In Memoriam
DMV writers we lost in 2025
by Kim Roberts and Washington Unbound
Washington Unbound is honored to present eminent D.C. poet, writer, and literary historian Kim Roberts’ In Memoriam list of DMV authors who passed away in 2025.
“I started including ‘In Memoriam’ notices in the Poetry News section of Beltway Poetry Quarterly when I founded the journal in 2000. I continued them for 15 or 16 years, until I stopped including the Poetry News as a regular online feature,” Kim told us.
The names are listed in the order of death dates. We are very happy to take up this tradition again.
Joyce Reiser Kornblatt (May 29, 1944 - January 1, 2025)
Kornblatt taught English and creative writing for 25 years at the University of Maryland. She published five novels, most recently Mother Tongue (2022). In retirement, she moved to Australia, where she led retreats integrating writing, Buddhist meditation, and healing. Her short stories, essays, and book reviews appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times, Washington Post, Georgia Review, and Iowa Review. She received an O.Henry Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and the Towson Literary Award for Fiction.
E. Allen Ahearn (May 29, 1937 - January 3, 2025)
Ahearn opened Quill & Brush in 1976 with his first wife Patricia, a combination book shop and art gallery, operating first in Olney, Maryland and later moving to downtown Bethesda. The rare book part of the business specialized in first editions. He was the author of several reference books for book collectors and book sellers, including Collected Books: The Guide to Identification and Values (4th edition, 2011), and Book Collecting 2000 (2000).
Elisavietta Ritchie (June 29, 1932 - January 12, 2025)
Ritchie was the author of 18 books of poetry and fiction, including Issues of Immortality (2021), Navigational Hazards (2019), Harbingers (2017), Tiger Upstairs on Connecticut Avenue (2013), Cormorant Beyond the Compost (2011), and The Spirit of the Walrus (2005). Raking The Snow won the Washington Writers’ Publishing House competition in Poetry in 1982, and In Haste I Write You This Note won in Fiction in 2000. Ritchie served twice as President of Washington Writers Publishing House, founded another small literary press, Wineberry Press, and ran the Macomb Street Workshops out of her DC home. She also taught Poetry in the Schools, and workshops at Calvert Library in Prince Frederick, Maryland. Ritchie also published journalism and photojournalism, and translated poetry and nonfiction from Russian, French, Malay, and Indonesian into English.
Michael S. Glaser (March 20, 1943 - January 24, 2025)
Glaser served as Poet Laureate of Maryland from 2004 to 2009, and taught at St. Mary’s College of Maryland for nearly 40 years (1970-20008). He co-founded St. Mary’s Literary Festival and the VOICES reading series on campus. He served on the Maryland State Department of Education’s Arts Advisory Committee, and on the board of the Maryland Humanities Council (2011-2017). Glaser is the author of seven books of poems, including Remembering Eden (2008), Being a Father (2004) and A Lover’s Eye (1989), and editor of the anthologies Come Celebrate with Me: A VOICES Memorial Tribute to Lucille Clifton (2011), Weavings 2000: The Maryland Millennial Anthology (2000), and The Cooke Book: A Seasoning of Poets (1987). He coedited The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton, 1965-2010 (2012).
Lewis J. Perelman (February 13, 1946 - March 10, 2025)
Perelman was a policy analyst and consultant, and author of six nonfiction books, including the best-selling School’s Out: Hyperlearning, the New Technology, and the End of Education (1992). He published articles on energy and climate change, as well as homeland security, and wrote the occasional poem, one of which was published in Beltway Poetry Quarterly.
Olivia Cadaval (September 29, 1943 - April 8, 2025)
Cadaval, a folklorist and historian, was born and raised in Mexico, and moved to the DC area in 1968. She worked for the National Center for Urban Ethnic Affairs, was director of El Centro de Arte, and is best remembered as a long-time curator for the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage (1989-2017). She authored Creating a Latino Identity in the Nation’s Capital (1998), and co-authored Curatorial Conversations: Cultural Representation and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival (2016). She also wrote chapters on D.C.’s Latino immigrant community in Urban Odyssey (1996) and Washington at Home (2010). Cadaval played a leading role in curating programs on Latino identity for the Smithsonian, and an exhibit on Latino youth movements for the National Museum of the American Latino. She was awarded the Américo Paredes Prize from the American Folklore Society.
Sharon Y. Ingram (February 22, 1967 - April 18, 2025)
Ingram, a DC native, performed under the name Sistah Fire and was active in The Anointed P.E.N.S., a poetry and performance group sponsored by Ebenezer A.M.E. Church in Oxon Hill, Maryland. In 2019, she won second place in the World Food Day Poetry Competition, sponsored by Poetry X Hunger. She was a featured reader at the Prince George’s County Poet Laureate Reading Series, the Annual Black History 365, the New Deal Cafe, and on Quintessential Listening Poetry Online Radio. Ingram wrote plays in addition to poetry. She worked for the American Postal Workers Union.
