• From Brookline, Massachusetts, Amy Godine attended public and private schools, and got her BA in American Studies from Hampshire College. In Berkeley, California, she was an editorial assistant for the Heyday Press, and for five years in Portland, Oregon, she wrote for the Willamette Week newspaper.  An MFA (fiction writing) from the Iowa Writers Workshop followed. Since 1980 she has lived in Saratoga Springs with her husband, several modestly productive fruit trees, way too many record albums, and an old, soulful dog.  The kids, now kids in our minds only, check up on us from DC, New Haven, and outside Boston.

  • “Black Pioneers, Gerrit Smith, and Timbuctoo” (lecture), National Abolition Hall of Fame and Museum, Peterboro, 8/5/23

    “Black North Elbans in Civil War” (lecture), John Brown Farm, 5/27/23

    “Willis Hodges’ Blacksville” (lecture), Loon Lake Jewish Community Center, 8/6/2023

    “Timbuctoo: Tapestry of History and Story,” Timbuctoo Teacher Institute (panel), John Brown Farm, 7/13/23

    “Adirondack Jewish Peddlers,” Beth Joseph Congregation, Plattsburgh; 4/23/23

    Reframing Adirondack History, “Adirondacks for All” Public Humanities Initiative webinar, ADKX, 11/1/22

    “The Black Woods,” (lecture) Protect the Adirondacks Annual Meeting, 7/16/2022

    “A Look at Diverse Peoples Within the Adirondacks” (webinar)), Adirondack Research Consortium webinar, 2021

    “Timbuctoo in Vermont” (lecture), Town Hall Theater, Middlebury, VT, 10/14/2021

    “John Brown’s Vermont” (zoom lecture), Rokeby Museum, VT, 10/16/2021

    “Uneasy Inquisition: The John Brown Statue in North Elba” (lecture),Whallonsburg Grange 10/27/2020

    “Adirondack Blackface” (zoom webinar), ADKX, 8/20/2020

    “Looking for Timbuctoo” (driving tour), Adirondack Architectural Heritage,

    “The Adirondack Black Experience” (panelist), ADKX, 8/6/2018

    “The Public and Our Timbucktus, Global Timbuktu Symposium” (panels), Rutgers, 4/24/2017

    “Lost and Found: Essex County and Its Immigrants” (lecture) Adirondack History Museum, 7/28/2015

    Keynote address, First Adirondack Diversity Symposium, 8/16/2014

    “Working on the Railroad” (lecture), Adirondack Museum

    “A Dream Deferred: The Betrayal of Stephen Pembroke” (lecture), Saratoga Springs Public Library, 12/5/2013

    “Have You Seen That Vigilante Man?”, Wilmington Community Center, 7/30/2010

    “Ethnic Neighborhoods of Glens Falls”, Warren County Historical Society, 8/2008

    “Peddlers, Gamblers, Chicken Farmers, Porch Sitters: The Heyday of Jewish” Saratoga Springs, SSPL, 3/10/2005

    “The Red Woods: The Adirondacks and the Left” (lecture), Fresh Water Institute, Lake George, 7/12/04

    “Adirondackers Anonymous” (lecture), Mohawk Valley Community College, 2002

  • "Dreaming of Timbuctoo,” at the John Brown Farm State Historic Site, North Elba, NY, since 2016. A travelling edition of this exhibit has been on the road since 2001. Among the venues: ADKX (The Adirondack Experience); Adirondack History Museum; New York State Museum; State Capital Building; Albany City Hall; SUNY Plattsburgh; Tang Teaching Museum, Skidmore College; St. Lawrence University; Paul Smith's College; Siena College; Rutgers University; Town Hall Community Theater, Middlebury, VT; NY State Fair; Brooklyn Public Library, Main Branch; Abolition Hall of Fame, Peterboro; Adirondack Visitors Interpretive Center, Newcomb; Adirondack Correctional Facility in Ray Brook; Whallonsburg Grange.

    "A Peopled Wilderness," (research curator), Adirondack Museum, 1999.

    “Lasting Roots: Ethnic Neighborhoods of the Southeastern Adirondacks,” Chapman Historical Museum, Glens Falls, 1998.

