Hughes, Betsy: - Betsy Hughes's passion for poetry, especially formal verse, has been fueled through the years as student, teacher, and participant in poetry groups and readings. A graduate of Vassar College, she taught English at the Baldwin School for Girls in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, before moving to Ohio as a newlywed and becoming one of the founding faculty at the Miami Valley School in Dayton, where she taught for 30 years. She earned her MA in English from the University of Dayton and, in retirement, returned to U.D. to moderate courses in literature, creative writing, and the arts for its Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. Winner of the Stevens Manuscript Competition, Betsy's book of sonnets Breaking Weather was published by the National Federation of State Poetry Societies Press in 2014. Other published collections of her poetry include Bird Notes (Finishing Line Press, 2017), Forest Bathing (Antrim House Books, 2019) and The Sixth Sense of Loss (Antrim House Books, 2021). Her poems appear in a variety of literary magazines and anthologies, and she is a Pushcart Prize nominee. Themes of her poems range from nature and human nature to contemporary issues. She is known to be especially fond of the sonnet genre.