Elaine Raco Chase (August 31, 1949 - May 5, 2025)
Chase is the author of 17 romantic comedy novels, including Rough Edges (1989), Dare the Devil (1987), Best Laid Plans (1983), and Double Occupancy (1982). Originally from Schenectady, New York, she lived in Fairfax and Ashburn, Virginia with her husband of 55 years. Chase was a past president of Sisters in Crime International, and a charter member of Romance Writers of America. Her books have been translated into 15 languages.
Clifford Bernier (July 11, 1959 - May 24, 2025)
Bernier is the author of six books, Wetlands (2025), Bakary and the River (2025), Ocean Suite (2024), The Silent Art (2011), Earth Suite (2010), and Dark Berries (2010). He founded the Poesis Reading Series in Arlington (and hosted it from 2003 to 2008), and served as a reader for the Washington Prize at the Word Works, and a judge for the Poetry Out Loud Competition, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts. Bernier worked for over thirty years at the Association for Advancement of Medical Instrumentation. In addition to writing poetry, Bernier was a musician, often combining his two passions in performances where he alternated between playing harmonica and reading his poems.
Ananda Lewis (March 21, 1973 - June 11, 2025)
Lewis, a broadcast journalist best known as a host for MTV and BET, also published creative nonfiction. She attended Howard University, where she became a youth activist, and graduated with a degree in history in 1995. More recently, she served as a correspondent on CBS’s “The Insider.” Lewis was the recipient of two NAACP Image Awards. She died of breast cancer at age 52.
Bill Moyers (June 5, 1934 - June 26, 2025)
Moyers served as de facto White House Chief of Staff (1964-65) and White House Press Secretary (1965-67) under President Lyndon B. Johnson. He was director of the Council of Foreign Relations (1967-74), and key in the establishment of the Peace Corps and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. As a journalist, Moyers published Newsday, worked as editor and chief correspondent for CBS News, and as a senior analyst and commentator for NBC News. For PBS, he developed the programs “This Week with Bill Moyers,” “Bill Moyers Journal,” and “Frontline.” His 13 books of essays and interviews include: Moyers on Democracy (2008), Moyers on America (2004), Fooling With Words: A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft (1999), The Language of Life: A Festival of Poets (1995), and, with Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth (1988). Moyers was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, a Peabody Award, and induction into the Television Hall of Fame.
Allan B. Lefcowitz (1932? - July 2025)
Lefcowitz served in the army during the Korean War, and earned a PhD from Boston University, writing a dissertation on Matthew Arnold. He was a professor of English at the U.S. Naval Academy, where, in addition to teaching, he was editor of the scholarly journal Nineteenth-Century Prose (originally titled The Arnold Newsletter). In 1976, Lefcowtiz co-founded The Writer’s Center (along with Patricia Griffith and Mary MacArthur), and served as its Artistic Director through 2002. Lefcowitz is the author of The Creative Writer’s Handbook (co-written with Philip K. Jason, issued as a fifth edition in 2010), and over 70 plays, including Pandora’s Jar, Wittgenstein, and Gulliver at Home.
Thomas Sayers Ellis (October 5, 1963 - July 18, 2025)
Sayers is the author of Crank-Shaped Notes (2021), The Corny Toys (2018), Skin Inc.: Identity Repair Poems (2010), The Maverick Room (2005), and The Genuine Negro Hero (2001). He was also included in Take Three (1996), along with Larissa Szporluk and Joe Osterhaus, a mini-chapbook, Song On (2005), and a book of photographs, Mexico (2021). Ellis, born and raised in DC., co-founded the Dark Room Collective, was a contributing editor to Callaloo Magazine, and taught creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College, Bennington College, and Case Western Reserve University. Among other honors, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry in 2015. Beginning in 2016, his reputation was marred by multiple accusations of sexual harassment, abuse, and sexual predation, and Ellis concentrated more on other areas: his work as a photographer, and leader of the band Heroes are Gang Leaders.
Melissa Nichols (January 29, 1969 - July 28, 2025)
An Assistant Professor at George Mason University, and a visiting writer at the Corcoran College of Art & Design, Mel Nichols hosted the Ruthless Grip Poetry Series. Her books of poems include: I Google Myself (2016), Catalytic Exteriorization Phenomenon (2009), Bicycle Day (2008), The Beginning of Beauty, Part 1 (2007), and Day Poems (2005). She also released an album, Poetics Orchestra, and collaborated with Pinktum on Pink Noise: a post-mastectomy poem & soundscape. Nichols was an avid gardener. She died of cancer at age 56.
