Pine Manor College l MFA Programs l Creative Writing

Kathi Aguero has published four collections of poetry: Daughter Of, The Real Weather, Thirsty Day, and—most recently—Investigations, a collection of poems inspired by Nancy Drew (2008). Kathi’s work has appeared in such publications as Poetry magazine, the Massachusetts Review, and the Cincinnati Review. She is also co-editor of three collections of multicultural literature: A Gift of Tongues, An Ear to the Ground, and Daily Fare. Her creative nonfiction essay, “Marriage Koan,” appears in the anthology Why I’m Still Married. Recipient of a Massachusetts Fellowship in Poetry and a fellowship to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Kathi also was awarded a writing grant from the Elgin/Cox Trust. She has taught at the Writers’ Center at the Chautauqua Institute in upstate New York, as well as in the Poets in the Schools Programs of New Hampshire and Massachusetts. In 2004, she held the position of Visiting Research Associate at the Brandeis University Women’s Studies Research Center in Waltham, Massachusetts. In addition to teaching in our MFA program, Kathi is a professor of English in Pine Manor’s undergraduate program. She also teaches for “Changing Lives Through Literature,” an alternative sentencing program based on the power of books to change lives through reading and group discussion.
Visit www.kathleenaguero.com.

An Na — Writing for Children & Young Adults (January residencies/spring semesters only)

An Na was born in Korea and grew up in San Diego, California. A former middle school English teacher, pastry chef, and video-store clerk, she is currently at work on her fourth novel. Her first novel, A Step from Heaven, was a National Book Award Finalist and received the Michael L. Printz Award and the 2002 Children’s Book Award in Young-Adult Fiction from the International Reading Association. It was also named a New York Times Book Review Notable Book and a Best Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association. Her second novel, Wait For Me (2006), was an ALA Best Book for Young Adults and Junior Library Guild Selection. Her third novel, The Fold, was released in spring 2008. In an interview after her NBA nomination, An Na said, “Writing for children is not easier than writing for adults. Nor is it a vehicle for teaching a lesson or moral. Some of the worst books out there for kids are the ones that preach. Kids, like adults, want to think and feel and come to their own conclusions.” An Na lives in Vermont.
Visit www.anwriting.com.

Laure-Anne Bosselaar — Poetry (July residencies/fall semesters only)

Laure-Anne Bosselaar grew up in Belgium, where she worked as a talk-show host, commentator, and voice-over artist for Belgian and Luxembourg Radio and Television. She is the author of Artémis, a collection of French poems, published in Belgium. Her first collection in English, The Hour Between Dog and Wolf, was a finalist for the Walt Whitman Award, the National Poetry Series, the Ohio State University Prize, and the Nicholas Roerich Prize. Her second book of poems, Small Gods of Grief, won the Isabella Gardner Prize for Poetry in 2001. Ausable Press published her third poetry collection, A New Hunger, which was selected as an ALA Notable Book in 2008. A graduate from the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers, she taught poetry workshops for the Writers in the Schools program in Colorado, directed a poetry workshop in Snowmass Village, Colorado, and co-directed the Aspen Writers’ Conference from 1989 to 1992. She was awarded a Fellowship at the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference, and has served as a Writer-in-Residence at Hamilton College and at the Vermont Studio Center. Recipient of a Pushcart Prize, she also been awarded the McEver Chair In Poetry at Georgia Tech. As an anthologist, Laure-Anne edited Never Before: Poems About First Experiences; Outsiders: Poems About Rebels, Exiles, and Renegades; and Urban Nature: Poems About Wildlife in the City. With her husband, poet Kurt Brown, she also co-edited Night Out: Poems About Hotels, Motels, Restaurants, and Bars. Fluent in four languages, she is currently translating American poetry into French and Flemish poetry into English; in 2006, she and Kurt Brown published a book of translations from Flemish poet Herman de Coninck: The Plural of Happiness. She lives in New York City and currently teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and at writers’ conferences across the country.
Visit www.laureannebosselaar.com.

Read Laure-Anne Bosselaar's Interview with Tiara Marchando

Joy Castro — Creative Nonfiction and Fiction (July residencies/Fall semesters only)

Born in Miami, Joy Castro is author of The Truth Book, which was reviewed as “an exquisitely powerful and beautifully written memoir” by The Boston Globe in 2005. An award-winning teacher, she publishes articles on innovative strategies for the college classroom, and her published literary scholarship focuses on experimental women writers of the twentieth century such as Jean Rhys, Meridel Le Sueur, Sandra Cisneros, and Naomi Shihab Nye. Her honors include the Charles Gordone Award for Poetry and a Frank B. Vogel Scholarship in nonfiction at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Her short fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared such magazines as North American Review, Cream City Review, Chelsea, Quarterly West, Puerto del Sol, and The New York Times Magazine. Her creative nonfiction and poetry have also appeared in the anthologies Without a Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class; Breeder: Real-Life Stories from the New Generation of Mothers; White Ink: Poems about Mothers and Motherhood; Faith and Doubt: An Anthology of Poems; and Ghost at Heart’s Edge: Stories and Poems of Adoption. Joy teaches literature and creative writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Committed to broadening the reach of higher education to communities in need, Joy has offered free courses to at-risk teenagers, low-income adults, and survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. She is currently completing both a collection of short stories and a book about the American Jazz-Age writer Margery Latimer.
Visit www.joycastro.com.

