Kim Bridgford, Founder & Director (1959-2020)
We remember with deep love and admiration our Founder and original Director, Kim Bridgford. She was the former Director of the West Chester Poetry Conference, the editor of Mezzo Cammin and founder of The Mezzo Cammin Women Poets Timeline Project. Bridgford was the author of many books of poetry, including Bully Pulpit, a book of poems on bullying; Epiphanies, Doll, and the recently released A Crown for Ted and Sylvia.
Anna M. Evans
Anna M. Evans gained her MFA from Bennington College and has received Fellowships from the MacDowell Artists’ Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She currently teaches at West Windsor Art Center and Rowan College at Burlington County. Her collection, Under Dark Waters: Surviving the Titanic, is available from Able Muse Press, and her sonnet collection, Sisters & Courtesans, is available from White Violet Press. Her website is annamevans.com.
Linda Stern
Linda Stern co-published the poetry magazine Endymion and, more recently, was associate editor of the online poetry journal Umbrella. She is the author of Why We Go by Twos, a book of poems from Barefoot Muse Press. She co-hosts a reading series in Manhattan, where she lives and works.
allison joseph
Allison Joseph lives in Carbondale, Illinois, where she is on the faculty at Southern Illinois University. Her most recent collections of poems are Lexicon (Red Hen Press, 2021, PBTS Best Book Award winner), Any Proper Weave (Kelsay Books, 2022), Speak and Spell (Glass Lyre Press, 2022), and Confessions of a Barefaced Woman (Red Hen Press, 2018). Confessions of a Barefaced Woman won the 2019 Feathered Quill Book Award and was a finalist for the 2019 NAACP Image Award. She was named Illinois Author of the Year for 2022 by the Illinois Association of Teachers of English. Her poems have appeared in the New York Times and in the Best American Poetry Series. She is the widow of beloved poet and editor Jon Tribble.
PATRICIA BEHRENS
Patricia Behrens began publishing poetry in 2010 and her poetry has since appeared in publications such as Naugatuck River Review, Split Rock Review, The Literary Bohemian, The Road Not Taken, Think, and American Arts Quarterly. She has also practiced law under the name Patricia McGovern, served as a Board member of non-profit legal organizations, and co-edited Courthouses of the Second Circuit: Their Architecture, History, and Stories (Acanthus Press, 2015).
Poetry by the Sea would like to recognize seven former Advisory Board Members who have now moved on to other projects. Thank you for helping to make the first years of the conference possible: