Polly Brown taught at Touchstone Community School in Grafton for 25 innovative, exhilarating years. A member of Every Other Thursday Poets, she has organized outdoor poetry events on her Hopkinton hillside, and written about war and peace at UMass Boston's Joiner Institute. She has two chapbooks, Blue Heron Stone and Each Thing Torn from Any of Us, and a new book of poems, Pebble Leaf Feather Knife, will be released in 2019 by the Cherry Grove imprint of WordTech. An earlier version of her workshop for this festival took place at Stanley Kunitz's boyhood home in Worcester--sitting next to the pear tree to read and discuss the poem about the pear tree.