Read Joy Castro's Interview with Tiara Marchando

Ray Gonzalez — Creative Nonfiction, Poetry, Fiction

Ray Gonzalez is author of The Underground Heart: A Return to a Hidden Landscape, winner of the 2003 Carr P. Collins/Texas Institute of Letters Award for Best Book of Nonfiction. A finalist for the Minnesota Book Award in Memoir, Underground Heart was also named one of ten Best Southwest Books of the Year and Best Nonfiction Book of the Year, and selected as “Book of the Month” by the El Paso Public Library. His other nonfiction books are Memory Fever, a memoir about growing up in the Southwest, and Renaming the Earth: Personal Essays. Ray is also author of ten books of poetry, including the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Book Award winner The Heat of Arrivals; 2000 and 2006 Minnesota Book Award Finalists Cabato Sentora and Consideration of the Guitar: New and Selected Poems; 2003 Minnesota Book Award Winner The Hawk Temple at Tierra Grande, and the forthcoming Cool Auditor: Prose Poems. His work has appeared in the 1999, 2000, and 2003 editions of The Best American Poetry and The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses 2000. Editor of numerous anthologies, he has also written two collections of short stories, including The Ghost of John Wayne, winner of a 2002 Latino Heritage Award in Literature; and a cross-genre work, The Religion of Hands: Prose Poems and Short Fictions. He has served as poetry editor of the Bloomsbury Review for twenty-five years, and is founder of the poetry journal LUNA. In 2004, Ray received a Lifetime Achievement Award in Literature from the Border Regional Library Association. He teaches at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

Terrance Hayes — Poetry (on leave until January/spring 2009)

When he was an undergraduate student at Coker College, Terrance Hayes identified himself primarily as a painter; it was only in 1999, after the publication of his first book, Hip Logic (the cover of which features one of his oil paintings), that Terrance first described himself as a poet. Hip Logic, selected for the National Poetry Series by Cornelius Eady, was finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize as well as the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. Terrance is also the author of Muscular Music and Wind in a Box, published by Penguin Books in 2006. He has received many awards and prizes for his work, including a Whiting Writers Award, a Kate Tufts Discovery Award, a Pushcart Prize, a Best American Poetry selection, a Breadloaf Writers’ Conference Fellowship, the Chester H. Jones Foundation Poetry Award, the Red Brick Review Poetry Prize, two Academy of American Poets prizes, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Terrance has taught at the Stonecoast MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine, the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Warren Wilson College, Xavier University of Louisiana, Columbus State Community College, and the University of Pittsburgh. He is currently an Associate Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he lives with his wife, son, and daughter.

Laban Carrick Hill — Writing for Children & Young Adults

Laban Carrick Hill has written more than 25 books for children, young adults, and adults. His America Dreaming: How Youth Changed America in the 60s won the 2007 National Parenting Publications Gold Award and has been selected as a 2008 New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age. The book is a cultural history of the sixties and its legacy, and is also a starred selection of the Children’s Book Community of Bank Street College of Education. His young-adult novel, A Brush with Napoleon (2007), has been praised by School Library Journal as “subtle” and “dramatic.” In 2006, Laban’s young-adult novel Casa Azul was chosen by The New York Public Library as a Best Book for the Teen Age. His Harlem Stomp! A Cultural History of the Harlem Renaissance (2004) received more than 25 awards and honors, including National Book Award Finalist, a Parent’s Choice Gold Award, and more than five selections for best books of the year lists. His book-length poem Dave the Potter is forthcoming from Little, Brown in 2011, and will be illustrated by Bryan Collier. A poet as well as a fiction and nonfiction writer, Laban has written critical biographies on the South African novelist J. M. Coetzee, the Southern novelist Bobbie Ann Mason, and the poet Jane Kenyon. His poems have been included in Contemporary Poetry of New England, an anthology edited by Jay Parini, as well as in numerous literary magazines. Laban has taught literature and writing at Columbia University, Baruch College, St. Michael’s College, and Vermont College. In addition, he has taught courses on the Harlem Renaissance at the University of Vermont.

Read Laban Carrick Hill's Interview with Tiara Marchando

Steven Huff — Fiction, Poetry

Steven Huff is the author of a collection of stories, A Pig in Paris (2008), and two collections of poems, The Water We Came From (2003) and More Daring Escapes, published by Red Hen Press in 2008. His chapbook Proof was named Editor’s Choice in the 2004 Two Rivers Review Chapbook Competition. Steve’s poems and stories have appeared in Ploughshares, The Hudson Review, Kestrel, The Chatauqua Literary Review, Ted Kooser’s “American Life in Poetry” column, and other journals and publications. Garrison Keillor has also read his poetry on “A Writer’s Almanac” public radio program. A Pushcart Prize winner in fiction, Steve teaches creative writing at the Eastman School of Music and the Rochester Institute of Technology. He is creator and host of the weekly radio feature in Western New York, “Fiction in Shorts,” aired on public radio stations WXXI-FM and WJSL-FM. The former executive director of BOA Editions, Ltd., he is now director of adult education and programs at the Writers & Books Literary Center in Rochester, New York, and is founding a new publishing house, Tiger Bark Press.

Randall Kenan — Creative Nonfiction, Fiction

In researching his nonfiction book, Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century, Randall Kenan spent eight years traversing the United States, gathering more than 200 interviews that represent the wide range of experiences in black American life today. In Walking on Water, which was nominated for the Southern Book Award, Randall brings to his interviews, travels, and comments the deep heart, keen curiosity, and inquisitive imagination that make him one of America’s finest writers and commentators. A Visitation of Spirits was Randall’s first novel, published in 1989. His collection of stories, Let the Dead Bury Their Dead (1992), was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was among The New York Times Notable Books of the year. He is also the author of a young-adult biography of James Baldwin and wrote the text for Norman Mauskoff’s book of photographs, A Time Not Here: The Mississippi Delta. His most recent book is a work of nonfiction, The Fire This Time (2007). Recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Whiting Writers Award, Randall received the Rome Prize in Literature from the American Academy in 1997. He was a member of the editorial staff at Alfred A. Knopf publishers in the mid 1980s. He has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Columbia University, Vassar College, the University of Mississippi, and the University of Memphis. He now teaches in the creative writing program at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Read Randall Kenan's Interview with Tiara Marchando

Helen Elaine Lee — Fiction (both July and January residencies/fall and spring semesters)

Helen Elaine Lee’s first novel, The Serpent’s Gift, was published by Atheneum in 1994. Her second novel, Water Marked, was published by Scribner in 1999. Her stories have appeared in myriad magazines and anthologies, including Callaloo; SAGE; Children of the Night: The Best Short Stories by Black Writers, 1967 to the Present, edited by Gloria Naylor; and Ancestral House: The Black Story in the Americas and Europe, edited by Charles Rowell. She recently completed her third novel, Life Without, about the lives of eleven people incarcerated in two neighboring American prisons. The book earned her the Jeptha H. and Emily V. Wade Award from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Life Without was inspired by her volunteer work teaching writing and storytelling workshops with prison inmates—which she has done for more than six years—and many interviews with ex-offenders and people who work with prisoners. Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, she was educated at Harvard College and Harvard Law School, from which she graduated in 1985. Library Journal has said of Helen: “She has a storyteller’s sure touch that transcends real life while staying firmly rooted in the African-American experience.” She is Associate Professor of Fiction in the Writing & Humanistic Studies Program at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Dennis Lehane — Writer-in-Residence, Fiction (summer residencies only)

