Jessica Hagedorn — Commencement Speaker, January 2011 Residency
© Miriam Berkley
Jessica Hagedorn was born and raised in the Philippines and came to the United States in her early teens. Her novels include Dream Jungle, The Gangster Of Love, and Dogeaters, which was nominated for a National Book Award. She is also the author of Danger and Beauty, a collection of poetry and prose; and the editor of Charlie Chan Is Dead: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Fiction and Charlie Chan Is Dead 2: At Home In The World. Her plays include Most Wanted, The Heaven Trilogy, and the stage adaptation of Dogeaters. She is the University Professor of Creative Writing in the MFA Program at Long Island University’s Brooklyn campus. Her new novel, Toxicology, will be published by Viking Penguin in 2011.
Phillip Lopate — Commencement Speaker, July 2010 Residency
courtesy of philliplopate.com
Widely considered one of the foremost American essayists and a central figure in the recent revival of interest in memoir writing, Phillip Lopate is best known for his supple and surprising essays, which have been collected most recently in Getting Personal: Selected Writings. He is the author of three essay collections, Bachelorhood (winner of the Texas Institute of Letters Award), Against Joie de Vivre, and Portrait of My Body (a finalist for the PEN Best Essay Book of the Year Award). He has also published two novellas in the book titled Two Marriages; two novels, Confessions of Summer and The Rug Merchant; two poetry collections, The Eyes Don't Always Want to Stay Open and The Daily Round; and a memoir of his teaching experiences, Being With Children, awarded the Christopher Medal. He has also edited the anthologies The Art of the Personal Essay, Writing New York; Journal of a Living Experiment (recipient of a citation from the New York Society Library and honorable mention from the Municipal Art Society's Brendan Gill Award); and a series collecting the best essays of the year, The Anchor Essay Annual. His work has been included in The Best American Essays and The Pushcart Prize series. His most recent book of nonfiction prose is the urbanistic meditation Waterfront: A Journey Around Manhattan.
Phillip has been awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York Public Library Center for Scholars and Writers Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts grants, and two New York Foundation for the Arts grants. After working with children for twelve years as a writer in the schools, he taught creative writing and literature at Fordham, Cooper Union, University of Houston, and New York University. He currently holds the John Cranford Adams Chair at Hofstra University, and also teaches in the MFA graduate programs at Columbia, the New School University, and Bennington’s MFA Program.
Patrick Donnelly — Special Guest, July 2010 Residency
© Carl Nardiello
Patrick Donnelly is author of The Charge (Ausable Press, 2003) and Nocturnes of the Brothel of Ruin, forthcoming from Four Way Books. He is an Associate Editor of Poetry International, and has taught writing at Colby College, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and elsewhere. He was Thornton writer-in-residence at Lynchburg College in 2006, and is a 2008 recipient of an Artist Fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. His poetry has appeared in many journals, including American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, The Yale Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and Hayden’s Ferry Review. With Stephen D. Miller he translates classical Japanese poetry and drama; their translations have appeared in many journals, including Bateau, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Circumference, thedrunkenboat.com, eXchanges, Metamorphoses, New Plains Review, Noon: The Journal of the Short Poem, Poetry International and Translations and Transformations: the Heike Monogatari in Nô. http://web.me.com/patricksdonnelly/
Lee Hope — Special Guest, July 2010 Residency
© William Betcher
Lee Hope is the recipient of the Theodore Goodman Award for Fiction, a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship, and a Maine Arts Commission Fellowship for Fiction. She has published stories in numerous literary journals and magazines, including Witness, The New Virginia Review, The North American Review, Beloit Fiction Journal, and High Plains Literary Review. Her short story “Recreational Biting” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She founded a low-residency MFA program, and played an instrumental role in the creation of Pine Manor’s MFA program. For 10 years she was the director of a national writers’ conference, and she has taught creative writing at various universities for the past 19 years. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Solstice Writers’ Institute, a nonprofit organization in the service of creative writers, and is Executive Editor of the organization’s literary magazine, Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices. She also serves on the MFA Advisory Board of Pine Manor College. She is in the process of completing a novel
Lesléa Newman — Special Guest, July 2010 Residency
© Mary Vasquez
Lesléa Newman is the author of 60 books for adults and children, including the poetry collections Nobody’s Mother and Still Life with Buddy; the novels The Reluctant Daughter and Good Enough to Eat; the short story collections A Letter to Harvey Milk and Girls Will Be Girls; and the children’s books Hachiko Waits, The Boy Who Cried Fabulous, and Heather Has Two Mommies. She has received poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Artists Fellowship Foundation, and is a past poet laureate of Northampton, MA. Nine of her books have been Lambda Literary Award finalists. Other literary awards include the James Baldwin Award for Cultural Achievement, a Barbara Deming/Money for Women fiction writing grant, three Pushcart Prize nominations, and a Highlights for Children fiction writing award.
