Jacqueline Renee Ahl Daughter of a painter and a hang glider pilot, Jacqueline Ahl is currently an Adjunct in the English Department at the State University of New York at New Paltz, where she earned a BA in Creative Writing for the Theater with a Minor in Philosophy in August 1998.  She is the Tutoring Facilitator for Dutchess County Community College and served as Director of the SUNY New Paltz Creative Writing Mentoring Program from 2000 to 2005, working with emerging writers in the areas of fiction, poetry, playwriting and screenwriting.  After spending her undergraduate summers wielding a nail gun and building props, sets and an outdoor stage for the SUNY New Paltz Summer Repertory Theatre, she now teaches writing and improv as an Academic Consultant for Vassar's Summer Institute for the Gifted.  Jacqueline is a member of the William Vasse Poetry Board at SUNY New Paltz and serves as Executive Grantwriter for Arts for Peace, a local organization of artists and activists.  She is also Co-Editor of Patriot Axe: Poems of Protest From the Hudson Valley and Beyond, a forthcoming anthology of peace and social justice poetry, and is anticipating the release of her first poetry CD, Underdog Lovely.  Recipient of the American Mensa Education and Research Foundation's Karen Cooper Memorial Scholarship, Jacqueline's areas of teaching and research interest are modern poetry and drama, existentialism and creative theory.  She has been a featured reader at many Hudson Valley events and venues, including Poetry on the Loose, The "Calling All Poets" reading series, and Arts on the Bridge.  Her play, Fear Itself, originally written for a Dramatic Writing class in 1998, was unearthed along with a renewed interest in the absurdist works of Pinter, Beckett, Genet, Ionesco and Sartre.  She is most interested in pieces which bridge the genres of poetry and drama, and is currently working on a series of performance poems for multiple voices. Awards Luncheon           Opening-Night Reception