Dennis Lehane is the author of Mystic River, winner of the Anthony Award for Best Novel, the Barry Award for Best Novel, and the Massachusetts Book Award in Fiction, given by the Massachusetts Center for the Book; Mystic River was also a finalist for the PEN/Winship Award, andwas released as an Academy Award-winning film directed by Clint Eastwood. A Massachusetts native, Dennis is the author of the Patrick Kenzie series of Boston detective novels: A Drink Before the War; Darkness, Take My Hand; Sacred; Gone, Baby, Gone; and Prayers for Rain. His most recent novel is Shutter Island, which is being made into a movie directed by Martin Scorsese with Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, and Ben Kinglsey in the starring roles. His short story “Until Gwen” was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2005, The Best American Mystery Short Stories 2005, and New Stories from the South 2005, and is the basis of his play “Coronado,” which premiered in New York City in December 2005. Writer-in-Residence at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, Dennis is the co-director of the Writers in Paradise Conference and was a staff writer for HBO’s The Wire. He has taught fiction and literature at the Harvard Extension School, the Stonecoast MFA Program, and Tufts University. His newest novel is The Given Day (fall 2008). The Cleveland Plain Dealer called Dennis Lehane “one of the best writers of his generation, period.”
Visit www.dennislehanebooks.com.

Laura Williams McCaffrey — Writing for Children & Young Adults (July residencies/fall semester only)

Laura Williams McCaffrey was born and raised in Vermont. She attended Barnard College of Columbia University, then returned to Vermont and eventually became a school librarian, answering to the names “Ms. Librarian,” “Library Lady,” and sometimes simply “Ms. Library.” She is the author of two young-adult fantasy novels, Water Shaper, selected for the 2007 New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age list; and Alia Waking (2003), named an International Reading Association Notable Book. Alia Waking was also a nominee for the annual Teens’ Top Ten Books list and for Vermont’s Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award. Laura now writes, speaks about children’s fantasy literature, and teaches writing fulltime. She lives in a small house in the woods with her husband, regionally acclaimed musician Colin McCaffrey, and their daughters.
Visit www.laurawilliamsmccaffrey.com.

Read Laura Williams McCaffrey's Interview with Tiara Marchando

Dzvinia Orlowsky — Poetry (January residencies/spring semester only)

Pushcart-Prize winner Dzvinia Orlowsky is the author of four poetry collections, the most recent of which is Convertible Night, Flurry of Stones. Her first collection, A Handful of Bees, was reprinted as a Carnegie Mellon University Contemporary Classic in 2008. Dzvinia’s poetry and translations have appeared in numerous anthologies, including A Map of Hope: An International Literary Anthology; From Three Worlds: New Writing from the Ukraine; and A Hundred Years of Youth: A Bilingual Anthology of 20th Century Ukrainian Poetry. Her translation (from Ukrainian) of Alexander Dovzhenko’s novella, The Enchanted Desna, was published by House Between Water press in 2006. A founding editor of Four Way Books, she is a contributing editor to Agni, The Marlboro Review, and Shade. She has taught poetry at the Mount Holyoke Writers’ Conference, The Boston Center for Adult Education, Emerson College, Gemini Ink, the Stonecoast Summer Writers’ Conference, the Stonecoast MFA Program, Writers in Paradise, and the Solstice Summer Writers’ Conference at Pine Manor College. Her poems have appeared in a number of magazines, including Columbia, Field, Diner, Ploughshares, The American Poetry Review, and The Massachusetts Review. Dzvinia was recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Poetry Grant as well as a the Council’s Professional Development Grant. She lives in Massachusetts.

Sandra Scofield — Fiction, Creative Nonfiction (January residencies/spring semesters only)

Author of seven novels, Sandra Scofield won the Texas Institute of Letters Best Fiction Award in 1997 and was a 1991 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow. Her titles include A Chance to See Egypt, Gringa, Plain Seeing, Walking Dunes, and Beyond Deserving, a National Book Award Finalist for Fiction. She has also published a memoir, Occasions of Sin, and a craft book for writers titled The Scene Book. An experienced teacher with a Ph.D. from the University of Oregon in Curriculum and Instruction, Sandra has served on the faculty of Southern Oregon State College (now Southern Oregon University), and has been a visiting writer at Macalaster College, the University of Arkansas, Miami University (Oxford, OH), and Old Dominion University. Through the National Book Foundation, she has twice served as writer-in-residence on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington. She has taught in private and public elementary and secondary schools, and has extensive experience as an educational planner, having worked with the Northwest Educational Laboratory, the Montana Department of Public Instruction, and school districts in Oregon and Alaska. Sandra is a regular faculty member of the Iowa Summer Writing Festival and has been on the faculty of several other summer writers’ workshops. Sandra was born in Texas and educated there. A longtime resident of Oregon, she now lives in Montana with her husband, a retired high school teacher. Her interests, besides her work, are spiritual reading, travel, her dogs, and visits to museums and galleries. Lately, she is learning to paint while working on a book of essays.
Visit www.sandrascofield.com.

Michael Steinberg — Writer-in-Residence, Creative Nonfiction (winter residencies only)

A native New Yorker, Michael Steinberg is a memoirist, personal essayist, and founding editor of the award-winning literary journal, Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction. In 2003, ForeWord Magazine chose his memoir, Still Pitching, as the Independent Press Memoir/Autobiography of the Year. Other books include Peninsula: Essays and Memoirs from Michigan; The Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writers of/on Creative Nonfiction (now in its fourth edition); Those Who Do, Can: Teachers Writing, Writers Teaching; and The Writer’s Way. His essays and memoirs have appeared in many literary journals and have been cited several times in Best American Essays and Best American Sports Writing. Mike taught writing and literature at Michigan State University for more than thirty years. Most recently he has been a guest writer/editor at several national and international writing conferences, including the Paris Writers’ Workshop, the Geneva Writers’ Conference, the Prague Summer Writing Program, and the Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference in Alaska.