Josh Neufeld — Special Guest, July 2010 Residency
© Seth Kushner
Josh Neufeld is the writer/artist of the New York Times bestseller A.D: New Orleans After the Deluge (Pantheon Books, 2009), a nonfiction graphic novel about Hurricane Katrina. Shortly after Hurricane Katrina, Neufeld spent three weeks as an American Red Cross volunteer in Biloxi, Mississippi. Neufeld works primarily in the realm of nonfiction comics. He is the author of the Xeric Award-winning comics travelogue A Few Perfect Hours. He is also a longtime artist for Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor, and his art has been exhibited in gallery and museum shows in the United States and Europe. Josh is currently at work illustrating The Influencing Machine, written by Brooke Gladstone, co-host of NPR's “On The Media.” Neufeld lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife, the writer Sari Wilson, and their daughter.
Sari Wilson — Special Guest, July 2010 Residency
© Nancy Wilson
Sari Wilson is a writer, editor, and consultant who works in prose and comics. Her fiction has appeared in literary journals such Agni, Slice, and Third Coast and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her comics writing has been anthologized in The Big Feminist Butt (forthcoming), From Girls to Grrrlz, and Keyhole. As an educational consultant, she has worked for Reading With Pictures, Drawing Words & Writing Pictures, Diamond Books, Teachers and Writers Collaborative, and Random House academic marketing. Sari presents at conferences on comics and the curriculum and conducts professional development workshops for teachers in graphic novel writing as a creative writing practice. She has been awarded a Wallace Stegner Creative Writing fellowship at Stanford University, a Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship, and a residency at The Corporation of Yaddo. She is currently at work on a novel.
Kevin McLellan — Special Guest, July 2010 Residency
© Jamie Graham
Kevin McLellan is the author of Round Trip (Seven Kitchens, 2010), a collaborative series with numerous women. He is currently working on another collaborative series, a male companion to Round Trip. When Kevin isn’t collaborating, he’s either trying to find proper homes for It was not that long ago and Shoes on a wire or composing poems for a 3rd full-length poetry manuscript. Individual poems can be found, or are forthcoming, in: Arch Literary Review, Barrow Street, Colorado Review, Drunken Boat, Exquisite Corpse, Hunger Mountain, Interim, Southern Humanities Review, Versal, and several other literary journals. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College, and he currently teaches writing at the University of Rhode Island in Providence. Even though Kevin lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a rural sensibility lives in him.
Sorche Elizabeth Fairbank — Special Guest, July 2010 & January 2009 Residencies
© S. Fairbank
Since establishing Fairbank Literary Representation in 2002, Sorche Elizabeth Fairbank has had the pleasure of working with a dynamic and varied list, representing best-selling authors, Edgar Award recipients, award-winning journalists, and of course one of her favorite kinds of clients — first-time authors. Authors and books represented by Fairbank Literary include: O. Henry prize winner Charlotte Forbes; Pulitzer nominee and LA Times Cairo Bureau Chief Jeffrey Fleishman; Darci Klein's To Full Term, A Mother's Triumph Over Miscarriage; and Edgar-winning mystery writer and host of "Anatomy Of A Mystery" Rex Burns, among others.
