Julie Ruth
Julie Ruth is a journalist living in Stockbridge. She previously covered South County for the Berkshire Record
Justin F. Jackson
Justin F. Jackson is a historian, author and assistant professor of history at Bard College at Simon's Rock in Great Barrington. Jackson has also lectured on Great Barrington native, author and scholar W.E.B. Du Bois.
Kameron Spaulding
Kameron Spaulding is a former newspaper reporter and editor who now leads his own communications firm in Lenox.
Karen Andrews
Karen Andrews is a freelance writer, artist, mediator and environmentally concerned resident of Berkshire County. She has written and photographed for the Artful Mind and Berkshire Trade and Commerce and is interested in things that contribute to community and environmental health.
Karen Beckwith
Karen Beckwith is the principal of Karen Beckwith Creative, an interior design consultancy based in Lenox, which specializes in both interior and custom product design for residential and commercial spaces. KBC serves mostly New England from Western MA with interior design and construction selections/specifications as well as renovation design. To learn more, visit karenbeckwith.com or call 413-637-4479.
Karen Christensen
Karen Christensen is CEO of Berkshire Publishing Group, based in Great Barrington. She is the author of several popular environmental books and numerous academic and professional publications, and has been a leader in US-China partnerships in publishing. After graduating from UC Santa Barbara, Christensen began her publishing career in London, and became a speaker on women's issues for the UK Green Party and a trustee of the Environmental Design Association as well as a founding member of the Women's Environmental Network. She is a member of the National Committee on United States-China Relations and a trustee of the University of Pennsylvania Press.
Karen Davis
Karen Davis is a professional rhymographer. She is available to create a rhyme for your event: Everything’s custom it’s your voice that’s heard We put it to verse every notable word From celebrations, farewells or giving ‘addresses’ To invites & parties or handling stresses Make it unique, let it sing, make it shine! Whether business or personal, it’s better in Rhyme!
Karen Lee
The daughter of a rabbi and a graduate of Hunter College, Karen Lee of Lenox is a Pilates specialist, choreographer, movement therapist, burlesque dancer, published writer, artist, actress (The Berkshire Eagle named her Best Actress in 2013 for her performance in the world premiere of Joan Ackermann’s “QWERTY: Typewriter Plays”), and the mother of Max and Sam, both rising stars. In addition, she is Pilates Director at the Westmoor Club on Nantucket.
Karen Shreefter
Karen Shreefter, who heads Karen Shreefter Landscape design of Monterey, Mass., has been a designer for two decades. Beginning with graphic design, she expanded into landscape design after obtaining a horticultural certificate from MCLA and then a landscape design certificate from the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, which at the time was associated with the New York Botanical Garden in New York City. Additionally, she studied at The Research Center for Japanese Garden Art & Historical Heritage in Kyoto, Japan. Currently, she enjoys working with her clients on their woodland, pool, Japanese-style, and floriferous gardens. Her work can be seen at www.kslandscapedesign.com
Karrie Allen
Karrie Allen Buratto is Marketing & Communications Specialist at Berkshire United Way. Previously she was a writer at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, the only college in the country offering a liberal arts and sciences BA program specifically designed for students ready to enter college early, after the 10th or 11th grade. Prior to Simon’s Rock, she worked at Columbia-Greene Media for 15 years, six years with the Register-Star in various positions, and nine years as editor of the Chatham Courier.
Kate Bailey
Kate Bailey is a staff member at Berkshire Grown.
Kateri Kosek
Kateri Kosek grew up in the Hudson Valley but has lived in or near the Berkshires for over a decade. She is the author of American Eclipse, winner of the Three Mile Harbor Press Poetry Book Award, and a chapbook, Vernal. Her poetry and essays have appeared in Orion, Creative Nonfiction, Northern Woodlands Magazine, Berkshire Magazine, and many literary journals. She teaches college English, and as a lifelong birder, has worked locally surveying bird populations for Green Berkshires and Aton Forest. More at katerikosek.com.
Kathleen George
Kathleen George is a Ph.D., DMIN, LADC I and a Chaplain at Fairview Hospital. Platform to Recovery is dedicated to helping people overcome substance abuse, alcohol addictions and other addictive disorders. I can help you break free from addiction issues. I am a counselor who will treat addicts heal by CBT, EMDR and Art Therapy. As a grief counselor I help many who have lost loved ones to addictions. Kathleen can be reached at platformtorecovery@yahoo.com.
