RANDY LEWIS

Randy Lewis is the winner of the People’s Choice Award, 2007 Adirondack Literary Awards for “Actively Adirondack: Reflections on Mountain Life in the 21st Century.”

Randy has been living in the Adirondacks since 1972, moving to Saranac Lake right after an almost three year stint living in northern Germany. She is a poet and essayist, and an amateur naturalist, all reflected by the tone of the essays in Actively Adirondack. She now teaches writing part time at North Country Community College, and leads an Adirondack writer’s group called Pen and Parchment. This diverse group of writers meets regularly, and performs often at readings in the area.

A former copy editor at the Adirondack Daily Enterprise, Randy loves words, both their grammatically correct and poetic usage. Among the places her poetry has been published are Blueline, Many Moons, the Northern New Yorker, and the Paterson Literary Review, where her poem “by the Oldsmobile” won honorable mention in the Alan Ginsberg National Poetry Contest in 2003. She is one of four poets appearing in A North Country Quartet, a book of northern poetry published by Potsdam College Press in 2006. Her essays, film reviews and features have appeared in the Adirondack Daily Enterprise, the Lake Placid News, the Sequel, and Adirondack Life. From 2000 to 2001, she was a writer and researcher for National Public Radio’s A Writer’s Almanac, where she also selected poems for the daily reading at the conclusion of this nationally recognized broadcast.

Among her hobbies are walking, swimming, birdwatching, traveling, reading poetry and practicing photography. A regular visitor to New York City, she enjoys immersing herself in urban culture regularly to enjoy its good ethnic cuisine and lively art.

She is the mother of three sons and wife of Neil Surprenant. After more than 25 years, they are still living in Paul Smiths, N.Y. next to the St. Regis River, in the shadow of St. Regis Mountain, watching the seasons change year by year.

Randy Lewis is available for readings and writing workshops. She may be contacted at activelyadirondack@roadrunner.com.