Kim Dana Kupperman — Special Guest, July 2010 Residency
© Bill Dowling
Kim Dana Kupperman is the author of I Just Lately Started Buying Wings: Missives from the Other Side of Silence (Graywolf Press, 2010), which was awarded the 2009 Bakeless Prize in Nonfiction. Her work has appeared in many literary periodicals, including Best American Essays 2006, Brevity, Fourth Genre, Hotel Amerika, Ninth Letter, and River Teeth. She has received notable mentions in Best American Essays (2007, 2008, 2009) and the Pushcart Prize anthology (2007; 2010). Other honors include the 2010 Peter Taylor Fellowship (Nonfiction) from the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, a 2009 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Literature Fellowship, a 2008 Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellowship, the 2003 Robert J. DeMott Prose Prize from Quarter after Eight, and first place in the 1996 Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics Essay Contest. She is the founder of Welcome Table Press, an independent nonprofit dedicated to publishing and celebrating the essay. She works as managing editor of The Gettysburg Review.
Louise Meriwether — Commencement Speaker, January 2010 Residency
© Kimberly Faulkner
Louise Meriwether was born in upstate New York and grew up in Harlem during the depression years. Shortly after graduating from New York University, she moved to Los Angeles where she worked for a black newspaper, the Los Angeles Sentinel, was a story analyst at Universal Studios in Hollywood, and wrote book reviews for the Los Angeles Times. At that time, she also penned her first novel, Daddy Was a Number Runner, based on the Harlem community that she knew as a child. The book is still in print and now considered to be a modern classic. Always fascinated by black history, which she claimed was often lost or vilified, Louise has written several articles on the accomplishments of black people and three historical children’s books: Don’t Ride the Bus on Monday is the story of Rosa Parks who sparked the 1960’s civil rights revolt; Dr. Daniel Hale Williams: The Heart Man chronicles the first doctor to successfully operate on the heart; and The Freedom Ship of Robert Smalls records the heroics of a slave who hijacked a confederate gunboat. Freedom Ship is also the genesis for Louise’s epic Civil War novel, Fragments of the Ark, its battles and personal lives told from the viewpoint of the slaves themselves. Her latest novel, Shadow Dancing, is a contemporary story set in New York City. Her short stories have appeared in several anthologies.
Louise taught creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College for several years as well as at the University of Houston in Texas. Ever an activist, she traveled south in the sixties to participate in the non-violent civil rights movement; was active in the campaign against apartheid in South Africa that successfully kept Muhamad Ali from fighting there when he was heavyweight champion of the world; and she is a dedicated peace activist against all wars. She is the recipient of literary grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Council for the Arts, the Rabinowitz Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation. She resides in New York City.
Dorothy Allison — Special Guest, January 2010 Residency
© Jill Posener
Dorothy Allison grew up in Greenville, South Carolina, the first child of a fifteen-year-old unwed mother who worked as a waitress. Now living in Nothern California with her partner Alix Layman and their teenage son, Wolf Michael, she describes herself as a feminist, a working-class storyteller, a Southern expatriate, a sometime poet, and a happily born-again Californian. Dorothy married Alix, her partner of twenty years, on All Souls Day, 2008. Wolf was witness and ring bearer.
An award-winning editor for Quest, Conditions, and Outlook—early feminist and Lesbian & Gay journals—Dorothy says that the early Feminist movement changed her life. "It was like opening your eyes under water. It hurt, but suddenly everything that had been dark and mysterious became visible and open to change." However, she admits, she would never have begun to publish her stories "if she hadn't gotten over her prejudices, and started talking to her mothers and sisters again."
