Gray Hair Reading Series

Don Mitchell grew up on the island of Hawai'i. Although as a Stanford undergraduate his professors encouraged him to attempt a career as a writer, he went to Harvard for a Ph.D. in anthropology instead. As a graduate student and professor at Buff State, he specialized in ecological anthropology, but in the mid-1990s he turned his attention to the emerging field of humanistic anthropology, winning the Society for Humanistic Anthropology's Poetry and Fiction prizes. Along the way he has been a photographer, marathoner and ultra-marathoner, professional road race timer, computer programmer, and renovator of old houses. His poetry, fiction, and photographs have appeared in Humanistic Anthropology, Green Mountains Review, New Millennium Writings, Discover, The Boston Phoenix, and elsewhere. His story "Dog Food" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and "Slip Pivot" won second place in the New Millennium Writings competition. Much of his work is based on years of living among the Nagovisi people of Bougainville (Papua New Guinea). He is working on a novel set on the island during its brutal decade-long secessionist war. He divides his time between Colden, NY and Hawai'i. 

Ruth Thompson grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and spent her working life in Los Angeles. In 2007, her poem "Fat Time" won the New Millennium Writings Award, and her poem sequence Family Album won second place in the William Faulkner / Pirate's Alley poetry contest. Her poem, "The Snow Leopard," is featured as one of Michael Morgulis's broadsides in the Tru-Teas Poetry series. Other work has appeared in Sonora Review, Comstock Review, Sow's Ear Poetry Review, River Styx, 13th Moon, and elsewhere. Ruth received a BA from Stanford and a Ph.D. in American Lit. from Indiana U., and has been a university professor, librarian, community network organizer, college administrator, yoga teacher, and poetry editor of The Eclipse literary magazine. In 2005 she left academia to live in a farmhouse in Colden, NY with her long-lost college sweetheart, teach yoga and meditation, and work on her first book of poems.

Some publications related to this event:
October, 2008 - 2008