Toni Ortner grew up in Woodmere, Long Island and now lives in Vermont. She has had 29 books published by small presses. The most recent are Daybook I and II by Deerbrook Editions and Daybook III by Ardent Writer Press. The daybook series is based on the idea of Virginia Woolf as to what a diary should contain to present the light of our lives. 

Toni hosted the Putney Public Library Writers Salon 2022. The series included writers of poetry and fiction from Vermont and other states.

Toni gives readings in VT and NH in bookstores and libraries and is Vice President of Write Action which is a nonprofit group that supports writers in Southern Vermont through events, contests, and publications. For 17 years her writing appeared in vermontviews.org under Old Lady Blog. The magazine just shut down.

Poems in the Time of Covid is a collection of 56 poems by 37 poets written in the Brattleboro area during the 2020-2021 pandemic. Shopkeepers posted the poems on the windows of their stores during Poetry Month, April 2021.

She taught in the English departments of several colleges and universities, most recently the University of Connecticut’s Stamford branch. She has won grants from both Pen America and the Author’s League.

Her books are sold on Amazon, Kobo, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble and at the sites of the small press publishers.