Dorothy published her book of poetry, The Women Who Hate Me, in 1983. Her short-story collection, Trash, was published by Firebrand Books in 1988. Trash won two Lambda Literary Awards and the American Library Association Prize for Lesbian and Gay Writing. The expanded edition of Trash, which came out in 2002, included the prize-winning short story, "Compassion," selected for both Best American Short Stories 2003 and Best New Stories from the South 2003.
Dorothy received mainstream recognition with her novel Bastard Out of Carolina, a Finalist for the 1992 National Book Award. The novel won the Ferro Grumley prize, and ALA Award for Lesbian and Gay Writing. It became both a bestseller and an award-winning movie, and has been translated into more than a dozen languages.
Another national bestseller, Cavedweller was named a New York Times Notable Boook of the Year in 1998. It was also a finalist for the Lillian Smith prize and an ALA prize winner. It was later adapted for the stage and made into a movie.
Dorothy's creative nonfiction books include Two or Three Things I know for Sure (Dutton, 1995) and Skin—Talking about Sex, Class & Literature (Firebrand Books, 1994), a collection of narrative essays.
Awareded the 2007 Robert Penn Warren Award for Fiction, Allison is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Her new novel, She Who, is forthcoming from Penguin.
M.L. Liebler — Special Guest, January 2010 Residency
© Photos by Alex Lumelsky
M.L. Liebler is an acclaimed poet, university professor, literary arts activist, and arts organizer. 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 Laureat 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).
Visit www.mlliebler.com.
Bob Owczarek — Special Guest, January 2010 Residency
© PMC/Stephanie Ronan
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.
Ira Sadoff — Special Guest, January 2010 Residency
Ira Sadoff's History Matters: Contemporary Poetry on the Margins of American Culture was published in spring 2009 by Iowa University Press. Sadoff is the author of seven collections of poetry, most recently Barter and Grazing. His Ira Sadoff Reader compiled selected poems, published essays and short stories. His work is widely anthologized, including in the Scribner Series Best Poems of 2002 and 2008, Harper American Literature, St. Martin’s Introduction to Literature, The Bedford Introduction to Literature, The Body Electric, The Paris Review Anthology, and The Bread Loaf Anthology of Poetry. He is also the author of one novel, Uncoupling. Recipient of grants and Prizes from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and The Poetry Society of America, he currently teaches at Colby College and the MFA program at Drew University; he has also taught in the MFA programs at the Iowa Writers Workshop, the University of Virginia, Warren Wilson College, and at the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference.
Melissa Stewart — Special Guest, January 2010 Residency
© Sarah Brannen
Melissa Stewart is the award-winning author of more than 100 science books for children. After earning a bachelor’s degree in biology from Union College in Schenectady, New York and a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University, Melissa worked as a children’s book editor for nine years before becoming a fulltime writer in 2000. She has written everything from board books for preschoolers to magazine articles for adults. Melissa believes that nothing brings nonfiction writing to life like firsthand research. While gathering information for her books, she has explored tropical rain forests in Costa Rica, gone on safari in East Africa, and swum with sea lions in the Galapagos Islands. Her latest picture book, Under the Snow, is a Junior Library Guild Selection. Melissa is a member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Board of Advisors and a judge for the American Institute of Physics Children’s Science Writing Award.
Visit her on the Web at www.melissa-stewart.com.
Walter Mosley — Commencement Speaker, July 2009 Residency
© Greg Morris
Walter Mosley is the author of thirty critically acclaimed books, including his latest, The Long Fall, and his work as been translated into twenty-one languages. His popular mysteries featuring Easy Rawlins began with Devil in a Blue Dress in 1990, followed by several more novels in the series, such as Black Betty, A Little Yellow Dog, and Cinnamon Kiss (all of which were New York Times bestsellers). Other novels by Walter Mosley include The Wave; RL's Dream (winner of the 1996 Black Caucus of the American Library Association’s Literary Award and the NAACP Award in Fiction); Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned; Walkin' the Dog; The Man in My Basement; and Fortunate Son. His works of nonfiction include Workin’ on the Chain Gang; What Next; Life out of Context; and This Year You Write Your Novel. His nonfiction has also been published in The New York Times Magazine and The Nation, and he was an editor and contributor to the book Black Genius. He was also guest editor for The Best American Short Stories of 2003.