    “We Were All Like a Family,” Saratoga Springs History Museum, 1996.

  • Journalism, essays, scholarship

    Articles & columns for Adirondack Life 1989 - ongoing

    "Memorial Field for Black Lives" The Gardan Journal 03, 2020,

    "What We Talk About When We Talk About Diversity" Blue Line, 40th Anniversary Issue, 2019

    "The Abolitionist and the Land Reformer: Gerrit Smith and Tom Devyr," The Hudson River Valley Review: A Journal of Regional Studies,  Spring, 2014

    "Poaching! Ethics in Folklore," Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore, Spring-Summer, 2001

    "Strangers in a Strange Land: John Chinaman in Northern New York," The Antiquarian, Clinton County Historical Association, 2000. 

    "Allen Walton of Essex County: An Adirondack Knight of the Road," New York Folklore, Winter-Spring, 1994

    "Notes Toward a Reappraisal of Depression Literature," Prospects: An Annual of American Cultural Studies, 1980.

    Fiction

    "Kurdistan," 1995, and "In the Year Zero," 1993. Lake George Arts Project Literary Review

    "Foreign Aid" TriQuarterly88, Fall 1993,

    "Mercy" The Quarterly/15, 1990,

    "The Gardener" North American Review, June 1986

    "In Alaska the Rivers Taste Like Snow” ACM/16, 1986,

  • The Black Woods, Cornell, 2023.

    Saratoga Springs: A Centennial History, “The Jewish Community" 2019.

    The Adirondack Reader, 3rd Edition, essay, “Forty Acres and a Vote,” AMC, 2009.

    The Adirondack Book, Ch. 1, “The People's Park," Berkshire House, 2001.

    Rooted In Rock, "Jewish Peddlers," Adirondack Museum & Syracuse University Press, 2001.

    Pamphlet: Adirondackers Anonymous: Lost Worlds and Hidden Heroes: Three Lectures, Alice T. Miner Museum, Chazy, NY, 2000.

    Adirondack Odysseys: A Guide to Historic Sites in Northern New York, coauthored with Elizabeth Folwell, Adirondack Museum & Berkshire House, 1999.

    Peopling the Adirondacks, history research monograph and exhibition brochure for Adirondack Museum. 1998-1999

    MediaWatch and book reviews (cultural geography, landscape history), Orion magazine, columns, 1995-2003

  • International Regional Magazines Association awards for historical features or columns: 1990, 1992, 2002, 2004, 2005, 2009, 2014, 2016, 2019, 2020, 2021

    Society of American Travel Writers Foundation, Foreign Travel, 1992-3, and Regional Publishers Assn., Travel, 1990

    Oregon Newspapers Publishers Assn. & Sigma Delta Chi Society for Investigative Journalism (Best feature; Best Investigative, Best Minority Affairs, 1979-1981).

    Residency writing fellowships: Yaddo, MacDowell, Ucross, Ragdale, Blue Mountain Center, Millay Colony for the Arts.

    New York Academy of History Fellow, 2007--.

    Larry J. Hackman NYS Archives Research Fellow, 2004

    Speaker, New York Council for the Humanities, 1996-1999, and 2001-2005. 

    James Michener Fellow, Fiction Writing, University of Iowa, Iowa Writers Workshop, 1986

  • While very far from a career academic, I like teaching and have kept my oar in when my schedule permits. When I was a teaching-writing fellow at the Iowa Writers Workshop, I taught literature to undergraduates and literature again to incarcerated college students in upstate New York. At Adirondack Elderhostels, Lake George Arts Project, and SUNY Empire State, I introduced adult learners to ethnic Adirondack and oral history, and for several years taught regional history classes at Skidmore College’s University Without Walls. From 2016-2020, I was a guest presenter for Hamilton College’s Adirondack residency program, and from 2019-2022, ran seminars in Adirondack social history for the NEH Summer Institute at the John Brown Farm.

  • Adirondack Center for Writing (2002-2013)

    John Brown Lives! (2000-2015)

    Saratoga Film Forum, (1993-2016)

    Saratoga Springs Jewish History Committee (2004-2005)