Sterling Watson — Fiction (Summer residencies/fall semesters only)

Sterling Watson is the author of five novels: The Calling; Blind Tongues; Deadly Sweet; Sweet Dream Baby; and Weep No More, My Brother, which was nominated for the Rosenthal Award of the National Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Sterling is the recipient of three Florida Fine Arts Council Awards for Fiction Writing. His short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in such publications as Prairie Schooner, The Georgia Review, The Los Angeles Times Book Review, Gulfstream Magazine, The St. Petersburg Times, The Michigan Quarterly Review, and The Southern Review. He has received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Director of the Creative Writing Program at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, Sterling has taught courses in film in addition to fiction. He was the recipient of both the John M. Bevan Teaching Excellence & Campus Leadership Award and the Lloyd W. Chapin Award for Excellence in Scholarship for the 2006-2007 academic year. Before Eckerd, he taught at the University of Florida and in the Prison School of the Florida State Penitentiary. He lives in Tierra Verde, Florida.

Jacqueline Woodson — Writing for Children & Young Adults (Winter residencies/spring semesters only)

Jackie Woodson is the author of a number of books for children and young adults, including Miracle’s Boys, winner of the Coretta Scott King Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (made into a six-part television miniseries on Noggin in 2004 – 2005, directed by Spike Lee); Feathers, a Newbery Honor Book; Hush, a Finalist for the National Book Award and the American Library Association (ALA) “Best Book For Young Adults”; Locomotion, winner of the Horn Book Award from the Boston Globe, a Coretta Scott King Honor Book, and a National Book Award Finalist; and If You Come Softly, named a Best Book for Young Adults by the ALA. Her picture book The Other Side has won many awards, including the Texas Blue Bonnet Award and a Child Magazine Best Book Award; it was also named an ALA Notable Book. She has received several additional honors, including two Jane Addams Peace Awards, three Lambda Literary Awards, the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Excellence, a Granta Best Writer Under Forty Award, Publisher’s Weekly Best Book of 1994, and a number of ALA Best Book Awards. A former drama therapist for runaways and homeless children in New York City, Jackie has taught fiction at the Vermont College MFA in Creative Writing Program; The City College, City University of New York; Goddard College’s MFA in Creative Writing Program; the National Book Foundation Summer Writing Camp; and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. She resides with her family in Brooklyn, New York.
Visit www.jacquelinewoodson.com.

Meg Kearney — Director

Meg Kearney is Director of the Solstice Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program at PMC as well as Director of its Solstice Summer Writers Conference. For 11 years prior to joining Pine Manor, she was Associate Director of the National Book Foundation—sponsor of the National Book Awards and a number of educational outreach programs—based in New York City. She also taught poetry at the New School University. Meg is author of An Unkindness of Ravens (2001) and The Secret of Me, a novel in verse for teens, published in hardcover by Persea Books in 2005 and out in paperback in 2007. Her forthcoming collection of poems, Home By Now, will be published by Four Way Books in 2009. She also has a picture book, Trouper the Three-Legged Dog, coming out with Scholastic. Her work, featured on Poetry Daily and Garrison Keillor’s “A Writer’s Almanac,” has been published in such publications as Poetry, Agni, and Ploughshares, and many anthologies, including Urban Nature (2000), Poets Grimm (2003), Never Before: Poems About First Experiences (2005), The Book of Irish American Poetry from the 18th Century to the Present (2006), and Conversation Pieces: Poems that Talk to Other Poems (2007). She also has a creative nonfiction essay, “Hello, Mother, Goodbye,” featured in the anthology The Movable Nest: A Mother/Daughter Companion (2007). In addition, Meg is co-editor of Blues for Bill: a Tribute to William Matthews (2005). A native New Yorker, she now resides in New Hampshire with her husband, writer Mike Fleming and their three-legged black Labrador named Trooper.

Tanya Whiton — Assistant to the Director

©Derek Jackson

Tanya Whiton has published stories and poems in literary journals including North Dakota Quarterly, Western Humanities Review, Northwest Review and Crazyhorse 63. Her short story “Giving Her Away” was included in the 2006 anthology The Way Life Should Be: A Collection of Stories by Contemporary Maine Writers, and she collaborated on the adaptation of her story “The Deal” for an award-winning eponymous short film. A former contributor to Casco Bay Weekly, The Portland Phoenix, The Bollard, and Maine Public Radio, Tanya holds two New England Press Association awards and was recipient of the 2000 Martin Dibner Fellowship for Maine Writers. A resident of Portland, Maine, she has taught for the Lesley Seminars, Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, the Stonecoast Writers’ Conference, and the University of Southern Maine.
Visit www.tanyawhiton.com.

Tiara Marchando — Program Intern

©Stephanie Ronan

Tiara Marchando is a spoken word poet from Boston, Massachusetts. Her work has appeared in literary magazines such as The Register and Conifers, which led to her participation in Pine Manor College’s annual Poetry Slam as a member of Ladies of Various Ebony Shades. She represented Pine Manor College (PMC) in the 2006 Greater Boston Intercollegiate Poetry Festival and has also performed alongside Def Poetry Jam poets Bassey, Stacey Ann Chin, and Black Ice in Northeastern University’s “Beatless” in both 2006 and 2007. Tiara was recently a featured poet in BloodSkinLand Production’s poetry show “YOUNG GIFTED AND BLACK: The 2nd Revolution”. She attended PMC’s 2007 Solstice Summer Writers’ Conference and now interns in the College’s MFA in Creative Writing Program. Tiara graduated from Boston Latin School, the oldest public school in America, noted as a bastion of excellence. She is currently a senior at PMC working toward a BA in English.

Special MFA Guests

Naomi Shihab Nye — Special Guest, January 2009 Residency

Naomi Shihab Nye is a poet, essayist, novelist, and teacher. Born to a Palestinian father and an American mother, she grew up in St. Louis, Jerusalem, and San Antonio. Drawing on her Palestinian-American heritage, the cultural diversity of her home in Texas, and her experiences traveling in Asia, Europe, Canada, Mexico, Central and South America, and the Middle East, Naomi uses her writing to attest to our shared humanity.

