2018 Season

Joshua Palmatier is a writer with a PhD in mathematics. He was born in Pennsylvania, but currently resides in New York while teaching mathematics full-time at the State University of New York- Oneonta. Palmatier started writing Science Fiction and Fantasy novels in eighth grade, and hasn’t stopped writing since, mainly focusing on novels. “The Skewed Throne,” his first work of fantasy, was a Compton Crook finalist for best first novel in the science fiction and fantasy genres for 2006.

Karin Lin-Greenberg is an American fiction writer. Her story collection, Faulty Predictions, won the 2013 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction from the University of Georgia Press and won gold in the Short Story category of Foreword Reviews’ 2014 INDIEFAB Book of the Year. Currently, she lives in upstate New York and is an associate professor in the English Department at Siena College.

Linnea Hartsuyker is a full time writer of historical fiction living in New York City with her husband. She has a MFA in Creative Writing from NYU and a BS in Material Science and Engineering from Cornell University. When she was a teenager, her family embarked on a project to trace their ancestry. They found that Harald Fairhair (Harfagr), the first king of Norway is one of their ancestors. Those explorations gave her the seeds of her first novel, The Half-Drowned King. 

Patrick Thomas has had stories published in over three dozen magazines and more than fifty anthologies. He’s written 30+ books including the fantasy humor series Murphy’s Lore, urban fantasy spin offs Fairy With a Gun, and Fairy Rides The Lightning. He has a darkly humorous advice column Dear Cthulhu which includes the collections Have a Dark Day, and Good Advice For Bad People. 

Kelli Huggins is a historian who believes history should never be boring. She is the author of the book Curiosities of Elmira: The Last Labrador Duck, Professor Smokeball, the Great Female Crime Spree & More. A specialist in animal history, her current book project is about the rise of canine celebrity in the late 19^th century, which is largely a dual biography of Railroad Jack and Owney, two real-life, train-riding famous dogs. Kelli regularly writes for the Chemung County Historical Society’s blog, where her love of unusual, quirky topics is on full display. Her articles have appeared in the New York State Archives Magazine and other publications. Kelli won the 2016 and 2017 Researching the Empire State Writing Contests for her essays “Flocks of Kittens and Litters of Chicks: Interspecies Adoption in New York, 1880-1920” and “Death Rays: The Murder That Put X-Rays on Trial.”

Kelli has worked as the Education Coordinator at the Chemung County Historical Society since 2013 and is now off to her next adventure as the Visitor Experience Coordinator at the Catskill Interpretive Center.  She earned a Master’s Degree in History and a Museum Studies Certificate from the University of Delaware.  She taught history and public history courses as an adjunct at Elmira College. Kelli was named the 2014 Museum Association of New York “Rising Star” Award winner.

Steve Coffman grew up in South Bend, Indiana where he wrote his senior class “play.” At the University of Michigan he won 3 Avery Hopwood creative writing awards and had several plays produced. Other productions followed at the University of Detroit, Norfolk State College, Bowie State College, The Smithsonian Institution and the The Dundee Players.

His move to a rural lifestyle gradually caused Coffman’s writing to move toward fiction and creative nonfiction. He has had stories published in “The Little Magazine” and “Nantucket Review” and four in “Redbook” (including “Freshening” which was also anthologized in Redbook’s Famous Fiction, Vol II.)

Coffman has taught writing at the University of Iowa, University of Michigan, Keuka College and the Elmira Correctional Facility. He has given readings from Madison, CT to Seattle WA, including dozens in New York State. He has led NYS writing workshops in Dundee, Penn Yan, Indian Lake, Finger Lakes Community College, Canstota, Tupper Lake, the North Creek and Attica Correctional Facilities.

Since 1972, Steve Coffman and his wife Bobbie have lived on a defunct farm at the end of a dirt road on one of the highest hills in rural Yates County, where they have raised two children, bounteous flowers and vegetables, occasional cows, horses, pigs, chickens and many acres of glorious trees.

Published nonfiction includes two political memoirs, Peace Meal and Messy Freedom (Foothills Publishing, 2005 and 2006), and the country memoir How To Walk A Pig (1995) which was expanded into Chicken Justice (Hearst, 2006), Founders v. Bush (2008), and Words of the Founding Fathers: Selected Quotations of Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton, with Sources (2014).