Biographies

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: Glenn Bater

Tonia Rotlcopf Blair

Marilyn Crockett has worked as an artist, textile designer, illustrator, miniaturist, and teaher. She has a husband, Daniel A Freeman, two children, three lovely grandchildren, the eldest of which studies music and biology at SUNY Albany. She is new to the “Writing from Life Experience” workshop but enjoys it immensely.

Nancy Eder worked for over thirty years as an administrator at New York University. She wields a paintbrush in the Pyrenees, a shovel in school gardens, and now a pen in her second year of the “Writing from Life Experience” workshop.

Lydia LaFleur worked thirty-two years for The New York Public Library as a librarian specializing in work with teenagers. After retiring in 1987, she has continued to enjoy life as co-founder of The Morningside Players, a community theater in Morningside Gardens where she lives, performing in many roles over the past twenty-eight years, and also as a participant for the last fourteen years in the writing workshop “Writing from Life Experience” led by Susan Willerman. She is the mother of two wonderful children, a son and a daughter, and four grandchildren.

Elinor Levin is a retired teacher and mother of two sons. These days she enjoys swimming, walking, yoga, and Writing from Life Experience.

Rebecca Rikleen ran an early childhood full-day program, used her spare time to create assemblages out of discarded children’s toy pieces, wrote, and finally worked hard at painting when she retired.She is a young painter and fledgling writer. She says, “Even though I am an old woman, and unfortunately, there is no short cut to honing skills. In my head I was always a painter and a writer. The eye and hands are trying to catch up.”

Anita Rothfeld grew up and lived in Brooklyn, New York for most of her 89 years. She was married for 61 years and had three sons and two grandchildren. Anita taught English in both the yeshiva and public schools, English as a second language to immigrants and to students seeking their high school equivalency diplomas. In 2008, Anita moved to Morningside Gardens in Manhattan ,where she became an avid member of the Writing From Life Experience class. Anita wrote her last piece just a week before she died, on March 25th, the date of her beloved late husband’s birthday.

Peggy Strait is a widow, mother, grandmother, professor emerita of mathematics, and since joining “Writing From Life Experience” has broadened her interest in arranging numbers to include an interest in arranging words.

Herbert Thorne has haply and happily played with words all his 90 years. He has shaped many endeavors, mostly as a NYC public librarian, plus soldiering in WW II, sculpting with clay, poetry, music and wording.

Susan Willerman is the Workshop Leader of the Writing From Life Experiences Group.

Lydia Zhang, coming from China to join her husband who was studying for his doctorate. She enjoys being a member of the Get-Your-Wordsworth, from which she draws inspirations and support for her writing interest. Lydia Zhang, coming from China to join her husband who was studying for his doctorate. She enjoys being a member of the Get-Your-Wordsworth, from which she draws inspirations and support for her writing interest.