Judy Light Ayyildiz, a graduate of Hollins University Writing Program, long taught creative writing to all education levels. As a graduate of the Marshall University Teachers College with a major in voice, she spent years in classrooms and on stage as performer, director, and conductor. She has been an instructor and presenter at literary workshops, international conferences on poetry, writing, and women’s studies and has through the VCA worked extensively as a writer in the schools. Internationally published and translated, she was an editor of Artemis for 13 years, a Blue Ridge Writers Conference founder, Medical Auxiliary President and founder/director of RAMA Chorus. Author of 11 books in 5 genres, including Mud River, Nothing but Time, Forty Thorns, Intervals- Appalachia to Istanbul. And 4 co-written creative writing hands-on supplementary textbooks for students and teachers. Literary publications appeared in New York Quarterly, Mickle Street Review, the new renaissance, Sow’s Ear, Pig Iron Press, Hawaii Pacific Review, Black Water Review, Northeast Journal, Kalliope, The McGuffin, and Nazim Hikmet Festival Chapbook. Judy was featured in international professional biographies in Women in Dialogue and in Outstanding Persons Who Have Come and Gone in Kirklareli, Turkey. Anthologies include a story translated into Italian in International Women Writing Today, a memoir in Biting the Bullet, and the first edition of Auschwitz Poems-Auschwitz Birkenau Museum. Honors include YWCA “Women of Achievement in Education”, Virginia Commission of the Arts grants, various poetry short story prizes, Daughters of Ataturk award, Turkish Forum award, College Bookstores Best Book nominee, Gusto Poet Discovery Winner, VCCA Fellow, and JPX International Literary Novel 1st Place. Married for over 50 years, she and her husband have three children and two grandchildren. Judy is currently completing a memoir titled, The West Virginia Diet.