Kathleen Aguero — Poetry (July Residencies/fall semesters only)
© Debi Milligan
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.
Venise Berry — Fiction (January residencies/spring semesters only)
Venise Berry is the author of three national bestselling novels: So Good, An African American Love Story; All of Me, A Voluptuous Tale –recipient of a 2001 Honor Book Award from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association– and Colored Sugar Water. Her fourth novel, Pockets of Sanity, is expected in 2011, and she is currently at work in a memoir, Driven. In 2003, she received the Creative Contribution to Literature Award from the Zora Neale Hurston Society; and in 2001, she was recognized with an Iowa Author Award from the Public Library Foundation in Des Moines. She has co-authored two non-fiction resource books with S. Torriano Berry, an associate professor in Film at Howard University: The Historical Dictionary of African American Cinema and The 50 Most Influential Black Films. Her book Mediated Messages and African-American Culture: Contemporary Issues, a co-edited, non-fiction project, won the Meyers Center Award for the Study of Human Rights in North America in 1997. Venise is at work on several new projects, including a cultural critical analysis of the media, I Used to be a Rap Music Fan: Racialism and the Media; a spiritual anthology series, What do you believe?; a fifth novel, Career Women; and a memoir, The Three of Hearts. She is an associate professor of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, and the Coordinator of the African American Studies program.
Visit www.veniseberry.com.
Laure-Anne Bosselaar — Poetry (July residencies/fall semesters only)
© Tellis A. Lawson, Jr.
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 by Tiara Marchando
M. Evelina Galang — Fiction, Creative Nonfiction (July residencies/fall semesters only)
Courtesy of mevelinagalang.com
M. Evelina Galang is the author of two books of fiction, Her Wild American Self, a collection of short stories; and the novel One Tribe. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in such publications as Melus: The Journal of the Society of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States; The Philippine Star; Calyx; Filipino Americans: Transformation and Identity; and Ms magazine. She is also editor of the nonfiction anthology Screaming Monkeys: Critiques of Asian American Images. She is the recipient of numerous awards, among them the 2004 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award for Advancing Human Rights, the 2004 AWP Prize in the Novel, and the 2007 Global Filipino Award in Literature (for One Tribe).
Evelina has been researching the lives of the women of Liga ng mga Lolang Pilipina (LILA Pilipina), surviving Filipina “Comfort Women” of WWII, since 1998. In 2002, she was a Fulbright Senior Scholar in the Philippines where she continued her work with survivors. This past year, she authored the blog, “Laban for the Lolas!” in support of House Resolution 121 and was the Filipino American Outreach coordinator for 121 Coalition. She is currently writing Lolas’ House: Women Living with War, stories of surviving Filipina “Comfort Women.” She has recently finished her second novel, Angel de la Luna and the 5th Glorious Mystery, and is at work on a new novel, Beautiful Sorrow, Beautiful Sky. She teaches in the MFA Creative Writing Program at the University of Miami and has recently been named one of the 100 most influential Filipinas in the United States by Filipina Women’s Network.
Visit www.mevelinagalang.com
Laban Carrick Hill — Writing for Children & Young Adults
© Mario Morgado
Laban Carrick Hill’s latest children’s picture book Dave the Potter: Poet, Artist, Slave, illustrated by Bryan Collier, is coming out with Little Brown in September 2010. 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 and has been translated into three languages. 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 picture biography of DJ Kool Herc, The Godfather of Hip Hop, will be published by Roaring Brook Press in 2011. He is currently editing an anthology of emerging Ghanaian poets for Woeli Press in Ghana. A poet as well as a fiction and nonfiction writer, Laban's 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 2008 he was a Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana. For spring 2010, he was awarded a Fulbright to teach creative writing at the University of Colombo, Colombo, Sri Lanka. Hill is the founder of the Ghana Poetry Project, a nonprofit organization promoting literary culture through writing workshops, readings, lectures and a small press in Accra, Ghana.
To read about Laban's experience in Ghana, go to:
www.penamerica.blogspot.com or
www.labanhill.com.
Read Laban Carrick Hill's Interview by Tiara Marchando
Amy Hoffman — Creative Nonfiction (January residencies/spring semesters only)
A writer and community activist, Amy Hoffman is editor in chief of Women's Review of Books. Her memoir An Army of Ex-Lovers: My Life at the Gay Community News was published by the University of Massachusetts Press in Fall 2007. It was short-listed for the New York Publishing Triangle Judy Grahn Award and a Lambda Literary Award. Her first memoir, Hospital Time, about taking care of friends with AIDS in the late 1980s, was short-listed for the American Library Association Gay Book Award and the Judy Grahn Award, and was a New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age selection. Amy's news stories, feature articles, essays, interviews, and book reviews have been published in Sojourner, Lambda Book Report, UU World, and MassHumanities, the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities biannual newsletter. A former development director for Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities and the Women's Lunch Place, a daytime shelter for homeless women, she has also been an editor at Gay Community News, South End Press, and the Unitarian Universalist World magazine.
Visit www.amyhoffman.net.
