Contributors
Charlene Anderson received an MA in English Literature from Purdue University and an MA in Research Psychology from San Francisco State University and spent most of her working life at the University of California San Francisco in grant administration. As a child, she always knew she would write, told stories to her friends, and even invented a pen name for herself, Charles Andrè. So, while working on budgets and submitting grant proposals at UCSF, she continued to write and, in 2001 published a novel, Berkeley’s Best Buddhist Bookstore. When Vistas & Byways was launched in 2015, she was pleased to be asked to chair the Editorial Board. She has served in that capacity ever since.
Contributions to this issue:
​V&B Board member
Fiction
Heaven or Earth?
Poetry
​To John Keats
Barbara Applegate is a retired administrator of Early Childhood Education, mother of three daughters, a traveler and contemplative. She enjoys writing but finds it challenging to write consistently. She loves taking writing classes—not just because she learns from them, but because they give her structure for writing.
Contributions to this issue:  
Nonfiction 
Naptime
​The $5 Bill​
Kathy Bruin is a writer, artist, and erstwhile activist. She has worked in publishing, event management, operations, and is currently the director for Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at San Francisco State University. Kathy is the founder of About-Face, a media literacy campaign which educates about the way media impact female body images. Among other appearances for About-Face, she was “punked” on a Comedy Central program called Crossballs. Kathy also produces Bruin Snappy Cards and a meditative game called the Fox Box. She lives in San Francisco with her son, Miles, who is a senior in high school.
Contributions to this issue:
Nonfiction
One Good Egg
Juanita Callejas has explored a variety of destinations as a universal traveler in both mind and body to get to her current “port” of creative writer. Her passport has been stamped as a Mexican-Nicaraguan first-generation native-born San Franciscan. She is a mother of three, an amazing visual artist, an alumna of San Francisco State University (BA in Spanish; BS in International Business and Accounting) and University of California, Berkeley (MBA), Finance and HR professional (banking, shipping and apparel industries), and a grandmother of one amazing grandson. She continues to add pages to her passport for trips to all continents and more visual art and creative writing projects!
Contributions to this issue: 
​Nonfiction
Musical Power
Joe Catalano practiced law for more than 30 years before he retired in 2018. He has since pursued his interests in photography, high performance driving, travel and writing. He enjoyed his first OLLI as SF State courses in the spring semester 2019 and thanks the members of the OLLI at SF State Poetry Writing interest group for their input and support. He lives in San Francisco with his wife Joan. 
Contributions to this issue: 
​V&B Board member​
​Fiction
Journeyman's Day
Poetry
Broke and Ugly
Heather Saunders Estes's debut book of poetry, Inner Sunset, was recently published by Blue Light Press and is available online. It celebrates the joy of life, the natural and human-made world, recognizing all must change. For her, poems are incantations to push back against the forces, human and inhuman, that turn our eyes away from the beauty of shivering aspen leaves, joy of whales breaching, and the compassion of hugs. She lives in the Inner Sunset in San Francisco and is a member of the OLLI at SF State Poetry Writing Group that has been meeting since 2016.  https://heathersaundersestes.com
Contributions to this issue:
Poetry
Thunder of Blood
​Elsa Fernandez grew up in Asia. She has lived in San Francisco since 1970 and never gets tired of this lovely city. She has travelled the world and still gets excited flying back home and to finally land at SFO. Her family is scattered around the world—India, Australia, Dubai, England, Ireland and Argentina. She is a political junkie and majored in Journalism and Political Science. She loves music and plays the piano quite well (one of her dreams was to own a piano bar in upcountry Maui . . .  she would probably call it the Maui Moon!). Writing poetry is an emotional outlet for her.
Contributions to this issue:
​​Nonfiction
The Music in My Soul
Poetry
​Another Hoop Dream
Find your passion and follow it!   -  Oprah Winfrey.  
Cathy Fiorello’s  passions are food, Paris, and writing. A morning at a farmers’ market is her idea of excitement and visiting Paris is her idea of heaven. And much of her writing is about food and Paris. She worked in publishing in New York, freelanced for magazines during her child-rearing years, then re-entered the work world as an editor. She moved to San Francisco in 2008 and published a memoir, Al Capone Had a Lovely Mother. In 2018, she published a second memoir, Standing at the Edge of the Pool. Cathy has two children and four grandchildren. Her mission is to make foodies and Francophiles of them all.