Walter’s numerous honors include the O’Henry Award and the Anisfield Wolf Award, an honor given to works that increase the appreciation and understanding of race in America. In 2002, he won a Grammy award for his liner notes accompanying “Richard Pryor: And It’s Deep, Too!: The Complete Warner Bros. Recordings (1968-1992)”. In 2005, he was honored by Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute with a “Risktaker Award,” given to him for both his creative and activist efforts. Two movies have been made from his work, including the 1995 TriStar release of “Devil in A Blue Dress,” directed by Carl Franklin, and starring Denzel Washington and Jennifer Beals. “Always Outnumbered,” produced by HBO/NYC and Palomar Pictures films, was directed by Michael Apted and starred Laurence Fishburne, Natalie Cole, Cicely Tyson, and Bill Cobbs. He was also given an honorary doctorate by The City College of New York in 2005. With The City College, Walter founded a new publishing degree program aimed at young urban residents—the only such program in the country. Born and raised in Los Angeles, he now lives in New York City.
Bruce Bennett — Special Guest, July 2009 Residency
© Wells College
Bruce Bennett is author of seven full-length books of poetry and more than twenty poetry chapbooks. His most recent books are Funny Signals and The Deserted Campus. His forthcoming Subway Figure will be released by Orchises in fall 2009. His New and Selected Poems: Navigating The Distances (Orchises Press), was chosen by Booklist as "One Of The Top Ten Poetry Books Of 1999." Co-founder and former editor of both Field: Contemporary Poetry and Poetics and Ploughshares, Bruce is currently Chair of English and Director of Creative Writing at Wells College in Aurora, New York. There, he co-founded the Wells College Book Arts Center and Wells College Press, and served as Director of the Center and Press until 2002. He has reviewed contemporary poetry books for The New York Times Book Review, The Nation, and Harvard Review, and his poems have appeared widely in literary journals as well as numerous text books and anthologies.
Rebecca Givens — Special Guest, July 2009 Residency
© Givens Archives
Rebecca Givens studied at Yale, Boston University, and the MGH Institute, where she was the recipient of a Mellon Fellowship, Clapp Fellowship, Bergan Prize, and and Academy of American Poets Award. Her poems have previously appeared in the Cincinnati Review, Gettysburg Review, American Letters & Commentary, Georgia Review, Carolina Quarterly, Southeast Review, Meridian, and have been included in a number of anthologies. Her interest include the poem series and collaborations with visual artists; one such collaboration with artist Monica Ong has been published in Born Magazine. Her current poem series, The Burden of Waiting to Arrive, is about a group of patients with aphasia and draws from her training as a speech-language pathologist. She is fluent in French and German and translates from these languages as well. Previously, she has taught at Wheelock College, Athens College in Greece, and in the Boston Public Schools; she has also worked as a consultant to students writing poetry and memoir. Currently she works as a speech-language pathologist and reading specialist at a private school while teaching creative writing throughout Boston, most recently the beginning and advanced versions of "10 Weeks 10 Poems" at Grub Street.
Visit www.rebeccagivens.com.
Albert LaFarge — Special Guest, July 2009 Residency
© Miriam Berkley
Albert LaFarge founded the Albert LaFarge Literary Agency in 2003. The agency handles works of general interest, mainly nonfiction, in subject areas including art and photography, biography, design, essay, history, medicine, memoir, narrative journalism, popular science, sports, and travel. Before becoming an agent, LaFarge worked in New York at Ballantine Books, Harcourt, Henry Holt, and Alfred A. Knopf. He was deputy editor of DoubleTake magazine for three years. He is the editor of The Essential William H. Whyte (2000) and, with Robert Coles, Minding the Store: Great Writing about Business, from Tolstoy to Now (2008). He has taught creative writing at Harvard College, where he was awarded a certificate of distinction from the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning in 2000, and he currently teaches a course in editing at Harvard Extension School and is on the faculty of the writing program at Harvard Medical School.