Maxine Clair (February 18, 1939 - September 5, 2025)
Clair, born in Kansas, moved to D.C. in 1967. She worked as chief medical technologist at Children’s Hospital before earning an MFA in creative writing at American University. She published a book of poems, Coping with Gravity (1988), two books of fiction, Rattlebone (1994, reissued 2022) and October Suite (2001), and one book of nonfiction, Imagine This: Creating the Work You Love (2014). Among other honors, she received the Literary Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Clair was a tenured English professor at George Washington University until her retirement in 2008, when she took up work in health care again, as a reiki practitioner.
Joanna Banks (March 28, 1943 - September 28, 2025)
Banks was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and moved to D.C. in 1964 to work at the Bureau of Public Debt, then moved the next year to a new job at AT&T (through 1987). From 1987 to her retirement in 2008, she served as a museum educator at the Anacostia Museum. Most of her own creative work was as a doll maker. But she is best remembered for amassing a collection of over 10,000 literary works by African-American authors, which was donated to the University of Pennsylvania Libraries in 2018. The collection is notable for its focus on Black women writers, and includes the extensive bibliographies Banks compiled under the titles From My Shelf: A Bibliography of Works by and about Black Women, which she updated through 1995, and From My Shelf, Black Heritage Cookbooks (2018). In addition, Banks was active in a longstanding African American feminist reading group, Black Womyns/Women’s Art Resource Collective (BWARC), and co-authored their 10th anniversary publication, BWARC: Black Women’s Art Resource Collective (aka “The Reading Group”), 1984-1994.
Susan Levitt Stamberg (September 7, 1938 - October 16, 2025)
Best known as a host of the National Public Radio shows, “All Things Considered” and “Weekend Edition Sunday,” Stamberg was the first woman to hold a full-time position in the U.S. as anchor of a national nightly news broadcast. She is the author of two books, Talk: NPR’s Susan Stamberg Considers All Things (1993), and Every Night at Five: Susan Stamberg’s All Things Considered Book (1982); and is co-editor, with George Garrett, of The Wedding Cake in the Middle of the Road: 23 Variations on a Theme (1992).
Arthur Waskow (October 12, 1933 - October 20, 2025)
Rabbi Waskow is the author or editor of twenty books, including Godwrestling (1978), Seasons of Our Joy (1982), Down-to-Earth Judaism (2020), Dancing in God’s Earthquake (2020), Torah of the Earth: 4,000 Years of Jewish Thought on Ecology (2000), Trees, Earth and Torah (2000, with Ari Elon and Naomi Mara Hyman), The Tent of Abraham (2007, co-written with Joan Chittister and Murshid Saadi Shakur Chisti), and, with Phyllis Berman, the books Freedom Journeys (2011), A Time for Every Purpose Under Heaven (2002), and Tales of Tikkun (2020). He also wrote the widely influential “Freedom Seder” in 1969, combining modern liberation struggles for Civil Rights and women’s rights with the Biblical story of the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in ancient Egypt. Waskow was a visiting professor at Swarthmore College, Temple University, Drew University, Vassar College, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, and the Hebrew Union College. He cofounded the Shalom Center in Philadelphia and ALEPH: The Alliance for Jewish Renewal. In DC, he co-founded the Institute for Policy Studies and Fabrangen Havurah. Waskow was prominent in anti-war protests, beginning with the Vietnam War, and was a pioneer in advocating for LGBTQ+ rights, and developing the eco-Judaism movement. He was arrested multiple times for civil disobedience. Waskow was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award as a Human Rights Hero by T’ruah, among other honors.
Evelyn Jean Small (March 17, 1948 - October 26, 2025)
Ev Small worked for decades as a journalist and senior researcher for The Washington Post, where she served as a contributing editor of Book World, and worked as literary assistant to Katherine Graham for 14 years as Graham wrote her Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, Personal History. She also worked with other authors to write and research their books. Small, originally from Greenville, Ohio, was educated at Miami University (BA), Ohio State University (MA, PhD), and Catholic University (MS).
Sarah Kristensen (February 6, 1969 - October 31, 2025)
A poet and short story writer, Kristensen attended Bryn Mawr College and American University. She lived in D.C. for decades, and recently moved to Palm Springs, California for her job as Senior Editor at SmithBucklin. Her creative writing was published in Mid-Atlantic Review, Scattered Thoughts, Haiku Universe, and Writer’s Digest.
William James Ivey (September 6, 1944 - November 7, 2025)
Ivey was chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts (1998-2001), and chairman of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (1981-1983, 1989-1991). He was founding editor of the Journal of Country Music, Director of the Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum (1971-1997), and won a Billboard Country Award for album note writing (1974). He was an advisor to President Barack Obama’s transition team in 2008. His books of nonfiction include: Rebuilding an Enlightened World (2018), Handmaking America (2012), Arts, Inc. (2008), and Engaging Art (2007, co-edited with Steven Tepper).
