Speakers 2025

Lyssa Black Fassett

Alive In This World: Tracking Light Through The Wilderness of Grief explores the altered perceptual landscape experienced after profound loss, and discovering new roadmaps that illuminate the way.

One of the primary teachers in this undertaking is the natural world and the organic healing that world has to offer the lonely journeyer struggling with grief.

Walking a familiar path through the woods, surrendering your pain to the ocean’s waves as you stand in the cold waters, sitting with a friend outside under the night sky—there is a synergy here that can greatly help the grieving process.

Jan Lokuta –  Gifford Pinchots’ vision of conservation compared to John Muir’s vision of preservation

Bill Longstreet – Fishing Guide

With nearly two decades of fly fishing experience, Bill is also an all-around sportsman, which can mean a lot when you’re spending a day on the water with a guide. He’s passionate about teaching others about the lifelong journey that fly fishing gives. Bill has been a resident of northeastern Pennsylvania for his whole life and is a devoted husband and father to his two boys, who he’s also busy instilling a lifelong passion for the outdoors. Bill is well versed in all techniques of fly fishing, and his easygoing personality allows him to easily convey those techniques to others.

Merrill Douglas – Poet

Merrill Oliver Douglas’s first full length collection, Persephone Heads For the Gate, won the 2022 Gerald Cable Book Award from Silverfish Review Press. She is also the author of the poetry chapbook Parking Meters into Mermaids (Finishing Line Press, 2020). Her poems have appeared in Baltimore Review, Barrow Street, Tar River Poetry, Stone Canoe, SWWIM Every Day, Verse Daily and Whale Road Review, among others. She lives in Vestal, New York. 

At the festival, she will read poems from Persephone Heads For the Gate, along with newer work. 

Amanda Mac Tarnaghan Forest Ranger at Vosburg State Forest on American Eagles

Take a short walk and learn more along the way about eagles and their life cycle, as well as the story of their incredible comeback.

Amanda MacTarnaghan is the Environmental Education Specialist at Vosburg Neck State Park. She offers recreational and educational programming for all ages at the park. Prior to beginning her career with DCNR she was a middle school mathematics teacher who had a passion for being outdoors and learning about the amazing flora and fauna of Pennsylvania.