Naomi is the author and/or editor of more than 20 volumes. Her books of poetry include 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East (a National Book Award Finalist); A Maze Me: Poems for Girls; Red Suitcase; and You & Yours. She is also the author of Mint Snowball (paragraphs); Never in a Hurry (essays); Habibi and Going, Going (novels for young readers); and Baby Radar and Sitti’s Secrets (picture books). Other works include seven prize-winning poetry anthologies for young readers, includin The Space Between Our Footsteps: Poems & Paintings from the Middle East. Her most recent book of essays is titled I’ll Ask You Three Times, Are You Okay? Tales of Driving and Being Driven. A book of poetry for young adults, Honeybee, is forthcoming in 2008. Naomi has been a Lannan Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Witter Bynner Fellow (Library of Congress). She has received a Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, four Pushcart Prizes, and numerous honors for her children’s literature. Her work has been presented on National Public Radio’s A Prairie Home Companion and The Writer’s Almanac. She has been featured on two PBS poetry specials: “The Language of Life with Bill Moyers” and “The United States of Poetry,” and also appeared on NOW with Bill Moyers.

Roland Merullo — Special Guest, July 2008 Residency Guest

Novelist and creative nonfiction writer Roland Merullo began his career as an author in 1991 with the publication of his novel Leaving Losapas, which was named a B. Dalton Discovery Series choice, had a starred review in Kirkus, and was called “the debut of the year” by Robert Stone and “the novel of the year” by Boston Magazine. He has published five additional novels to date: Breakfast With Buddha, A Russian Requiem (translated into Spanish and German and adopted by the Bertlesmann Book Club); Revere Beach Boulevard (a finalist for the PEN New England/L.L. Winship Prize); In Revere, In Those Days (a Booklist Editors’ Choice and winner of the Maria Thomas Fiction Award for best novel by a former Peace Corps volunteer); A Little Love Story, published by Crown in August 2005, and Golfing With God, published by Algonquin Books in October 2005. His latest novel, American Savior, is forthcoming from Algonquin in August, 2008. His nonfiction work, Passion for Golf: In Pursuit of the Innermost Game, was published in 2000. His memoir, Revere Beach Elegy, won the Massachusetts Book Award for nonfiction in 2002. He has written for the New York Times, Newsweek, Outside, The Boston Sunday Globe Magazine, Reader’s Digest, The Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday Magazine, and a serialized novella and essays for The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Bob Owczarek — Special Guest , July 2008 Residency Guest

Bob Owczarek has taught theatre at Dean College, the Boston Conservatory, and Boston University, and is currently professor of drama at Pine Manor College. He has appeared on stage, film, radio and television. He is a member of the American Federation of Radio and Television Artists, the Screen Actors’ Guild and Actors’ Equity Association.

Elizabeth Peavey — Special Guest , July 2008 Residency Guest

While growing up in small-town Maine, Elizabeth Peavey wanted nothing more than to become a writer and see the world. But what she learned as she traipsed around the country and the globe was that there was only one place she wanted to park her typewriter (yes, she’s that ancient): home in Maine. She returned for good in 1990 and has stayed put ever since. Peavey is the author of a collection of humor columns, Outta My Way: An Odd Life Lived Loudly, and Maine & Me, a compilation of her travel writing for Down East magazine, where she has been a contributing editor since 1997. Her essays and articles have appeared in Yankee's Travel Guide to New England, Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors and Odyssey Travel, among other publications. She authored the Maine chapter of Fodor’s Road Guide U.S.A. (Random House, 2001) and has contributed essays to the Maine Public Broadcasting Network news program "Maine Things Considered." She teaches public speaking at the University of Southern Maine and has taught creative nonfiction at the University of Maine at Farmington, as well as numerous workshops for the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. Her current humor column, “Outta My Yard,” can be read online at thebollard.com, and her travel column, “Downtown, Maine,” appears quarterly in the print version of The Bollard. She is also a contributor to newengland.com, Yankee Magazine’s new travel/destination Web site. Maine & Me was awarded the Maine Literary Award for Best Maine-themed Book in 2006.

Peter Wood — Special Guest , July 2008 Residency Guest

Peter Wood’s poems have appeared in national poetry journals such as Antioch Review and Prairie Schooner as well as many regional journals and anthologies. He has participated in many of the Geraldine R. Dodge Poetry programs in New Jersey and the annual poetry festivals at The Frost Place in New Hampshire. Peter has published three illustrated chapbooks in collaboration with Demarais Studio Press. After nearly forty years of teaching poetry and writing, he retired from the English Department of The College of New Jersey in 2001. He lives in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, where he and his wife Joan are active in issues involving open space and public trails.

July 2008 Publishing Panelists

Esmond Harmsworth is a founding partner of the Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Literary Agency. Harmsworth’s nonfiction list includes serious nonfiction books on topics such as politics, psychology, culture, history, food and cooking, and politics. Recent highlights on his list include: Thanks! How The New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier, by Dr. Robert Emmons and Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making by David Rothkopf. For fiction, Harmsworth represents literary fiction, mystery and crime, and popular (mainstream) fiction. His clients include Laura Dietz, author of In The Tenth House, Alicia Metcalf Miller, author of My Life on Mars, Donald Hays, author of Dying Light, and Sabina Murray, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award for The Caprices.
For more information about the Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Literary Agency, go to: http://www.zshliterary.com/

The former executive director of BOA Editions, Ltd., Steven Huff is now director of adult education and programs at the Writers & Books Literary Center in Rochester, New York, and is founding a new publishing house, Tiger Bark Press. Steve is the author of a collection of stories, A Pig in Paris, and two collections of poems, More Daring Escapes and The Water We Came From. His poems and stories have appeared in Ploughshares, The Hudson Review, Kestrel, The Chatauqua Literary Review, Ted Kooser’s “American Life in Poetry” column, and other journals and publications. Garrison Keillor has also read his poetry on “A Writer’s Almanac” public radio program. A Pushcart Prize winner in fiction, Steve teaches creative writing at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He is creator and host of the weekly radio feature in Western New York, “Fiction in Shorts,” aired on public radio stations WXXI-FM and WJSL-FM.

