Joseph (Jay) Featherstone, President was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., and grew up in post- war Japan. A Harvard graduate, he has been many things: a political activist (speechwriter for the anti-Vietnam War candidate, Sen. Eugene McCarthy in the 1968 Democratic primaries), and for many years a literary critic and editor of the New Republic, where he also wrote about politics and education. He served as the headmaster of the Commonwealth School in Boston. He has taught at Harvard, Brown, and Michigan State, where he and his colleagues pioneered a progressive, school-based teacher education program, about which he co-authored a book with Helen Featherstone and other colleagues, Transforming Teacher Education, Notes from the Field (Harvard EducationPress, 2007). He has written a number of other books on education, including Dear Josie, Witnessing the Hopes and Failures of Democratic Education (TC Press, 2003) This book was declared a distinguished foreign contribution to education, and was translated and published by the East China Normal University Press in Shanghai. Besides the New Republic his writings and poems have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Atlantic, the Harvard Education Review, Ploughshares, the Harvard Review, and the Nation. His first poetry collection is Brace’s Cove (New Issues, 2000). He convenes regular meetings of the Off Season, a poetry group in Cambridge, Mass, and is active in the Gloucester Writers Center. He is married to the writer and educator, Helen Featherstone. They have three grown children and 5 grandchildren. His poetry website is jayfeatherstone.com.
Mary Tess Crotty, Vice President spent 25 years leading customer experience and performance management as Vice President of Quality for Genesis HealthCare, a national long-term care company. She aligned internal programs and operations with the company’s mission and vision and coached multiple leaders to receive the industry’s highest performance recognition, the American Health Care Association’s Gold Award for Performance Excellence. Mary Tess introduced and led training strategies that support person-centered care by focusing on the relationship between caregiver and patient and encouraging listening skills rooted in compassion. Prior to her career at Genesis, Mary Tess led several non-profit organizations in the arts and education. Mary Tess completed her M.A. at Lesley University focusing on Adult Development and Creativity.
Mary Baine Campbell, Clerk is a Professor of English Emeritus at Brandeis University, where she taught medieval and early modern literature, and directed the Creative Writing program. She is the author of The Witness and the Other World: European Travel Writing 400-1600, Wonder and Science: Imagining Worlds in Early Modern Europe (winner of the MLA’s James Russell Lowell Prize for the Best Book of 2001), and two books of poetry: her current project is a book on early modern dreams. She has held research fellowships at Brown and Columbia Universities, the National Humanities Center (US), the Max Planck Institut fur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, and Birbeck College, University of London.
Maria (Mia) Millefoglie was raised in Gloucester by an extended family of Sicilian immigrants working in the fishing industry. Mia’s early career provided advocacy and social work services for Boston’s Italian communities. In Maine, she developed a career spanning 25 years leading philanthropy, marketing, and communication initiatives for the non-profit healthcare sector. In 2021, she formed WritePages, LLC as a vehicle to support non-profit organizations to articulate their missions, shape their stories, and craft compelling proposals for securing funding.She authored Senior Solutions and has published articles in Stonecoast Review, Remington Report, Nursing Management, HomeHealth Care Nursing Journal, and white papers for industry journals. She holds an MA in Public Policy and Management from the Muskie School of Public Service, University of Southern Maine. In June 2020, she earned an MFA in Creative Non-Fiction from the Stonecoast Program, University of Southern Maine. She is working on a collection of personal essays and a memoir set in Gloucester. Mia and her husband enjoy life in Kennebunk, Maine.
Megan Hemenway is a student at Endicott College studying Communication with a minor in Creative Writing. Currently, she is the president of Endicott’s radio club, is an honors scholar, and also participates in the theatre program. In her free time, she loves writing and in 2020 published her first poetry chapbook, “Pity Party.” Additionally, her poetry has been featured in The Somerville Times and the Muddy River Poetry Review. Aside from poetry, she has also cultivated an entertainment and lifestyle blog called itsmegblog.com. Overall, she hopes to motivate young people from the North Shore and beyond to use their voices and hopefully be heard by others. Megan resides in Woburn with her family and two dogs.