Steven Huff — Fiction, Poetry
© Joe Flaherty
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 Rochester Institute of Technology. He was creator and host of a weekly radio feature in Western New York, “Fiction in Shorts,” which aired on public radio stations WXXI-FM and WJSL-FM from 2002 through 2008. The former executive director of BOA Editions, Ltd., he is now director of adult education and programs at the Writers & Books community literary center in Rochester, New York, and has founded a new publishing house, Tiger Bark Press.
Read Steven Huff's Interview by Jiao Fu
Randall Kenan — Creative Nonfiction, Fiction
© Jill Krementz
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), and he wrote the biographical essay in the forthcoming A New Historical Guide to James Baldwin, in addition to editing the forthcoming Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings of James Baldwin. 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
Laura Williams McCaffrey — Writing for Children & Young Adults
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 three young-adult speculative fiction novels: Lyla’s Flight, which is forthcoming from Clarion Books; Water Shaper (2006), 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. In addition to working with young writers in mentoring programs, she is a core faculty member at Pacem, a learning community for homeschoolers.
Visit www.laurawilliamsmccaffrey.com.
Read Laura Williams McCaffrey's Interview by Tiara Marchando
Jaime Manrique — Fiction, Creative Nonfiction, Poetry (July residencies/fall semesters only)
Jaime Manrique is a Colombian born novelist, poet, essayist, and translator who has written both in English and Spanish, and whose work has been translated into many languages. Among his publications in English are the novels Colombian Gold, Latin Moon in Manhattan, Twilight at the Equator, and Our Lives Are the Rivers; the volumes of poetry My Night with Federico García Lorca and Tarzan, My Body, Christopher Columbus; and the memoir Eminent Maricones: Arenas, Lorca, Puig, and Me. His honors include Colombia’s National Poetry Award, the 2007 International Latino Book Award (Best Novel, Historical Fiction), and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Jaime was associate professor in the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Columbia University (2002-2009); he has also taught in the MFA in Creative Writing Programs at Long Island University and Rutgers University. A Trustee of PEN American Center, he is currently at work on Cervantes Street, a novel.
Anne-Marie Oomen — Poetry, Creative Nonfiction
Anne-Marie Oomen is author of two memoirs, Pulling Down the Barn and House of Fields (Wayne State University Press), both Michigan Notable Books; two chapbooks of poetry, Seasons of the Sleeping Bear and Moniker (with Ray Nargis); and full-length collection of poetry, Uncoded Woman (Milkweed Editions). An American Map, a new collection of essays, is forthcoming from Wayne State University Press. She is also represented in New Poems of the Third Coast: Contemporary Michigan Poetry, and edited Looking Over My Shoulder: Reflections on the Twentieth Century, and anthology of seniors' essays funded by the Michigan Humanities Council. She has written and produced seven plays, including the award-winning Northern Belles, inspired by oral histories of women farmers; Wives of An American King, based on the James Jesse Strang story; and Recovering Ruth, inspired by the Ruth Douglass story on Isle Royale. Her most recent, Whaddaya Give!, a regional musical, continues her dramatic series inspired Michigan history. She is faculty editor for the Interlochen Review, founding editor of Dunes Review, president of Michigan Writers, Inc., and serves as instructor of creative writing at Interlochen Arts Academy. She and her husband, David Early, built their own home in Empire, Michigan, where they live with a large cat named Walt Whitman.
Dzvinia Orlowsky — Poetry (January residencies/spring semesters 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. She is a besotted grandmother, a frequent flier, and an apprentice landscape painter.
Visit www.sandrascofield.com.
Mark Turcotte — Poetry (January residencies/spring semesters only)
© S. Neill
Mark Turcotte spent his earliest years on North Dakota’s Turtle Mountain Chippewa Reservation and in the migrant camps of the western United States. Later, he grew up in Michigan, then traveled the country, working and living on the road for nearly fifteen years. Mark is author of four poetry collections, including The Feathered Heart and Exploding Chippewas. His work has appeared in myriad journals, including Prairie Schooner, Poetry, and Ploughshares. His short stories have most recently been published in Rosebud and Hunger Mountain. Recipient of a Lannan Foundation Literary Completion Grant, he has also been awarded two Literary Fellowships by the Wisconsin Arts Board. He was writer-in-residence in the National Book Foundation’s “American Voices” program on the Wind River Indian Reservation of Wyoming, and was awarded a Lannan Writer’s Residency in Marfa, Texas. He was the 2008/09 Visiting Native Writer at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, and now serves as Visiting Assistant Professor at DePaul University, where he teaches creative writing in the Department of English.
Sterling Watson — Fiction (July residencies/fall semesters only)
© John M. Clark
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, The Chattahoochee 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 & the Arts 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.
