HVWG Member Lisa St John recently won first place in Anthology’s Poetry Competition with her poem “Through the Membrane.”
Lisa St. John is a writer living in the beautiful Hudson Valley of upstate New York and used to live in the Arizona desert. She is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee. Lisa is a board member of The International Women’s Writing Guild (IWWG) and co-hosts their Featured Author and Open Mic series with Catharina Coenen. She is also on the Board of Trustees of the Stone Ridge Public Library and volunteers in their Little Book Shop.
Peter Balint‘s new memoir The Shoe in the Danube: The immigrant experience of a holocaust survivor, describes his origins, and eventual immigration to the US. It is available in a number of libraries around the Capital District. Peter has given several author talks and has more scheduled at local libraries and Albany JCC.
Peter Balint was born in Budapest, Hungary nine months before the end of WW II. His father was killed 2 weeks before the end of the war by the NAZIs at Mauthausen. In 1946 his widowed mother along with her daughter and her son fled as refugees to Germany where he was raised until he was 13 years old. He immigrated with his mother to the United States at 13, eventually graduated from high school and college, and served for three years on active duty as a commissioned officer in the US Army. Following that service he had a career both in the United States and internationally. He and his wife have three college educated children with masters degrees. Their two daughters are published authors and one is serving in the US Congress. He has been working on his memoir/biography with fits and starts for over twenty years.
Shakeema Funchess has three new children’s books available – Hoodnight, Brooklyn: Jahrel’s Got the Juice, Audris the Kind-Hearted: The ABCs of Boundaries, and The Wildlife of Emotion: Learning to Manage Our Feelings.
Hoodnight, Brooklyn: Jahrel’s Got the Juice (April 18, 2025) is a lyrical and heartwarming bedtime story that celebrates the rhythm, resilience, and richness of life in Brooklyn. Inspired by the tone of Goodnight Moon, it offers a fresh, culturally grounded perspective that honors BIPOC communities with authenticity and joy. Told in poetic verse, this book is a love letter to the borough’s neighborhoods, people, and enduring spirit.
Audris the Kind-Hearted: The ABCs of Boundaries (April 22, 2025) is an empowering picture book that introduces children to the concepts of boundaries, consent, and emotional safety through the lens of a kind and relatable young girl named Audris. With vibrant AI illustrations and accessible language, it’s a tool for encouraging self-respect and empathy from an early age.
The Wildlife of Emotion: Learning to Manage Our Feelings (Teplitskaya Tales) (May 26, 2025) – is an emotional literacy story, where children are introduced to seven expressive animal characters—Anger the Lion, Sadness the Bear, Fear the Rabbit, Jealousy the Fox, Happiness the Monkey, Wisdom the Owl—and Renata, a brave little girl who helps them navigate their feelings. This book encourages self-awareness and emotional regulation in a fun and compassionate way.
Shakeema Funchess is an inspiring author who is making a difference in the lives of young readers. She is a graduate of Saint Bonaventure University and holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology and pre-law. She minored in Arabic and Islamic Studies. Born and raised in bustling cities in New York, Funchess developed a love for writing and storytelling at a young age. She has a master’s in healthcare administration from Southern New Hampshire University. While completing her education, Funchess began her career as a writer, focusing on creating stories that would empower and inspire young readers. She drew upon her own experiences as an African American woman to create relatable characters that would help children understand the complexities of the world around them. She is deeply committed to promoting diversity and inclusion in her writing, and her stories often feature characters from a wide range of backgrounds and cultures. Funchess is known for her dynamic and engaging artistic style, which is both educational and entertaining. Her stories often tackle difficult topics such as racism, discrimination, and prejudice, but always do so with a message of hope and resilience. She is also a dedicated advocate for literacy and education and has worked tirelessly to promote the importance of reading and writing skills among young people. She wants her books to captivate and inspire young readers, and she remains committed to creating stories that promote diversity, kindness, empathy, and understanding.
Elisabeth Frischauf has just published her second poetry memoir volume of “They Clasp My Hand,” called The Lost Notebook. The first book is easily available on Amazon/Kindle They Clasp My Hand. Unfortunately, due to tariffs, it is too difficult to order online from Theodor Kramer Verlag except in the European Union. Elizabeth will mail out the copies of this second book until it becomes an ebook.
Frischauf, born in 1947 to Austrian refugees and raised on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, is a neuro-psychiatrist, poet, and accomplished visual artist whose work reflects a legacy of survival, resilience, and creative renewal. Her bilingual memoir poem They Clasp My Hand (Theodor Kramer Verlag, 2022) explores her family’s tragic history during the Holocaust and their efforts to rebuild in upstate New York. Praised by Edmund de Waal, her poetry often appears on politically engaged platforms, and her mixed media and ceramic art has been featured in juried exhibitions and private collections. She lives in Putnam County with her husband, a playwright, where she writes, makes art, and gardens—honoring the memory of those who came before her.
Joni Marie Iraci announces her second novel, Vatican Daughter, has just been released and is now available for purchase.
Set in Rome and Venice – with a brief stop in Magallanes, Chile, and New York City – Vatican Daughter propels the reader deep into the heart of Italy. Ensnared by its vivid descriptive language, you will be transported and immersed in this plausible, suspenseful story as it takes you through various cities, tasting their foods along the way, with different characters. At the same time, you will meander along the medieval palazzos of Rome and Venice, sip the wine, explore the countryside, ride the train, step behind the walls of Vatican City and its papal gardens, and imagine experiencing the loss of a child at the hands of men who would go to any means to avoid the exposure of Vatican corruption, papal indiscretion, and the Vatican’s long-buried secrets. A story of a young woman who relentlessly searches for her child while coming head-to-head with the most powerful entity on earth, Vatican Daughter focuses on serious female-centric issues and the Vatican’s controversial, scandalous, and hypocritical behaviors.
Eileen Kelly shares that her novel, Small Wonder, won the Bookfest First Place Award for Women’s Fiction and was a featured Indie Fiction Starred Review in the April print issue of Kirkus Reviews.
Eileen Kelly lives in Stephentown, New York, where she writes development documents for criminal justice and mental health nonprofits and fiction for children and adults. Her stories have appeared in the Tupelo Quarterly and Wrongdoing Magazine. She is a winner of the Hopwood Award in the Novel from the University of Michigan’s MFA program. This is her first novel.
