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 Pinchot’s” vision of conservation compared to John Muir’s vision of preservation, set against the backdrop our national forests and national parks.”

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.

“Fred Burton has written a post-apocalyptic, mind-bending thriller that scours the depths of morality, ethics, and consciousness in a race to control the very essence of humanity. This thoughtful, provocative page-turner explores themes not easily debated in the 2025 political landscape and asks questions we may not want the answers to as we hurtle toward a future that seemingly has already arrived. The question is, are we ready?”

– Pam Lazos, author of Bad Pharma and the blog, Green Life Blue Water

The near-future reality portrayed in Man Made is eerily familiar.  But the AI, social media, and surveillance tools are more advanced, and the populous more dispirited.  The collective gaze has shifted to cyborg intelligence and its promise of speed learning; one more layer of technology to fix the problems caused by all those that came before it.  But the amazing talents displayed by the first cyborgs to come online uncover one surprising finding: the awesome power contained within each of us.

We have entered an age where many of us feel there is no center, no agreed upon sources of truth.  We are creeping, or lunging, towards authoritarianism.  We are looking for answers.  Man Made provides answers that sometimes conflict, but definitely need to be discussed and interrogated.  Like most good fiction, Man Made wraps its answers in flesh and blood.  The experience is visceral because the characters struggle to retain their humanity, but may find that goal beyond their grasp.  It does all this with a compelling, entertaining narrative that modulates between hyper-realistic and surreal realms of experience.

Fred Burton grew up in Queens, New York and wrote fiction through his early 20s. This was his first passion and he returned to it after his sons reached their teen years. He’s lived most of the past 30 years in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

He is particularly well suited to write a book like Man Made.  In addition to his love for literature he spent his career in the technology sector.  Understanding how complex computing systems work was invaluable for this project.  It was the perfect counterpoint to his desire to present what it means to be fully human.

Burton has previously published two novels.  One reviewer said the first, The Old Songs, read like a “gritty Anne Tyler novel”.  The second, Bountiful Calling, investigates the effects of fracking on the residents of Pennsylvania.

Man Made can be purchased at Amazon and IngramSpark.  For review copies or interview requests, please contact Fred Burton at contact@FredFBurton.com.

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.