Donna M. Marbach
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Donna M. Marbach (born 1948) is an American poet, editor, publisher and visual artist. She was first published at the age of 13, and, at 16, named "Junior Poet Laureate of the Monterey Bay Area".
Marbach was born in King City, CA and raised on the Monterey Bay Peninsula. She studied literature at the University of California, and received a Master's degree in Education from the University of Pennsylvania.
She currently resides in Penfield, NY, a suburb of Rochester, NY, where she also owns her own business, Palettes & Quills, a consulting and teaching services for creative writers and visual artists. The company also started a small press and has published five poetry publications to date.
Marbach's non-fiction, fiction, and poetry have been published in a variety of anthologies and periodicals, including Philadelphia Medicine, The Friend, The HazMat Review, and The MacGuffin. Her first play, Synchronized Swimming, was part of the Latter-Day Playwrights festival held by Rochester's GEVA Theatre. Her first chapbook, The Silver Thimble, was released at the first Music and Poetry Festival organized by poet Patricia Roth Schwartz and held at the Writers & Books Gell Center in July, 2002.
In 2004, Marbach and Schwartz co-edited Summer Songs for Foothills Publishing. In 2005 they edited Knocking on the Silence, an anthology of poems inspired by the Finger Lakes region of New York. She has served as one of the editors of Le Mot Juste, the annual anthology of Just Poets, a Rochester literary group she co-founded in 2004.
She regularly teaches creative writing workshops for both children and adults in community settings in the Rochester area such as Writers & Books, ArtisanWorks, and has collaborated in readings with WordFoundry and RochesterInk. She organized Rochester's annual "Women Celebrating Women" program, which includes group readings and the publication of a limited edition chapbook. In November 2006, the 25 year-old writing magazine ByLine underwent a change of ownership, and Marbach became the magazine's new poetry editor.
Marbach is also a watercolorist with memberships in the Rochester Contemporary gallery and The Penfield Art Association, where she also edits the group's bi-monthly newsletter, PAA Perspective. Her work has been exhibited at the annual Clothesline Art Festival of the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, the Rochester Contemporary, Moodmakers Books, Barnes & Noble in Pittsford, NY, the Center at High Falls Gallery, The Copper Beeches Gallery, Penfield Town Hall, the Legacy at Willow Pond, and Write Books and Gift Shop in Honeoye Falls, NY.
Since 1995, Marbach has worked as a Marketing Representative for The Scholar's Choice, a Rochester firm that markets scholarly and academic books through book exhibits and on-line sales. Previously, she was President and COO of the Easter Seals Society of Rochester, and Monroe County; and Vice-President of Operations for the Volunteers of America Adult Care Facility in Rochester. She has also worked in professional and supervisory positions for the City of Philadelphia, The University of Pennsylvania, the American Lung Association of Philadelphia and Bucks County; and as a substance abuse counselor for women ex-offenders at Horizon House in Philadelphia.
She has served on the boards of several community groups, including a term as President of the Rochester Interfaith Jail Ministry and as Membership Chair of the Community of Churches. She is currently a merit badge counselor for the Boy Scouts of America and has taught creative writing programs at the YWCA of Greater Monroe County.
