RCLS Local Authors: Orange County

Bill Braine is a Hudson Valley writer whose work has appeared in Runner's World magazine and in the critically acclaimed podcast Getting On with James Urbaniak (named one of Rolling Stone's "20 Best Comedy Podcasts," 2014). His blog Exurbitude was a funny and practical take on migrating north from New York. Bone Hollow is his first novel.

Jim DeFelice is the best-selling author of a dozen books of fiction and non-fiction.Besides his "solo" works, he is known for his collaborations with Richard Marcinko (Rogue Warrior), Dale Brown, Stephen Coonts, and Larry Bond .He is also the author of the first biography of Omar Bradley, the American architect of victory in Europe during WWII. He co-authored American Sniper.

Mystery writer Christopher Forman was voted The Hudson Valley's best local author by readers of the Times Herald-Record.

Jason Gehlert is the author of the werewolf horror series Quiver. Through his tireless promotions, Jason landed several contracts, resulting in the fan favorite, Contagion, his sensational South African jungle zombie novel. He has plans to expand his writing library, prolifically offering up work after work each year, including Demon Revolver and Ghost Prints, the latter which featured the debut of Lincoln Carter and Joe Buchanan. Jason now has the forthcoming Ferrymen from Damnation Books featuring an all new case with Lincoln and Joe, bringing justice to evil spirits.

ELEANOR KUHNS is the 2011 winner of the Minotaur Books/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel competition. She lives in New York, received her master’s in Library Science from Columbia University, and is currently the Assistant Director at the Goshen Public Library in Orange County, New York.

Sharon Linnea is the best selling author of the Eden Thrillers, Chasing Eden, Beyond Eden, and Treasure of Eden, originally published by St. Martin's Press. She has also written award-winning biographies of Raoul Wallenberg and Hawaii's Princess Kaiulani. Her new mystery, These Violent Delights, is the first in her new Movie Mystery series, debuts in April 2012 from Arundel Publishing.

Lisa Melville created the award-winning historical novel The Grace Murder Case. After obtaining her Master’s degree in public history, she turned to creative writing where she has written about the Colden Mansion and detailed the history of historic houses. In recognition of Lisa’s abilities and passion for history the Greater Hudson Heritage network (GHHN) awarded the 2011 Award for Excellence to Lisa Melville for community documentation in The Grace Murder Case.

James Patterson, is the accomplished American author of not only thriller novels but also romance and non-fiction works. Born in Newburgh he has written over 71 novels in 33 years of which 19 topped the list of New York Times bestsellers, Patterson remains amongst the most widely read authors of these times. From his James Patterson Pageturner Awards (which rewarded groups and individuals for creative and effective ways of spreading the joy of reading) to his website ReadKiddoRead.com (which helps adults find books that kids are sure to love) to his regular donations of thousands of books to troops overseas, Patterson is a lifelong champion of books and reading.

Jennifer Probst brings a degree in business and a career as a travel agent, yoga teacher, business manager, and insurance salesperson to her work as a writer of romantic fiction. She is the author of the popular "The Marriage to the Billionaire" series. She has also written a children's book with her niece.

Carrie E. Robinson is no less than a "watchman" commissioned by God to proclaim His love for mankind. As an ordained minister, psalmist, former radio personality, newspaper columnist and realtor, she has traveled extensively sharing her experiences and knowledge of the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ in these United States of America as well as Haiti. Carrie's educational focus has been in communication and public relations. She spends her time ministering, counseling and writing. She is married to her wonderful husband Merrill E. Robinson, Jr. for 40 years. They have 4 children and 9 grandchildren. They reside in upstate New York.

Susan Schoenberger, a native of Newburgh, N.Y., graduated with honors from Dartmouth College in 1984. Since college, Susan has been a writer, editor and copy editor at various newspapers. She currently works as a as an editor for Patch.com. Susan's short stories have appeared in Inkwell, Village Rambler and on the website www.bartlebysnopes.com. A Watershed Year, her first novel, received the gold medal in the 2006 William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing competition and was published by Guideposts Books in 2011.

Marianne Sciucco is writer who happens to be a nurse, using her skills and experience to create stories that bear witness to the humanity in all of us. In her Indie Recon Award winner Blue Hydrangeas, a pair of retired Cape Cod innkeepers struggle with Alzheimer's Disease. When not writing she works as a school nurse at a community college in New York’s Mid-Hudson Valley.

is a poet, a scholar, and an educator. A professor emerita of English from Pace University, her poems, stories and essays have been published in literary and professional journals, and in anthologies of Hudson River poets: “Riverine” and “WaterWrites.” She has also published two books of poetry, Hapax Legomena and The Ordinary Living, and a book of literary criticism, The Enemy Self: Poetry & Criticism of Laura. Dr. Adams served as poet-in-residence at the Cape Cod Writer’s Conference in 1998. Her most recent book is Distances.. Her first play, God’s Lioness & the Crow: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, was produced in November 2000 by the Mohonk Mountain Stage Company.