Contributions to this issue:
​Nonfiction
Not Climbing Every Mountain
​As a journalist, Janice Fuhrman has been published in major newspapers around the world, and from 1987 to 1992, she was a foreign correspondent in Tokyo, Japan. As a wine writer, her stories and columns have been published in magazines and newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle. She is the author of several wine books. She has a travel website, Fuhrmantations.com. In her brief career as a lawyer, she practiced in the area of Elder Law.
Contributions to this issue:
Poetry
Diminue: A Sestina
​Elinor Gale has been a writer, observer of human nature, and lover of the English language since childhood. An inveterate eavesdropper, she has woven her curiosity about human behavior into her work as writing teacher, editor and creator of humorous yet poignant fiction and poetry. She holds a BA in English from Smith College and an MS in Counseling from Northeastern University. Her essays, poetry and articles have been published in print and online. Elinor moved to the Bay Area from New England over 20 years ago and still marvels at flowers and green grass in February.
Contributions to this issue:
Fiction
​Retribution
​Kathy Gilbert received her MFA from San Francisco State University in 2013 after a career in public transport. She received the Marc Linenthal Poetry Award in 2012 from SFSU and won the San Francisco Browning Society Gita Specker Award three times for her dramatic monologues. She was commissioned to write a play for the 2015 San Francisco Olympians Festival. Her one act play, Delphin and the Children of Amphitrite, was performed at the Exit Theater. She also tutors third graders, studies tai chi, practices yoga and swims.     
Contributions to this issue:
Poetry
Paths
Sphygmomanometer
​Matt Ginsburg is a candidate for an MFA degree in Creative Writing with a concentration in playwriting at San Francisco State University. His work often explores his interest in business, economics and politics. Matt has written several short stories, monologues and comedy routines in addition to his focus on playwriting. His full-length play, Eight is Great, has been read or performed at the Greenhouse and Fringe Goes Long Festivals at SFSU and the PianoFight and Breach Once More Theaters in San Francisco. His full-length play, Holy Cowboy, was read at the Poetry Center at SFSU last year. Woke Wash, his third full-length play, was recently read at Z Space in San Francisco.
Contributions to this issue:
Nonfiction
Finding My Father
Jane Bell Goldstein has held a variety jobs during her life: salesperson, tour guide, accountant, middle school teacher, and half a dozen positions during her 19 years with the Internal Revenue Service, all of which might fall under the general description of spirit guide to taxpayers through the fathomless bureaucracy. Since her retirement in 2010, she has pursued interests in writing, bird-watching, genealogy, history and, from 2015 – 2019, website design, as chief architect of the Vistas & Byways website. Jane is a graduate of San Francisco State University (BA History, 1974). She has a grown son and daughter and two grandchildren. She lives with her husband, Mark, in the Oakland hills.
Contributions to this issue:
V&B Board member
​​Fiction
Scrambled Eggs    
​Mary Heldman is retired from a career in medical school administration, computer programming, and business systems analysis. She grew up in Los Angeles but lived in Palo Alto, Washington D.C., Cambridge, and Stony Brook, New York before settling in San Francisco in 1974. She tutors at a local high school, studies piano, and designs costume jewelry. From time to time she writes sardonic prose for her friends. Mary wishes she lived with a chocolate lab or a golden retriever, but she doesn’t.
Contributions to this issue:
V&B Board member
Mike Lambert is a long-time resident of San Francisco and led the effort to start Vistas & Byways in the fall of 2015. In an earlier life, he worked in the telecommunications industry for 35 years and taught at San Francisco State University’s College of Business for 15 years. He refutes the adage about old dogs and new tricks. He took up creative writing as a hobby at age 75. He recently self-published two novels and a collection of his short stories. His main fictional character is Jessica Jones, a single working girl in contemporary San Francisco.  See his Author page at Amazon under the name of M. L. Lambert for more details.
Contributions to this issue:
​V&B Board member
Poetry
​Green Bananas
Bruce Martin grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, one of three brothers. He received a BA degree at Keene State College, Keene, New Hampshire in 1967 and an MA in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1969. He worked in planning and management, mostly in housing, in Portland, Oregon. He moved to San Francisco in 1986 and primarily worked for a financial industry publishing company. He always loved poetry and, after stopping work, focused his time on reading and writing poetry.

Bruce Martin passed away on October 1, 2019.
Contributions to this issue:
​Poetry
A Good Life for a Boy, 1952
​Charles O. McCauley was the frontman for the rockabilly dive bar band, Collateral Damn-age, which featured his original songs. His poetry has been published in The Tule Review, California Quarterly, The Aurorean, Blue Unicorn, and Soundzine.  A retired Navy Aviator, he has helped populate Martinez, California.
