Award winning poet Joan Kantor lives with her husband in the charming riverfront village of Collinsville, CT. Joan's training is in education as well as marriage and family therapy, and she was a college disabilities counselor for many years. She actively promotes poetry in the community and is a member of The International Academy of Poetry therapy. She has been a featured reader for the public television series Speaking of Poetry, as well as for several art museums; additionally, she leads workshops, has mentored for Poetry Out Loud, and judged and mentored for the Hill-Stead Museum's Sunken Garden Poetry Festival Fresh Voices Poetry Program. To fulfill her inclusive vision of the arts, Joan collaborates with both visual artists and musicians and currently performs in Stringing Words Together, an interactive program of poetry and violin music. Kantor's first published collection, Shadow Sounds, was a finalist for the Foreword Reviews Book of the Year Award in 2010. Her poetry has been published in numerous literary journals, in 2013 she won first prize in The Hackney Literary Awards poetry contest, and in 2015 her book, Fading Into Focus, too First Place for Poetry in The Writer's Digest 23rd Annual Self-Published Book Awards. Her book, Holding it Together, will be published in 2016 (WovenWord Press), as will her book, Too Close for Comfort (Aldrich Press).