Tina Darragh (November 21, 1950 - November 18, 2025)
Darragh’s numerous books of poems include: Opposable Dumbs (2022), Doubles Change (2016), Dream Rim Instructions (1999), 6tpf/6tyn (1997), Etruscan Jetty (1996), adv. fans (1993), a(gain)2st the odds (1989), Striking Resemblance (1988), Exposed Faces (1984), on the corner to off the corner (1981), and my hands to myself (1975). She also worked in collaboration with other writers, including Douglas Oliver, Randolph Healy, Marcella Durand, and Diane Ward. Her work was notable for puns, lists, and other inventive lexicography. She came to D.C. in 1970 to attend Trinity University (now Trinity Washington University), and worked with Some of Us Press, Folio Books, and the Mass Transit community workshop in the 1970s. She founded the press Dry Imager in 1975, which released four titles, including her own selected poems, My Hands to Mutant Solidarities (2020). Darragh spent the majority of her career as a reference librarian at Georgetown University.
Loraine Hutchins (May 2, 1948 - November 19, 2025)
Hutchins was an activist who created BiNet USA, a national fellowship of bisexual people, and AMBi, The Alliance of Multi-Cultural Bisexuals, a direct-action group in Washington, DC. She co-edited two anthologies, Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out (1991, co-edited with Lani Ka’ahumanu), and Sexuality, Religion and the Sacred: Bisexual, Pansexual and Polysexual Perspectives (2011, co-edited with H. Sharif Williams). She contributed to essays to The Routledge History of Queer America, 21st Century Sexualities, Bisexual Politics, and Identities and Place; and articles to the Journal of Gay & Lesbian Issues in Education, American Sexuality, and the Journal of Human Sexuality. Hutchins was a fourth-generation Washingtonian, and worked as an adjunct professor at Montgomery College.
Maria de Los Angeles (November 9, 1967 - November 21, 2025)
The author of a book of poems, Journey to Now (2020), and an unpublished memoir-in-progress of the same title, Los Angeles was a digital creator and independent journalist, and author of a newsletter, HeartCenteredDC. Her writing addressed the intersections of creativity, yoga, sobriety, and spirituality. Born in Miami, she lived in D.C. from 2018 to 2024, and was living in Cantabria, Spain at the time of her early death from cancer.
Raymond Maxwell (November 30, 1955 - December 6, 2025)
Maxwell worked for the U.S. Navy before entering the Foreign Service in 1992, where he served until his retirement in 2008. He earned an MA in International Studies from the University of London, and an MS in Library Studies from Catholic University. He later worked as a librarian and archivist at American University, and led courses on August Wilson’s plays for the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. He wrote explications of poems he loved for his blog on Dante and Shakespeare. Maxwell wrote poetry throughout his adult life; many were published on his blog, and in 2022, he self-published his Poems.
Lou Cannon (June 3, 1933 - December 19, 2025)
Cannon, a long-time Washington Post reporter (much of it as senior White House Correspondent), won the Gerald Ford Prize in 1988 for distinguished reporting on the U.S. Presidency. He is best known for his coverage of Ronald Reagan. His books of nonfiction include: Reagan’s Disciple: George W. Bush’s Troubled Quest for a Presidential Legacy (2008, written with his son Carl Cannon), Governor Reagan: His Rise to Power (2003), Official Negligence: How Rodney King and the Riots Changed Los Angeles and the LAPD (1997), President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime (1991), Reagan (1982), and Reporting: An Inside View (1977).
Eleanor Elson Heginbotham (November 8, 1938 - December 23, 2025)
Heginbotham wrote Reading the Fascicles of Emily Dickinson: Dwelling in Possibilities (2003), co-edited Dickinson’s Fascicles (2016, with Paul Crumbley), and contributed to the Emily Dickinson Encyclopedia. She was a board member of the Emily Dickinson International Society. Heginbotham was born in California and raised in D.C. She taught at American University’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, Concordia University St. Paul, the University of Maryland, and the Stone Ridge School in Bethesda. Married to a foreign service officer for 62 years, she lived and taught in several countries, including Liberia, Vietnam, and Indonesia, and was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to teach at the University of Hong Kong. The Heginbotham Literary Lecture Series at Concordia University was established in her honor.
Washington Unbound honors the memory of these writers, some famous, others less well known, all part of the texture of the DMV literary community. We thank Kim Roberts for entrusting us with this task of memorializing.
Kim Roberts is the author of seven books of poems, most recently Q&A for the End of the World, a collaboration with Michael Gushue (WordTech Editions, 2025), and two guidebooks, including The District’s Departed: Walking Tours of DC-Area Cemeteries (forthcoming from Rivanna Books, 2026). She co-curates DC Pride Poem-a-Day each June, and co-directs the Pride Poetry Fellowship at the Arts Club of Washington. http://www.kimroberts.org