David Yoo — Writing for Young People
David Yoo is the author of the novels Girls for Breakfast (Delacorte), which was named a NYPL Best Book for Teens and a Booksense Pick and Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before (Hyperion), a Chicago Best of the Best selection, of which author Jonathan Lethem wrote, “David Yoo's voice is so witty and charming it only seems fair to give warning: he’ll break the hearts of teenage readers of all ages with this bittersweet love story.” His forthcoming collection of essays, The Choke Artist (Grand Central), documents the experience of growing up as a Korean American with characteristic humor. David has published fiction and nonfiction in various journals, including The Massachusetts Review, Rush Hour, The Maryland Review, as well as in various anthologies, including Who Can Save Us Now? (Simon & Schuster) and Guys Write for Guys Read (Viking), and he has a regular column in Koream Journal. He holds a B.A. from Skidmore College and an M.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He currently teaches at the Gotham Writers’ Workshop, and resides in Massachusetts.
Visit www.daveyoo.com.
Writers-in-Residence
Terrance Hayes — Poetry (January residencies/spring semesters only)
© Ric Francis
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.
Helen Elaine Lee — Fiction
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 (July residencies/fall semesters 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, and was 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 novel Shutter Island was adapted for a film directed by Martin Scorsese with Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Ruffalo, and Ben Kinglsey in the starring roles, and will be in theaters in February, 2010. 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.
Grace Lin — Writing for Children & Young Adults
Author and children's book illustrator Grace Lin was born and raised in upstate New York. Her first book, The Ugly Vegetables, was published in 1999 and heralded as an American Booksellers Association's "Pick of the List" and a Bank's Street College Best Book of the Year. The Ugly Vegetables was also nominated for the California Young Reader Children's Choice Award and named a Growing Good Kids Book Award Classic. Grace followed that success with the publication of more than a dozen more books, including Dim Sum for Everyone!, Fortune Cookie Fortunes, and Olvina Flies. Grace's first middle-grade novel, The Year of the Dog, was released with glowing praise, as was her 2008 sequal, The Year of the Rat. Her latest novel, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, was the 2009 Parents' Choice Gold Winner and recipient of a Newbery Honor. While most of Grace's books are about the Asian-American experience, she believes "Books erase bias; they make the uncommon everyday, and the mundane exotic. A book makes all cultures universal."
Visit www.gracelin.com.
Read Grace Lin's Interview by Jiao Fu
Michael Steinberg — Writer-in-Residence, Creative Nonfiction
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 fifth 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 California State University Fine Arts Festival, the Geneva Writers’ Conference, the Prague Summer Writing Program, and the Kachemak Bay/Alaska Writers’ Conference in Alaska. He's currently working on a collection of essays and a mid-life memoir.
Consulting Writers
M.L. Liebler — Consulting Writer
© Photos by Alex Lumelsky
M.L. Liebler is an acclaimed poet, university professor, literary arts activist, and arts organizer. He was recently awarded the 2010 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award, bestowed by the literary magazine Poets and Writers to honor authors who "have given generously to other writers or to the broader literary community." He is author of thirteen books, including the award-winning Written In Rain: New & Selected Poems 1985-2000; The Moon a Box (which includes a CD of his performance poetry); Greatest Hits: 1984-2004; a bilingual edition (in Russian and English) of The Frangrant Benediction of Life; and Wide Awake in Someone Else's Dream (Wayne State University Press), featuring poems written in and about Russia, Israel, Germany, Alaska, and Detroit. On behalf of the U.S.
State Department, he has read, performed, and taught poetry in such countries as China, Russia, Israel, Germany, Austria, France, Czech Republic, Britain, Wales, and elsewhere, including almost every state in the USA. In 2005, he was named the first Poet Laureate of his home town, St. Clair Shores, Michigan. He has taught English, Creative Writing, Labor Studies, and American Studies at Wayne State University since 1980. He is the founding director of The National Writer’s Voice Project in Detroit and the Springfed Arts: Metro Detroit Writers Literary Arts Organization. He was recently selected at Best Detroit Poet by The Detroit Free Press and Detroit’s Metro Time, and he is the nation’s first-ever Artist in Residence for a Public Library, the Chelsea District Library (2008-2009). M.L. is available to consult with MFA students and prospective students who are interested in pursuing a third-semester, applied-track internship.
Visit www.mlliebler.com.
Jacqueline Woodson — Consulting Writer
Jackie Woodson is the author of a number of books for children and young adults, including Peace, Locomotion; the Newbery Honor books After Tupac & D Foster and Feathers; 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); 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.
Director and Staff
Meg Kearney — Director
Meg Kearney is Founding 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 most recent collection of poems is Home By Now (Four Way Books, 2009). Her forthcoming picture book, Trouper the Three-Legged Dog, will be illustrated by E.B. Lewis and published by Scholastic. Meg’s poems, featured on Poetry Daily and Garrison Keillor’s “A Writer’s Almanac,” have 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 three-legged black Labrador named Trooper.
Visit www.megkearney.com.
Tanya Whiton — Assistant Director
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 2009 Martin Dibner Memorial Fellowship for Poets, and the 2000 Martin Dibner Fellowship for Fiction 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. She currently serves on the board of Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, an organization dedicated to building community and coordinating resources for writers in the Pine Tree State.
Visit www.tanyawhiton.com.