Michael Steinberg is a memoirist, personal essayist, teacher, and founding editor of the award-winning literary journal, Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction. His books include Still Pitching: A Memoir; Peninsula: Essays and Memoirs from Michigan; The Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writers of/on Creative Nonfiction (now in its fourth edition); Those Who Do, Can: Teachers Writing, Writers Teaching; and The Writer's Way. In 2003, ForeWord Magazine chose Still Pitching as the Independent Press Memoir/Autobiography of the Year.In 2001, Peninsula was a finalist for the Great Lakes Book Award and the ForeWord Magazine Anthology of the Year.
For more information about Mike, go to: http://www.mjsteinberg.net/, and to learn more about Fourth Genre, go to: http://msupress.msu.edu/journals/fg/

Andrea Tompa is lucky enough to be an associate editor at Candlewick Press, where she works with authors such as Annette LeBlanc Cate (The Magic Rabbit), Clara Gillow Clark (Hill Hawk Hattie), Joan Carris (Welcome to the Bed & Biscuit), and Megan McDonald (The Sisters Club). She acquires books in all areas, including picture books, fiction, and nonfiction, but is particularly enthusiastic about expanding her middle-grade fiction and young YA list. When she's not editing, she can be found hiking, snowshoeing, swing dancing or — most often — reading.
To learn more about Candlewick Press, go to: http://www.candlewick.com/

Wyn Cooper — Special Guest, January 2008 Residency Guest

Wyn Cooper has published three books of poems: The Country of Here Below (Ahsahta Press, 1987), The Way Back (White Pine Press, 2000), and Postcards from the Interior (BOA Editions, 2005). His poems, stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, Agni, Verse, and more than 60 other magazines. His poems are included in 25 anthologies of contemporary poetry. In 1993, “Fun,” a poem from his first book, was turned into Sheryl Crow’s Grammy-winning song “All I Wanna Do.” He has co-written songs with David Broza, David Baerwald, and Bill Bottrell. In 2003, Gaff Music released “Forty Words for Fear,” a cd of songs based on poems and lyrics by Wyn and set to music and sung by the novelist Madison Smartt Bell. It has been featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition and World Café, and has been written about in Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Observer, and elsewhere. Songs from the CD have been featured on four T.V. shows. He has taught at the University of Utah, Bennington College, Marlboro College, and at The Frost Place, where he now serves on the advisory board. He is a former editor of Quarterly West, and the recipient of a fellowship from the Ucross Foundation. He lives in Halifax, Vermont, and helps run the Brattleboro Literary Festival.

Gibson Fay-LeBlanc — Special Guest, January 2008 Residency Guest

Gibson Fay-LeBlanc is the executive director of The Telling Room, a nonprofit literary organization in Maine. His poems have appeared in AGNI Online, Guernica, The New Republic, Tin House and Verse Daily, among other places, and are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner and Poetry Northwest. His work is featured at fishousepoems.org, an audio archive of emerging poets, and he was awarded the Bellevue Literary Review’s annual poetry prize by Edward Hirsch. With graduate degrees from UC Berkeley and Columbia University, he has taught writing and literature in public and private secondary schools throughout the country and, prior to his work with The Telling Room, taught at Fordham and the University of Southern Maine.

Michael Fleming — Special Guest, January 2008 Residency Guest

Born in San Francisco, raised in Wyoming, Michael Fleming decided early on that he was a writer and needed to see something of the world. He set out on a twenty-year odyssey: undergraduate work at Princeton; teaching English in refugee camps in Thailand; a graduate degree from Oxford; teaching high-school mathematics in Africa; work as a carpenter, hospice volunteer, and college composition teacher in California; and editing textbooks in New York City. Meanwhile, Fleming has written short stories, poetry, essays, and a rock & roll novel, The Del Ray Method. An award-winning teacher of composition and literature, he has extensive knowledge of English usage and prose style. He now works as a freelance editor; his projects include The Norton Introduction to Literature, The Norton Introduction to Poetry, The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, and The Norton Anthology of Drama. He lives in New Hampshire.

Marie Harris — Special Guest, January 2008 Residency Guest

New Hampshire Poet Laureate from 1999 to 2004, Marie Harris is a writer, teacher, editor, and businesswoman. In 2003, she produced the first-ever gathering of state poets laureate. She has served as writer-in-residence at elementary and secondary schools throughout New England, and written freelance articles for such publications as the New York Times and the Boston Globe. Marie is the author of four books of poetry for adults and two books for children; she is also editor of nearly a dozen anthologies, including The Party Train: North American Prose Poetry (New Rivers Press); The Broken Bed (HarperCollins), and The Book of Eulogies (Scribner). With poet and Solstice MFA faculty member Kathi Aguero, she is also editor of A Gift Of Tongues: Critical Challenges in Contemporary American Poetry (University of Georgia Press) and An Ear to the Ground: Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry (University of Georgia Press, cited as one of ALA's Notable Books of 1989). She is currently working on a novel for young readers involving America's first female composer, Amy Beach. Visit www.marieharris.com.

Jessica Lipnack — Special Guest, January 2008 Residency Guest

Jessica Lipnack is co-author of six non-fiction books, including Networking, The Age of the Network, and Virtual Teams, which have been translated around the world. Beginning her career as a reporter at The Mercury (a daily in Pottstown, PA), she’s written for The New York Times, Boston Globe, Harvard Business Review, Mothering, The Futurist, Mother Earth News, and, recently, Global City Review, where her short story, “Endless Knots,” appears in the Fall, ’07 issue. Howard Rheingold’s Virtual Community cites her as a pioneer in electronic communication. She served as faculty in the first online global executive education program and has participated in many online experiments. Her blog, www.endlessknots.com, named for the short story and vice-versa, allows her to write about writing, writers, technology, books, food, yoga, collaboration, family, friends, the weather, and knitting, among other topics, without fear of rejection (and serves as a substitute for the newspaper she published in her neighborhood when she was ten years old). She earns her living as the CEO of NetAge, a consultancy that advises global enterprises.

Sheree R. Thomas — Special Guest, January 2008 Residency Guest

Sheree Renee Thomas was awarded the 2003 Ledig House/LEF Foundation Prize for Fiction for her novel Bonecarver. Her fiction and poetry have most recently appeared in Bronx Biannual, No. 2: The Literary Journal of Urbane Urban Literature; The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South, edited by Nikky Finney; Colorlines: the National Magazine on Race and Politics. Her anthology, Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora, won the World Fantasy Award and the Gold Pen Award in 2001; it was also designated a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, received a Washington Post Editor’s “Rave,” and was named an Amazon.com “Essential Book.” Her second anthology, Dark Matter: Reading the Bones was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for best anthology of the year in 2004. Co-publisher of the literary journal Anansi: Fiction of the African Diaspora, she is founder of Wanganegresse Press. A former Cave Canem Fellow and recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Poetry, she teaches fiction at the Frederick Douglass Creative Arts Center in Manhattan.

