Julia Neily is a retired nurse with a Master of Public Health. She lives in Lebanon, NH with her husband and two daughters, one of whom has autism. Her oldest daughter and grandchildren live nearby, and she enjoys visiting them often. When she is not writing she enjoys baking and running ever so slowly.
Annabelle Cone has been “storytelling" all her professional life in front of a classroom full of students and conference attendees. As for personal stories, she has self-published two volumes of a graphic memoir titled “Empty Nesting 1 and 2.”
Lars Hasselblad Torres’ career has spanned public policy, higher education, and community innovation. His first job out of college was to start the public policy nonprofit America Speaks in Washington, DC. Since then, he has served as founding faculty member of the Booker T. Washington Public Charter School for Technical Arts; led MITs IDEAS Global Challenge; served as Innovation Prize Advisor to the
Lemelson-MIT program and USAID; directed Vermont's Office of the Creative Economy; served as Entrepreneur in Residence at Vermont State College, Lyndon, VT; and led turnaround efforts for several maker spaces in the northeast. He is a writer,
collage artist, and photographer.
Don Kollisch is a semi-retired Family Doctor whose first practice was in the rural northern NH communities of Bath and Monroe. He writes short fiction based on those wonderful rural communities and people. He practiced at DHMC and the VA and is now involved with various community non-profits and progressive political organizations.
Marv Klassen-Landis is a poet, storyteller and theatre artist. A co-founder and performer with Children’s Voices Theatre, he also has taught creative writing at pre-school through college levels and has led many storytelling, writing, and theatre workshops and residencies from Vermont to Colorado.
Marv has published poetry in a variety of journals and is the author of a children’s book. He lives in Windsor, Vermont.
Judith Hertog is a journalist and writer who also helps organize local storytelling events such as the Mudroom and Story Jam. She teaches creative writing in the MALS program at Dartmouth. She grew up in Amsterdam and immigrated with her family to Israel as a teenager. After some more wandering around the world, she ended up in Vermont. Her website is: www.judithhertog.com
The theme for our June 11 Mudroom is “Over My Head.” Everyone has gotten in over their head at some point. We are looking for storytellers who have gotten in over their heads at some point in their lives. If you have a good story to tell, we want to hear it! Stories are limited to around 10 minutes, must be true and autobiographical, and must
be told live—not read! The Mudroom is an incredibly supportive venue for live storytelling. We hope that tonight’s event will inspire you to give it a try!
Pitch us the actual story you plan to tell. Give us a sense of the story arc and how your story affected you. Please send your story submission and short bio to sheryl@avagallery.org. The deadline for story submissions is May 17. We will then select 5 – 6 stories from the submission pool. Storytellers are required to attend a rehearsal at 5pm on Sunday, May 31.