Kathleen Williams
Kathleen Williams is a transplant from California where she was a stringer for the L.A. Times. She eventually wrote a (satirical) fashion column for the Times' Ventura County section while maintaining an avocado orchard and managing a small apicultural business. Currently, she lives near Alford, Mass., in an area known to locals as Green River.
Katy Sparks
Katy Sparks is an award-winning chef and culinary and food systems consultant who lives and works in the southern Berkshires after spending over 25 years in New York City. She is Cornell certified in Executive Leadership and passionate about helping our local food businesses and food makers grow and thrive. She enjoys the abundant and diverse cultural scene in our region and shares many beautiful local walks with her husband and energetic “doodle”.
Keith Shaw
Residing in Adams, Massachusetts, Keith Shaw received his doctorate in art history from the University of Pennsylvania. He has taught art history at various institutions, including Long Island University and Hofstra University. Upon escaping from New York in 2001, he took a position at Berkshire Community College -- his current affiliation. Shaw has numerous scholarly publications on Italian Renaissance art. From 2008 to 2013, he was a regular contributor of art reviews and criticism on Berkshire artists for The Berkshire Eagle, Berkshire’s Week, and Artscope Magazine. During 2014 and 2015, he was the director and chief curator for the Berkshire Artist Museum in North Adams.
Ken Roht
Ken is a progressive-multimedia artist and a pied piper for community-engagement creations. In October of 2017, he left Los Angeles in search of new adventures, started Daniel’s Art Party in January 2018 “and that has made all the difference.”
Kenzie Fields
Kenzie Fields is an Associate Agent, licensed in Massachusetts, at Elyse Harney Real Estate. Kenzie has lived in six countries across both hemispheres and moved to Massachusetts from Brooklyn in 2010. She has represented and facilitated transactions from historic farms to contemporary single-family houses, as well as large-scale commercial properties, rentals, land, and foreclosures. As a member of the Berkshire Board of Realtors, she currently serves as a town monitor for New Marlborough, Mass. She is the chairperson of the Great Barrington Fresh Air Fund volunteer committee, is a member of the board of Flying Cloud Institute, serves on the New Marlborough Housing Committee, and is a team member of Sole To Soul, a project of the New Marlborough Land Trust. She is a former school committee member of the Southern Berkshire Regional School District. Kenzie is a photographer, a horsewoman, and lives in an 18th-century village house in Mill River with her husband, three children, therapy dogs, and other critters too numerous to mention (but all very beloved).
Kerry Bartini
Kerry Bartini, AIA, NCARB is a principal at Berkshire Design, Inc. in Pittsfield, MA. She is a licensed architect in the state of Massachusetts, serves as an executive board member of WMAIA and is the AIA MA State Licensing Advisor to NCARB.
Kevin Pink
Kevin Pink is the Deputy Director of Economic Development at 1Berkshire, where he has been a member of the Economic Development team since October 2018. Kevin is a 2018 graduate of the Berkshire Leadership Program and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Coolidge Hill Foundation. Photo by Tricia McCormack Photography.
Kristen Hewitt
Kristen Hewitt is an Assistant Editor at Orion magazine where she has worked for the last four years. She attended the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Portland, Maine, after graduating from Bates College. Her writing has appeared in Terrain.org, Orion, and the Farmers’ Almanac. She lives in Great Barrington.
Kunda Dixit
Kunda Dixit is the publisher and chief editor of the Nepali Times in Kathmandu, Nepal.
Kurt Kruger
Kurt Kruger is a furniture maker, living in the Berkshires, writing poetry, etc. In his spare time, he conducts seminars on Sanskrit.
Larry Wallach
Larry Wallach is the Livingston Hall Chair in Music at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, where he has taught for five decades. He is a performer, composer, musicologist, and educator whose interests span the history of Western music up to the present day, with particular focus on baroque and modern repertories. He has published articles about Charles Ives and Johannes Brahms, and as pianist performed all the Ives violin sonatas. He is a founding board member of the Berkshire Bach Society. Dr. Wallach is active as a keyboard player on harpsichord, organ, and piano, collaborating with Ronald Gorevic, Paul Green, the Avanti Wind Quintet, John Cheek, Daniel Stepner, Stephen Hammer, Lucy Bardo, Paul Green, Susanna Ogata, Allan Dean, Ronald Barron, the Berkshire Bach Society chorus, Crescendo, and Anne and Eva Legêne. He has organized and performed in a concert for the Bard Retrospective Festival for Charles Ives in 1996, for the Housatonic River Festival Concert in 2004, for the Boston Early Music Festival in 2009, and for a program of music for four harpsichords that was performed in Norfolk CT, Great Barrington, MA, Albany NY and Hunter NY in 2009 and 2010. His compositions, primarily of chamber music, have been performed in New York, New England, Texas, California, and elsewhere. In 2020, his orchestral composition “Species of Motion” was recorded by the Janacek Philharmonic in the Czech Republic. He started writing music reviews for the Columbia College newspaper and resumed in 2009 for the Berkshire Review of the Arts.