Kurt Andersen — Special Guest, July 2007 Residency Guest

Novelist, columnist, screenwriter, playwright, and radio host Kurt Andersen was named “One of the 100 People Who Changed New York” by New York magazine in 2003. His first novel, Turn of the Century, was a national bestseller and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (the Times called it “wickedly satirical” and “outrageously funny”). Publishers Weekly called his latest book, Heyday, “delightful, intelligent…rowdy, knowing — and wholly American.

Kurt, who is host and co-creator of Studio 360, the Peabody Award-winning public radio show about the arts and culture, writes a column called “The Imperial City” for New York magazine. He has previously been a columnist for The New Yorker, and was for eight years Time’s architecture and design critic. As an editor, he co-founded the legendary Spy magazine; served as editor-in-chief of New York in the mid-90s; and in 1999 co-founded Inside, an online publication covering the publishing and entertainment industries.

In addition, Kurt has written for film, television and the stage. He adapted Turn of the Century as a screenplay with the director Curtis Hanson. During the 1990s he was executive producer and head writer of two prime-time specials for NBC starring Jerry Seinfeld and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. He is co-author of Loose Lips, a satirical off-Broadway revue that had long runs in New York and Los Angeles starring Bebe Neuwirth and Andy Richter.

He is a member of the boards of trustees of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum and Pratt Institute. He received an honorary doctorate from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2005, and graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College, where he was an editor of the Lampoon. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughters.

Melanie Drane - Special Guest, July 2007 Residency Guest

Melanie Drane is an alumna of Princeton, University of California at Berkeley, and the London School of Economics. During 17 years as an expatriate, she lived in Bonn, Vienna, London and Tokyo. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, including The Iowa Review, Nimrod, The North American Review, Poetry Review (UK), Comstock Review, and Witness. She also reviews books for ForeWord, a journal specializing in independently-published books. Her nomadic history includes stints as newspaper wine columnist for The Japan Times and Daily Yomiuri; speechwriter for a former Berlin mayor near the end of the Cold War; and editor at a foreign-policy think tank in Tokyo.

She received her MFA in creative writing from the University of Southern Maine at Stonecoast. From 2002-2004, she served as writer-in-residence at Interlochen Arts Academy in northern Michigan. Most recently, she became the first non-British winner in the history of the UK’s National Poetry Competition, and was invited to read at Ledbury Poetry Festival in July 2006. She currently makes her home in an old tobacco warehouse loft in Durham, NC and leads writing retreats and workshops at Basho’s Cabin (http://bashos-cabin.blogspot.com/).

Phyllis Karas - Special Guest, July 2007 Residency Guest

©Kathy Joyce

Phyllis Karas began her writing life as an author of young adult novels, including Cry Baby, For Lucky’s Sake, Spellbound, and The Hate Crime, which was named a Young Adult Choice by the International Reading Association in 1997. She is also the author of an adult novel, A Life Worth Living, as well as numerous magazine and newspaper pieces. Phyllis, who teaches writing at Boston University’s School of Journalism, has earned the New England Press Association’s award for the Best Feature Story (a four-part series about teenage pregnancy) and the Simon Rockower Award for Excellence in Feature Writing (for an article in Moment Magazine about kosher slaughter). As a columnist, she wrote “Living the Life: Wit, Wisdom, and Woe” for the Boston Herald, and “In This Corner” for the Boston Globe.

A trip to Greece to celebrate her 30th wedding anniversary changed Phyllis’s writing life completely. There, she met Kiki Feroudi Moutsatsos, Aristotle Onassis’ private secretary during his six-year marriage to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The Onassis Women: An Eyewitness Account, by Kiki Feroudi Moutsatsos with Phyllis Karas, was published in 1998. The book was the subject of a Dateline NBC story and garnered interviews by such publications as the New York Times, People, Vogue, and Hard Copy. Even the National Enquirer has featured her book, albeit without her consent.

Phyllis went on to write Street Soldier (2001), the story of a minor Irish mobster named Edward McKenzie, working under Boston mob boss Whitey Bulger. Her latest book, Brutal: The Untold Story of My Life Inside Whitey Bulger’s South Boston Mob, was published in 2006 and named to the New York Times Best Seller List in April 2006. Her coauthor on the book, Kevin Weeks, was Whitey Bulger’s top associate for 25 years.

Phyllis Karas has been married for 40 years to Jack Karas, a pulmonary physician, is a mother of two sons and the grandmother of two. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband and balances her professional writing and teaching careers with her love of family and of sports.

Alexander J. Motyl — Special Guest, July 2007 Residency Guest

Alexander J. Motyl is professor of political science and deputy director of the Division of Global Affairs at Rutgers University-Newark. He served as associate director of the Harriman Institute at Columbia University in 1992-1998. He is the author of six non-fiction books, including Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires (Columbia University Press, 2001) and Revolutions, Nations, Empires (Columbia University Press, 1999). He is also editor of The Encyclopedia of Nationalism (Academic Press, 2001), as well as the author of two novels, Whiskey Priest (iUniverse, 2005) and Who Killed Andrei Warhol (Seven Locks, 2007). In addition, he is a painter, with shows scheduled in Toronto in April 2007 and in New York City in September 2007 (represented by The Tori Collection, www.toricollection.com).

Manette Ansay — Special Guest — Fiction, July 2006 Residency Guest

Novelist, short-story writer, poet, and creative nonfiction writer A. Manette Ansay will publish her seventh book, Blue Water, in 2006. This novel is preceded by Vinegar Hill, an Oprah Book Club Selection and one of the Chicago Tribune’s Best Books of 1994; Midnight Champagne, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of the Great Lakes Book Award; River Angel, named a New York Times Notable Book; and Sister, winner of the 1997 Banta Prize and a New York Times Notable Book. Read This and Tell Me What It Says was the recipient of the 1994 AWP Short Fiction Series Prize and the Paterson Prize for Short Fiction. After its American debut, her memoir Limbo was released in the UK, Australia, and Germany. Her creative nonfiction has also been published in such magazines as Redbook, Real Simple, Gourmet Magazine, Victoria Magazine, and The Indiana Review. She has written reviews for The Washington Post, The Globe and Mail, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Chicago Tribune. Manette has also published poems in Prairie Schooner, The Northwest Review, New Letters, The Kansas Quarterly, and many other literary journals.