Jeffrey Thomson — Special Guest, July 2009 Residency
© Jennifer Eriksen
Jeffrey Thomson is the author of four books of poems, including Birdwatching in Wartime (Carnegie Mellon, 2009) and Renovation (Carnegie Mellon, 2005). He co-edited From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great with Camille Dungy and Matt O'Donnell (Persea Books, 2009) and translated Different Ways to Dig a Tunnel, poems by the Cuban poet Juan Carlos Flores. He has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pennsylvania Arts Commission, and, most recently, was named the 2008 Individual Arts Fellow in the Literary Arts by the Maine Arts Commission. He has taught at a variety of colleges in Kansas, Washington, Pennsylvania, and Maine, where he is currently associate professor of creative writing at the University of Maine Farmington.
Visit www.jeffreythomson.com.
Donald Hall — Commencement Speaker, January 2009 Residency
© Hugh Chatfield
Donald Hall is one of America’s most respected writers. He has published fifteen books of poetry, most recentlyWhite Apples and the Taste of Stone: Selected Poems 1946 – 2006. In addition to poetry, he has also written several collections of essays (among themLife Work and String Too Short to be Saved), children’s books (notablyOx-Cart Man, which won the Caldecott Medal), short stories, memoirs, biographies, textbooks, sports journalism, and a number of plays. He has also devoted time to editing: between 1983 and 1996 he oversaw publication of more than sixty titles for the University of Michigan Press alone. His many awards include two Guggenheim Fellowships, the Robert Frost Medal, the Lamont Poetry Prize, inclusion on the Horn Book Honor List, the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and theLos Angeles Times Book Prize. A three-time National Book Award Finalist, he also received the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for lifetime achievement. Donald Hall served asPoet Laureate of his home state of New Hampshire from 1984 to 1989, and in 2006 was named the 14th Poet Laureate of the United States, a position he held for one year.
Naomi Shihab Nye — Special Guest, January 2009 Residency Guest
© Ha Lam
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 poetryanthologies for young readers, including 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 aLannan Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Witter Bynner Fellow (Library of Congress). She has received aLavan 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.
Matt O'Donnell — Special Guest, January 2009 Residency
© A.F. Norling
Matt O'Donnell is founding Editor & Executive Director of From the Fishouse, an online audio archive of emerging poets, based in Pittston, Maine. Matt graduated from Holy Cross College and earned an MFA in poetry from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He is Associate Editor of Bowdoin magazine at Bowdoin College, and an assistant editor of Poets on Poets, an online audio archive of contemporary poets reading Romantic-period poems, from Colby College. His poems have appeared in journals such as The Greensboro Review, 32 Poems, and Ecotone, and he co-edited From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great (Persea Books, April 2009).
William B. Patrick — Special Guest, January 2009 Residency Guest
© Roberto Bocci
William B. Patrick's writing has been published or produced in several genres: creative nonfiction, fiction, screenwriting, poetry, and drama. Saving Troy, his innovative chronicle of a year spent living and riding with professional firefighters and paramedics, was published in December, 2005. His memoir in poetry, We Didn't Come Here for This, was published by BOA Editions in 1999 and—in a starred review—Kirkus called the book "a marvelous memoir-in-poetry and a wonderful hybrid, written in a voice that's compassionate, fresh and American, without ever proclaiming itself such." An earlier collection of Mr. Patrick's poetry, These Upraised Hands, also published by BOA Editions in 1995, is a book of narrative poems and dramatic monologues. His novel, Roxa: Voices of the Culver Family, won the 1990 Great Lakes College Association New Writers Award for the best first work of fiction. Currently, Bill is working on a novel about a stand-up comic who believes he is a famous bank robber.
