Pike Artworks
Board Members

Carol McManus is an award-winning author, professional speaker, and radio host. She is the Senior Editor for the Mark Victor Hansen Library and oversees a team of ghostwriters and illustrators. She is passionate about the written word and helping others discover their voice through poetry and prose.

Brian Carso has worked in law, government, and academia. As both a lawyer and historian, he has written broadly about the American experience, including a scholarly book on the history of treason and a historical novel about Revolutionary War espionage.  He serves on the faculty of Misericordia University in Dallas, PA, and lives in Matamoras, PA.

Rocco Zappile serves as the Treasurer of Pike Artworks. He is a CPA, holds an advanced degree in finance, and managed a large not-for-profit organization in Patterson, New Jersey.

Barbara is a English teacher, a writing professor, and a former school administrator. She serves as Pike Artworks’ Secretary, and runs the children’s events at the festival.

Rebecca Lindsey practiced law in Chicago, New York and Washington. She researches and writes extensively for the Metropolitan Museum. Her history of the 130 year old Musical Instruments Department at the Metropolitan Museum was published in 2016. She and her husband Richard came to Milford twenty years ago and now make it their permanent residence.

Jennifer Ziegler is retired from her company JCZ Inc. in Connecticut and New Jersey after over 30 years in business. She has been on the Board of Stamford Women’s Club. Jennifer also served as event planner for 3 seasons of the Ridgefield Film Festival. She is current President of the Highland Lakes Women’s Auxiliary.  She has been on the Milford Readers and Writers Festival Committee since its inception.

Verne Kreger worked as an engineer and attorney for Fortune 500 companies and recently retired from the Johnson & Johnson law department.  He has been visiting the Milford area since 1977, and he and his wife, Lynn Nordstrom, became full time residents at Twin Lakes in 2019.  Verne also volunteers at the Milford food pantry and is on the board of the Twin Lakes Property Owners Assn.

Rose Chiocchi is the Executive Director of the Pike County Public Library. She has a BA in Public Relations and a Master’s in Library and Information Science. Before entering librarianship over 10 years ago, she was in marketing and large-scale event planning in NYC.  She serves on multiple local boards and is heavily involved in the Pennsylvania Library Association. Rose is originally from Pike County and now lives over the river in Port Jervis, NY.

Linda Perlman Fields is a writer, journalist and a former broadcast news producer/writer. She won a Peabody award while at CBS News and was nominated by the Writers Guild, East for Outstanding Achievement in the category of radio documentary. She taught English at the high school and college levels and writes from her home in Milford.

Richard C. Morais is an award-winning financial journalist and a New York Times bestselling novelist. His novel The Hundred-Foot Journey was made by Spielberg and Oprah into a film starring Helen Mirren. Morais was also Forbes’s European Bureau Chief and its longest serving foreign correspondent, and the editor who built Barron’s Penta. Morais has won three Business Journalist of the Year Awards, while his fiction was a semifinalist or shortlisted for multiple literary awards in the U.S. and abroad. In 2015, Morais was named Citizen Diplomat of the Year “for promoting cross-cultural understanding in all of his literary work.” Richard currently serves as editorial director, working in concert with the festival program committee