Author
Marjorie Ryerson, the executive director of Water Music, Inc., is also an award-winning professor, photographer, poet, editor and journalist. Her photographs have appeared in such diverse publications as Vermont Life, The Boston Globe, Yankee, Country Living, and the photography books, The Vermont Experience, Vermont for Every Season and Water Music. As an art photographer, Ryerson has had numerous one-woman shows of her work throughout the United States. Her feature stories, news stories, photography and poetry have been published by magazines and newspapers across the Northeast for many years.
Ryerson currently serves as the editorial director for the Safer Society Press in Brandon, Vermont, where she is in charge of all the books the press publishes. She previously taught non-fiction writing, editing and photography at Castleton State College from 1991 until 2005. While a professor, she was selected as the Vermont State Colleges Faculty Fellow for the academic year 2000-2001. It is the highest honor awarded to a professor in the Vermont State College system. In the academic year 2006-2007, Ryerson was the Visiting Scholar at Green Mountain College, and as part of that honor, she taught creative writing at the college. Ryerson currently teaches occasional classes in non-fiction writing for Johnson State College and Champlain College. Since 1990, she has taught poetry for Middlebury College at the annual New England Young Writers' Conference at Bread Loaf. Just prior to beginning teaching, Ryerson worked as a weekly magazine editor for four years for a Vermont-wide news magazine. Throughout her career, she has done freelance photography for newspapers and magazines. In the start of her career, she worked in editing and writing for two New York City publishers, Random House and Oxford University Press.
Ryerson was chosen as the 2005 recipient of the international Harry E. Schlenz Medal for public education about water quality, because of Water Music and the larger Water Music Project she directs. She received the award in Washington, D.C., November 1, 2005. Ryerson also was the recipient of the 2003 Paul Keough Award for leadership in the water environment, also for her Water Music work.
Ryerson is the author of several books. Her most recent book, Companions for the Passage: Stories of the Intimate Privilege of Accompanying the Dying was released by the University of Michigan Press in 2005 and is available in bookstores, from the author, from the publisher, and through Amazon.com, as is Water Music.
Ryerson is listed in the 25th Silver Anniversary 2008 edition and the 2009 edition of the Marquis' Who's Who in the World. She has been listed in all editions of the Marquis' Who's Who in America since 2000, as well as in numerous other Who's Who volumes for Media, Communication, Teaching, and American Women. She holds a Master of Fine Arts degree in poetry and creative writing from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Ryerson may be reached by emailing Water Music, Inc., at water05060@gmail.com
