ADD YOUR VOICE

Contributing Writers

Are you interested in becoming a contributing writer for Yo!Community? Have an idea for an ongoing column? Are you a person who has a special interest to share?  Are you a parent with a good resource other parents might like to know about?  Are you a child who enjoys writing stories?  We’d love for people to share their voices on Yo!   Won’t you join us?  We are looking for writing that reflects an effort to entertain, educate, inspire, include, connect, and inform our community thereby celebrating the diversity that our small town has to offer.  A variety of writing styles are encouraged including reviews, stories, humor, short articles about local happenings, and special interest columns.  Send your idea to yocommunity@gmail.com.   Yo!community retains the right to edit any submissions.

Contributing Artists

Do you have a photograph or an illustration you’d like to share on Yo!Community?   We are looking for art that reflects an effort to entertain, educate, inspire, include, connect, and inform our community thereby celebrating the diversity that our small town has to offer.  Send all submissions in a low-resolution .jpg or .pdf to yocommunity@gmail.com.

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Yo!Community Founder & Editor

Kathy Kristjanson-Gural is the creator and organizer of Yo!Community and spends most of her time homeschooling her two children and organizing community events for families and children.  She is the main editor of Yo!Community.  She is a long-time community organizer, educator, an activist on behalf of children and families, a trained Hand in Hand Parenting instructor, a passionate crafter, gardener, and photographer.   This is her first foray into the blogosphere.

Yo!Community Technical Wizards

Cory Bishop is a student at Bucknell University

Jordi Comas

Yo!Community Calendar Maven

Ann Longanbach relishes the role of local resource librarian (collecting & sharing information), which she refined during her years as an innkeeper & owner of Anni’s Inn & Outings.  So she jumped at the opportunity to become a calendar maven for Yo!Community!   Anni is a devoted fan (and gives thanks daily!) for life in small town Lewisburg, where she can walk downtown & to the library, go to movies, live music, & art events, attend programs & classes at BU, buy locally-grown food at the farmers market & natural food store, and keep up with “what’s happening” by running into her friends & neighbors almost daily.   Anni also spends her time riding her bicycle, doing volunteer work, traveling, enjoying her community, and evolving into a more whole & healthy person

Yo!Community Contributing Writers

Hannah Bowen has lived in Lewisburg her whole life and attends Bucknell University.

Rebecca Boyce has been interested in food and nutrition for more than 35 years. She moved to the Susquehanna Valley from Philadelphia in 1989 and began her search for local food. In 1992 she started Spruce Run Co-op, which still operates today. She worked in medical research and drug manufacturing before becoming a stay at home mom. Boyce received her Practical Nursing certificate in 2003 and works as a private duty pediatric nurse. Rebecca lives in Kelly Township with her husband, James Doran, and son, Jeffrey. Her favorite chef is Julia Child.

Maya Hart likes to write stories and plays, and is on an Odyssey of the Mind team.  After school she can be seen out and about with her friends or reading.

Susan Jordan loves laughing, making music, cooking, and being outdoors. She has lived in Lewisburg for 8 years and loves it.  She enjoys organizing outings for her family, friends and cub scouts. If she were a tree, she would be an oak.  Not flashy.  Just tall, strong and reliable.

Emma Kristjanson-Gural likes dance and reading.  She has three pets (ZuZu, Tigger, and Lily) who she loves a lot.  Her favorite colors are purple and turquoise and she enjoys hanging out with friends.

David Kristjanson-Gural teaches Economics and Social Justice at Bucknell where he offers competing perspectives on capitalism and the role media and advertising play in our economic system.  He likes to play guitar and soccer, write fiction, non-fiction, poetry and jokes, and lovingly torment his two children, Emma (12) and Rudy (8.5).

Tara D. McKinney is a freelance writer who writes for local publications and businesses further afield. She is also the owner of black fringe photography. For the past few years she has been a correspondent for the Daily Item and the Williamsport Sun-Gazette. She currently has her own column, DIYstyle, which runs the second Friday each month in the Sun-Gazette.

Kate Parker fills her days with the study of long texts about the long eighteenth-century in Europe, and the writing and teaching of literature.  When not at her desk or in the classroom at Bucknell University, Kate bakes (vegan) cupcakes and brownies with her adorable sous-chef, her daughter Eliot, and eats (or dreams about eating) her partner Justin’s out-of-this-world delicious tofu curry.

Sam Pearson has been focused on sustainability since graduate school in the mid 90s, initially pursuing it more in the form of office policies and later in design work.  For the past ten years, she has been applying principles of life-in-balance in the community and domestic arenas.  She is involved in several local environmental or land use planning groups as a volunteer, including the Local Action Network, the Sierra Club, the Lewisburg Borough Traffic Advisory Committee, the Lewisburg Neighborhoods Corporation, the Lewisburg Area Recreation Authority Board, the Buffalo Valley Rail Trail Committee, and the Lewisburg Coop.  Her education and work background is in architecture and planning.  She writes on the many topics related to green design, from relocalization to land use planning, from nature deficit disorder to fighting fracking, from consumerism to green building.

Julia Portocarrero is a sophmore in high school. She loves reading, running, and Nutella. Julia has one big fluffy dog, and plays the string bass. Her favorite colors are green, blue, and yellow.

Jenny Rosen is a senior at Bucknell University. She sings, runs, plays club soccer, loves animals, and is a health & exercise enthusiast.

Virginia Zimmerman is an Associate Professor of English at Bucknell University, where she specializes in Victorian literature and children’s literature. She has published on nineteenth-century literature that explores geological time and archaeological artifacts. She also writes children’s fiction. Her first novel, A Sketch in Time, comes out in Barcelona this May.

Elijah Zimmerman-Comas was born in Barcelona, Spain.  He likes to read; play Catan, Dungeons and Dragons, Minecraft, and various made up games.  He has written Poetry, Fish A-Z, Journey’s End, and articles on Yo!Community and KittyKat.  He is a 6th grader at Donald H. Eichorn Middle School in Lewisburg.

Yo!Community Contributing Artists

Nancy Cleaver has lived in Lewisburg for 32 years, involving herself in many community projects focused on the arts, peace, celebration, and the environment.  After many years in her downtown studio, Nanso runs PenSylvania Calligraphy from her home on the edge of the woods, where she lives with her woodworker husband Michael Kryzytski and chocolate Lab, Zoe. 

Maureen Moore lives in Shelburne Falls, Mass.  She has been many things in her life including a gardener, historian and teacher, avocado grower, bookstore owner, scribbler, B&B doyen, blank book crafter, and book designer.  She now runs Mo’s Place a quiet retreat offering a welcome, short-term refuge from the busy world for writers, artists, academics and travelers seeking the beauty and calm of the Berkshires.   Yo!Community blossomed at Mo’s Place with the help of Mo’s artistic hand. 

Gratitudes…

Special thanks go out to Cory Bishop and Deb Sarlin for believing Yo!Community was a good idea.  To Deb for putting me in touch with Cory.  And to Cory who taught me how to maneuver in the blogosphere with humility and grace when he could make it happen 10x faster.   Also big thanks go out to Elizabeth Sterling who set up the original template and who shared her photography as the featured image on the site.  Much thanks to Kelly Knox and the Happy Happy Song and Dance Show for their support of the blog.  And to the Saturday B & N working session group- you rock!  And last but not least, to Dave, Anni, Mo, Nanso, the Z-Cs, and Emma & Rudy for believing it could happen amidst our busy lives and adding their amazing talents to the mix to make it happen.