In addition to being an ASPCA Henry Bergh Book Award Finalist, it was also a New York Library Association Book of the Season, a Book Sense Picks nominee, and a North Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association Picture Book of the Year Award nominee.

A graduate of the Institute, Ms. Vlahakis has published over 100 stories, articles, and poems. Her knack for making science and nature appealing to kids makes her a favorite among editors—her work has appeared in Highlights for Children, Ladybug, Spider, Cricket, AppleSeeds, Turtle, Kid space in the Christian Science Monitor, Story Friends, Guide, and other children’s magazines.

Her article, “My Favorite Fruit? The Olive!” and her story, “Finding the Robin’s Nest” both originally published in Highlights for Children, are seen in reader comprehension assessments for CTB/McGrawHill, Harcourt, Pearson, and others. Her poems for adults have appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, frogpond, Modern Haiku, Connecticut River Review, Comstock Review, New England Letters, and other magazines. A poem in Blue Berry Press won their Best of Issue Award as well. She has been anthologized in The Thin Curve (Red Moon Press, 2000), Tour de Bug (Cricket Media, 2011), The Temple Bell Stops (Modern English Tanka Press, 2012), and Take-Out Window (Haiku Society of America Anthology, 2014), among others.

A registered nurse, Ms. Vlahakis is also a contributor to the award-winning Intensive Care: More Poetry and Prose by Nurses (University of Iowa Press, 2003), A Call to Nursing (Kaplan Publishing, 2009), and the American Journal of Nursing. She has done numerous readings with a Connecticut Poetry Society writer’s group, as well as a reading at the University of Connecticut with the Litchfield County Writers Project.