Laura Chester
Born April 13, 1949, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Laura Chester grew up in Milwaukee and Oconomowoc, Wisconsin with a large extended family. Married to Geoffrey Young in 1969, they set up camp in Albuquerque, New Mexico where they edited the magazine <em>Stooge</em>, and began a small, literary press, The Figures. With moves to Paris and Berkeley, Chester finally settled in the Berkshires of Massachusetts with her sons Clovis and Ayler. She now lives on “Rose Hill” in Alford with her husband Mason Rose. Chester has consistently written and published books of poetry, prose-poems, short stories, novels, as well as non-fiction, while editing six important anthologies of American writing.
Laura Didyk
Laura Didyk, a writer most of her adult life, began drawing in 2014, creating small works on paper in themed series using ink and colored marker. Her artwork has been printed in Orion Magazine, No Tokens, Artful Mind, Your Idea Starts Here, NELLE: A literary magazine, and others. She works out of her apartment in downtown Great Barrington. You can follow her on Instagram @lauradidyk or visit her website, lauradidyk.com.
Laurily Epstein
Laurily Epstein, an Iowa native, has lived in the Berkshires since 2001, and was a second-homer before then. Her Ph.D is in political science, which she taught at Rutgers before her stint at NBC news, where she worked on polling and election projections. A widow, she has two children and three grandchildren. She serves on the boards of Berkshire Grown, Berkshire Natural Resources Council, Green Berkshires, and Project Native.
Lear Levin
An award-winning Film Director and Director of Photography for nearly four decades, Lear Levin has made feature-length documentaries, short films, TV specials and thousands of memorable commercials. He also worked extensively in lifestyle television. His visual aesthetic contributed to the success of the original Martha Stewart television show. His work is part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Levin’s fine art photography explores classic themes through the use of careful lighting, composition and a deep respect for 19th century painting. His subjects range from the female form to flowers, and his quest for interesting imagery often takes him far beyond his home in West Stockbridge. By finishing his prints in the rarely used method of Three-Color Gum Dichromate, he is able to achieve a textured, hand-made quality that sets his work apart from conventional printing. He also renders his work in the Platinum/Palladium process and in Gum Over Platinum, methods practiced by Pictoralist photographers over a hundred years ago. This technique requires many hours of meticulous attention to detail, vast amounts of experimentation, and much cursing.
Lee Buttala
Lee Buttala is a writer and organizational consultant. He is the former Executive Director of Seed Savers Exchange, an organization dedicated to the preservation of America’s garden and farming heritage, an Emmy Award-winning television producer of Martha Stewart Living and the creator, producer and director of Cultivating Life, a PBS series on outdoor living and gardening. He has written for The New York Times, Martha Stewart Living, New York, and Metropolitan Home. As an editor, he has worked for Saveur, Garden Design and Interview, and for the book publisher Alfred A. Knopf. He also served as the preservation program manager for the Garden Conservancy and has studied garden design at Kyoto University of Art and Design, the English Gardening School at London’s Chelsea Physic Garden and the New York Botanical Garden. He is the author and editor of the books Cultivating Life: A Guide to Outdoor Living and The Seed Garden: The Art and Practice of Seed Saving. You can also follow him on Instagram (https://www.igcol.com/user/leebuttala)
Lee Harrison
In 1999, Lee Harrison and Sherwood Guernsey created a countywide Democratic organization that would eventually become Berkshire Democratic Brigades, an organization that sent activists to New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Ohio for John Kerry in 2004 and which continues to organize Democrats to this day. Lee chaired the Williamstown Committee for most of the 2000s, and was elected to the Massachusetts Democratic State Committee more than 15 years ago. A graduate of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, Lee firmly believes that, as Jefferson said, “democracy itself depends on an informed electorate,” and he has spent the last four decades diligently working to shore up our democracy by informing that electorate.
Lee Schwartz
Lee Schwartz is a New York and Berkshire poet. Her latest poetry appears in Writing Fire Anthology, 2, Strong Shoulders, Green Fire Press as well as Oxford Press, Gender Poetics. She is published in many Journals, including The Mom Egg, Passager and Adanna. Lee has been a two time winner of the Allen Ginsberg, Paterson Literary Review Prize. She has served as an Artist in Residence at the 92nd St Y in NYC.
