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 the past 25 years.
Ryerson taught writing and photography at Castleton State College from 1991 until 2005. 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, where she also taught creative writing. Ryerson currently teaches non-fiction writing for Johnson State College, poetry and creative non-fiction for Middlebury College at the annual New England Young Writers' Conference at Bread Loaf, and creative non-fiction at the Young Vermonters' Writing Conference at Champlain College. Prior to teaching, Ryerson worked as a writer, editor and photographer for several Vermont newspapers and magazines and as an editor and writer for Random House and Oxford University Press in New York City.
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 received the 2003 Paul Keough Award for leadership in the water environment, also for her Water Music work.
Ryerson's book, Companions for the Passage: Stories of the Intimate Privilege of Accompanying the Dying was released by the University of Michigan Press in April 2005 and is available in bookstores, from the author, and through Amazon.com.
Ryerson is listed in the 25th Silver Anniversary 2008 edition of the Marquis' Who's Who in the World and 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@verizon.net.
