Who We Are

Staff

Maureen Esty, River of Words Coordinator
p: (925) 631-4289
e: [email protected]

River of Words Advisory Council

Robert Hass, co-chair

River of Words judge, advisor, and co-founder, Bob is the author of several books of poems, including Field Guide (1973), Praise (1979), Human Wishes (1989), and Sun Under Wood: New Poems (1996); and a collection of essays, Twentieth Century Pleasures: Prose on Poetry (1984). His poetry collection Time and Materials (2007) won the National Book Award for poetry and the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for poetry. His awards include the Yale Younger Poets Award, the William Carlos Williams Award, the National Book Critics’ Circle Award for criticism in 1984, an Award of Merit from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship. Bob served from 1995 to 1997 as Poet Laureate of the United States and as consultant in poetry to the Library of Congress and as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2001 to 2007. He is a graduate of Saint Mary’s College, and is a Distinguished Professor in Poetry and Poetics at the University of California, Berkeley.

Christopher Sindt 

Christopher Sindt is Vice Provost for Graduate and Professional Programs and Dean of Kalmanovitz School of Education at Saint Mary's. He was also the director of the college’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program for seven years. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and he served from 2002-09 on the advisory board of WritersCorps, a national organization that places writers in urban classrooms and communities. Sindt has a doctorate in English and a master's degree in creative writing from UC Davis. His book The Bodies was published by Parlor Press in 2011, and his poetry chapbook, The Land of Give and Take, was published in 2002. His poetry has recently appeared in nocturnes, Pool, Swerve and Xantippe. 

David Wood

David Wood has worked for more than 25 years as an English teacher at Northgate High School in Walnut Creek, currently serving as department chair. He received a Distinguished Teacher award from Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington in 2002. He was a member of the board of the Aurora Theatre in Berkeley from 1998 to 2007, and served as Board President from 1999 to 2001. Wood is also a director of the Wood Foundation of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. He received his undergraduate degree from Yale University and a Master of Arts in teaching (MAT) in English education from the University of Chicago.

John Muir Laws

River of Words art judge, Naturalist, educator and artist John (Jack) Muir Laws delights in exploring the natural world and sharing this love with others.  Laws has worked as an environmental educator since 1984 in California, Wyoming, and Alaska.  He teaches classes on natural history, conservation biology, scientific illustration, and field sketching. He is trained as a wildlife biologist and is an associate of the California Academy of Sciences. In 2009, he received the Terwilliger Environmental Award for outstanding  service in Environmental Education. He is a 2010 TogetherGreen Conservation Leadership Fellow with the National Audubon Society. He was the 2011 artist for International Migratory Bird Day. Laws has written and illustrated books about art and natural history including The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds (2012), Sierra Birds: a Hiker's Guide (2004), The Laws Guide to the Sierra Nevada (2007), and The Laws Pocket Guide Set to the San Francisco Bay Area (2009). He is a regular contributor to Bay Nature magazine with his "Naturalists Notebook" column. His illustrations are informed by extensive field experience and capture the feeling of the living plant or animal, while also including details critical for identification. Laws is deeply committed to stewardship of nature and collaborates with organizations throughout the state. He is the founder and host of the Bay Area Nature Journal Club. A free, family friendly, intergenerational community who connect with nature through art and field journaling. He is the primary author and editor of the California Native Plant Society Curriculum: Opening the world through Nature Journaling. This standards based, curriculum is kid tested and teacher approved and integrates science, language arts, and visual arts through teaching students to keep a nature journal. He initiated Following Muir's Footsteps, an educational program to engender passionate love of nature, personal understanding of natural history and commitment to stewardship. This program gets students out in the field, learning from their own observations and using field guides and nature journals as the basis for discovering nature around them. As a part of this project, he is working secure funding to donate sets of field guides to every middle and high school in the Sierra Nevada.  

Leonore Wilson

Leonore Wilson has long taught English and creative writing at various colleges and universities in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her new book of poetry is Western Solstice (Hiraeth Press). Her poetry, stories and essays have been featured in such magazines as Quarterly West, Madison Review, Laurel Review, Pif, and Third Coast. She has won fellowships to the University of Utah and Villa Montalvo Center of the Arts. Her work has been nominated for four Pushcart awards. Leonore lives on her historic family cattle ranch in the east hills of the Napa Valley. She is the mother of three grown sons.