loves music and plays the piano quite well (one of her dreams was to own a piano bar in upcountry Maui . . . she would probably call it the Maui Moon!). Writing poetry is an emotional outlet for her.
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Contributions to this issue:
Inside OLLI: Book Review - "All in Measure" - Poetry by Heather Saunders Estes A Memory on OLLI's 20th Anniversary Poetry: Looking Through Sunlight Poliahu's Return |
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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 three short stories and three 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:
Editorial Board Member, PREVIEW to this Issue Nonfiction: Chaos and Creation |
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A native of San Francisco, Kathryn Santana Goldman’s interest in poetry began when she was working in ICU as a registered nurse. She used this practice to process the variety of stressful scenarios experienced. Over the years, she has continued to experiment with different types of writing such as short stories and plays. As an avid traveler, Kathryn has become skilled at capturing photographs about the diversity she encounters. Three years ago, she began to combine her love of photography with her writing by using the images she captures as seeds for her poems. She continues to explore new ways to use these two art forms to share her experience with family and friends.
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Janis Greenberg once aspired to be a literature professor but after reading several novels set in colleges, is quite glad she didn't. She moved to San Francisco from Boston after graduating from UMass Amherst. She worked in accounting, photography, and eventually retired as a technical writer from Oracle. She has taken Bay Area community college courses in subjects as diverse as Java, technical writing, and job cost accounting. The only course she quit was tax preparation. It was too illogical. As a retiree, she likes to do occasional pro-bono photography for people and organizations in need. She also enjoys bridge, poker tournaments, kayaking, and lots of novels.
Janis is a first time contributor to Vistas & Byways in the Spring 2023 issue. |
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Mary Heldman is retired from a career in medical school administration, computer programming, and business systems analysis. She grew up in Los Angeles, but lived in Palo Alto, Washington D.C., Cambridge, and Stony Brook, New York before settling in San Francisco in 1974. She tutors at a local high school, studies piano, and designs costume jewelry. From time to time she writes sardonic prose for her friends. Mary wishes she lived with a chocolate lab or a golden retriever, but she doesn’t.
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Contributions to this issue:
Editorial Board Member, Fiction & Nonfiction Editor, Launch Party Committee |
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Since age six, Vivian Imperiale has been writing poetry to identify and process her emotions about the world around her. She soon learned that her poems could be meaningful to others. A friend touched her with these words, "You gave me words for an emotion I didn't even know I needed to express."
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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, and has written plays, a musical and poetry. Since the onset of Covid-19, she has taken numerous Zoom writing workshops, developing a memoir and stories. She is a free-lance writer and editor, specializing in aviation and the arts, and was a managing editor at U.S. Pharmacopoeia and an editorial director at McGraw-Hill Aviation. She has a BA in English from Georgetown University (1977) and served as president of the American News Women’s Club from 1999 to 2000.
Donna is a first time contributor to Vistas & Byways in the Spring 2023 issue. |
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Since retiring as a corporate comms executive, Cindy Knoebel has turned from writing press releases to writing fiction. Her work has appeared in The Big Jewel, The Literary Hatchet, The Stray Branch, Abstract Jam, Wink, Anchor Magazine, Apeiron Review and others. In September 2018, she was awarded the 2018 Grand Prize for Fiction from Haunted Waters Press. From 2017 to 2021 she was also the editor of the digital storytelling platform for a national immigrants’ rights organization. Currently, she is the host/facilitator for the Marin Writers Circle, which has over 160 members.
Cindy is a first time contributor to Vistas & Byways in the Spring 2023 issue. |
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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:
Webmaster Poetry: Searching Inside OLLI: Comments: Gathered at the 20th Anniversary Event |
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Dan Liberthson was born in Rochester, NY. He attended Northwestern University and SUNY at Buffalo (PhD, English), has retired from a career as a medical writer, and lives in San Francisco and Cottage Grove, OR. He has published five books of poetry and individual poems in many journals, including The Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, South Coast Poetry Journal, Elysian Fields Quarterly, and Chaminade Literary Review. Dan has also written The Bluejay Contrivance, a spy novel, and The Golden Spider, a young-adult fantasy novel. Currently Secretary of the Oregon Poetry Association, Dan took second place in the William Stafford Memorial Award Poetry Contest (2020) and in the Maine Poets Society Contest (2022).
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Karen Marker submits poems to Rattle’s Poets Respond (to the news) and reads this poetry on the open mic with RattleCast. This past May she was a featured reader for Rivertown Poets out of Petaluma. Karen was honored to win first place prize for an essay, “Ruth in the Redwoods,” in the 2021 Keats Soul Making contest and that one of her poems was chosen to be in the Kent State University Libraries Special Collections and Archives. Karen is also grateful that she had the opportunity to work with the Young Writers Program through Santa Cruz’s Cornerstone Project, and to work with so many talented poets through PandaPoets and through OLLI including Kathleen McClung, Diane Frank and Jannie Dresser.
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Kathryn J. 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.
Kathryn is a first time contributor to Vistas & Byways in the Spring 2023 issue. |
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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 December 2020.
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Contributions to this issue:
Poetry Editor Photo Essay: East Bay Neighborhood Whimsy Poetry: Ritual for a Wild Plum Ode to My Snooze Alarm Penumbra |
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Kim A. Munson has an MA from SFSU, and is an independent art historian and curator based in San Francisco. She is the editor of the Eisner-nominated Comic Art in Museums anthology and a 2022 Eisner judge. She recently contributed chapters to The Comics of R. Crumb: Underground in the Art Museum and The Cambridge Companion to Comics (forthcoming August 2023). She curated Women in Comics (New York, Rome, Naples) and Colleen Doran Illustrates Neil Gaiman (NY, San Diego). She is currently working on books about Denis Kitchen and Trina Robbins for the University Press of Mississippi's Conversations series.
Kim is a first time contributor to Vistas & Byways in the Spring 2023 issue. Note: Face sketch by Darik Robertson |
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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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Contributions to this issue:
Nonfiction: Winning the Cultural Lottery While Assessing the Rule of Law in Papua New Guinea |
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Daniel Raskin is a retired preschool teacher. He lives in Bernal Heights. Daniel writes with The Older Writers Laboratory at the Bernal library, The MERI Center at UCSF and Laguna Writers.
Daniel is a first time contributor to Vistas & Byways in the Spring 2023 issue. |
Contributions to this issue:
Nonfiction: Childhood Paradise Photo Essays: Unexpected Scenes Poetry: Bird Stories |
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David A. Scott is a retired psychotherapist living with his wife, two dogs, and a cat in Fresno, California. He has written poetry for most of his life and had a few poems published.
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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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Steve Surryhne was an Associate Lecturer in English Literature at San Francisco State University 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 published in The Blue Moon Review and Interpretations. He is currently working on a project with a photographer friend on poem-texts and photos.
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Mark Thoma has practiced medical social work for thirty years and is semi-retired. He recently took his first OLLI class. Mark likes to cook, make bread from the The Tassajara Bread Book, hike, read, write poetry, and help maintain a neighborhood garden. Mark's first encouragement for writing came from his fourth grade Creative Writing teacher (yes! a teacher just for creative writing!) when he was ten years old. He has been writing poetry on and off since. Mark lives with his husband in San Francisco.
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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 (who is also an OLLI member and V&B contributor) and their cat.
Robert is a first time contributor to Vistas & Byways in the Spring 2023 issue. |
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Vivien Zielin was born in England and graduated in history and social studies at the University of Sussex. She was a history teacher in London, worked for an interior design company in Jerusalem, and was the owner of “The China Ware House Company” in Carnaby Street, specializing in fine English made giftware, dinnerware, and quirky teapots. She has worked for media companies on various projects. She has traveled the world. In 2005 she moved to California and became a citizen in 2012. She discovered OLLI at SF State in 2009 and was for many years the Event Organizer for the annual Creativity Celebration. Eyeballing Big Croc: Chasing Dreams Around the World is her first book and was published in 2018.
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Vistas & Byways Review is the semiannual journal of fiction, nonfiction and poetry by members of Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at San Francisco State University.
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Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at San Francisco State University (OLLI at SF State) provides communal and material support to theVistas & Byways volunteer staff.
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