Growing up mostly in Allegany County, New York, Diane Bliss was surrounded by rolling hills, farmlands and local woodlands at a time and place that allowed rural kids to explore freely. The small central school she attended taught her a sense of her community’s history, beauty, and interconnectedness. Her English teacher posted poetry on the coat closet doors by Diane’s desk, creating a deep love of poetry and language. When she planned on college to pursue teaching English, her teachers and mentors warned her of the lack of positions at the time, so before following that path, she spent a year at a forestry school in the Adirondacks, where she learned more about the thing she loved to write about: nature. Now, Diane is an amateur naturalist and novice nature photographer, avid birder, retired English professor, published scholar and poet. She resides in Middletown, New York in the Hudson Valley region.

“Nature,” Diane says, “is my source of sanity, and poetry my language for sharing it and hoping to bring others in touch both with nature and with their own humanity.”