Dawn Potter — Special Guest, January 2009 Residency Guest
© Thomas Birtwistle
Dawn Potter is associate director of the Frost Place Conference on Poetry and Teaching. A violinist as well as a poet, she spent seven years teaching elementary school music as a long-term substitute. This odd backdoor introduction to teaching reinforced her conviction that public school education must be both intellectually rigorous and an avenue into wonder. She now works as a visiting poet in K-12 schools throughout Maine, has led workshops at Haystack and for the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, and is a member of the Beloit Poetry Journal's editorial board. Dawn is the author of a memoir, Tracing Paradise: Two Years in Harmony with John Milton (University of Massachusetts Press, 2009), as well as two collections of poetry, most recently, How the Crimes Happened (CavanKerry Press, 2010). New poems and essays appear in the Threepenny Review, Sewanee Review, Prairie Schooner, and many other journals. She lives in Harmony, Maine, with photograph Thomas Birtwistle and their two sons.
Tad Richards — Special Guest, January 2009 Residency
© Peter Jones
Tad Richards has published 17 novels and five collections of poetry, including Situations (Ye Olde Font Shoppe 2002), a novel in verse which was also adapted as a play. In recent years, he has written best selling nonfiction with financial expert Neale S. Godfrey, and entries for The St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture; Companion to 20th Century American Poetry; and The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Poets and Poetry. He has written screenplays for three feature films, and the English dialogue for the dubbed versions of the Academy Award-winning "Z" and "State of Siege." He has had plays produced at theaters and colleges in New Work and New Mexico. His songs have been recorded by Orleans, John Hall, and Fred Koller. He teaches at SUNY New Paltz and lives in Saugerties, New York, where he is president and artistic director of Opus 40.
Mark Schafer — Special Guest, January 2009 Residency Guest
© Marjorie Salvodon
Mark Schafer is a literary translator and visual artist whose inspiration to begin translating came in college, when he read short stories by the Cuban author Virgilio Piñera. In 1987, Eridanos Press published Cold Tales, a collection of Piñera's stories, and the following year they published René's Flesh, Schafer's translation of Piñera's only novel. In addition to Piñera's fiction, Mark has translated novels, short stories, essays, and poetry by many other Latin American authors including Gloria Gervitz, Alberto Ruy Sánchez, Jesús Gardea, Eduardo Galeano, and Antonio José Ponte. He has received numerous grants and awards for his translations, including the Robert Fitzgerald Prize and two Translation Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. His translation, Before Saying Any of the Great Words: Selected Poetry of David Huerta, was published in January of this year by Copper Canyon Press. Mark is also a visual artist who makes provocative collages with maps, which can be viewed on his website: www.marksonpaper.us.
Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright — Special Guest, January 2009 Residency Guest
© Mila Pavek
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 publication 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 in New European Poets (Graywolf 2008), she has taught classes and workshops in translation at Boston University, Oberlin College, and the University of Arkansas. Door Languages, her translations of poetry by Zafer Senocak, appeared with Zephyr Press in October 2008.
Previous Special Guests
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July 2008
|
Nina Crews
Commencement Speaker |
Roland Merullo |
Bob Owczarek |
| Elizabeth Peavey |
Peter Wood |
Publishing Panelists |
|
January 2008
|
| Wyn Cooper |
Gibson Fay-LeBlanc |
Michael Fleming |
| Marie Harris |
Jessica Lipnack |
Sheree R. Thomas |
|
July 2007
|
| Kurt Andersen |
Melanie Drane |
Phyllis Karas |
| Alex Motyl |
|
|
|
January 2007
|
| Nancy Willard |
Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright |
|
|
July 2006
|
| Manette Ansay |
Andrew Solomon |
Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright |
| Franz Wright |
|
|