Her myriad awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, the Nelson Algren Prize, a Centrum Foundation Fellowship, and two Great Lakes Book Awards. She has taught at the Warren Wilson MFA in Creative Writing Program; Marquette University, where she held the Women’s Chair in Humanistic Studies; the Stonecoast MFA Program of the University of Southern Maine; Vanderbilt University; the University of the South; Phillips Exeter Academy; and Cornell University. Manette currently lives with her husband and daughter in Florida, where she teaches creative writing at the University of Miami. www.amanetteansay.com

Andrew Solomon — Special Guest — Creative Nonfiction, July 2006 Residency Guest

In 1988, Andrew Solomon began his study of Russian artists, which culminated with the publication of The Irony Tower: Soviet Artists in a Time of Glasnost (Knopf, 1991). He was asked in 1993 to consult with members of the National Security Council on Russian affairs and wrote parts of President Clinton’s first Russia speeches; that year he was also named a Contributing Writer of The New York Times Magazine, a position he held until 2001. His recently reissued first novel, A Stone Boat (Faber, 1994), was a runner up for the LA Times First Fiction prize and was a national bestseller; it has now been published in five languages.

Mr. Solomon’s most recent book, The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, earned fourteen national awards, including the 2001 National Book Award. It was named an American Library Association Notable Book of 2001 and a New York Times Notable Book, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. The Noonday Demon has been on the New York Times bestseller list in both hardback and paperback. Published in 22 languages, it has also been a bestseller in seven foreign countries. Mr. Solomon has lectured on depression around the world, including recent stints at Princeton, Yale, Stanford, Harvard, MIT, and Cambridge.

Andrew Solomon is a regular contributor to numerous publications, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Artforum. His writing on cystic fibrosis has won him the Angel of Awareness Award of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, as well as the Clarion Award for Journalism. He has written essays for many anthologies and books of criticism, including essays for Coach (Warner Books, 2005), Who Owns The Past: Cultural Policy, Cultural Property, and the Law (Rutgers University Press, 2005), The Proust Project (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004), Oleg Vassiliev: Memory Speaks (Palace Editions, 2004), and Loss Within Loss: Artists in the Age of AIDS (University of Wisconsin Press, 2001). His work was also selected for Best American Travel Writing 2003.

He is currently writing a book, to be published in 2008, called A Dozen Kinds of Love: Raising Traumatic Children, which deals with how families accommodate children who are deaf, who are autistic, who are prodigies, who have committed crimes—in other words, children who pose great challenges to their families and to themselves. He is also working on a comic novel.

Andrew Solomon studied at Yale University, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1985, and then at Jesus College Cambridge, where he received the University writing prize, as well as top first-class degree in his year, the only foreign student ever to be so-honored. He is now pursuing a PhD at Cambridge in Social and Political Studies (psychology), working on the relation between biological and psychosocial models of early attachment between mothers and infants.

He maintains residences in London and New York and is a dual national.

Nancy Willard — Special Guest , January 2007 Residency Guest

Poet, novelist, short-story writer, playwright, essayist, and picture-book author Nancy Willard is the author of two novels for adults, Things Invisible to See and Sister Water, several novels for young adults, including Island of the Grass King and Firebrat, as well as a dozen books of poetry, including Water Walker, which was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Swimming Lessons: New and Selected Poems, and — most recently — In the Salt Marsh. In addition to her graphic novels, she has written nearly 20 picture books including The Moon & Riddles Diner and the Sunnyside Café, Nightgown of the Sullen Moon, Sweep Dreams, The Well-Mannered Balloon, and A Visit to William Blake’s Inn: Poems for Innocent and Experienced Travelers, which was awarded the Newbery Medal.

Nancy lyrically adapted the traditional tale “East of the Sun & West of the Moon” into a play in 1989, which was published and illustrated in full color by Barry Moser. A documentary about Nancy and her work, “Uncommon Sense: The Art & Imagination of Nancy Willard,” was directed by Michael Mayhew and co-written with producer Ken Robinson in 2003. Awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Arts in both fiction and poetry, her work has been widely anthologized.

She teaches in the English department at Vassar College and lives in Poughkeepsie, New York, with her husband, the photographer Eric Lindbloom.

Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright — Spcial Guest — Translation, July 2006/January 2007 Residency Guest

Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright is the translator of Beauty and the Best: The Aesthetic Moment in Science, originally written in German by Ernst Peter Fischer. She has been translating Zafer Senocak and other contemporary German poets for years, and her work has been featured in such publications as the Seneca Review, Exchanges, Agni, and Another Chicago Magazine. Winner of the Gary Wilson Award from the University of Arkansas Press and Agni’s William J. Arrowsmith Translation Award, she has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Literary Translators Association, and the University of Arkansas Fulbright College.

Editor of German language poetry for New European Poets (to be published by Graywolf in 2006) and translation editor for the online poetry journal Perihelion, she has taught classes and workshops in translation at Boston University, Oberlin College, and the University of Arkansas. A selection of her translations of the work of Zafer Senocak will appear in the Anthology of World Literature of the 20th Century, forthcoming from Green Integer Books. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband, the poet Franz Wright.

Franz Wright — Special Guest — Poetry, July 2006 Residency Guest

Franz Wright won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for poetry for his collection Walking to Martha's Vineyard, which was published by Knopf in October 2003. He is also the author of The Beforelife, Ill Lit: New and Selected Poems, Rorschach Test, The Night World and the Word Night, Midnight Postscript, and an expanded edition of translations titled The Unknown Rilke. In addition, he has translated the works of René Char, Erica Pedretti, and Rainer Maria Rilke. He has received the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, as well as grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His new book of poems, God’s Silence, will be released in March, 2006.

Wright was born in Vienna in 1953 and grew up in the Northwest, the Midwest, and northern California. He has been the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts grants, a Whiting Fellowship, and the PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, among other honors. He lives in Waltham, Massachusetts, with his wife, Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright.

return to top