William Alexander is the author of the best-selling memoir, "The $64 Tomato" and "52 Loaves: In Search of Truth, Meaning, and a Perfect Crust" his hilarious and moving account of a year spent striving to bake the perfect loaf of bread.

Kael Alford is a documentary photographer, writer and journalist born in Middletown, NY. Kael has worked extensively covering culture, politics and conflict in the Balkans and the Middle East for many US and European magazines and newspapers including Time, Newsweek, US News and World Report, The New York Times, Times (London), The Guardian, The San Fransisco Chronicle, NRC Handelsbad (Netherlands), Vanity Fair, and others

Gil Anderson is a teaching professional at Winding Hills Golf Course, has thirty-nine years of expertise which he enthusiastically shares with all ability levels. He is a motivational speaker using his golf experience as a metaphor for facing the challenges in life. Married, with one daughter, Gil lives in Montgomery, New York. His book "Going Fore It in Golf & Life" is the result of a lifelong pursuit of the deeper meanings and complexities that lie at the core of the golfing experience

Fergus M. Bordewich is the author of several books, including Bound for Canaan, Killing the White Man's Indian, and My Mother's Ghost a memoir.

Frances Susan Brown is an accomplished writer of both fiction and nonfiction. In 2015, she released her memoir, Writing under the the pseudonym Claire Gem, her debut novel, Phantom Traces, addresses the themes of May-September romance and the heartbreak of Alzheimer's disease.

James Finn Cotter is a poet and professor of English literature. Dr. Cotter is the author of Inscape: The Christology and Poetry of Gerald Manley Hopkins; Beginnings: the First Twenty-Five Years of Mount Saint Mary College; and A New Life: Learning the Way of Omega. As a scholar, he has penned articles on Hopkins, Dante, Geoffrey Chaucer, Sir Philip Sidney, and J.D. Salinger. As poet and literary critic, he’s been published in America, Commonweal, The Hudson Review, The Nation, The New York Times, Sparrow, Spirit, Thought and other periodicals. He is also the author of Inscape, a critical study of the British poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, and published a translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy.

Born in 1909 in The Netherlands. Moved to Warwick, NY where he and his wife Claske founded Pacem in Terris. He died in 2006. A painter, sculptor, and author of over 35 books on life, art, and human spirituality.

Marilynn is an inspirational writer and strong advocate for the research that may lead to new drugs and an eventual cure for Alzheimer's. She has taught foreign language for over thirty years on the secondary and university level and is the author of numerous publications in the field of education. Her book, Released to the Angels, is a reflection of her positive attitude and belief that life presents moments of joy and pain and that in experiencing both, we can come to a greater understanding and acceptance of the quiet gifts that surround us.

Wesley and Barbara Gottlock are retired educators who are passionate about the history of Hudson Valley.

Cheetah Haysom was born in South Africa, and on graduating from the University of Natal, Durban, started working as a news reporter and as a New York based foreign correspondent for South African newspapers.. She has lived in Pine Island, in the heart of the Black Dirt region of New York, for 20 years. For more than 10 years, Cheetah has written about the Black Dirt region.

Charles Isaacs has been a school teacher, college professor, social activist, community organizer, financial analyst, ghostwriter, gambler, real estate consultant and occasional journalist. His undergraduate studies were in Mathematics (LIU-Brooklyn), after which he attended the University of Chicago Law School. His later graduate work was in the Social Sciences, earning an M.A. (New School for Social Research) and a Ph.D. (The Union Institute & University) He currently resides in Newburgh, New York.

Has written on topics ranging from the Wild West to internet search techniques.

Former Newburgh native, Guy LoFaro is an 82nd Airborne Division combat veteran and former West Point history professor. LoFaro has written a comprehensive history of 82nd Airborne Division during WWII. He currently resides in Atlanta.

Mary Makofske has taught at Ramapo College of New Jersey and at SUNY Orange, from which she retired in 2006. Traction, her new book of poetry, won the Snyder Prize and was published in 2011 by Ashland Poetry Press. She is also author of The Disappearance of Gargoyles and Eating Nasturtiums, winner of a Flume Press chapbook award. Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies nationwide and in Australia. She enjoys reading poetry and leading book discussions and writing workshops at area libraries.

