New England Nature

David K. Leff is an award-winning essayist, former deputy commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, and poet laureate, town meeting moderator, and historian of Canton, Connecticut. He is the author of six nonfiction books, three volumes of poetry and two novels in verse, including The Breach: Voices Haunting a New England Mill Town. His 2016 travel adventure, Canoeing Maine's Legendary Allagash: Thoreau, Romance and Survival of the Wild won a silver medal in the Nautilus Book Awards for memoir and a silver medal in the Independent Publisher Book Awards for regional nonfiction. Another Thoreau oriented book, Deep Travel: In Thoreau's Wake on the Concord and Merrimack was published in 2009 by the University of Iowa Press. In 2016-2017 the National Park Service appointed David poet-in-residence for the New England National Scenic Trail (NET). His journals, correspondence, and other papers are archived at the University of Massachusetts Libraries in Amherst.

Eric D. Lehman is an Associate Professor at the University of Bridgeport and the author or editor of ninteen books, including seven from Globe Pequot Press: Insiders' Guide to Connecticut, A Connecticut Christmas, Connecticut Waters, Connecticut Town Greens, Quotable New Englander, Yankee's New England Adventures, and New England at 400: From Plymouth Rock to Present Day. His biography of Charles Stratton, Becoming Tom Thumb, won the Henry Russell Hitchcock Award from the Victorian Society of America, and was chosen as one of the American Library Association's outstanding university press books of the year. His novella, Shadows of Paris, was the Novella of the Year from the Next Gen Indie Book Awards, won a Silver Medal for Romance from the Foreword Review Indie Book Awards, and was a finalist for the Connecticut Book Award.