Leigh Davis
Leigh Davis is the State Representative for the 3rd Berkshire District—and the first woman elected to serve in that role. Before Beacon Hill, she served on the Great Barrington Finance Committee and for two terms as Vice Chair of the Selectboard, where she also chaired the town’s housing subcommittee. Her work has focused on housing, economic development, and community, with leadership roles at Construct, the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, and the Eagle Mill Redevelopment in Lee. She has also served on the boards of 1Berkshire and Saint James Place, and on the development board of Volunteers in Medicine. Earlier in her career, she worked as a film and television editor in Los Angeles and was a member of the Motion Picture Editors Guild (IATSE Local 700), before spending more than a decade in Ireland as a tenured lecturer in film and television. Now based in Great Barrington, she is the solo parent of three—Sage, Sean, and Kayleigh, all of whom attended Berkshire Hills Regional public schools. She often describes herself as an accidental politician—and is grateful for the opportunity to serve the people of the Berkshires.
Lenore Sundberg
Lenore is a retired art museum professional, having worked as a gallery lecturer, assistant registrar, curatorial assistant and museum store manager. After moving to the Berkshires from Brooklyn in 1976, she began work as an editor for the Bibliography of the History of Art, an art history indexing and abstracting journal based at The Clark Art Institute Library in Williamstown, MA, a job she held for 18 years. She then enjoyed a new career managing gift shops for The Clark in Lenox, the Berkshire Botanical Garden in Stockbridge and the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield. A strong believer in the power of volunteerism, Lenore has been as ESOL tutor at Literacy Network of South Berkshire (LitNet) for nearly 20 years and has volunteered in a variety of capacities at the Berkshire Botanical Garden. She has also served on the boards of the Berkshire Hills Regional School District, the Laurel Hill Association, the Dowmel Lectures Series and the Stockbridge Library and recently joined the Literacy Network Board. Lenore has a B.A. in art history from Oberlin College. She has lived in Stockbridge with her husband since 1976. Their two grown sons were born and raised in the Berkshires.
Leonard Quart
Leonard Quart is Professor Emeritus of Cinema — CUNY and COSI; Contributing Editor, Cineaste; Columnist for Berkshire Eagle; and co-author of American Film and Society Since 1945 —4th Edition (Praeger).
Leslee Bassman
A seasoned journalist, Leslee Bassman has made a career out of her passion for local community issues, first in Central Texas and now in the Berkshires. The former editor and reporter with Community Impact Newspaper was also a contributor to the Austin American-Statesman’s suburban editions, among other western Travis County publications. She received two National Newspaper Association awards, moderated a local candidate forum, acted as presenter for a civic group’s annual meeting and authored the book, “The Rotary Club of Austin Celebrates One Hundred Years of Service Above Self.” An attorney by trade, Bassman transitioned into the newspaper business to keep citizens better informed as to government actions and events in their neighborhoods. This mother of two grown daughters currently resides in Dalton with her husband, Rob, and Ella, a beloved, freckle-faced Setter mix. Bassman was recently appointed to the Dalton Cultural Council and serves as its treasurer. When she doesn’t have a notebook and tape recorder in hand, you can find her on the pickleball court, hiking one of the area’s beautiful trails or knee-deep in mud pulling out pesky weeds from her gardens.
Leslie Klein
Leslie Klein is an artist and writer, living in the Berkshires of Massachusetts. Her op-eds, feature stories, and poetry have been published in various newspapers and magazines. Her recent book is called Driving Through Paintings. Klein has had a long career teaching and showing her work in galleries and juried exhibitions. She was commissioned to create the sculpture for The Boston Freedom Award. Reach her at clayforms@aol.com.
Leslie Noyes
Leslie Noyes is a graphic designer and writer living in Southern Vermont. When she isn’t art directing magazines—including our Out & About with The Berkshire Edge—she is developing delicious gluten-free, dairy-free and nightshade-free food, sending overlong emails to her friends, playing competitive croquet, and plotting her next novel while fighting a never-ending battle against the clutter trying to colonize her desk.
Levi Green and Adam Gudeon
Levi Green is a writer, director, actor, dancer. Adam Gudeon is an illustrator, children's book author, and Super Dad. They seem to be twins separated at birth and reunited by the deity of brotherhood.
Lia Spiliotes
Lia Spiliotes, a senior partner in Cambridge Management Group, is interim CEO of Community Health Programs. She is a graduate of MIT's Sloane School of Management.