Robert Milby has read his poetry publicly throughout the Hudson Valley and currently hosts a poetry series at Casa Java, in Cornwall, N.Y. A member of The Woodstock Poetry Society and Voices of the Valley, he has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Mr. Milby’s work has been collected and published in several chapbooks, the most recent entitled Crow Weather .

An award-winning poet and essayist, Siegel is also a former writer for MGM/United Artists and an accomplished classical pianist as well.
Most recently, she was a finalist for the Poetry Foundation’s 2005 Emily Dickinson Poetry Award.
With her husband, Joel Solonche, she is co-author of “Peach Girl: Poems For A Chinese Daughter.”

J. R. Solonche received a BA from New York University and an MA from SUNY–New Paltz. He is the author of Tomorrow, Today, and Yesterday (Deerbrook Editions, 2019); In Short Order (Kelsay Books, 2018); I, Emily Dickinson & Other Found Poems (Deerbrook Editions, 2018); The Black Birch (Aldrich Press/Kelsay Books, 2017); Invisible (Five Oaks Press, 2017); Won’t Be Long (Deerbrook Editions, 2016); and Beautiful Day (Deerbrook Editions, 2015). With his wife Joan I. Siegel, he coauthored Peach Girl: Poems for a Chinese Daughter (Grayson Books, 2001). He is professor emeritus of English at SUNY–Orange County.

Donna Spector is a playwright as well as a poet. Her play Golden Ladder (published in Women Playwrights: The Best Plays of 2002) was produced Off Broadway, as was her first play, Another Paradise, in 1986. Her poetry collection, The Woman Who Married Herself, a finalist for the Sinclair Poetry Prize, was published by Evening Street Press. Her poems and stories have been published in The Greensboro Review, Poet & Critic, Sycamore Review, Notre Dame Review and other literary magazines and anthologies. Winner of the Masters Poetry Prize, she has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize in poetry. Her latest book is entitled ,The Candle of God published in 2012.

Rosemarie Werkman is an award-winning poet and memoirist whose recent volume Love, War, & Remembrance is an account of the powerful impact of World War II on a young girl growing up. Rosemarie Werkman is the author of two books of poetry: Love, War and Remembrance (Trillium Press, 1992) and PS…I Love You (Royal Fireworks Press, 2009). She was appointed the Orange County Poet Laureate by former Orange County Historian Theodore W. Sly; a position she has served in for several years

Albert James (A.J.) Williams-Myers is a professor of Black Studies at the State University of New York in New Paltz. The former executive director of the New York African-American Institute, he is the author of numerous influential volumes on the African-American experience, including Long Hammering: The Forging of an African-American Presence in the Hudson Valley and On the Morning Tide: African Americans, history and methodology in the historical ebb and flow of Hudson River Society.

Author, police detective, and paranormal researcher is the author of several books.

Linda Zimmerman is a ghost investigator and local historian!

Community New Specialist and columnist at the Times Herald Record, Amy is the author of the young adult novel, Down But Not Out in High School.

Margaret Campilonga (M.L. Stainer) lives in the beautiful Hudson Valley area of Ne York State with her husband, Frank. Born in London, she holds degrees from Queens College, SUNY New Paltz and Fordham. A retired high school teacher with many young adult novels to her credit, she writes under the pseudonym M.L. Stainer to honor her father.

The author has published several YA and juvenile titles. Jan Cherpiko's YA novel Imitate the Tiger is based on Valley Central High School in Orange County, where he attended.

Ms. Circosta is a published author of her children’s book, “The Many Tails of
Luck-shmee” (2011), Tate Publishing Enterprises, "Be Beautiful" (2015), Panther Productions and her psychological thriller short story, “1713 Maplewood Drive” (2015), also Panther Productions. Her poems have been published in seven different Anthologies and showcased in Belief Persists (2011) as well as Stars in Our Hearts, (2011). Jennifer was chosen as a semi-finalist in the World Poetry Movement’s International Competition and won the Editor’s Choice Award from the International Library of Poetry for her poem, "The Maiden."

Mattew S. Field has written several books. He has also written a children's book titled "Father Like A Tree." He lives in Orange County.

Bobbi Katz is a children’s book author and her newest books include More Pocket Poems, The Monsterolgist: A Memoir in Rhyme and Nothing But a Dog. She has also written Trailblazers: Poems of Exploration, Once Around the Sun, A Rumpus of Rhymes: A Book of Noisy Poems, a NCTE Notable Book 2001, We the People, a Kirkus Starred Review Booklist Top Ten Poetry Pick, Could We Be Friends? Poems for Pals and 25 Great Grammar Poems with Activities.

Barbara Lanza has written several children's books and is an accomplished artist.

Susan Beth Pfefferof Middletown has written numerous children's and YA books.

Michelle Zink is a YA author and lives in Orange County.