Contributions to this issue:
Poetry
dive bar bandstand 
​no joke
​Angie Minkin retired from a long career as an administrative law judge with the State of California and now spends her time rehabilitating her right brain. She practices yoga, takes dance classes several times a week, and loves to write poetry. She volunteers with a local non-profit that serves low-income immigrant families. Angie has two adult children and lives in San Francisco with her husband and two cats, all of whom provide inspiration. She escapes to the sun whenever possible.
Contributions to this issue:
​V&B Board member 
Nonfiction​
​Lifeline
Poetry
Call to Prayer
​Ode to Lucca Ravioli
​M J Moore lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her various incarnations have included technical writer and editor, grassroots environmental activist, first grade teacher, poet and flash fiction writer, wife, and mother. Strongly bi-coastal, she thrives on salt air, wind and waves, but also loves mountains, deserts, forests and streams. Writing for her is a source of vision and joy. Her poem, Cello Suite, was previously published in Bach in the Afternoon, Poems from the Blue Light Press Summer 2018 Workshop.   
Contributions to this issue:
Poetry
Cello Suite
​Monet's Water Lilies
​Don Plansky has participated in many OLLI at SF State writer workshops. In a former incarnation, he worked as a freelance journalist, contributing more than 200 articles to The Jewish Bulletin of Northern California, as well as book reviews for The Pacific World: Journal of the Institute of Buddhist Studies. Don has been a member of the Vistas & Byways Editorial Board since 2015.​
Contributions to this issue:
​​V&B Board member
​Nonfiction
​Bud in Dreamland
Rodney J. Shapiro was born and raised in South Africa. He worked as a journalist and published several short stories, poetry, and articles. He taught English Literature as a part-time teacher but decided on psychology as a career. He graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, with a PhD in 1965. He immigrated to the USA in 1966. His professional career included faculty positions as Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester, NY, and Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco. His interests have included traveling, amateur photography, a classics book club, telling jokes, jogging with his dog, reliving his 11th (last) marathon. His primary reverence is inspiration for writing poetry and fiction.    
Contributions to this issue:
​Fiction
Haunted
​Denize Springer’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in various publications and literary journals including the Marin IJ, East Bay Express, Pearl, Estero, Vistas & Byways and Ocean Realm. Her short story, “The Way We Say Goodbye,” was named a semi-finalist in the 2019 Tillie Olsen Short Story Award and will appear in the online journal Please See Me in early 2020. Her plays and adaptations have been presented in New York and San Francisco venues including the New York Theatre Workshop, the Public Theatre and the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. She earned an MFA in creative writing from San Francisco State University and has taught creative writing courses at OLLI at SF State.
Contributions to this issue:
Nonfiction
Longevity Rocks!
​Steve Surryhne was an Associate Lecturer in English Literature at San Francisco State University from 1993-2012. He is currently semi-retired and has recently returned to writing poetry. A native of San Francisco, he was a baby-beat in the sixties, knew some of the beat poets and is now a neo-beat. In his alternate career, he worked in Community Mental Health in San Francisco from 1979-2012. He took first place in the Jack Kerouac Poetry contest in 2015 and has published in The Blue Moon Review and Interpretations. He is currently working on a project with a photographer friend on poem-texts and photos. 
Contributions to this issue:
Poetry
Etude Crepuscle
Palestrina
​A retired physician, Corey Weinstein is a musician, poet, songwriter and clarinet player. He has published two CDs of original music inspired by the Klezmer and Yiddish stage musical traditions and led Umzist, a Klezmer band playing benefits for Jewish elders for more than a decade. He wrote and performed at various venues a singspiel, Erased: Babi Yar, the SS and Me to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the massacre at Babi Yar. He plays clarinet in the Or Shalom Jewish Community choir, with The Jamberries Jazz Band at Shabbat services at Rhoda Goldman Plaza, and with any chamber music group he can find. He lives in the Ingleside of San Francisco with his wife of 37 years, Pat Skala.
Contributions to this issue:
​Poetry
Ocean Avenue Anthropology
​Vistas & Byways Review is the semiannual journal of fiction, nonfiction and poetry by members of Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at San Francisco State University​.
Vertical Divider
Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at San Francisco State University​ (OLLI at SF State) provides communal and material support to the Vistas & Byways  volunteer staff.