Greenwich Pen Women Announces Officers

By Nancy Burke

As summertime ebbs and fall begins, will soon hold September meetings for authors, artists and musicians of all ages and creative talents.

This year’s officers of Greenwich Pen Women are: Joyce French, president; Marie Amoruso, vice president; Ellen Fagan, treasurer; Kathy DiGiovanna; corresponding secretary; and Catherine Stahl, recording secretary. 

Other board members include: Barbara O’Shea and Margaret Simon, art chairs; Anita Kiere, historian; Arlene Mark and Judy Crystal, letters chairs; Deborah Weir, membership chair;

Claudia Dumschat, music chair; Ann Caron and Joanne Dearcopp, program chairs; Nancy Burke, public relations; and Lucy Hedrick, website coordinator.

In 1897 The National League of American Pen Women, a non-profit organization for female members of the press and other writers, was founded in Washington, DC, by Marion

Longfellow O’Donahue, neice of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The co-founders were

Margaret Sullivan Burke and Ann Sanborne Hamilton of The Washington Post.

In the past 100 years, a number of well-known writers, artists, and composers have taken part in Pen Women: Anya Seton (Greenwich author of The Winthrop Woman,) her mother Grace Gallatin Thompson Seton, Florence King Harding, Grace Goodhue Coolidge, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, and Barbara Bush. There are now over 150 branches of 3,000 members of Pen Women throughout the country. The Greenwich branch of Pen Women was founded in 1955 and is one of the largest branches with a membership of approximately 70 professional female writers, artists, and musicians.

For more information visit www.greenwichpenwomen.org.