Since 1991 I have done presentations and facilitated numerous book-discussion groups for the Vermont Council on the Humanities. I have visited libraries (and often accepted invitations to return for repeat engagements) in the following Vermont communities: St. Johnsbury, Thetford, Post Mills, Norwich, Strafford, Warren, Cuttingsville, Westminster West, Rochester, Springfield, and Washington. In the process, I have helped participants explore fiction and nonfiction works by William Shakespeare, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, E.B. White, Gloria Naylor, Willa Cather, George Bernard Shaw, Andrei Codrescu, P.D. James, William Faulkner, Jeannette Winterson, Leslie Marmon Silko, Michael Dorris, Manlio Argueta, Michael Ondaatje, Arthur Miller, Gary Wills, Emily Bronte, Harper Lee, Marie-Claire Blais, Julia Alvarez, Paul Monette, Jody Gladding, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Barry Lopez. Charles Simic, John Engels, Jane Kenyon, Terry Osborne, W.D. Wetherell, Howard Mansfield, Galway Kinnell, Cleopatra Mathis, and Eugene O'Neill, as well as sessions on classic fairy tales and nursery rhymes.

Poetry readings have included the Meetinghouse Reading Series, in Canaan, N.H. (1994, 1999); the Friends Meetinghouse, in Hanover, N.H., as a benefit for the Upper Valley Land Trust (1997); The Bean Gallery in Lebanon, N.H. (1997); The Frost Place, in Franconia, N.H. (1997, 2000); Riverfest, in Hartford, Vt. (1996, 1997, 2000); the Full Moon Café, in South Strafford, Vt. (1997, 1998, 1999, 2000); the Lathem Library in Thetford, Vt., as part of the Elizabeth Mines Remediation Project's Copper Mine Arts series (1999); The Town House Readings Series in Strafford, Vt. (1999); The Morrill Memorial - Harris Library, in Strafford, Vt. (1999); Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, Vt. (1998, 1999); The Good Life Center, in Harborside, Maine (1999); Camp Manito-wish YMCA, in Boulder Junction, Wis. (1999); The Norwich Book Store, in Norwich, Vt. (1999); Della Rossi Trattoria, Dublin, N.H. (2000); The Galaxy Bookshop, Hardwick, Vt. (2000); The Book Rack, Winooski, Vt. (2001); Bear Pond Bookstore, Montpelier, Vt. (2001); two benefit readings for Vermont Refugee Assistance, with Poets for Peace: Unitarian Church, Montpelier, Vt. and the Vermont Jazz Center, Brattleboro, Vt. (2002); and participation in a statewide series of readings in celebration of the poet Hayden Carruth (2002).

I give annual presentations on publishing to the Wildbranch Workshop in Outdoor, Natural History, and Environmental Writing, at Sterling College in Craftsbury Common, Vermont (director: Dave Brown). This is an annual writers' conference with a special emphasis on nature writing in a range of forms, including journalism as well as creative writing such as essays, fiction, and poetry.

Once or twice each year I give presentations to Elderhostel groups in Lyme, New Hampshire, hosted by the Aloha Foundation of Fairlee, Vermont (director: Deb Williams) as part of the theme Contemporary New England Nature Writers. My role has been to guide participants "behind the scenes" of the writing and editorial process, explaining how different types of authors create a wide variety of writings. I also include observations about the present state of book publishing, since this is a time of great turmoil.

I have been co-organizer and principal host and introducer for the annual Town House Reading Series in Strafford, Vermont.

I have been invited to be the "first poem" reader at the annual awards dinner of the Vermont Book Professionals Association (director: Rebecca Béguin) and have also served as a panelist and resource person for VBPA workshops and roundtable sessions.

As part of a three-year project funded by a grant from the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest foundation and administered by the Vermont Center for the Book, I was invited by Vermont's state poet Ellen Bryant Voigt to take part in a program called The Poet Next Door which included participation in a teachers' workshop, an interactive television session with students from seven of the state's high schools (video available), and three follow-up visits to St. Johnsbury Academy (teacher: Jenny Land) and Sharon Academy (teacher: Curtis Ingham) for workshops on writing, bookmaking, and publishing.

I participated in a panel discussion about publishing at the annual conference of the New Hampshire Writers Project (director of programs: Karen Marzloff.)

I organized and participated in a panel discussion of publishing options for the Northern New England chapter of the writers' organization PEN (director: Sally Ryder Brady).

I helped organize and introduce a series of collaborative readings involving more than a dozen authors of books published by Chelsea Green Publishing Company and hosted by bookstores throughout Vermont and New Hampshire.

I participated in a panel discussion on careers in environmentalism organized by the Environmental Studies Program of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire.

I helped organize and participated in a series of workshops on homesteading, publishing, organic gardening, and renewable energy hosted by Chelsea Green Publishing Company at the three-day Solarfest held annually in Middletown Springs, Vermont.

Twice I have been invited to be one of four resident-faculty poets at the Frost Place Festival of Poetry, an annual conference convened by director Donald Sheehan at the former home of Robert Frost in Franconia, New Hampshire. I designed and led daily, three-hour workshops; supervised four individual tutorials; and gave a public reading.

I planned and delivered a presentation to an literature class at Thetford Academy in Thetford, Vermont (teacher: Peggy Sadler), explaining the steps involved in writing and publishing a book.

I helped organize and host Chelsea Green's First Annual Convocation of the Invisible Universe at Shelburne Farms in Shelburne, Vermont.

I wrote and delivered a presentation about writing, editing, and publishing to a discussion group at the senior-citizens residence Kendal in Hanover, New Hampshire. (organizer: Charles Dudley).

I was invited to be the guest of the Good Life Center in Harborside, Maine, an educational center established at the home of the late authors and activists Helen and Scott Nearing (organizer: Kathy Mills). I presented a talk entitled "Poetry as Compass" and gave a reading of my own poems, then answered questions from the audience.

Poetry Residency at the Newton School kindergarten, South Strafford, Vermont (teachers: Leslie Johnston and Brenda Billian). Using poems by Robert Frost, Edna St. Vincent Millay, James Wright, and Emily Dickinson, I planned and presented three sessions introducing groups of students to three basic elements in poetry -- music (rhythm & rhyme), description (images), and comparisons (metaphors).

Speaker at a conference on Energy Futures at Middlebury College. I wrote and presented a plenary talk concerning the role of education, including imaginative writing and publishing, in addressing environmental, economic, and policy issues such as energy production and consumption.

I taught a class called Dimensions in Learning for Community College of Vermont in White River Junction, Vermont (co-director, Ina Anderson). This is a required course in reading, composition, and discussion for "non-traditional" students returning to school. I spent a great deal of time with the students looking at letters, diary entries, poems, short stories, and novels as examples of private, personal "voices" taking public form.

I taught classes on Native American History and Culture, the first sponsored by Lebanon College of Lebanon, New Hampshire (director: Jan Chapman), and the second by Community College of Vermont in White River Junction, Vermont (co-director, Deecie McNelly).

Presentation to the New England Writers' Conference in Windsor, Vermont (directors: Frank and Susan Anthony). I gave a talk on the writing and editorial process, describing the particularly close working relationship between book authors and their editors.

I participated in numerous performance residencies with Bread & Puppet Theatre in the United States, Canada, and Europe (director: Peter Schumann). In each locale, a small core company of puppeteers would work with local volunteers of various ages to create a new version of a particular traveling show and we would often meet with audience members after performances to entertain questions.